Another weekly news round-up from the world of poker including another successful MILLIONS event for partypoker, two slam dunks for the World Poker Tour, and poker and politics get a little too comfortable for some people’s liking.
There was a time when partypoker live events were like a shivering wet mongrel, but today they are walking around town with all the elegance and strength of a Tibetan Mastiff, and it’s all thanks to the MILLIONS brand.
The event that has non-affiliated poker players airing their nostalgic feelings on twitter like the shake of your grandma’s snow globe is currently entertaining folk in the Dominican Republic, and there have been some big winners.
The Norwegian online star, Preben Stokkan, topped a field of 103 entrants on his way to banking the $275,000 first prize in the $10,300 High Roller. Chris ‘Big Huni’ Hunichen continued his scintillating 2017 form with victory in the $25,500 Super High Roller, beating 43-entrants to win the $400,000 first prize. And Rainer Kempe proved he can reach the zenith of a smaller buy-in live tournament when he hit 812 entrants for six to take the $200,000 first prize in the $1,100 buy-in MILLIONS Open.
At the time of writing, the $5m Guaranteed MILLIONS Main Event is ploughing through Day 3, where 195 of the 1,061 entrants are currently in a mass tug-of-war for the $1m first prize.
And there were some other MILLIONS related new this week when partypoker confirmed they would partner with Leon Tsoukernik at the King’s Casino in Rozvadov to host an $8m GTD MILLIONS Festival in February.
It’s not only the live arena where team partypoker is placing a particular emphasis. Patrick Leonard and the online team launched a new Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) schedule containing 25 daily events and over $180,000 in weekly guarantees after feedback from their most dedicated grinders.
And talking about Leonard – at the back end of last week, the partypoker ambassador announced plans to turn bitB Staking into the world’s first ‘Super Stable.’ I caught up with the man to prod and poke around in that brain of his in The Plus, Minus, and Equal of bitB’s Plans for Global Domination.
In other online poker related news, PokerStars became the sponsor of the Italian Poker Open (IPO), and plan to relaunch the $55 buy-in $1m GTD Red Spade Open in December. And 888Poker strengthened their relationship with the Swedish Poker Federation after agreeing to host the Swedish Online Poker Championships for a further two years.
World Poker Tour News & The Rest of the Live Scores
The World Poker Tour (WPT) was busy this week.
China’s Qian Zhi Qiang defeated a monster field of 888 entrants to capture the first prize of $242,555 in the WPT Main Event in Sanya. And over at the Playground Poker Club in Montreal, Maxime Heroux beat 606 entrants to win the WPT Montreal Main Event. Jonathan Duhamel beat 29 entrants, banking $102,505 in the High Roller.
And other results from around the world saw Mexico’s Fernando Galvan beating 845 entrants to win the $247,160 first prize in the World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) Main Event in Planet Hollywood. Eric Baldwin beat Chris Moorman in heads-up action to take the $114,585 first prize in a Venetian DeepStack event containing 345 entrants. And Rich Bai won the largest-ever live tournament held on Wisconsin soil when he beat 701 entrants to bank the $139,086 first prize in the Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT) Wisconsin State Poker Championships.
Bits and Bobs
Poker and politics ended up in the same shaker this week.
The former Poker After Dark host, Leeann Tweeden outed the Minnesota Democratic Senator, Al Franken, as a sex pest after sharing a tale involving unwanted tongues and mammary massages during a tour to the Middle East to raise the morale of the US troops. And poker’s friend, Republican Congressman, Joe Barton, helped us to see what a 68-year-old wedding tackle looked like when his sexy naked photo ended up doing the rounds on social media this week. Apparently, videos of the senator masturbating are on the way, so keep Googling his name for updates.
Instead of watching old men fiddling with their bits, perhaps people should subscribe to PokerGO and watch the most talented players in the world? This week the team announced plans to host another High Roller series called The U.S. Open and I opined on why I think it’s nothing more than the Poker Masters without the purple jacket.
The Mumbai All-Stars won the inaugural Match Indian Poker League (MIPL), and PokerStars’ Aditya Agarwal won the Player of the Series. Rolf Slotboom and the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) Champion of the World, Steven van Zadelhoff, joined the Dutch Poker Hall of Fame during the Master Classics of Poker in Amsterdam. And Floyd Mayweather has joined the poker industry. The man who once fought The Big Show in his downtime has decided to put his jab and right hook behind a social media poker game with power-ups called Wild Poker.
Time ladies & gentlemen.
Someone has just called the clock.
