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Swedish Pro Martin Jacobson Leads the Field with 24 Remaining
Day 3 has come to a close at the European Poker Tour Vilamoura €5,000 no-limit hold’em main event and there are just 24 players remaining from the original 384 players that entered the event. Today was especially tough on the professionals, particularly day 2 chip leader Brandon Cantu. He came into the day with 557,400 but he eventually fell in 36th place.
The remaining players will return tomorrow and play down to the final table of eight. You can watch all of the action live on the EPT Live video feed, which will bring you every minute of the tournament. You can also follow the tournament live on the PokerStars blog feed.
The overnight chip leader is Swedish professional Martin Jacobson. He will be looking to take his career earnings above $1 million at this event and he is in a good position to do so with only two days left on the journey to the championship. Another familiar face remaining is the first EPT Grand Final champion Rob Hollink. He holds 696,000. Other notables still in the mix include England football star Teddy Sheringham (381,000) and Nicolo Calia (609,000), who took seventh place at EPT Tallinn. He can make back-to-back EPT final tables if he survives tomorrow.
Check back at CardPlayer.com tomorrow for another summary of the action. Here is a look at the tournament statistics from EPT Vilamoura Day 3:
Day 3 Top Chip Counts:
Martin Jacobson — 1,362,000
Marco Leonzio — 778,000
Guillermo Garcia — 766,000
Sam Trickett — 712,000
Rob Hollink — 696,000
Sergio Coutinho — 635,000
Nicolo Calia — 609,000
Jason Lee — 600,000
Erik Van Den Berg — 554,000
Tom Johansen — 521,000
Notable Cashes:
56: Joe Ebanks — €7,263
52: Luca Pagano — €7,263
36: Brandon Cantu — €8,381
35: Marcin Horecki — €8,381
29: J.P. Kelly — €9,312
26: William Thorson — €9,312
Hand of the Day:
William Thorson Eliminated
William Thorson raised to 25,000 preflop and Guillermo Garcia reraised all in. Thorson made the all-in call and they flipped over their cards:
Thorson: Q
Q
Garcia: A Q
Board: A
6 5 A 7
Garcia had three outs in the deck and two of them were delivered by the board. Thorson was eliminated on the hand in 26th place and he took home €9,312 in prize money.
Remaining Payout Structure:
1: €467,835
2: €297,984
3: €186,240
4: €139,680
5: €93,120
6: €74,496
7: €55,872
8: €37,248
9-10: €27,936
11-12: €20,486
13-14: €16,762
15-16: €13,968
17-24: €11,174
This week, the Commerce Casino caused outrage amongst members of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) after it’s revelation that it was against any federal licensing of online poker.
The Commerce Casino’s opposition to Barney Frank’s HR 2267 and McDermott’s HR 2268 bills may have caused a furore in the poker playing community, but now more casinos have come out in support of the Commerce, including the Bicycle Casino, Hollywood Park and Hawaiian Gardens.
Responding to criticism by the PPA that they were greedy, betrayers of the poker community, Commerce Casino board member Haig Papaian and Tom Malkasian dismissed the PPA as one of many “special interest groups receiving funds from illegal offshore gaming operators.”
The Commerce Casino claims to employ over 20,000 workers in the state of California. Furthermore, with 70% of Californians using the interenet and $13.4 billion wagered annually online, the Commerce said it was keen to protect what is the biggest internet gaming market worldwide. As Malkasian explained in an interview with Poker News Daily:
“Federal and state regulation of online poker is coming and we can either fight to ensure that poker players’ interests are protected or allow illegal foreign operators, who are siphoning millions of American dollars out of this country, to dominate the U.S. market”
“If domestic card casinos do not defend themselves from offshore interests, we stand to lose not only revenue but also the loss of jobs. We are against the Frank and McDermott bills. (The) Poker Players Alliance should be against this, too.”
So far, the PPA seem unmoved by the Commerce casino’s stance with over 6,000 poker players already having signed a PPA organised online petition voicing their dissatisfaction with the casino. Amongst those players adding their weight to the petition are Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, Patrik Antonius, John Juanda, Joe Sebok, Erick Lindgren and David Williams.
In addition, PPA Executive Director John Pappas countered some of the Commerce’s argument by highlighting the fact that the HR 2267 bill stipulates that poker companies would be required to have at least 50% of their operations within the country. He summed up by stating:
“It’s pretty clear their only concern is that they don’t want to compete.”
As the war of words continues between the casinos and the PPA, we will endeavour to bring you any updates to the story as they develop.
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM – Virgin Casino, part of the leading online gaming company – Virgin Games, has today added to its extensive range of games with the introduction of Cashapillar, one of the most popular slots to be launched. With as many paylines as a centipede has legs, this latest game from Microgaming is a 5 reel, 100 payline slot with Wild, Scatter, Freespins, Multiplier and Gamble opportunities wrapped in a fun insect party theme.
This slot introduces the ’stacked wilds’ concept on all reels. A maximum of 5 ‘Cashapillar’ wilds can appear vertically stacked to create a win bonanza – and every time the wild substitutes to complete a win, that win is doubled. This new game has remarkably good chances for reward, too. Up to 2,000 in the base game and 6,000 coins in Free Spins can be won per line. This translates to a maximum win across all paylines of 2 million coins in the base game and 6 million coins on Free Spins.
Warren Eloff, Head of Products at Virgin Games, commented:
“With 100 paylines, this latest release from Microgaming is certainly a unique addition to our game portfolio. The plentiful paylines together with the stacked wilds make this slot enormously rewarding and fun. This is sure to become a firm favourite with our customers.”
Founded in 2004, Virgin Games has over 1,000,000 players and over 200 games on its site. Through the introduction of a custom built Virgin Games platform in 2008, Virgin Games seeks to provide its players with the widest possible choice of casino games. A growing selection of games can be found at Virgin Games from a number of producers including Microgaming, WagerWorks, Cryptologic, Freemantle and Ash Gaming.
About Virgin Games:
Virgin Games launched in June 2004 and has quickly established itself as one of the leading gaming websites in the UK. Virgin Games comprises three distinct offerings:
• Virgin Casino, offers content from a range of games suppliers including WagerWorks, Microgaming, Cryptologic, Freemantle and Ash Gaming, bringing consumers classic casino games like Blackjack and Roulette, as well as great feature slots like Monopoly, Rubik’s, X-Factor and the highly popular MegaJackpots progressive games, with a current jackpot value of over £2,500,000
• Virgin Poker, part of the Boss Media network, offers a huge array of games and content for beginners through to experienced pros – as well as the most generous loyalty scheme in the industry
• Virgin Bingo, part of the Virtue Fusion network, offers cash prizes worth thousands of pounds in the progressive jackpots, as well as Virgin prize bingo and a range of unique Virgin Games bingo games.
International Game Technology (IGT: 15.33 0.00%) will showcase its award winning products this week at the 2010 Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association Tradeshow (OIGA).
Attendees on August 23 and 24 will get hands on experience of more than a dozen of IGT’s popular games and system enhancements.
On display will be MegaJackpot slot games like American Idol, Star Wars Droid Hunt, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Super Nova Blast; Siberian Storm, The Little Shop of Horrors, Cougarlicious and Double Diamond Reel MultiPLAY.
Also being featured will be IGT’s video poker games including Five Star Poker, Texas Hold ‘Em Heads Up Poker and Double Super Times Pay Poker.
Roulette Evolution and Triple Towers Greyhound Racing games in the M-P Series will also be displayed, allowing casinos to increase the number of players wagering on a single game.
“IGT prides itself on being an industry leader and developing the games that players enjoy playing,” said Eric Tom, chief operating officer for IGT. “OIGA attendees will see this first hand when they learn more about the many exciting new games and Network Systems products available from IGT.”
WMS’s Reel ‘em In has always been one of the casino’s most popular slots, and now the excitement is enhanced with a new Egyptian Riches game featuring a community shared bonus.
Compete to Win! offers exciting features such as a winning combination of competitive events and overhead leader boards designed to both excite and publicly recognize players’ bonus accomplishments. The game also brings community bonus excitement to a whole new level by utilizing two high-definition 52 inch monitors to immerse players in a massive, real-time, 3-D undersea world!
Players select one of four fishermen to compete for them in the three competitive community bonus rounds. When a bonus round is triggered, all eligible players on the bank will enter to cheer their characters toward the biggest fish and the greatest number of credits.
The Adaptive Gaming technology enables players to create unique, personalized login and pass codes that track their bonus accomplishments in any casino.
The Great Dane isn’t so great when it comes to online cash games.
Gus Hansen is one of the most recognizable players in poker today – and he is also a study in how deceiving some numbers can be in poker. Hansen’s live tournament winnings total nearly $7.25 million, more than all but 22 players in the entire world since poker tournaments first began being played in the 1970s. He has three World Poker Tour titles to his name, and he also won the 2008 Aussie Millions main event. Without a doubt, he is one of the most successful tournament poker players in the world.
But when it comes to playing online poker, Hansen prefers the high-stakes cash games against top competition like Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey. His results in those games have been nearly the total opposite of those he’s compiled in live tournaments. He’s down $7.7 million since the beginning of 2007, making him one of the single biggest losers in the game over that time period, with about $800,000 of that total coming just in 2010. So, depending on your perspective, Gus Hansen is either a highly successful poker player, or he’s the fish who keeps the game running.
Naturally the speculation that Gus Hansen is broke is high, but there’s not nearly enough information to back that up. His online poker results are publicly available, but numbers for his live games and his outside business dealings don’t show up on databases. The only really sure thing is that the Great Dane might want to reconsider the players he takes on when he decides to play high-stakes online poker.
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You’d have to be living under a rock this past week to not have realized that the Full Tilt Online Poker Series is well underway and drawing huge crowds of young poker hopefuls to compete on Full Tilt. This is, of course, the seventeenth FTOPS and the biggest so far with 34 events and a massive $19,000,000 in guaranteed prize pools. Event 22 is the first thus far to have had a $1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool, and it kicked off yesterday evening.
This latest FTOPS tournament was a rebuy event, which allows players to be much more liberal and aggressive in the first hour of play. Any time that a player falls below a certain level of chips during the rebuy period, even if he loses all the chips in front of him, he is able to top up his chipstack and continue playing. As the rebuy period comes to a close, there is a brief break in which players are given the option of purchasing an add-on, which is usually the size of their starting stack. In these sorts of tournaments you tend to see a lot of big pots in the first hour when the consequences of getting stacked aren’t very harsh.
Only 913 players registered for the $300 + $22 tournament, whether outright or by winning any number of satellite tournaments, but each time a player rebuys or purchases an add-on it costs the same as entry into the tournament, minus the tournament fee. With 1,713 rebuys and 711 add-ons, the prizepool for Event 22 just snuck over its $1,000,000 guarantee and came to rest at the grand total of $1,001,100. The top 102 players got a piece of the action.
A cool thing about FTOPS is that each event has a host, usually a well-known poker player affiliated in some way with Full Tilt. Event 22 was hosted by Argentinean player Damian Salas, who has enjoyed multiple World Series of Poker cashes since discovering his passion for poker. The lawyer is a force to be reckoned with, and in addition to hosting the event he made his presence felt on the tables, too, during this tournament.
Event 22 was a 6-handed event, and as the final 30 players settled into their five tables, there were two red pros in their midst. One was 2010 November Nine member John Dolan, and the other was the host himself Damian Salas. Although they both put in a great effort to make it so far, sadly their luck ran out and shortly afterwards Dolan and Salas busted in 26th and 27th places respectively, for a touch over $4,500 each.
Sailing past them were KJulius10, BLUEberLEEZ and elanor, three players who went on to make the final table, outlast their competitors and eventually settle on a chop. While BLUEberLEEZ and elanor walked away with $147,000 each, KJulius10 scored $159,000 and the win. The young american player is no stranger to big success, having already netted over $1 Million in online poker winnings since starting playing, but this latest victory is nevertheless sure to have him riding the winner’s high for days to come!
Here are the official final table results:
KJulius10 – $158,243.21
BLUEberLEEZ – $147,826.47
elanor – $146,929.17
Bourbonftw – $76,083.60
Maxine Waters – $54,059.40
Aneris – $34,537.95
This being a gambling column, we pride ourselves on commanding oodles of odds. So it is with great confidence that we say the game of poker is about nothing but making money 99.8 percent of the time.
On rare occasions, however, events around the poker table transcend the need to win the almighty dollar and force players to look deep inside ourselves and think about – gasp! – the right thing to do.
One of these moments happened to yours truly last week.
The scene was a cardroom on the Peninsula. I had been winning big at a table of $2/$5 no-limit Texas hold ‘em for about two hours when two people walked in and grabbed seats at my table.
From the moment they sat down, it was clear something just wasn’t right about our new players.
For starters, they obviously were mother and son. Mom couldn’t have been a day over 40, and Boy looked like he wasn’t even old enough to drive. (He had to be older, though, because most cardrooms won’t let you play unless you’re 21.)
Within minutes, Boy (who was seated next to me) announced to the table that this was his first experience playing poker anywhere but online, and that it was his mother’s first time ever playing poker, anywhere. He thanked us in advance for our patience. Then he ordered a Budweiser.
It was around this point that I started wondering if they were faking it. Was this an elaborate ruse to get us to take pity on them and play soft? Were they duping us?
All skepticism disappeared quickly when Mom looked at her hole cards, clapped (no, I’m not joking) and said, “Oh, this is a good hand!” She moved her entire stack of $95 into center of the felt and laughed giddily.
Then some dude called her.
She, of course, had aces, and he had some suited rags. As the board filled up, she spiked an ace on the flop but lost to a flush on the turn.
Mom lost all her money in one hand. So she bought in for more.
The scene played itself out nearly a half-dozen times over the next 40 minutes – our opponents at the table lining up to take turns sucking out on Mom and Boy. I steered clear of the carnage completely, quietly wishing the newbies would just go away.
Finally, after watching a particularly brutal hand where a player baited Boy into calling with nothing, I couldn’t take it anymore.
So I got up and left.
Did I want to play more? Absolutely. Could I have partaken and made bank? No question. But the way I saw it, playing against Mom and Boy was, quite literally, like taking candy from babies. One can do that anywhere; doing it at the poker table just doesn’t seem fair.
