Ivey breaks his WPT duck
February 29, 2008
For a man who’s widely regarded as one of the best poker players on the tournament, it seems strange that Phil Ivey had never won a WPT Final Table.
That changed last night though, at the eighth time of asking, when Ivey picked up the winners prize for the L.A. poker classic.
It wasn’t always straight forward though and when Ivey lost a large pot to Charles Moore early on in the match-up, he admits that his mind had started to wander:
“I actually felt when I first sat down and lost that big hand, I thought, ‘Here we go again’.”
He wasn’t to be outdone though and started to steadily increase his stack again, and winning a $3.14m against Name Le soon gave him the chip lead again.
It was a lead he wasn’t to let go. He knocked Le out shortly afterwards and advanced to the heads-up play with a 5:1 chip lead over his opponent, Qinn Do. A full house of Aces and Eights was eventually good enough to land Ivey the winners cheque for $1,596,100, but you feel that finally having a WPT Tour trophy sitting at home will probably mean more to him than the money in the bank.
“I was just really frustrated, about the seven other times I’ve made a WPT final table,” he admitted afterwards.
BPO all set to get underway at Bodog Poker
February 27, 2008
Bodog is preparing to launch the biggest poker tournament in the site’s history, and to celebrate the fact the online poker room will be adding $75,000 of their own money to swell the prize pool. The Bodog Poker Open (BPO) will house five events climaxing with a $500 buy-in main event scheduled to be played on March 9th at 4pm E.T.
The Open itself will actually start on March 3rd with a $250+$20 no-limit hold’em tournament. The winner of that will join the Winners of the other prelimiary events in receiving a free entry into the BPO main event to go alongside their tournament winnings.
Satellites for the main event (with a buy-in starting at just $40) are currently being hosted every weeknight at 8.35pm EST with twenty seats at the BPO main event being put up for grabs in each tournament.
To register for a satellite tournament, visit the Bodog Poker website »
PKR offering largest cash prize in their history
February 18, 2008
The PKR Masters will see the 3D online poker room giving away the largest prize in their history.
It’s been an impressive few weeks for PKR who claimed that they were the fastest growing poker room on the web last month when they served 10,000 simultaneously for the first time. Now their Masters tournament will be offering a first prize of at least $18,00.
A Mega-Satellite (with a buy-in of $30) will be held this Friday at 20.00 GMT with PKR guaranteeting twenty five seats for the final tournament. For those of you with a slightly smaller bank roll, regular satellites have already started to roll with a buy-in of just $3.30
Sign up now for the PKR Masters »
Titan announce £2m ECOOP
February 14, 2008
Following the huge success of the first European Championship of Online Poker (ECOOP), Titan Poker have announced that they will be running a second, even bigger tournament.
Last year, over $2,500,000 was given away in prize money in just ten days with Luke Cahill the biggest winner. He walked away with a cheque for $220,000 for winning the $1,000,000 Guaranteed Prize Tournament.
This year though, things have literally doubled in size. The Guaranteed tournament will now have $2,000,000 in prize money up for grabs. Satellites are already running and the final stages will be held on March 2.
Make sure you’re in the running, by clicking here to sign up with Titan Poker and get a 100% of your first deposit back as a welcome bonus. And because you’re a visitor to The Short Stack, you’ll also get a free $25 to play with on top of your bonus when you deposit $20. No strings attached
Titan Poker to offer unique Leap Year Tournament
February 13, 2008
Titan Poker are offering all players who have played at least 29 tournaments at their online poker room during the month of February, the opportunity to participate in a special Leap Year tournament which will be held on February 29th.
The top 29 players will each be awarded a share of $5,000 for their efforts.
Click here to sign up to Titan Poker
PKR giving away free poker books
February 9, 2008
3D poker room PKR are giving away copies of the highly acclaimed book Kill Everyone to their most succesful Sit and Go players this week.
The book is a collaboration between three of online poker’s most respected players: Lee Nelson (author of “Kill Phil“), Tysen Streib and Kim Lee and focuses on tournament strategy for the more advanced player.
The promotion is only running for the next seven days and will see the book being given away to the top 50 bounty hunters playing in PKR’s Terminator Sit & Go tournaments.
The Terminator format was introduced by PKR at the beginning of December and offers players a fun and exciting way of playing their S&G’s. Players get paid for every opponent that they knock out, while the price on their own head continues to rise. It has so far proved to be very sucessful among PKR’s members
Click here to sign up for a Terminator Tournament
Full Tilt Online Poker Series to start tomorrow
February 7, 2008
Full Tilt Poker are getting their impressive array of Poker Superstars together again as they kick off their Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS).
The series will begin tomorrow and consist of 20 separate events: The first one being a $750,000 guaranteed no limit hold’em tournament. Players entering the series will be treated to a Pro Chat session with a Full Tilt Pro before every event and the eventual winners will receive a gold FTOPS jersey to wear in the flesh as well as an exclusive digital avatar to show off at the table.
The series will offer over $10million in guaranteed prizes with the highlight being a $2million guaranteed event (buy-in $500) to be played on Sunday 17th February.
Full Tilt will also be giving a second chance to all those players who go out on the bubble. With the exception of the main event, all of the entrants who just miss out on being paid will be entered into the Bouncebackability tournament (a freeroll) with first prize being entry into the main event itself.
Book your place in FTOPS and get 100% of your initial deposit back (up to $600)
WSOP Qualifiers start on Bodog
February 6, 2008
Today saw the the race for the World Series of Poker crown start in earnest on Bodog Poker. The online poker room looks set to offer more than 120 seats to its players as it holds a number of satellites leading up the main event on July 3rd.
The satellites (named Main Event Semifinals), are to be held on a weekly basis with the first one being held tonight. They’ll be played every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings with each one offering its winner a package worth $12,000: a $10,000 entry to the WSOP Main event and $2,000 for travel expenses.
What’s even better news for potential players is that Bodog have announced plans to add further main-event qualifiers, which should push the free WSOP seats on offer up past the 120 mark.
Tournaments have started now with a buyin of $250+50, but there are plenty of qualifiers starting for as little as $1 or 100 player points for those who are looking to push their bankroll that little bit further.
Places can also be won via Bodog’s regular Player’s Choice tournaments. Winners of this weekly tournament can use their prize as an entracnce fee to any $10,000 including the World Series of Poker Main Event itself.
McDonald comes of age at the German EPT
February 4, 2008
Eighteen year old Mike McDonald has a lot to thank his former chess teacher for.
After picking up the $1.3million first prize at the German European Poker Tour event, the young Canadian revealed that it had been while studying at the well known University of Waterloo that his chess mentor introduced him to the game and told him that it was a good way to make a living.
McDonald obviously took these words to heart and dived head long into his first tournament on his eighteenth birthday which just so happened to coincide with the World Series of Poker Europe in London. He turned up with his $10,000 buy-in and ended up at the feature table alongside Jamie Gold before the 2006 World Champion eliminated him from the tournament.
He obviously learned a lot from his experience though as he has been going from strength to strength. Having got into the prize money for the first time in Prague at the end of last year, McDonald has picked up prize money five times in the last month alone.
The German EPT victory represents his biggest success yet though and suggests that he is one to keep an eye on in the future.
Online poker players can qualify for all European Poker Tour events at PokerStars.
Gavin Griffin makes poker history in Atlantic City
February 2, 2008
Poker history was made at the Borgata Casino last night as one of the brightest stars in the game won the 2008 Borgata Poker Classic.
Gavin Griffin had already been victorious in the 2007 Grand Final of the European Poker Tour and had won a World Series of Poker bracelet for pot-limit hold’em (2004). However, when he won his first World Poker Tour Title by topping the field in Atlantic City last night he became the only player in poker to hold a title in all three of the major tours.
Going into the final table Griffin was only narrowly behind chip leader, David Tran although that soon changed within a dozen hands being played. When Griffin raised Tran under the gun, Tran responded by re-raising to 475,000. Griffin wasn’t finished though and made a further re-raise to 1.5million which forced Tran to have a serious think. After more than a minute, the man from El Monte, California mucked his hand leaving Griffin to pick up a pot worth over a million in chips.
The opening stages of the final table were great to watch. Play was fast and furious with large numbers of chips swapping sides of the table on a regular basis. The initial short stack (Ervin Prifti) went out after only five hands and when Lee Watkinson finished in 5th place ($282,779) having thrown all his chips into the middle three times already, play seemed to calm down a bit.
By this time Tran had built up a fairly impressive chip lead again with Thomas Hare, Griffin and Noah Schwartz all sharing roughly the same number of chips. Tran really started to show championship credentials when he won a pot worth 2.1 million from Griffin and soon followed that up with a significant win a few hands later when he got help from the flop to beat Schwartz’s 9 9 with his own KK. This was the hand that eliminated Schwartz from the tournament in fourth place with a cheque for $331,958.
With only three players left, Griffin went to work reeling in Tran’s huge chip lead. He managed to double up through Thomas Hare leaving the player from Haverford crippled. He was eliminated the next hand when his K3 was dominated by Griffin’s KQ. His third place finish earned him $381,137 but the real story was that Griffin had managed to get his hands on enough chips to allow him to compete in the heads-up play.
And compete he did. Three hands later he picked up a pot worth $4.2m dollars to take the chip lead out of Tran’s hands for only the second time that night. It was a particularly ballsy play with Griffin throwing all his chips into the middle of the table on the turn and forcing his opponent to fold.
It was the momentum that Griffin needed. Tran briefly got the chip lead back, but the tournament hit a major turning point after 83 hands. Tran went all in with a pair of nine. After a quick think, Griffin called him and turned over A Q. The flop came Q 8 8, leaving Tran praying for a 9 from the remaining two cards. It wasn’t to be though with the turn and the river bringing a 7 and a 5 which allowed Griffin to build a stack with over 13 million.
To credit David Tran though, he never went away. Having been dealt pocket rockets he was able to double up again and his stack rose to 4.73 million when a 10 arrived on the river enabling him to topple Griffin’s K Q.
But with the chip lead he had, you sensed it was only a matter of time before Griffin got his hands on the title. The final hand of the evening dealt Tran K 8 and his opponent Q J. Again Tran announced an all in raise which was called by Griffin. The board came up A 9 8 Q 10 giving Griffin the help he needed to get his hands on the tournament title, but more importantly affording him the status of the only poker player on the planet to have completed the “Triple Crown”.
His winnings for the tournament amounted to $737,685 ($25,000 of which was entry into the WPT World Championship) and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. David Tran’s prize for second place was an impressive $737,685.