Three barrels of an 888Poker flavour including a step into the land of the boot, the introduction of the Action Clock in Aspers, and the results are in from São Paulo.
What happened to the second season of Master of None?
Black and white?
Italy?
Subtitles.
Perhaps it’s en vogue?
Last week, 888 Holding’s CEO Itai Frieberger mentioned on their H1 2017 earnings call that they were looking to open an online poker room in Italy. The move makes sense. Earlier in the summer, the regulatory bodies in Italy, France, Portugal and Spain agreed to share their online poker liquidity, and the finer details are expected to be brushed away with a feather duster sometime next year.
888 already has a poker room in Spain, so an Italian spoke would enable those two babies to share player pools. One suspects Portugal could be next to follow, but the French move seems less likely given their current tax laws and feeling that online casinos are akin to radioactive lumps of uranium.
The grand Italian opening should go smoothly for 888. The online gambling giant is familiar with the Italian gambling regulators having already set up a sports book and a casino in the boot-shaped country that has stolen Dev and turned him into an Indian Charlie Chaplin with an Italian accent.
If 888Poker did launch in Italy, what a perfect time to add to their ambassadorial roster.
Who would they choose?
If it’s titles that 888Poker are after then why not go for the Italian Pirate, Max Pescatori? If an aesthetic appeal is important, then you can do far worse than slap a patch on Dario Sammartino. And if you wanted to go down the Liv Boeree/Igor Kurganov love route then why not bring Giovanni Rizzo to feature alongside his beloved Kara Scott?
888Live to Launch Shot Clock at Aspers Event
When everyone else was faffing about experimenting with shot clocks in certain tournaments, and at certain times in tournaments, 888Poker came along and said, “Screw that! Let’s introduce the clock from the very beginning in all of our Main Event and High Roller events.”
It was brave.
It was ballsy.
It was brilliant.
Oct 5-16, the 888Live Series in Aspers Casino, Stratford, UK, will be the first port of call for the new initiative. The two events that feature the Action Clock are the £1,100 buy-in £400,000 GTD Main Event, and the £2,200 buy-in £50,000 Guaranteed High Roller. 888Poker will also move their most popular online tournaments into the live setting with The Swordfish, The Hurricane, and The Whale all getting a live makeover.
The festival features £800,000 in guarantees across the spectrum of events, and 888Poker ambassadors Chris Moorman, Dominik Nitsche, Kara Scott, and Sofia Lovgren are all set to star.
Haroldo Silva Wins 888Live São Paulo Mai Event
888Poker’s first visit to Sao Paulo Brazil went down a storm.
Haroldo Silva topped a field of 757 entrants to take the top prize of R$200,000 ($63,862). It was only Silva’s fourth live cash recorded on the Hendon Mob, but Silva did show that he was capable of a deep run in an established event when he finished 14/1002 in the World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) Main Event in São Paulo, last year.
In addition to his big bucks, Silva also won a $13,000 WSOPE package, and a Breitling watch.
Final Table Results
1. Haroldo Silva – $63,862
2. Guilherme Cazula – $39,914
3. Emanuel Fernández – $26,183
4. Daniel Aziz – $16,604
5. Mauro Tabarin – $12,038
6. Clevio Junior – $9,579
7. Valcir Mello – $7,663
8. Luis Lima – $6,386
