Posts Tagged ‘High Stakes Poker’

Jamie Gold Busto? Selling WSOP Bracelet

Saturday, May 18th, 2013

People have been wondering for years if 2006 WSOP Main Event Jamie Gold is busto. And the poker world is only going to further buy into this rumor now that Gold is selling his 2006 Main Event bracelet through an auctioneer.

The bracelet is being sold through Heritage Auctions, which dubs themselves as “The World’s Largest Collectibles Auctioneer.” The bidding will be open on July 13th, 2013 and the auction happens from August 1st-2nd. Heritage provides a lengthy description of the product on the sale page, including the following excerpt:

The bracelet features 259 stones including over seven carats of diamonds and 120 grams of white and yellow gold. Rubies are inset to create the red of the heart and diamond suits, while a sapphire represents the spade and three black diamonds the clubs. The clasp is stamped “14K.” Fine condition. An absolutely amazing representation from one of the most talked about WSOP events in history.

It’s hard telling how much this bracelet will sell for. The only true comparison we have is when 2008 Main Event champ Peter Eastgate sold his bracelet on eBay. Scottish millionaire and philanthropist William Haughey bought the hardware for $147,500. Of course, it’s worth mentioning that proceeds from Eastgate’s bracelet sale went to charity, whereas Gold’s bracelet is likely being sold for his benefit.

Jamie Gold first gained international poker fame after winning the 2006 Main Event along with $12 million. The $12 million payout is the largest WSOP ME payday in history, and the second biggest tournament score of all-time. Unfortunately for Gold, he didn’t get the full amount after settling a lawsuit with Crispin Leyser (undisclosed amount) over a Bodog staking arrangement. He also donked off a great deal of money while playing against some of the world’s best players on High Stakes Poker.

One more point worth making is that Gold has failed to earn much additional revenue through poker since ’06. He only has $150k in tournament winnings since winning the Main Event.

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Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom dominating Online Poker

Monday, January 7th, 2013

When Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom first hit the online poker scene in 2009, his hyper-aggressive style and fearlessness baffled opponents. He was taking on the world’s top poker players just months after moving into high stakes games – and he was winning too!

Unfortunately, Blom ran into a red-hot Brian Hastings, who was armed with ill-gotten hand histories on Isildur1′s play. Hastings’ massive EV spike coupled with the hand histories helped him win $4 million off of Blom in a single session. Since that time, the Swede’s profits have spiraled downward at both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars. That spiral continued into this past November, when his career Full Tilt losses hit $2.97 million.

But it seems as if a cloud has been lifted because all of the sudden, Viktor Blom is dominating the online poker world. And when we say dominating, we’re not just talking about a few hundred thousands dollars in a week; instead, we’re alluding to the fact that he’s won almost $2.5 million in the past week alone!

Thanks to the $344k profit that he hauled in last night, Blom has earned $3.1 million since early December. What’s more is that this $3.1 million amount has easily made him the biggest winner in the “new” Full Tilt Poker’s history.

Blom is still only up $222k for his entire career at FTP, which dates back to 2009. As mentioned before, he was quite a bit in the hole after the $4 million losing session to Hastings. And he’s never really battled out of the red – until now that is. Seeing as how he is now pulling a profit, it’ll be interesting to see what Blom does from here. The 22-year-old is much younger than most high stakes poker pros and could really take over the game as time moves on.

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Is Guy Laliberté really a Poker Pro?

Sunday, December 30th, 2012

A few days ago, Yahoo.com ran a very interesting article called “20 Inspiring Rags-to-Riches Stories.” As you can guess from the title, this piece dealt with a number of high-powered business people and CEO’s from around the world. Interestingly enough, Canadian billionaire and high stakes poker player Guy Laliberté found himself on the list too. Here’s a quick look at what was written about Laliberté in the Yahoo article:

The Canadian-born Laliberté began his circus career busking on the streets: playing accordion, walking on stilts and eating fire. He gambled by bringing a successful troupe from Quebec to the Los Angeles Arts Festival in 1987, with no return fare. The bet paid off, and the circus group was eventually brought to Las Vegas, where they became the world famous Cirque du Soleil we know today.

Today, Laliberté is the CEO of Cirque, a professional poker player and space tourist, with a total net-worth of $2.5 billion.

As you can see at the end, the writer describes Laliberté as a “professional poker player.” To those who follow poker results closely, this is a debatable matter because Guy hasn’t always been the world’s most successful grinder.

He was rumored to be behind the old Full Tilt Poker name “Esvedra,” which shows a loss of $2.7 million on HighStakesDb. And it’s often been said that many of the world’s top pros would bum-hunt Laliberté while hoping for big profits. So if you’re looking at a “poker pro” as somebody who purely makes a living off the game, this isn’t Guy.

However, you also have to consider what he’s done for the game, which includes starting the Big One for One Drop tournament this past July – to which we might add that Laliberté finished fifth in his own tourney and scooped $1,834,666. In all, he’s collected $2,607,986 in live tournaments, which is a very poker-pro-like figure!

So all things considered, it’s tough to say whether Guy is truly a poker pro or not. But regardless, he’s definitely good for poker and brings a lot more attention to it through his mainstream fame.

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Phil Ivey returns to Full Tilt Poker under New Name

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

Following a long hiatus from the poker world, which coincided with Full Tilt Poker shutting down, Phil Ivey has been getting more and more involved in the game lately. First off, he returned to the 2012 WSOP and won five gold bracelets. Then he started a poker training website called IveyPoker. Now it appears as if he’s back to playing high stakes poker games on Full Tilt – only under a different name.

Ivey was previously a sponsored pro by the site and owned a stake in FTP. But now that he doesn’t have any contractual obligations with the poker room, he’s been grinding under the screen name “Polarizing.”

Apparently this started a few weeks ago when other high stakes players were sent an email stating how Ivey would be changing screen names with the Full Tilt relaunch – something that’s been acceptable given how the revamped FTP is owned by a totally different company.

Since his return, the eight-time WSOP champion has wasted no time in winning on the high stakes tables. Over the past couple of days, he’s collected $225k in profits while playing against some of the world’s top 2-7 Triple Draw players. His overall winnings this week are a bit lower at $114k, but still very good nonetheless.

Before Full Tilt Poker went offline in June, 2011, Phil Ivey was easily the greatest online player of all-time. He’d earned $19.24 million in profits, which is simply amazing when you consider that Patrik Antonius is a distant second with $11.84 million. Based on the hot start he’s gotten off to already since the FTP relaunch, we can only assume that Ivey will continue building on his record amount of profits – rather than suffering through major losses like fellow high stakes grinder Gus Hansen.

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Gus Hansen – Still an Online Poker Loser

Friday, November 16th, 2012

From 2009 to 2010, Gus Hansen became this lovable sort of online poker loser that just couldn’t stop spewing millions. It got so bad at one point that many people questioned his decision to keep battering his bankroll and reputation against the top online players.

After hitting rock bottom in August of 2010 – when he’d lost over $9.2 million – Hansen magically started getting better. Okay, so maybe it was more hard work and perseverance, but the point is that the Great Dane suddenly became this elite player.

While taking on some of the world’s best high stakes PLO players, the Great Dane managed to rack up over $6 million in winnings from September, 2010 to June, 2011. He was the talk of the poker world too during this incredible run, and many players thought that Hansen had finally conquered the game.

Unfortunately, Gus’ great run came to an end when Full Tilt Poker lost their license in June of 2011. With much of his bankroll wrapped up on the site, Hansen was forced to stop playing high stakes online games for a while. But after 16 months of being stagnant, Full Tilt has their license back and Hansen is on the tables again.

Sadly this hasn’t really been a good thing for Gus because he’s dropped over $2 million in less than a month. It’s difficult to pinpoint what the exact problem is right now, but it is clear that Hansen isn’t showing the same dominance he displayed in late 2010/2011. And now his overall losses sit at around $5.2 million, which is among the worst in poker history.

Hopefully Gus Hansen can find what made him so great last year again, but he’d better do it quick because the losses are mounting!

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Hollywood High Stakes Poker Saga ends for Ponzi Victims

Thursday, May 17th, 2012

For quite some time now, we’ve heard a lot of talk about the high stakes poker ring that involved Tobey Maguire, Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio. The ring made worldwide headlines after a crooked hedge fund manager named Bradley Ruderman lost $5.2 million to the players at these games.

After defrauding his clients, Ruderman was arrested by federal authorities and forced to spill everything he knew about the poker ring. One of the most telling points included when he told authorities that Maguire was “a winner and the best player.” He may have been right too since it’s estimated that the former Spiderman actor earned $30-$40 million from the high stakes poker games.

Moving past Maguire, those who fell for Ruderman’s Ponzi scheme finally received some good news regarding the $5.2 million they were seeking. Now the investors won’t get everything back because the poker players were unaware that Ruderman’s money was fraudulently earned. However, they will receive $1.75 million, which is about a third of what was lost in the poker games.

The lawsuit against those involved in the case was settled out of court, and bankruptcy trustee Howard Ehrenberg discussed this by saying, “All of the poker defendant cases are settled. The settlement of every poker related case without having had to incur the cost of taking any of them to trial means that the fund available for the victims has been maximized.”

One player who will be paying back a portion of the money is Magure, since he’ll owe $80k to the Ponzi victims. Others who are on the hook for repaying the scammed investors include High Stakes Poker commentator Gable Kaplan, record label owner Cody Leibel, and The Notebook director Nick Cassavetes.

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Ilari Sahamies dominating High Stakes Poker Again

Tuesday, April 17th, 2012

Ilari Sahamies was the talk of the online poker world last year after collecting over $2.2 million in profits. The Finn dominated the competition at PokerStars, and earned the most money out of any online poker player in 2011.

Unfortunately for Sahamies, the good times came to a screeching halt in 2012 when he got off to a very rocky start. Perhaps the word “rocky” is an understatement because he lost a nightmarish $1 million over the first two months of this year. But in proving how much of a roller coaster ride the high stakes can be, Ilari Sahamies has already turned things around by winning almost all of his losses back.

Much of the winning has occurred over the past few days, where the Finn has accumulated nearly $500k in profits. This helps make up for the poor start he had to April, which cost him around $700k. A large portion of Sahamies great sessions have come at the PokerStars $50/$100 and $100/$200 PLO tables, while facing top-notch competition such as Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom, Phil “MrSweets28″ Galfond, Ben “Sauce123″ Sulsky and Ben “milkybarkid” Grundy.

So with yet another “up” to his up and down sessions lately, it’s nice to see Ilari Sahamies battling back again. But does his great play as of late mean that there’s any chance he could top the online poker world two years in a row?

It appears highly unlikely since another Finn by the name of Jens “Jeans89″ Kyllonen seems to be asserting himself atop the cyber poker world this time around. Things haven’t been so good for the 21-year-old lately, but he still has $1.25 million profits thus far, and the year isn’t even halfway over with. This being said, he’s definitely the favorite to top the online poker world in 2012.

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High Stakes Poker Gone – Any Poker Shows Left?

Friday, December 9th, 2011

As you may already know, GSN announced that they won’t be bringing High Stakes Poker back for an eighth season. This ends the run of one of the most successful poker TV shows in history, and leaves us wondering if there’s anything left in the way of poker-related programming.

After all, this is the same year that also saw the highly-popular Poker After Dark fall by the wayside too. Both Poker After Dark and High Stakes Poker lasted seven seasons, and paved the way for other successful TV shows in the same genre.

Of course, there is ESPN’s coverage of the WSOP, which will probably always be on TV – at least for the foreseeable future; however, the WSOP isn’t a weekly program like HSP or Poker After Dark. Furthermore, there really aren’t any reoccurring poker TV shows on right now because several other ones have also been cancelled.

For instance, PokerStars Big Game was another 2011 casualty because PokerStars was busy pulling out of the US market and paying off the US Department of Justice after Black Friday. Speaking of Black Friday, it seems that this horrid day continues to have reverberations throughout the poker community – even eight months after the fact.

Following Black Friday, online poker is still in a recovery stage, and it will take something big to happen for anything to change quickly; that includes the world of poker TV shows. PokerStars would be the only sponsor capable of backing a major poker show any time soon, but they probably aren’t interested in jumping back into this world just yet. Both Party Poker and the iPoker network aren’t nearly big enough to fill the role that Full Tilt Poker did in the TV world (they single-handedly backed HSP at one point).

Long story short, it may be a while before we see any good poker TV shows that don’t include WSOP coverage.

 

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Poker Hall of Fame, EPT San Remo Updates

Friday, October 28th, 2011

There are some big updates in the poker world to report dealing with the Poker Hall of Fame and 2011 EPT San Remo tournament.  First off, Barry Greenstein and Linda Johnson were inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame yesterday.

Barry Greenstein was a virtual lock after looking at the nominees, which included Annie Duke, Huck Seed, Tom McEvoy, Jack McClelland, Jennifer Harman-Traniello, John Juanda, Marcel Luske and Scotty Nguyen. Greenstein, who is called the Robin Hood of Poker for his charity work, got into the Hall via his $7.5 million in live tournament cashes and two WPT titles. In addition to this, Greenstein is a regular in the high stakes poker world.

Linda Johnson’s resume includes being a driving force in starting the World Poker Tour, and starting CardPlayer Magazine mostly by herself. She is also a solid poker player with over $342,000 in winnings and a WSOP bracelet – though this played much less of a factor in her Poker Hall of Fame induction.

As for the 2011 EPT San Remo, the tournament was won by an unheralded player by the name of Andrey Pateychuk. The Russian player, who had just $46k in live tournament cashes before this victory, added another €680,000 ($965k) to his poker earnings after beating Dimitar Danchev heads-up.

When the two players were the only ones remaining on the EPT San Remo final table, they decided to split €1.2 million of the leftover prize money, and play for the other €80,000. After a couple of hours of play, the two players were still near-even until Pateychuk went all-in with 6-7 unsuited. Danchev called with 9-T unsuited and flopped top pair with 9′s; unfortunately for him, the next two cards gave Pateychuk a runner-runner straight, and he won the hand.

With very few chips left, Danchev was quickly eliminated, which gave Andrey Pateychuk the victory.

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Victory Poker Closed – Failed to Diversify

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

Few poker sites in recent years have made the splash that Victory Poker has in its short existence. Victory aggressively marketed their room, they had a solid rakeback deal, and they signed an impressive roster of pro players that included Andrew Robl and Antonio Esfandiari. Not coincidentally, these two pros gained Victory even more exposure when they appeared on High Stakes Poker wearing the Victory Poker patches. But even with everything that Victory did right, they failed in one key aspect – diversification.

The site was too centered on the American market, and once the events of Black Friday hit, their player base died fast. Plus their impending move from the Cake network to the CEREUS network was cut short by Black Friday.

And while it’s possible that Victory could have survived longer, CEO Dan Fleyshman had enough and was burnt out. Fleyshman dropped the bombshell on the poker world through his Facebook page by writing “The brand will continue doing strategy, news (and) videos as an affiliate site. I will be focusing much more on my upcoming charity, consulting other companies and helping with Victory marketing.”

As far as I can remember, this is the first time that a major poker room like Victory has made the decision to transform into a poker affiliate site. And while it’s not exactly a success transforming into an affiliate, it will be interesting to see how the room does in this capacity.

In regards to the Victory Poker pros, there is no word on what will happen to Esfandiari or Robl; I’m sure that they’ll find a sponsor somewhere though. And if you’re wondering about the Victory players, all accounts, Gold Chips, and other bonuses will be transferred to Cake Poker in June.

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