Carla Solinas will be asking herself how she didn’t win the latest leg of the Italian Poker Tour (IPT) in Nova Gorica. Slovakian Anton Karasinsky is the answer she’s looking for after he overhauled a huge chip deficit to take home the winner’s prize of €140,000. Solinas had entered the leg’s final day with more than double the chip count of second-placed Drubavko Bagic and looked sure to take down the €2,000 buy-in main event. 286 players had started out this stop and now it’s off to popular San Remo for season 3’s grand final. One thing we learnt: never take anything for granted in live poker.
Bryce Yockey emerged from the shadows to take home $10,000 for leading the World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star on day 1a. Every March around 50 “big names” arrive in San Jose to meet the $10k buy-in price. Of the 19 that took part on day 1a, only five advanced to day 2 and it will be down to the remaining 30 to test their mettle on day 1b. Yockey outperformed everyone and made his way to an unofficial end of day stack numbering 245,300 chips. Notable players inside the top 10 include Vanessa Selbst (125,400) and former WSOP November Nine champion Jonathan Duhamel (102,200) and there were 54 players remaining from the 142 that had started the day.
PokerStars’s MicroMillions series of tournaments is proving popular with 18,000 already signed up for the first event. In reply Stars have raised the player cap from 50,000 to 100,000 and made it a turbo format – to prevent the tournament lasting longer than a day.
