Posts Tagged ‘Poker News’

Poker Player Newspaper ends Print Magazine just as GPI launches One

Tuesday, May 27th, 2014

With a wealth of poker news and information now available on the internet, many printed poker magazines are having a rough go of it these days. For Poker Player Newspaper, the pressure became too much as they ended their print edition after 30-plus years in the business.

Owner Stan Sludikoff said that the costs of printing and distributing a magazine “have escalated past a point of feasibility in our current business model.” He added, “Accordingly, effective immediately, we will be publishing Poker Player Newspaper exclusively on the Internet at pokerplayernewspaper.com.” Sludikoff, who’s 78, also mentioned that he’s open to selling the business with the following statement:

At this point in my life, given my desire to pass the mantle as well as to work through the economic pressures as expeditiously as possible, I am looking for a working partner/investor or alternatively for a full buyout of my family-based Poker Player business which has operated since 1982.

Just as Poker Player Newspaper is getting out of the print magazine business, the Global Poker Index will be launching a free printed mag. As an official partner of the World Series of Poker, the GPI will have a booth at the Rio this summer and distribute their magazine. In addition to the Rio, the free publication will also be handed out at other Las Vegas casinos like the Aria, Bellagio, GoldenNugget, Venetian and Wynn.

The company’s CEO, Alex Dreyfus, is extremely excited to venture outside the bounds of their internet presence. “This is our first full-scale foray outside of the digital,” he said. “We couldn’t be happier to take this step and keep our growing momentum going in time for the 2014 WSOP.”

Some of the content that’ll be in GPI’s June edition includes a feature on Vanessa Selbst and her WSOP plans, Top 1,500 GPI US Rankings, and a guide of Las Vegas for WSOP out-of-towners. If you’d like to read the first edition of GPI’s magazine online, you can do so here.

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Victoria Coren and David Mitchell Engagement

Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

There was a bit of joyous poker news earlier today as female pro Victoria Coren and comedian David Mitchell announced their engagement. This might come as a surprise to many people within the poker community because the Brits have kept their relationship really quiet. However, they figured that now was the perfect time to unveil their romance to the public as Mitchell put the following announcement in a British newspaper:

MR D.J.S. MITCHELL AND MISS V.E. COREN. The engagement is announced between David, son of Mr and Mrs Ian Mitchell, of Oxford, and Victoria, daughter of Dr Anne Coren and the late Mr Alan Coren, of London.

Mitchell is getting quite a catch with Victoria Coren since the PokerStars pro is 12th all-time among women with $1,476,668 in live poker tournament winnings. She first became known to the poker public after appearing on TV’s Late Night Poker in 1999. The 38-year-old gained more fame after winning the 2006 EPT European Poker Championships title and $941,513.

Away from the poker tables, Coren writes for the UK’s Guardian newspaper, and has even reviewed porn movies for British papers. But perhaps her most notable achievement includes hosting the TV quiz show Only Connect, which has been running since 2008.

As for her hubby-to-be, David Mitchell is best know for his long-running role on the sitcom The Peep Show, which has been on air since 2003. Based on his The Peep Show performance in 2009, Mitchell actually won the British Academy Television Award for Best Comedy Performance. The 37-year-old has also been on a lot of different quiz show panels, and he met Victoria Coren when they were on The Bubble in 2010. Apparently, this is when their romance sparked up – although they kept things quiet at this stage.

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Epic Poker League could be in Trouble

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

If you listen to Commissioner Annie Duke, you’d think that the Epic Poker League was the greatest thing to happen to poker. But if you pay attention to recent reports by several poker news outlets, you might conclude an entirely different thought.

After all, it’s being reported that Pinnacle Entertainment is currently talking to EPL owners about buying the poker league. Popular speculation is that Jeffrey Pollack and the Palms Casino want to sell the EPL because they’re going through some major financial difficulties.

The reason why is because they have delayed their fourth event along with the championship $1 million freeroll tournament until the spring. Considering the fact that this isn’t exactly something you expect from a thriving poker organization, it’s no wonder why people are skeptical about the Epic Poker League finances.

As for their prospective buyer, Pinnacle Entertainment, they’re best known for operating several casinos throughout the United States. And they seem to be really motivated in acquiring the EPL since they’re trying to get the deal done by March.

Assuming they do indeed buy this poker tournament league, it will be interesting to see how the EPL transforms. Will all of the events suddenly revolve around the Pinnacle properties in states like Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri and Ohio? Or will they continue to be held in the same scheduled locations as what we saw this year?

Perhaps more importantly is what will happen to the TV deals and current structure of the league. Right now, 200 poker pros are invited to the EPL season events, while other players can work their way into the mix by meeting the specified requirements. However, under new ownership, this could all change if Pinnacle Entertainment doesn’t think the current model will offer future profits. We’ll have to revisit this discussion when/if Pinnacle does buy the Epic Poker League.

 

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Scott Matusow and Mike Matusow reconcile

Sunday, December 4th, 2011

Three weeks ago, an abrupt feud between poker pro Mike Matusow and his brother Scott Matusow was dominating the poker news headlines. The fight started when Mike Matusow dissed his brother for promoting a negative article about Phil Ivey and Full Tilt Poker through Mike’s twitter feed.

Then Scott Matusow wrote an unflattering post about Mike entitled An open letter to Mike Matusow. The jest of the post was that Mike is a degenerate gambler who only comes around his family when he needs something. In any case, I got to wondering about how things would be over the holidays when the Matusow brothers got together again. And apparently, they’ve already reconciled as Scott mentioned in his most recent blog post.

The most telling excerpt from the blog post read as follows:

There was a good deal of somewhat heated convo, but I was able to get my point across to him pertaining to the things I wrote on my last blog. I stated to him that I did not want to publicly air our stuff out, but that I felt I did not have a choice in the matter, since talking to him privately up to this point, and getting him to listen was a virtual impossibility. It seems that he now understands things much better, and he expressed to me he wished I did not publicly do what I did. However, I did apologize and explain it was not meant to hurt him, and explained to him why I did and both of us have come to a common understanding over this issue.

Is this the end of the drama for the Matusow’s? With two such explosive characters so closely related, it seems unlikely, but only time will tell. As for Mike Matusow, the former Full Tilt Poker pro continues to play in tournaments and build upon his impressive $7,828,911 in career cashes. Scott Matusow appears to be posting on his blog every once and a while, and benefits from his relationship to Mike.

 

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WSOP Fantasy Draft

Saturday, May 28th, 2011

The world of fantasy sports is no doubt intoxicating as millions of people worldwide spend hours trying to think of every possible angle to improve their team. This being said, where does fantasy poker fit into this equation?

While I love poker, it’s hard to see how one could get excited about fantasy poker since the game isn’t exactly something that you invite your buddies over to watch while downing a few beers. Instead, it is an activity that gains popularity from one thing – the fact that you can win major money doing it!

Sure it’s fun to check out the latest poker news and crazy happenings that are currently going on, but aside from this, extracurricular things like WSOP fantasy leagues will never have a following outside of the diehard players who have deep ties to the game. This being said, I can see how people like Daniel Negreanu can get into it as he and some other pros actually had a WSOP fantasy draft party at the Aria Casino, while they selected their dream lineups.

Kid Poker recently blogged about the draft on FullContactPoker, and the rules are as follows:

– League buy-in is $25,000
– Everybody gets 200 points to spend on players
– When players are announced, people bid on them with the points
– Every team must have 8 players

Now that we’ve covered the rules, here is a look at who got who in the draft as according to Negreanu:

Team #1 Joe Cassidy/Huck Seed
1: Tom Dwan 62
2: Vladimir Schemelev 33
3: Alexander Kostritsyn 58
4: Jennifer Harman 19
5: Sam Trickett 7
6: David Pham 1
7: Vitaly Lunkin 10
8: David Bach 1

Team #2 Barry Greenstein
1: Barry Greenstein 64
2: Phil Ivey 108
3: Chau Giang 19
4: John Pham 2
5: Ralph Perry 3
6: Ted Forrest 1
7: Joseph Serock 1
8: Jimmy Fricke 1

Team #3 Robert Mizrachi, Greg Meuller, Jared Bleznick, “Crazy” Mike
1. Daniel Alaei 80
2: Robert Mizrachi 51
3: Josh Arieh 26
4: Hoyt Corkins 5
5: Chad Brown 24
6: Marco Traniëllo 1
7: David Baker 5
8: Lee Goldman 1

Team #4 Justin “BoostedJ” Smith, Ashton Griffin
1. Justin “BoostedJ” Smith 64
2: Huck Seed 50
3: Ali Eslami 35
4: David Chiu 32
5: Farzad Bonyadi 3
6: Amnon Filippi 1
7: Eli Elezra 4
8: Mike “SirWatts” Watson 10

Team #5 Eugene Katchalov, Danny Alaei
1: Eugene Katchalov 72
2: Steve Sung 6
3: Matt Hawrlenko 32
4: Nikolai Evdakov 12
5: Pat Pezzin 14
6: Mikael Thuritz 28
7: Ville Wallbeck 15
8: Abe Mosseri 21

Team #6 Casey Katz
1: Erik Seidel 43
2: John Juanda 53
3: Michael Mizrachi 50
4: Carlos Mortensen 19
5: Annette Obrestad 1
6: Jason Somerville 1
7: David Singer 20
8: Eric Baldwin 13

Team #7 Scott Seiver, Justin Bonomo, Eric Froelich
1: Matt Glantz 58
2: Sorrel Mizzi 40
3: Justin Bonomo 43
4: Christian “charder30” Harder 5
5: Jon “PearlJammed” Turner 13
6: Andrew Brown 9
7: John Monnette 11
8: Greg Mueller 21

Team #8 Jason Mercier, Jason Somerville
1: Michael Binger 45
2: Dan “djk123” Kelly 36
3: Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier 18
4: David Oppenheim 6
5: Allen Bari 36
6: David “Bakes” Baker 40
7: Ben Lamb 15
8: Bryn Kenney 4

Team #9 James Bord, Toby Lewis
1: Nick Schulman 64
2: Scott Clements 45
3: Shaun Deeb 38
4: Luke Schwartz 1
5: Richard Ashby 28
6: Andy Bloch 6
7: Anthony Lellouche 1
8: James Bord 1

Team #10 Daniel Negreanu
1: Scott Seiver 73
2: Jason Mercier 74
3: Yuval Bronstein 18
4: Yueqi Zhu 5
5: Mike Matusow 12
6: Roland De Wolfe 1
7: Gavin Smith 1
8: Steve “MrSmokey1” Billirakis 16

Team #11 Frank Kassela, Shaun Deeb
1. Daniel Negreanu 89
2: Frank Kassela 41
3: Dwyte Pilgrim 10
4: Alan Cunningham 25
5: Victor Ramdin 1
6: Rob Hollink 17
7: Thomas Koral 1
8: Dario Minieri 16

Team #12 Erick Lingdren, David Oppenhiem
1: Erick Lindgren 61
2: David Benyamine 58
3: Shawn Buchanan 63
4: Eric Froehlich 6
5: Shannon Shorr 1
6: Kirill Gerasimov 1
7: George “Jorj95” Lind III 9
8: Brian Hastings 1

Team #13 Todd Brunson
1. Todd Brunson 40
2: Scotty Nguyen 35
3: Phil Hellmuth 38
4: Freddy Deeb 23
5: Allan Kessler 41
6: Chris Feguson 4
7: Minh Ly 1
8: Shun Uchida 1

Team #14 Mori Eskandani
1: Jeffrey Lisandro 50
2: Chris Bjorin 38
3: Men “The Master” Nguyen 27
4: Dan Heimiller 21
5: Tom Marchese 10
6: David Williams 14
7: Vanessa Selbst 5
8: Phil Galfond 35

Team #15 Vladimir Schmelev
1. Sebastien Sabic 40
2: Joe Cassidy 43
3: Brett Richey 37
4: Patrik Antonius 5
5: Jared Bleznick 8
6: “Crazy” Marco Johnson 43
7: Alex Kravchenko 21
8: Sergey “gipsy74” Rybachenko 1

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Unknown Ivan Freitez wins EPT Grand Final

Friday, May 13th, 2011

It seems like the last few EPT events that I’ve seen have featured little known winners. And this trend definitely kept up after Ivan Freitez defeated fellow unknown Torsten Brinkmann to win the 2011 EPT Grand Live Final.

Now this isn’t to say that Freitez was a total bum before he won the biggest EPT tournament of the year. In fact, he had 13  cashes prior to the EPT Madrid win; however, it’s not exactly like the poker world was talking about the Venezuelan before he graced poker news headlines everywhere.

The same goes for Freitez’s heads-up adversary Torsten Brinkmann, who was known by few people outside of his mom and dad before finishing runner-up in the 2011 EPT Madrid. Looking past their anonymity, I’m glad that both players were able to put themselves on the poker map with the big finishes

As far as those who poker fans might actually recognize, Alex Gomes was the big story going into the final day since he was chasing a triple crown (WPT title, EPT title, WSOP bracelet). The Team PokerStars member was hoping to become part of an elite class that only includes Gavin Griffin and Roland De Wolfe. However, those dreams ended when Eugene “FishosaurusREX” Yanayt busted him out.

Yanayt was another interesting story since he made headlines earlier in the year for losing over $2 million in one month at Full Tilt Poker’s cash tables. However, he was looking to get some of the money back, which he did manage to do to an extent. If you’d like to see how much Yanayt made, along with the rest of the results, here is a look at the final table:

1. Ivan Freitez – €1,500,000
2. Torsten Brinkmann – €900,000
3. Tamas Lendvai – €550,000
4. Andrey Danilyuk – €400,000
5. Juan Maceiras – €315,000
6. Eugene Yanayt – €250,000
7. Alex Gomes – €185,000
8. Andrew Li – €130,000

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Check Out The ‘Poker That Sucks’ Blog

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

A friend of mine, Michael Olsen, writes a poker blog at PokerThatSucks.com and I thought I’d let my readers know about it. Michael makes his living playing poker – a fact that I have always been a tad jealous of – and his blog is about everything having to do with poker.

At Poker That Sucks, you can find posts about poker news, different pro poker players, poker tips and strategies, and more. The tips and strategies are great, as Michael has done a lot of practicing and research to figure out what works and what doesn’t over his years of going from poker newbie to poker professional. He posts on a pretty regular basis, so you should check back often for new content.

The thing I like best about his blog is that Michael writes from his own experience. He has been playing poker for 5 years and has grown a lot as a player in that time. He has put a lot into figuring out various poker trends, analyzing why poker players do the things they do and the best ways to improve your game and work your way into the world of professional poker.

I highly recommend heading over to Poker That Sucks for some great poker reading material!

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