Poker News

Darvin Moon, the chip leader of the 2009 <a href=”http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/articles/wsop/” title=”World Series of Poker”>World Series of Poker (<a href=”http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/articles/wsop/” title=”wsop“>wsop) Main Event entering the final table in November, joined the ESPN.com poker show “Inside Deal.” Also appearing was Absolute Poker pro Lacey Jones.

“Inside Deal” is released every Tuesday on ESPN.com and aired its ninth episode this week. The poker franchise began with discussion of the Caesars Cup, which saw Annette Obrestad lead the European team to victory over Daniel Negreanu’s Team Americas. “Inside Deal” host Bernard Lee explained, “The Americans were no slouches. They had 45 wsop bracelets among them. Overall, Europe got the best of it, but there was some luck involved as well.” The Caesars Cup featured a series of heads-up and two-on-two matches, with the European team trouncing the American squad by a final score of 4-1.

2010 will mark the first wsop that Obrestad will be of legal age to play on U.S. soil. She took down the 2007 wsop Europe Main Event and became a formidable force in the poker world long before her 21st birthday. Lee explained, “I think it’s safe to say Annette Obrestad will be the most anticipated 21 year-old ever to enter the wsop.” Other news reviewed by “Inside Deal” included Paul Zimbler playing poker for nearly 75 straight hours in the name of charity and November Nine member Jeff Shulman receiving coaching from Phil Hellmuth to improve his short-handed game.

Jones joined the show donning an Absolute Poker logo and explained that wsop Europe sponsor Betfair matched Zimbler’s fundraising efforts dollar for dollar, with ₤28,000 being doubled. On her team’s win in the Dream Team Poker Media Event held during the 2009 wsop, Jones told “Inside Deal” hosts Lee and Laura Lane, “When you’re playing on a team, you have friends to root on. If maybe you didn’t go far, they do, so you’re sitting there cheering them on.” Jones ultimately took 11th in the event.

Jones was a participant in the Ladies Event held during the Borgata Poker Open, where Abraham Korotki, a male, took down the tournament. Jones commented, “I don’t mind that there was a guy at the table,” but didn’t approve of his demeanor. Jones added that a transsexual was in the event as well, who felt more comfortable playing in a Ladies’ event than an open event. On being one of the male-dominated game’s most recognized females, Jones commented, “There are things I can do to trap these guys and let them keep trying to steal my blinds. Eventually, I’ll pop them and take their chips.”

A reticent Moon joined the show wearing a New Orleans Saints baseball cap. Moon will be present for the coin toss of the November 30th Monday Night Football game between the Saints and New England Patriots. Moon, a logger by trade, revealed he has no e-mail address or credit card and his trip to the wsop Main Event was just his second time ever being on an airplane. During the course of a normal day, Moon wakes up at 6:00am, eats breakfast, works until 4:00pm, and then participates in family activities.

On his odds to defeat the rest of the final table in the wsop Main Event, which includes poker pros Phil Ivey, Jeff Shulman, and James Akenhead, Moon told “Inside Deal” viewers, “I don’t feel my odds are good to win because everyone there is better than I am. I have the least experience of anyone there.” Moon does not plan to take lessons prior to the wsop Main Event finale and instead will stick with his tight strategy.

Moon is the lone representative of the November Nine to lack a sponsorship deal. On what he’s looking for in a potential agreement, Moon told Lane and Lee, “A lot of money for being at that final table and then when I leave Las Vegas, the sponsorship is over.” He revealed that no company has come forward with an offer matching that description.

Check out ESPN “Inside Deal” every Tuesday on ESPN.com.

Move over, Robert Downey, Jr. There’s a new Ironman in town! Brett Radin scooped $51,000 for taking down the Commerce Casino’s first ever Ironman event, a no-break poker tournament.

Radin defeated Chris “Trips” Tyrba in the Ironman tournament, which ran for 19 hours and 21 minutes. A total of 64 players bought in for $1,600 each and three meals were served at the table given the no break structure. The Commerce Casino added $10,000 to the prize pool, which came in at $103,000. The Ironman concept was the brainchild of veteran tournament director Matt Savage, who told poker news Daily, “The Ironman is an idea that I came up with in response to players always asking, ‘When is the break?’ and others asking why the breaks are so long. When you signed up for the Ironman, there was no guesswork.”

Bathroom breaks and other reasons to stand up from the table meant missed hands in the Ironman tournament. As such, Savage noted that the extra twist tested players’ mental toughness: “Players should know that missing a hand in a tournament is not the end of the world and that many successful tournament players take unscheduled breaks away from the table. It was a test of a player’s skill and willpower, as the structure was very good.” Ultimate Bet pro and 11-time <a href=”http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/articles/wsop/” title=”World Series of Poker”>World Series of Poker (<a href=”http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/articles/wsop/” title=”wsop“>wsop) bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, for example, often misses hours of major poker tournaments in an effort to woo the assembled field with his customary late entrance.

Here were the top six finishers in the Ironman tournament:

1st Place: Brett Radin - $51,160
2nd Place: Chris “Trips” Tyrba - $22,686
3rd Place: Farzin Akhtar - $11,859
4th Place: Tyler “Titan of Tulalip” Patterson - $7,218
5th Place: Brian Brubaker - $5,672
6th Place: Eric “Basebaldy” Baldwin - $4,125

Baldwin is a wsop bracelet winner, having taken down a $1,500 buy-in No Limit Hold’em event during the 2009 tournament series. Baldwin promptly finished third in the World Championship of Pot Limit Hold’em, boosting his take from the 2009 wsop to over $780,000. On the online felts, where he can be found under the “Basebaldy” moniker, Baldwin won the Bodog weekly $100,000 Guaranteed twice in May of 2008. Last December, he took down the Full Tilt Poker $750,000 Guaranteed for $132,000. Baldwin finished 54th in the Main Event of the 2009 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) for $23,000.

Many who took to the felts in the Commerce Casino’s Ironman event were brand name players, including Shane “Shaniac” Schleger, Gavin Griffin, Matt “mattg1983” Graham, Joe Bartholdi, 2009 World Poker Tour (WPT) L.A. Poker Classic Champion Andrew Cimpan, and Adam “a_junglen” Junglen. Graham. Each entrant was given a stack of 10,000 chips and blinds began at 25-25. The price of poker increased every hour. On the structure, Radin commented in a press release distributed by the West Coast casino, “It was the truest poker tournament I have ever seen or played in. I love the fact that it played all the way down and no deals were allowed!”

The Commerce Casino plays host to the WPT L.A. Poker Classic every year, with its next installment slated for February 20th to 25th. In its last running, Cimpan defeated Binh Nguyen heads-up, with Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers and Full Tilt pro Chris Ferguson also reaching the final table. Cimpan banked $1.6 million for his efforts and the tournament aired as part of Season VII of the WPT on Fox Sports Net. The $10,000 buy-in contest generated a field of 696 runners.

The Ironman event was part of the Commerce Casino’s Hold’em Series. Its inaugural event, a $220 buy-in No Limit Hold’em tournament, generated a field of 3,967 players, which the Commerce Casino claimed was the largest non-wsop field in live poker history. Players could re-enter on another starting day if they busted out.

History may be in the making in one of the most historic cities in the world. Doyle Brunson is in search of his record-tying 11th bracelet in the <a href=”http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/articles/wsop/” title=”World Series of Poker”>World Series of Poker (<a href=”http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/articles/wsop/” title=”wsop“>wsop) Europe Main Event and is sixth in chips with 92 players remaining.

Brunson holds a stack of 210,900 and is in pursuit of the £801,603 first place prize. “Texas Dolly” has 10 wsop bracelets to his name, tied with Johnny Chan for second most all-time. He needs one more to move into the lead with 11, a record currently held by Ultimate Bet pro Phil Hellmuth. Brunson has been shut out since 2005, when he took down a $5,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em Short-Handed event for $367,000, defeating a competitive final table that also included Minh Ly, Layne Flack, and Scotty Nguyen.

Brunson will captain Table 10 on Tuesday at the Casino at the Empire, where he’ll be joined by online poker players Justin “Boosted J” Smith and Christian Kruel. Smith is fresh off a third place effort in the Bellagio Cup, a stop on the World Poker Tour (WPT). He earned $464,000 at the Las Vegas casino back in July. Kruel can be found on the virtual felts of PokerStars under the screen name “C.K.” He won a $530 buy-in $80,000 Guaranteed High Roller tournament on PartyPoker in mid-August for $22,000.

Also in the Top 10 in London is Team PokerStars Pro member Jason Mercier. In May, he took down a tournament held during the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) for $86,000 and then followed up that performance with a bracelet win in a $1,500 buy-in Pot Limit Omaha event during the 2009 wsop. Mercier recorded four cashes overall during the wsop and was quickly scooped up by PokerStars to join their pro team. He also competed in the star-studded field of the Ante Up for Africa charity poker tournament, which aired on ESPN. Mercier owns the 10th largest stack at 202,300.

Liz Lieu doubled her stack holding pocket aces on Monday in the wsop Europe Main Event. Entering play on Day 3, she sits at 16th in the chip counts with 184,400. Meanwhile, November Nine member James Akenhead also remains in contention. Akenhead, a Brit on his home turf, sent Nick Bleeker packing after coming out on the winning end of a race holding pocket jacks against A-K. The board ran out 9-7-Q-Q-7, pushing Akenhead to 250,000 in chips. He ended the day with 178,000, which was good for 17th overall. Fellow November Nine member Antoine Saout, who held a Top 10 stack entering Day 2 play on Monday, fell back to 50th on the leaderboard with 90,100.

Here are the Top 10 stacks in the 2009 wsop Europe Main Event entering Day 3 on Tuesday:

1. Ian Munns - 528,300
2. Praz Bassi - 299,000
3. Oyvind Riisem - 255,300
4. Arron Eric Filippi - 216,500
5. David Docherty - 216,200
6. Doyle Brunson - 210,900
7. Shandoi Demjan - 209,000
8. Markus Ristola - 205,000
9. Ram Vaswarni - 202,500
10. Jason Mercier - 202,300

Other notable names remaining in the hunt for the £801,603 prize include:

12. Yevgeniy Timoshenko - 192,100
13. Steve Zolotow - 191,100
16. Liz Lieu - 184,400
17. James Akenhead - 178,000
18. Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott - 174,000
19. Antonio Esfadiari - 173,300
20. John Tabatabai - 160,100
38. Daniel Negreanu - 113,100
39. Barry Shulman - 111,200
49. Annette Obrestad - 90,500
50. Antoine Saout - 90,100
55. Teddy Sheringham - 74,800
65. Freddy Deeb - 61,200
67. Andre Akkari – 58,300
69. Todd Brunson - 51,600
70. Eric Liu - 51,100
79. John Juanda - 38,900
85. Men “The Master” Nguyen - 27,500

The top 36 players will finish in the money, with the minimum payout being £21,142. Every member of the nine-handed final table will walk away with at least £66,533. Stay tuned to poker news Daily for the latest from the wsop Europe Main Event.

Poker pro Olivier Busquet, a high-stakes heads-up sit and go expert, recently took down the World Poker Tour’s (WPT) Borgata Poker Open, mounting a comeback of epic proportions after being down 20:1 in chips to Jeremy Brown with a $925,000 first place prize on the line. Busquet sat down with poker news Daily to recap the comeback.

poker news Daily: Talk about mounting a comeback of epic proportions at the WPT Borgata Poker Open over Jeremy Brown.

Busquet: Anytime you’re down 20:1 or anything like that, you have to won coin flips or cooler people in some sense. Chips are bound to get in the middle and your opponent will definitely have outs. I ran well in the all-in pots, which is critical when my chips are on the line. I tried to focus on keeping the pots relatively small pre-flop. I didn’t limp that much because there’s a lot of equity in the game to someone folding to a pre-flop raise. Jeremy had a tendency to polarize his ranges. I had to win with J-7 offsuit versus Q-9 all-in. I flopped the nuts against top pair. I had to avoid flush and straight draws on the last hand.

PND: Did you ever feel like winning the tournament was out of reach?

Busquet: If someone had pulled me aside and asked me if I was going to win, I would have said probably not. When I’m playing, though, I don’t think in those terms. I think of what I’m dealt and the situation I’m in. I was actually fortunate in that I play one-on-one poker tournaments all the time. In heads-up sit and gos, there are 3,000 chips in play and in the Borgata there were 30 million. Every kind of situation I encountered in terms of the number of chips and blinds, I had been in that situation tens of thousands of times before. Being down to 1.4 million was like being down to like 140 chips in a heads-up sit and go.

PND: You were a sizable chip leader entering the final table. Was it frustrating seeing Jeremy Brown eliminate three people and build his stack?

Busquet: I don’t have a ton of experience being a big chip leader in a tournament. When I wasn’t the chip leader, I was just adjusting to stack size changes. I wasn’t reacting emotionally to the sense that I could lose the tournament. Instead, I was thinking of how the change in stacks changes my optimal strategy. There are so many things out of your control. I didn’t have the illusion that I was going to stay the chip leader from wire to wire.

PND: How did you get started in poker?

Busquet: A friend of mine from high school brought me to an old friend’s house. I never really played and walked into a room with young 20 year-old, confident kids and was intimated. I ended up losing money and that piqued my interest a bit. A kid I was working with told me I could play online. My first account was on PartyPoker and then one of my doormen told me that Full Tilt was a better site. I made small deposit of $100 playing $1/$2 six-max cash. I played a bunch and read TwoPlusTwo a lot, especially the high-stakes No Limit threads. I essentially moved up in stakes from there.

PND: What were some of the biggest influences on your game coming up?

Busquet: TwoPlusTwo was probably the biggest. There was one kid who came to Full Tilt that I became friendly with, Dustin Dirksen. When he first started on Full Tilt, he played a style that threw a lot of people off. People were unsure whether he was a massive fish or crazy shark. We talked a little bit and I was more interested in the perception people had of him rather than the actual style he had. I also read “Super System” like other players did. The way that I came up was by trying to be my own player. I would try to think about situations in an original way. TwoPlusTwo allowed me to set a foundation. I learned the basic strategies and then, from that, I was able to leapfrog into my own way of playing.

While the Ukranian born and U.S. raised 21-year-old currently sits 15th in chips, surrounded by a group of poker’s greatest stars who are all trailing chip leader and 2009 wsop bracelet winner Matt Hawrilenko in the fight for a seat at the final table, recent history has to make him a favorite to book one.

Timoshenko has more than $3 million in career live tournament earnings, including $2,149,960 from a win at the 2009 <a href=”http://www.pokerlistings.com/live-poker tournaments/wpt”>WPT Championship this past April, all collected over the last two and a half years.

But his poker prowess extends to the virtual felt as well.

Just last week he took down the PokerStars WCOOP main event, adding $1.7 million to his online MTT winnings, which now total more than $3 million over the past three years.

Weaned on online poker, starting when he was just 15-years-old, Timoshenko told PokerListings his game is built for both the virtual felt and inside the brick and mortar.

“I think my game is very adaptable to both online and live play,” he said. “If you are just good at reading people you are not going to have as much success online and if you’re only good at the math and playing ABC, you might do well online, but you’re probably not going to do well live.”

A serious student of the game, Timoshenko certainly appreciates that experience is an important factor in his success.

“I definitely paid my dues before I became successful and started making lots of money,” he said. “I spent a lot of time playing, learning, reviewing my play and just talking to other people about poker and seeing what I could pick up.”

However, his approach to learning the game has been a bit more analytical than most.

“There are definitely players that have played a lot more hands of poker than me,” he said. “I just took a different approach. I studied and reviewed sessions as much as I played poker when I started out.”

As scary as it sounds, Timoshenko admits he’s still learning how to pick up some of live poker’s subtleties, but he is obviously getting more comfortable with them every day.

“I’m very much a math guy,” he said. “A lot of the reads I make are not based on live tells, but more on picking up on player tendencies, bet sizing and the way people play different strength hands. I use all that information to make my decisions.

“But I’ve been more comfortable with live poker for a while. It’s not the way I started playing poker, I’ve played a lot more hands online than live and because of that, I guess I feel more comfortable playing online than live.”

The chance for Timoshenko to get even more comfortable will come as the final 36 plays down to a final nine at the wsopE main event starting at 12 p.m. BST in London Wednesday.

But with names like Praz Bansi, Arnaud Mattern, Eric Liu, John Kabbaj, Chris Bjorin, Ram Vaswani, Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu and a host of others still well stacked, it will not be a walk in the park for the young star.

For more from the wsopE main event, including chip counts, photos and live updates, click through to PokerListings’ <a href=”http://www.pokerlistings.com/live-poker tournaments/wsope/2009/main-event/live-updates”>Live poker tournaments page.

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There were no less than 16 pots worth over $200k, 67 pots between $100k and $200k, over $14 million wagered and one very bad night for unknown Swede martonas.

After winning close to $200k a night earlier, it appears martonas booked over a half a million in losses on the session despite winning the second largest pot of the night.

Outside of the one $284k pot it was literally a martonas bloodbath, as he lost a string of pots in the $200k range to Tom “kingsofcards” Marchese, Aaron “aejones” Jones and Tom “durrrr” Dwan.

Despite his strong presence in the top pots of the night, Marchese ended his session down around $60k, but mostly thanks to martonas, Jones walked away from the tables with over $350k in profits.

The surprise of the night would have to be Phil Ivey joining martonas in the red. A quick addition of the nights biggest pots show poker’s most feared player down nearly $300k.

But the real story was a common one on Full Tilt’s high-stakes tables: Tom Dwan playing Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies heads up on his own $500/$1,000 PLO tables.

Although concrete numbers have yet to surface, it looks as though Dwan managed to come out ahead in the battle.

Out of the 23 pots from the session to make the top 100 list (worth a combined $3.7 million) Dwan came out nearly $150k in the black.

Below are the three largest pots of the night. For a look at pages full of Ferrari-sized pots, head over to MarketPulse and get a real feel for last night’s action.

Sahamies = hard to bluff.

A cold deck for the king.

Marchese gets his own hand.

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The woman who took PokerFace to the top of the worldwide pop charts reportedly has a break in her tour with hip-hop artist Kanye West and Ladbrokes has asked her to fill it by playing in the Festival’s €550 main event beginning Oct. 2.

“It would be great if she could come and we’ll even make room for Kanye,” Ladbrokes’ head of poker Kate McLennan said.

“The question everyone wants to know is if Lady Gaga can make sweet music on the green baize.”

There’s been no word yet on whether Lady Gaga will make the trip, but 90’s Irish boy-band star, Boyzone’s Shane Lynch, has confirmed he will play.

The Irish National Events Centre in Killarney will play host to the €250,000 guaranteed main event.

In 2008, the event was a sell-out at 832 players setting a European record. Irishman Jimmy McSweeney banked the €100,000 first prize.

This year, the Festival also includes a two-day €270+30 tournament Oct. 3 and a one-day €150+20 event Oct. 4.

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Every time he sits down at a poker table, the newly minted Team PokerStars Pro believes he’s going to win.

“When you feel good, you feel like you’re playing well and you feel like you are going to win, then you start making good decisions, you make the right folds, you pick the right spots and everything just kind of clicks,” he said. “Confidence, feeling good about yourself, and having a positive attitude really helps a lot.”

Mercier burst onto the live poker scene in April of 2008 winning the San Remo leg of the PokerStars European Poker Tour, his first major live tournament. But the 22-year-old Floridian did not stop there.

He went on finish sixth at EPT Barcelona, eighth in the 2008 wsopE £5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event and first in the £20,000 High Roller Event at EPT London, all within the next six months.

Add in prelim wins at the L.A. Poker Classic and the Wynn Classic before his first wsop bracelet win in the $1,500 PLO event this summer and Mercier has already accumulated more than $3.3 million in live tournament earnings in less than two years as a pro poker player.

Detractors claim he’s simply running well and will come back down to earth before long, but the results keep rolling in and Mercier’s confidence continues to build.

“I think confidence is definitely a key to success in poker,” he said. “I try to think that I have as good a shot as anyone, if not better, in every tournament I play.

“I try to come in with a positive attitude and hope things go well from the beginning, try to get some momentum going and ride it all the way through.”

While Mercier’s confidence has been bolstered by all his recent success, he believes it’s important to understand that success did not happen overnight.

In 2007, he became just the 16th player in PokerStars history to reach Supernova Elite VIP status by earning 1 million VIP Player Points in one year.

“It’s not like I started playing online like two months before I won San Remo or anything,” he said. “I had been playing online for almost three years and probably put in over 3 million hands before I won my first live tournament.

“I definitely have played more hands than like 99% of poker professionals. I played more than 2 million hands in one year and that’s really hard to do. I doubt there are more than 200 people that have done that ever.”

While he’s attained a level of success in poker few have achieved, Mercier said he’s still constantly working on his game.

“If you stop trying to get better, you’re going to get worse,” he said.

When Day 3 of the 2009 wsopE main event presented by Betfair begins Tuesday at 12 p.m. BST inside the Casino at the Empire, Mercier will be in the top ten in chips sitting on a little over 200k.

A host of big names, including November Niner James Akenhead, 10-time wsop bracelet winner Doyle Brunson, Poker Diva Liz Lieu, Full Tilt Pro Steve Zolotow, Amnon Fillipi, Antonio Esfandiari and recent PokerStars WCOOP main event winner Yivgeniy Timoshenko are all right there with him, chasing chip leader Ian Munns with just 92 players remaining.

To hear more from Mercier himself follow the Jason Mercier Poker Blog right here on PokerListings.com.

For more from Day 2 of the wsopE main event and beyond, including chip counts, photos and live updates, click through to PokerListings’ <a href=”http://www.pokerlistings.com/live-poker tournaments“>Live poker tournaments page.

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The online giant drew 307,016 players on 42,814 tables Sept. 6, which was more than enough for a new world record.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records it was the most players ever recorded on an Internet poker room, breaking PokerStars own record by more than 100,000 players.

At this rate, PokerStars is only competing with itself for online traffic records and the site still holds the record for the largest poker tournament ever held at 65,000 players on July 19, 2009.

As the world’s largest poker site, PokerStars has more than 27 million members worldwide and has dealt more than 33 billion hands since it launched in 2001.

The online site has since expanded to include a number of live poker tours including the European Poker Tour, ((Asian Pacific Poker Tour)) and the Latin American Poker Tour.

The PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker main event is also the world’s most lucrative online tournament.

Yevgeniy “Jovial Giant” Timoshenko won $1.7 million for taking down the event Sept. 21.

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