Lee Davy gives you a sound bite of all the week’s poker news and stories including a run down of the most impressive results from the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, PokerStars Spin & Go’s first $1m winner, and much more.
The story that picked up the most press coverage, this week, was the magnificent performance of Ronaldo in the $10,000 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) Main Event.
The Brazilian footballing legend’s impressive run ended in 26th place, and the PokerStars marketing department must have been rubbing their hands with as much verve and vigor as a witch checking out the kids as they start munching on her chocolate flavored brass knockers.
This is what it’s about.
This is why online poker rooms pay the big money to attract the stars of sport. They finish 26th and the brand of PokerStars is spread wider and further than any poker player could take it.
The winner of the event was the Kevin Schulz. The American beat the number one Peruvian online wizard, Diego Ventura, in heads-up action, to take the $1.4m first prize. A good kid and a great poker player. But I doubt he goes down in the box with the enthusiasm of Ronaldo.
The PCA ended with their largest ever $25k High Roller event. 269 entrants, and the winner was a young man who doesn’t even play live tournaments. In fact, his million-dollar victory is the only piece of writing on his Hendon Mob CV. Cash game player, Ilkin Garibli, was on holiday, in the Bahamas, when friends convinced him to play. Wise choice.
Those Lucky Russians
There’s been a lot of talk about the damage that could be caused if the Russians are not able to play on PokerStars in the very near future. The government are becoming very itchy about the direction of their online poker revenue, and with most of it either flowing through the tributaries heading to the Bank of PokerStars, or Sergey Rybachenko’s local home game, it means empty government coffers all round.
That just won’t do.
Fortunately, for one lucky Russian bar steward he has managed to sneak in, grab a million bucks, and get the hell out of dodge before the whole thing is shut down.
Micro stakes player sss66666 is the first player to turn a $5 luck box investment into a million bucks courtesy of the latest Spin & Go promotion at PokerStars. The other two players, in the fairytale three-handed Hyper-Turbo, each received $100,000, making it one of the sickest bubbles in the history of the game.
The WSOPC go Large
It’s not just the PCA and the Russians that have been raking it in this week. The World Series of Poker (WSOP) have also been at it. Poker players might complain about the lopsided effect the re-entry clause has on the poker community at large, but it hasn’t slowed anything down.
Ray Henson has just topped the largest field in WSOP Circuit (WSOPC) history, by beating 4,053 players in the Choctaw Casino, Oklahoma. The guaranteed $500,000 prize pool was decimated as $1,215, 900 was generated by the poker players who don’t like re-entries.
In a wonderful twist of fate, Henson defeated the six-time WSOP bracelet winner, TJ Cloutier, in heads-up action; seven years after TJ Cloutier beat Henson, in heads-up action, to win the Scotty Nguyen Poker Challenge IV in Tulsa.
Mississippi and Washington Launch Online Gambling Bills
The state of Oklahoma may allow poker to be played under a controlled environment in the wild, but the same cannot be said for the online environment.
Two states (or more accurately a man and a woman) that are trying to change that are Mississippi and Washington. Washington Rep. Sherry Appleton has prefiled an online poker bill, known as HB 1114, and Mississippi Rep. Bobby Moak has thrust his third online gambling bill, in four years, into the faces of lawmakers in that place with the wordy river name.
The cliffs show that the Washington Bill seems to be ‘bad actor’ free, and includes jargon that would allow intrastate player pool sharing, and the Mississippi bill includes the potential for international player pool sharing.
New Jersey Online Poker Numbers Improve
If the bills are to be successful in Mississippi and Washington, then one expects the people that matter will take a peek at the goings on in New Jersey; and if they looked right now it would look a lot better than one month ago.
Online poker revenue hit an all-time low of $1.87m in November, so it’s not heart stopping news that they managed to beat that paltry effort in December. $2.05m was the number. Not bad, but not as good as the January peak of $3.4m.
The partnership of Borgata/Bwin led the way with $1.1m in online poker revenue (+10%), with the WSOP in second with $950k (+8%). Caesars online poker room will be hoping for an even better Jan 2015, after they announced plans to share certain player pool liquidity with their part time partner 888Poker.
