Benny Spindler has triumphed at the European Poker Tour London main event, notching his first major live poker trophy. The German outlasted the 691 players who each ponied up £5,250 in the misguided belief that they might take what was rightfully Spindler’s. Spindler had been lodged at or near the top of the chip counts all week, and when things got down to the eight-handed final table, Spindler personally dispatched six of his rivals, including runner-up Steve O’Dwyer. Along with his place in the EPT history books, Spindler earned £750k, while O’Dwyer settled for £465k and Spindler’s countryman Andre Klebanov took £265k for placing third.
Zee Germans were clearly in a mood to do some damage at the EPT London, as Aachen native Philipp Gruissem took top honors at the £20k buy-in High Roller event. Gruissem earned £450k, Russian runner-up Igor Kurganov earned £318k, while Englishman Rob Akery took third and £205k, restoring some pride for British poker fans. Who won the bloody war, anyway?
The Poker Hall of Fame has announced its nominees for the class of 2011. The Hall currently has 40 members, to which two more will be added this year. The 10 nominees are (in alphabetical order): Annie Duke, Barry Greenstein, Jennifer Harman, Linda Johnson, John Juanda, Marcel Luske, Jack McClelland, Tom McEvoy, Scotty Nguyen and Huck Seed. The lucky pair will be selected by the Hall’s governing council — consisting of the 18 living members of the hall plus a panel of 17 poker media cognoscenti — and announced Nov. 8 during the World Series of Poker.
Back in the 1990s, business impresario and future failed presidential candidate Donald Trump launched the United States Poker Championship (USPC), a live event Der Donald used to burnish the reputation of his Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. In 2005, the mighty ESPN began broadcasting coverage of the event, further elevating USPC awareness. So you can imagine that a few viewers inevitably wandered over to their computers and typed ‘UnitedStatesPokerChampionship.com’ into their web browser, only to be greeted by… hardcore gay pornography. Apparently unimpressed by the hot man-on-man action on display, the guy with the muskrat pelt on his head (muskrat-on-man?) filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Forum. The domain name has now been transferred into Donald’s hands, but the nameservers have yet to be switched, so if you’re eager to see what Trump intends to do with his new toy, try to resist the temptation to visit the site for just a little while longer. Unless, of course, that’s what whips your skippy, then by all means, go, uh… nuts.
