February 2012 Poker Events
Calendar of Poker Events for February 2012 brought to you by freeonlinepokergame.biz
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WORLD POKER CHAMP ROUGHED UP BY BURGLARS
2011-12-22
Thankfully, no serious injury for Duhamel...but not a pleasant experience
The media in Montreal is reported that Jonathan Duhamel, the 2010 World Series of Poker main event champion who earned himself $8.9 million by winning last year, was the victim of a burglary at his home in which he was manhandled and roughed up by two criminals who are currently being sought by the police.
Two men forced their way into Duhamel's Boucherville borough home and assaulted him in the course of the burglary, necessitating hospital treatment for his fortunately minor injuries.
The reports are not clear on what the burglars were after, but once they had decamped Duhamel called the police.
SWEDE TAKES EPT BARCELONA TITLE
2010-11-29
Final table saw representatives hailed from eight different nations
The European Poker Tour Barcelona was decided over the weekend, with Kent Lundmark (22) of Sweden taking the honours and the Euro 825,000 first prize after a heads up against Jesus Cortes Lizano of Spain.
When the heads up started Lundmark held a 2 million chip advantage, and he managed to largely hold on to his lead and dominate the action. Cortes took home Euro 525,000.
The multi-national final table comprised Lundmark of Sweden and Cortes of Spain, along with Russian ace Konstantin Puchkov; Shander De Vries from Holland; Germany's Giuseppe Pantaleo; Thor Stang of Norway; Greek player Georgios Skotadis; and Italy's Francesco Notaro. The six-figure payouts extended down to sixth place.
The win was the biggest yet in live tourneys for Lundmark, who is an accomplished online poker player. His previous best live performance was in January this year at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event, where he won $66,000.
LADBROKES IRISH POKER FESTIVAL
2010-09-27
Meet Nick Moran and take a crack at a Euro 250 000 prize pool
The Ladbrokes Irish Poker Festival returns to Killarney from 1st- 3rd October, with poker ambassador Nick Moran aiming to raise the stakes and put a year’s worth of poker training into practice in a bid to score from an impressive Euro 250,000 prize pool.
Poker players of all levels will compete over 3 days hoping to scoop the estimated Euro 100,000 top prize, making the Ladbrokes.com Irish Poker Festival Europe’s biggest ‘everyman’ tournament and one of the only competitions on the Brit side of the Atlantic offering a six figure prize pool from a Euro 500 buy-in event.
The tournament acts as the culmination of Nick Moran’s year long partnership with Ladbrokes Poker. The Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels movie star earlier this year became the face of the brand for 2010 and has hosted a series of poker tutorials on Ladbrokes Poker.com alongside professional poker player Jon ‘skalie’ Kalmar.
Kalmar has tutored Moran from a complete poker novice and now hopes to see his hard work put into practice. On his poker playing skills Nick said “after a year of skalie attempting to drum all things poker in to me, I feel like I’m in a great position to compete for the prize pot. Skalie may even need to watch out if we end up the same table; he might find out that he’s taught me a little too much!”
This is the third year of a tournament that last year saw 752 players enter. Nottingham-based Thomas Rolfe took home the six-figure paycheck last year.
A DAY 8 TO REMEMBER AT WSOP (Update)
2010-07-20
It took nearly 18 hours to arrive at this main event final table
When InfoPowa left Day 8 of the main event at the World Series of Poker in the early hours of Sunday morning the remaining 10 players were playing to see who would be axed in tenth position to decide the final table - the November Nine as it has come to be called.
It took just on six more hours for the final table bubble boy to bust out at level 36 in the early morning hours Sunday, and it was Brandon Steven, who had been short-stacked for most of the day but valiantly tried to improve his position.
Steven was finally eliminated by Matthew Jarvis, setting up a final table comprised of:
1 Jonathan Duhamel 65,975,000
2 John Dolan 46,250,000
3 Joseph Cheong 23,525,000
4 John Racener 19,050,000
5 Matthew Jarvis 16,700,000
6 Filippo Candio 16,400,000
7 Michael Mizrachi 14,450,000
8 Soi Nguyen 9,650,000
9 Jason Senti 7,625,000
With average chip stacks at 24,396,667.
It had been a tough, 18 hour day for all involved.
The November Nine will draw their final table ninth position payouts this weekend and over the next few months prepare for the decider in November, when the table reconvenes to play down to a winner.
Ninth place pays each remaining player $811,823; higher finishers will win at least $1,045,738 and be paid the difference from ninth place money in November.
Here's a snapshot of the November Nine for the 2010 WSOP Main Event:
Jason Senti of St. Louis Park, Minnesota is 25 years old and a pro player with ten series cashes that have earned him $157,528, and four circuit cashes worth $543,637
Joseph Cheong is a 24 year old UC San Diego psychology graduate from La Mirada, California who also plays professionally and can claim cashes for 2 series of $31,064 and four circuit cvashes worth $20,890.
John Dolan (24) hails from Bonita Springs, Florida and is a pro player with five series cashes for $105,340 and two circuit cashes of $3,333.
Jonathan Duhamel of Boucherville, Quebec in Canada is a 22 year old poker pro who has two cashes worth $43,000 under his belt.
Michael Mizrachi (29) aka 'The Grinder' is a well known poker pro from Miami, Florida who has a WSOP bracelet to his credit, along with 23 series cashes worth $2.27 million and six circuit cashes for $323,258.
Matthew Jarvis is a 25 year old Canadian business student and amateur player from Surrey in British Columbia.
John Racener (24) is a poker pro from Port Richey in Florida.
Filippo Candio (26) is a poker pro based in Cagliari, Italy. He has one ca sh for $3,460 to his credit.
Cuong "Soi" Nguyen (37) is from Santa Ana, California, where he works for a medical supply company when not playing poker as an amateur.
POKERSTARS EXEC JOINS LIVE DEALER PROVIDER
2010-06-11
Visionary iGaming hires Steve Obia
The Costa Rica-based live dealer provider Visionary iGaming has announced the appointment of Steve Obia (43) as chief operating officer, responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of the company’s 24/7 live casino studio, IT operations, customer service and relationships, and support.
Obia joins the company after three years at the world’s largest internet gaming site, PokerStars, where he served as director of support operations, a role in which he was instrumental in building and managing the giant’s Deposit Assistance and Customer Service organisation, handling millions of active monthly players.
Prior to Pokerstars, he spent 17 years in a range of international executive, management, and operational positions at Hewlett Packard. In Obia’s preceding executive role with HP he was responsible for building and managing the company’s Software Support Group in its Costa Rican Customer Support Center, an operation that ultimately employed over 500 staff.
“I am tremendously excited to have such a high profile executive join Visionary iGaming’s management team, where we will benefit immensely from his industry experience at PokerStars, proven record of success in large operations and passion for technology,” said Martin Reiner, CEO of Visionary iGaming.
Obia said, “Visionary iGaming is one of the fastest growing companies in the internet gaming industry because of its innovative approach to producing high quality live online casino games. All large gaming brands are evaluating the addition of live dealer casino to their product offering and Visionary iGaming is at the forefront with an exceptional product.”
A GOOD WEEK FOR FULL TILT POKER (Update)
2010-04-27
Major online poker provider successful in court
The legal team at major online poker firm Full Tilt Poker.com will be celebrating a successful week in which the company prevailed in two US courtrooms.
In the first case, two California players who were banned and had winnings confiscated failed in their civil case against the giant poker site. Lary Kennedy and Greg Omotoy sued Full Tilt last year for false advertising, libel and fraud (see previous InfoPowa reports), alleging that the company had unlawfully seized over $80 000 from their accounts after accusations that they were illegally using bot software.
Full Tilt dismissed the action as"frivolous" and "baseless", claiming: “Both of these player accounts were appropriately terminated for multiple violations of the express terms and conditions governing fair and lawful play in the Full Tilt Poker online virtual cardroom, including their own admissions of using multiple accounts.” The company also drew attention to the lack of cooperation received from the claimants during its investigation.
The case was thrown out by the Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles.
In Kentucky, the parent group of Full Tilt Poker, a company titled Pocket Kings, obtained at the least temporary relief from a legal motion by the state's lawyers seeking discovery, a legal tactic designed to uncover documents, more information and other evidence from a disputing entity in pre-trial legal manouevreing.
The process was the latest in a series of moves by Kentucky's outsourced lawyers which are rooted in the state's so far unsuccessful attempt to achieve legal backing for its seizure two years ago of 141 international domain names (see previous InfoPowa reports).
Ironically, the relief - on the grounds that Pocket Kings had not been properly served in a timely fashion and therefore no discovery could be permitted - was given in the Franklin Circuit Court, where the original seizure order had been granted by a local judge.
That does not mean that Pocket Kings is free of the discovery threat, however, as the wording of the order illustrates: "As of entry of this order, the only named defendant, Pocket Kings Ltd, has not been served. The Court finds that allowing discovery here would be premature until Pocket Kings has been served, and until the Court has reviewed any responsive pleadings that Pocket Kings may file."
FINNISH FIRMS TO OFFER ONLINE POKER AND CASINO ACTION
2010-02-09
RAY gets the Finnish government’s green light
The Finnish Slot Machine Association (RAY) and its lottery counterpart Veikkaus have been given the government green light to push ahead with legal online gambling ventures that include online poker and casino action (for RAY) and online bingo and similar number-based games (for Veikkaus)
RAY intends to introduce a variety of internet poker and casino games, which it believes will create an income of around Euros 25 million annually.
Finnish media sources report that the new government licenses come into force on March 1 2010, and that RAY hopes to start real money operations before August this year.
The government has apparently insisted that strict regulatory measures concerning problem and underage gamblers and responsible gambling must be observed.