Lee Davy covers news from the World Poker Tour (including the creation of the Bobby Baldwin Classic), the Super High Roller Bowl expanding to China and much more.
I’m going to begin this week’s picnic of poker by focusing on the World Poker Tour (WPT) who started and ended three different events this week.
The most recent to end saw Darryll Fish overcome a field of 911 entrants to win his first major title, and career-high $511,604 in prize money, in the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open Main Event at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino & Hotel in Hollywood, Florida. Nesrine Reilly (4th) and Andy Frankenberger (3rd) also made the final table.
It was Reilly’s second final table of the Lucky Hearts Poker Open after finishing eighth in the WPTDeepStacks Main Event. Scott Baumstein took that one down for a career-high $220,238 after overcoming a field of 1,366 entrants.
And over in Berlin, Germany, the WPT held their inaugural WPT European Championship. The event attracted 339 entrants, and Ole Schemion captured the €218,435 first prize. Schemion also made the money in the WPTDeepStacks Main Event Berlin. Dustin Mangold beat 561 entrants to win the €134,809 first prize in that one.
Schemion and Fish earn $15,000 seats in the season-ending Tournament of Champions (TOC), and this week we learned the event is moving to the ARIA Hotel Resort and Casino with the final table moving to the new Esports Arena Las Vegas at the Luxor Hotel.
The TOC move wasn’t the only change to the Season XVI schedule. ARIA COO, President and Poker Hall of Fame member, Bobby Baldwin becomes part of the WPT furniture thanks to the creation of the $10,000 buy-in Bobby Baldwin Classic, which, incidentally, is the last event you can compete in and win a seat into the TOC. WPT Amsterdam has also found a late spot on the schedule for the fourth consecutive year.
Finally, the WPT Foundation partnered with the brand experience agency Latitude to host a charity poker event as part of Super Bowl weekend. The event, named NVRFLD, takes place Feb 2 in Minneapolis. Tony Dunst and Lynn Gilmartin will feature. Money raised goes to MATTER, Starkey Hearing Foundation and Healing Haiti.
Asian Poker News
There was a time when the WPT flirted with the idea of entertaining the high roller community. Remember the WPT Alpha8? It didn’t work. But did it leave a gap in the market? The organisers of the Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) thinks so.
This week, Poker Central announced a partnership with the Macau Billionaire Poker Club that will see the SHRB host a second event, this time in Macau. They have christened the $2m+$100k HKD (USD 270k) buy-in event SHRB China, and it carries an HKD 100m (USD 12.8m) guarantee and a 49 player cap. The event takes place at the Babylon Casino, Macau Fisherman’s Wharf March 20-22.
And the Indian online poker room PokerBaazi added to their opex spreadsheet this week when they hired the only boxer from India to ever win an Olympic medal. Vijender Singh (who took Bronze in Beijing 2008) will try to instil a sense of respect and seriousness to a game that the authorities still believe is no more than a lottery. Singh is unbeaten in ten fights since turning pro knocking out seven of his opponents.
Online Poker News
partypoker is looking to the past in a bid to reinvent the future. The made for TV live cash game ‘The Big Game’ is coming out of retirement. The 36-hour cash game marathon forms a part of the forthcoming MILLIONS Germany. Sam Trickett, Viktor Blom and Tony G feature. Buy-ins range between €20k-€40k and blinds begin at €50/€100. The game of choice is Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO), and the event will be streamed live on partypoker TV in three different languages.
It was also a week when partypoker strengthened their ambassadorial team. Isaac Haxton, formerly of PokerStars, joined the partypoker squad. It wasn’t that long ago that Haxton voiced his opinion on Twitter that if PokerStars kept going the way, they were partypoker could overtake them as the market leader by the end of 2019. Now he gets to have a more hands-on impact.
Talking about PokerStars; they handed out another seven-figure score this week. The aptly named 24HourATM won a million bucks while playing a $100 Spin & Go. The action whistled past as fast as an arrow from a crossbow. Four minutes to be exact. The second and third place finishers picked up $100k each.
PokerStars Team Pro Liv Boeree is scheduled to appear at TEDx in Manchester, England February 11th. TED is promoting Boeree as a poker champion, but it’s unknown whether she will be talking about poker or her other love effective altruism.
888Poker announced their 2018 888Live tour stops. Bucharest, Romania and Lisbon, Portugal are two new destinations. Aspers Casino, Stratford takes up most of the slack. Barcelone returns and will be the biggest festival of the year for them. The brand will also sponsor the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas and continue their partnership with the WPT, with a WPT500 event in Aspers.
Finally, one of the oldest cryptocurrency driven online poker rooms reopens this weekend, four weeks after closing down. Betcoin Poker shut down on Christmas Day after new owners decided the online poker room had no future. The closure left a cloud over the Bad Beat Jackpot (BBJ). The first idea, to distribute the money to people who had created it, didn’t work out. Betcoin decided to reopen the poker room this weekend, relax the rules and hope that someone wins the thing ASAP. There is no word on what happens once someone hits the BBJ, but you have to assume the site will close once again.
Bits and Bobs
Investigators working on the Wichita illegal gambling ring cleared businessman and part-time high stakes poker player, Brandon Steven, from any wrongdoing this week. You may remember the feds wiretapped phone conversations that included Steven. Two people pleaded guilty, and several more (including members of the police) are in the dock, but not our man Steven.
And it was interview week this week.
Check out my conversations with the following damsels, degens and diehards of this beautiful game of ours.
Maria Konnikova
Jeff Gross
Kevin Martin
Usain Bolt
Lex Veldhuis
Jaime Staples
Igor Kurganov
Jake Cody
Time ladies and gentlemen.
Someone has just called the clock.
