Sweedish pro survives dramatic final table Poker’s biggest names flocked to Barcelona for the €5,000 EPT event last week, but it was a previously unknown pro who lifted the title and €825,000.Sweden’s Kent Lundmark had less than $180,000 in live winnings before arriving at the Casino de Barcelona, and few predicted that he would finish as champion ahead of a quality-ridden 758-strong field, which included Carlos Mortensen, Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospeller and Liv Boeree.And despite all the household names busting by Day Three of the five-day event, the final table wasn’t lacking in drama, with players hitting the rail in rapid succession before Lundmark found himself in a three-way war with Konstantin Puchkov and Jesus Lizano.And after Puchkov’s set of Kings were busted by Lundmark’s spade flush, the Swedish pro made light work of Lizano, ending their heads-up bout in under an hour when his AQ held over Lizano’s KJ.The final table payouts were as follows:1 Kent Lundmark €825,0002 Jesus Cortes Lizano €525,0003 Konstantin Puchkov €300,0004 Shander de Vries €222,0005 Giuseppe Pantaleo €170,0006 Thor Stang €130,0007 Georgios Skatadis €90,0008 Francesco Notaro €70,000For more poker news and views, check out PokerPlayer’s Facebook and Twitter pages.
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Last week Gus Hansen was online poker’s biggest loser, this week he’s the biggest winner with over $600k in profit.
Gus Hansen
Hansen, perhaps looking to finally get even this year, played 3,852 hands on Full Tilt Poker during the week in everything from H.O.R.S.E. to Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo.
For a change Hansen victimized players like Di “Urindanger” Dang, Brian Hastings and rumprammer. Hansen
Despite the season’s first big snowfall, the Lake Tahoe leg of the World Series of Poker Circuit drew 246 players for its $1,500 main event this weekend.
A massive snowstorm brought nearly three feet of snow to the south shores of Lake Tahoe, but despite road closures and white-out conditions the tournament’s attendance more than tripled the 64 who entered in 2009.
Last year the event was a much larger $5k buy-in, but this year’s $354,240 prize pool still represents a 15 per cent increase over 2009.
Play began Sunday at Harvey’s Lake Tahoe with just 51 players surviving through to Day 2.
The overnight chip leader is Daniel Black from Cloverdale, California.
Play resumes at 12 p.m.
Chris DeMaci will take a massive chip lead into a star-studded final table at NAPT Los Angeles Wednesday.
The 27-year-old pro from Newport Beach, California has earned more than a million dollars online and needs just a sixth-place finish to eclipse his largest live cash to date – a $98,933 score he collected finishing seventh in one of the many $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em bracelet events at the 2009 WSOP.
But despite a 2.5 million chip lead on his nearest competitor, the final table will be no cake walk for DeMaci.
Team PokerStars Pro and PokerListings blogger Jason Mercier will bring his better than $5 million in career earnings and a boatload of final table experience to the final Thursday.
The hottest player in poker over the past three years, Mercier will come in second in chips looking to secure his second NAPT title after a win in the NAPT Mohegan Sun High Roller Bounty Shootout this past April.
Plus, WPT title holder Joe Tehan and 2006 WSOP Main Event third-place finisher Michael Binger are in the mix.
2007 WSOP Main Event 12th-place finisher Ray Henson, Canadian Team PokerStars Pro Anh Van Nguyen, New Yorker Al Grimes and 21-year-old Penn State student Jacob Toole make up the rest of the final eight.
The $5k PokerStars NAPT L.A. m
Dan “jungleman12” Cates is starting to look unbeatable on Full Tilt as he posted another $333k win last night.
Cates recorded over 3,000 hands of $100/$200 Heads-Up PLO against Arbianight and absolutely dominated, raking in several pots worth nearly $100k each.
Thanks to last night’s victory, Cates has now made $4.89 million in 2010, which makes him by far the biggest winner of the year.
Cates has been remarkably consistent this year and never once dipped into the red.
Considering the jungleman12 account only appeared on Full Tilt in late 2009, Cates has one of the most impressive graphs ever, essentially going from $0 to $4.8 million in the span of 11 months.
It seems one of the only ways Cates could possibly relinquish his title as the biggest winner of 2010 is if he started playing miserably in the durrrr Challenge 2 but even that seems unlikely as he’s dominated Tom Dwan thus far.
Former 2 Months, 2 Million star Dani “Anksky451” Stern made a rare appearance on the high stakes tables last night winning a total of $196k.
Stern has barely played high stakes this year but is now sitting on a decent $235k profit in 2010.
Arbianight was easily the biggest loser last night going $337k in the hole but was joined by IReadYrSoul who dropped $144k.
Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies also found time to lose another $102k. Sahamies curren
"Thank you to everybody for being here, it's a dream come true," Duhamel said. "I don't know what to think, I don't know what to say," came from Duhamel as the grand finale to four months of the 2010 Main Event of the World Series of Poker came to an end. "Ole! Ole! Ole! Ole!" chants rang from Duhamel's cheering section as he posed for photos with his newly acquired, change-your-life pocket change of $8,944,310, and confetti falling from the sky. His fans hoisted him in the air and showed him to the world from their shoulders.
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To quote one of PokerWorks bloggers, Linda Geenen, “Poker is a game of people played with cards.” That is a great saying and hits the nail squarely on the head.For many players, anonymity is one of the things they love about playing online. They don’t have to talk to anyone and can remain a faceless entity. But for many it is and will always remain a game of people, a way to participate in a game, have fun, interact with real people and have human contact with the world.This point was driven home for me in a recent 7 Card Stud hi/lo game on PokerStars. The game was 2/4 limit and had a good mix of average and loose players. When I first got in the game I saw chat going on between “PB” and “Ax” which was rather heated. As it continu
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New WSOP bracelet-holder Gus Hansen cruised to a $658k victory on Full Tilt Poker last night.
Gus Hansen
Hansen played 2,268 hands in $1,000/$2,000 H.O.R.S.E., $500/$1,000 Cap PLO and $300/$600 PLO.
Some of his notable opponents over the span of the evening included Urindanger, Tom “durrrr” Dwan, harrington25 and Brian “sbrugby” Townsend.
In his biggest hand of the session Hansen turned a straight to steal a $177k pot from Dwan and Urindanger.
Thanks to his successful night, Hansen has now improved to being down only $1.4 million on the year. Add in his recent victory at the WSOPE Heads-Up event and it’s safe to say Hansen is on officially on a heater.
Hansen wasn’t the only player rake some huge pots last night. Skjervoy an
Wooster, Ohio’s Jim Anderson won the first-ever World Series of Poker Circuit Regional Championship in Hammond, Indiana Thursday.
The bartender turned poker player earned $525,449 for the win, surpassing his previous best cash recorded when he finished 242nd in the 2010 WSOP Main Event.
“I definitely think my deep run in the Main Event this year helped me here,” Anderson said. “The $10K is always intimidating if you are new. But having played in it before, it allowed me to focus more.
The atmosphere was kind of similar with all the lights and the television cameras around. So, I
Thomas Bichon, John O’Shea and William Thorson rose to the top of the chip counts on Day 1a of EPT London.
William Thorson
A total of 349 runners started the day but only 146 players made it through all nine levels of play.
American PokerStars qualifier Soheb Porbandawala finished the as the overall chip leader with 218,600 while Frenchman Bichon was the highest finishing Team PokerStars Pro with 185,000.
Ireland’s O’Shea ended up with 184,400 which was good enough for fourth place overall while Thorson built a stack of 125,600 to hold down 14th place.
Numerous pros secured a seat on Day 2 including Barry Shulman, Alex Kravchenko, Tom Marchese, Greg Raymer, Shannon Shorr and John Juanda.
There were also a number of notable pros that fell to the rail on Day 2. Celin
