Poker Digest

Defending a major title successfully is no small feat for any player. Jackson Zheng has backed up on his 2010 New Zealand Poker Open Title and Soren Erickson took down 2 Nationals in a row. To Christchurch Casinos Nationals, the Open is rapidly becoming the North Islands answer and with just under 200 runners winning this year, the event was a tough ask. It was Jackson’s second major title and he walked away with $50, 615, 00.

The New Zealand Poker community needed a shot in the arm and the 2011 New Zealand Poker Open has done exactly the same for the community. The country’s Hold Em aficionados have had to settle for overseas on online for over six months, as their only major tournament fixes.

In Day 2 of the Main Event, eighty players were qualified with just eighteen players returning to the SKYCITY Poker room for the final day. Until only nine players remained beginning the Final Table for the tournament, players bet, raised and folded.

Only two hours after the final day commenced, the Final Table at the SKYCITY New Zealand Poker Open had begun. 2010 winner Zheng was chip stack leader, throughout the majority of the Final Table. Until only Zheng and Manu Austin remained, players were eliminated. Until Manu pushed all in with King, both played cautiously and kept it tight, 6 and was called by Zheng who held 8, 10. With a pair of 10’s over Manu’s King High, the cards fell Jackson came out on top.

On Tuesday, May 31st, 2011, the World Series of Poker begins at the Rio Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. It promises to be the biggest WSOP in history with 58 bracelet events this summer.

With a $25,000 heads up no-limit championship the WSOP kicks off. The main event is scheduled to begin July 7, capping off over a month long series of satellites. The WSOP will be offering over 7,000 different events leading up to the main event even with the controversy surrounding Internet poker wagering offshore.

Including some new events added to the schedule there have been a number of changes to 2011 World Series of Poker. Including No-Limit Hold’em, Seven Card Razz, Limit Hold’em, Badugi Limit, Seven Card Stud, 2-7 Draw Lowball No Limit, Omaha Hi-Lo Split 8 or better, Pot Limit Omaha, 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball Limit and Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo Split 8 or better, the other new event is the $2,500 buy-in 10-game mix. On June 16th it will be a 6 handed event.

The chip stacks is another new addition, which will be triple chip stacks to start every single bracelet event, regardless of buy-in. Each day’s play in any given event will last 10 levels as late registration will last four levels. For all players, this should result in better finishing times for to ensure a better night’s sleep.

Florida’s first World Poker Tour event ever has reached its final table. For a top prize of US$1.1 million, the six players who have reached the televised Texas Holdem final table will contend. With nearly 4.4 million chips, young American pro Taylor von Kriegenbergh leads the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown final table.

Over the next two players on the leaderboard, Mr. von Kriegenbergh holds a dominating lead. With just under 2.2 million chips, Florida native Justin Zaki sits in second place. Abbey Daniels has just over 2.1 million chips going into tomorrow’s play. She is the only female poker player at the final table.

In the state of Florida, a total of 433 players entered the WPT’s first ever event, creating a $4,156,800 prize pool with $1,122,340 reserved for first.

When play resumes, Abbey Daniels and Justin Zaki, relatively unknown locals will be the two players closest to Von Kriegenbergh, but three experienced pros sound out the final six, which includes three-time WPT final tablist Curt Kohlberg, WPT title holder Tommy Vedes and 2008 Borgata Summer Open champ Allen Bari.

A 2010 graduate of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, Von Kriegenbergh did place fourth in the $4,750 Main Event at The Big Event, scoring a $140,000 payday. He does not have a long live tournament history because of his age.

For the biggest payday of his flourishing professional career, the young poker pro is also in line. He is guaranteed to win at least US$166,272 at the WPT event, although he won US$140,000 in Los Angeles. He should be a strong contender to take down his first career title and million-dollar payday, with his colossal chip stack and strong play.

For the final table play, the chip stacks are – Taylor von Kriegenbergh: 4,384,000 (Seat 4), Justin Zaki: 2,197,000 (Seat 6), Abbey Daniels: 2,192,000 (Seat 1), Allen Bari: 1,984,000 (Seat 3), Tommy Vedes: 1,570,000 (Seat 2) and Curt Kohlberg: 655,000 (Seat 5).

The high-stakes cash games at Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars hasn’t stopped many other regulars and prominent players from taking to the virtual felt the last few days, even though the high-stakes cash games at Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars will no doubt be missing some key players and well-known faces. Gus Hansen played on along with “NoPasaran” and Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies. Success was seen for NoPasaran and Hansen, while it was quite the contradictory for Sahamies. In a new era of cash games on Full Tilt Poker, Hansen and Antonius kept on to be the driving force.

Over two days, Hansen engaged in a prolific 5,000 hands, taking on hot names like NoPasaran, gavz101 and Patrik Antonius. At the $300 / $600 stake level, most of the games were played. Harrington25 lined Hansen’s pockets with an additional $169k, while Antonius gave up $329k.

A few US high stakes online players including Ben “Sauce1234? Sulsky, Matt Hawrilenko and Josh Arieh were still able to make it to the tables in the first few hours of the weekend. However, the field of competitors looked a bit more euro by Sunday.

Meanwhile, Antonius is now within $100k of being even in 2011. He had a rough start to the year. NoPasaran had a prevailing night pulling in $54k, but Antonius was the principal winner.

From Full Tilt Poker last night, U.S. players were obviously still absent and there were some new faces at the top of the online poker charts.

Among the top players on PokerStars were diemaus36o (+$21k), K_0_S_T_Y_A (+$47k), vence0r (+$27k) and 0Human0 (+$36k). Thecortster (-$26k), FallAtYourFeet (-$40k), scout326 (-$48k) and podnil (-$27k) are included in the list of losers. Vaga_Lion, who lost $27k, was one of the few identifiable players.

Day 2 of the EPT Berlin main event has concluded, leaving only 119 of the 353 players who started the day. With a stack of 1,079,400, Fabrice Soulier, of France, has propelled himself into the chip lead, which makes him the lone player with more than a million in chips.

All remaining players are assured of at least €7,500 and the bubble boy was Andrey Lobzhanidze. After Sunday’s final table, the last man standing will take home the top prize of €825,000.

For the 120 players headed into Day 3, the good news is that they are all in the money, while chip leader Fabrice Soulier was beginning to put some distance between him and the rest of the field, which was bad news for them. The lone player over 1 million chips is the Frenchman and Alessandro Laubinger is his next nearby opponent has 742,400.

The start of day chip leader, Sander Berndsen, departed early in the day, while Soulier finished the day on top. Tobias Reinkemeier, Jeff Sarwer, Davidi Kitai, McLean Karr, Team PokerStars Pros Sandra Naujoks, Jan Heitmann and Arnaud Mattern, Matt Affleck and Nicolas Chouity.

Returning for Day 3 on Friday are just a few of the players and they are Per Linde, Vladimir Geshkenbein, Mayu Roc Uribe, Roberto Romanello, Jeff Hakim, Cornel Cimpan, Peter Eastgate and Team PokerStars Pros George Danzer and Sebastian Ruthenberg.

With the final 119 players taking their seats, Day 3 will commence at noon local time tomorrow. The goal is to play down to 24 players. To the final 24, the plan for Day 3 is to cut the field down, which means there is an additional carnage-filled day on the horizon at the Spielbank Berlin Casino.

Gus Hansen has been in astounding form in the last one week at Full Tilt Poker, winning one million dollars over a game of pot-limit Omaha and limit deuce to seven triple draw games. As on 2011, this one million has raised Hansen’s worth to a monstrous four million dollars. This is no revelation considering Hansen, in the start of his career as a poker player, was always a poker player to watch.

For the second successive night, Gus Hansen smashed his challengers to the tune of $500k and put on a high stakes clinic on Full Tilt.

Scott “URnotINdanger2” Palmer was Hansen’s chief challenger, who, after a fast start in 2011 has run into a wall. 867 hands of heads-up $500/$1,000 PLO was played by the pair.

Hansen started out by winning $354k on a single table and his conquest was never really in question. Palmer made a gutsy effort, later in the session, to get even and won $252k on one table and another $218k on a different table, even though at one point Palmer were down over $500k.

The high stakes tables at PokerStars were active, even though all of the above mentioned action took place on Full Tilt as well. Ben “Sauce123? Suklsy earned $191k and recorded over 3,200 hands against Also11. WheresMyRoll (up $35k), skjervoy (up $101k), V. Wahlbeck (up $33k) and Martin Kabrhel (up $40k) were the other noteworthy winners.

Van Marcius (down $56k), jungleman12 (down $98k), OMGClayAiken (down $206k), URnotINdanger2 (down $53k), paula35 (down $87k) and Also11 (down $192k) are included as the biggest losers of the evening.

The Australian Hotels Association (AHA) and Clubs Australia are set to commence an enormous $20 million campaign opposing the federal government’s recommended poker machine reforms.

The suggested national reforms look to limit problem gambling, which are being pushed by the Gillard government as it looks to maintain the support of Tasmanian independent and anti-gambling advocate Andrew Wilkie. The lobby groups have assigned Banjo Advertising to commence a campaign in April, which will run across print, television, radio, outdoor and online.

However, there are ample people who have come out strongly against the reforms. The Australian Hotels Association and Clubs Australia are launching a $20 million campaign to rally opposition to the reforms. They say that the reforms would gravely damage pubs and clubs in distant areas, many of which depend on gambling revenue to stay alive.

Current announcements from the government have sought to ease some of the apprehensions raised by rivals of reform. The smartcards that the government would like to require gamblers to use will not rely on biometric data, meaning that there will be no central database of information or distress about privacy infringements.

The Banjo advertizing contract is for a $20 million campaign over the subsequent two years, starting with online video and newspaper adverts. The promotion then ramps it up a notch and moves to radio, TV, billboards and pub coasters.

The gambling issue in Australia is red hot with government deals and assurances surpassing the insecure ground the current Gillard government are on. Gillard is duty bound to put into practice the problem gambling reforms.

The National Heads-Up Poker Championship’s list of invitees has been declared. The championship is reminiscent of the poker all-star game.

On March 4 through March 6, the heads-up tournament will take place at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The tournament is in its seventh year. For the tournament, the prize pool is $1.8 million and the buy-in has augmented from $20,000 to $25,000. $750,000 will be received by the winner. A day before the tournament begins at Pure Nightclub at Caesars; the bracket for the 64 players will be selected at random.

Defending champion Annie Duke, Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson, Huck Seed, Tom Dwan, Vanessa Rousso, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Chris Ferguson and Patrik Antonius are among the well-known professionals included in the field.

In the field, for the first time are November Niner John Racener and Sorel Mizzi, the 2010 BLUFF Magazine player of the year. In a side game of Chinese poker, Racener recently blamed Mizzi of cheating him.

Three pure personality picks are, former Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith, actors Jason Alexander and Don Cheadle for this year. In the field are Jennifer Tilly and Gabe Kaplan, who had more than enough success to be regarded as poker players first, and celebrities second. This year, two players were the online qualifiers.

Ayaz Mahmood is the other fascinating name in the field. By prevailing in the World Series of Poker heads-up championship event, he was qualified. In 2011, Dwyte Pilgrim had a getaway year but he has yet to become a true star to the poker-viewing public. After much publicized retirement from poker in 2010, Peter Eastgate will also be participating. Tournament’s history was turned on its head in the last year. Erik Seidel, who seemingly could not win, beat in the first round to Erik Seidel.

On Tuesday, Feb. 22 at 9 p.m. (CET), Victor Chandler Poker’s “55 Special” Share Scheme League starts and will run every Tuesday for next five weeks, consisting of both the freerolls and a leaderboard.

Members of the online poker room are entitled to participate in five weekly €200 freerolls, for the price of the €10 fee. Four hours before the freeroll is due to start, you must register for that too. If you aren’t registered for the Place Holder then you can’t register for the freeroll, so registering early is as always the wisest approach. After the final €200 “55 Special” freeroll, the leader board will be finalized and those awarded points will win a share of the total entry fees (up to €18,000), depending on the points awarded, and perhaps get a place in the Victor Chandler Hall of Fame.

Each freeroll shares out a fixed number of leaderboard points to the top 55 players, with more points obviously being awarded to the players who put in the best performance. Then, at the end of the five weeks, you will be paid a share of the Prize Pool according to how many points you have. For example, if you have personally earned 5% of the total points awarded, you would receive 5% of the prize pool as your reward. Earn more points and you would receive a bigger share.

Full details of the 55 Special Share Scheme League can be found at VC Poker. Register today if you want to get involved and best of luck.

After topping a 523-strong field at the World Poker Tour Venice, Alessio Isaia took down the largest tournament ever to be held in Venice to become the first Italian to win a major WPT title.

For the first-place prize of €380,000 at the Casino di Venezia, Isaia beat Hungaraian Szabolcs Mayer heads up, which is reputed to be the oldest casino in the world. At the WPT World Championship and a Tiffany bracelet, the young Italian also takes home a $25,500 seat. A breathtaking buy-in of €3000 plus €30 was witnessed at the WPT Venice Main Event.

In Venice, this was the largest poker tournament ever held, but that did not keep Alessio Isaia from being the first home countryman to take down a major World Poker Tour title. At the World Poker Tour Venice stop, he beat a 523-strong field and managed to endure a grueling heads-up challenge against Hungaraian Szabolcs Mayer. The challenge was gruel some, which lasted for a record setting eight hours, 20 minutes. More than just the €380,000 first-place prize, Isaia claimed a $25,500 seat at the World Poker Tour World Championship and a very nice Tiffany bracelet.

At the end of four days, eight talented poker players reached the final tables. The European Poker Tour (EPT) titleholders, David Vamplew and Max Lykov were clearly the favorites. At the heads-up tournament, it was the 24-year-old Italian poker pro Isaia, who finally defeated Szabolcs Mayor.

At the finals of the last two WSOP events, Italian player Isaia had not performed well, owing to which the WPT Venice win turned out to be his first greatest victory and the largest win of a poker career of nearly 5 years.

The holder of the EPT London title, Vamplew finished third. Mayer managed to increase his chip stack by double just before dinner break, even though Isaia was the chip leader at the start of the heads-up tournament. In a vice-like grip, Mayer took hold of the match and appeared as if he would beat Isaia anytime. However, Isaia managed to become the chip leader again. This match lasted 8 hours and 20 minutes and it was the longest match in the history of WPT.

On February 19 in Las Vegas, the next WPT event will be the WPT Celebrity Invitational while the LA Poker Classic Main Event will be played on February 25.