Poker Blog & Poker Forum

Full Tilt Poker is the online poker room where most of the high stakes action on the Internet takes place. HighstakesDB tracks the betting at Full Tilt Poker on a hand to hand basis and compiles the results into the biggest winners and losers every month.

Phil Ivey tops the list of winners for August 2010 with just over $2 million against his name, which is way ahead of the next poker professional at Full Tilt Poker. If things continue this way then Ivey can cross more than $20 million in life time winnings in September. For someone who started out only in October 2006 this is a huge feat. Ivey crossed the $5 million mark in September 2008, the $10 million mark in April 2009 and the $15 million mark in November 2009. And all this is at Full Tilt Poker only. The biggest single pot won by Ivey was of $832,940 in November 2009.

Numbers two and four on the August 2010 list are jungleman12, real name Dan Cates, and durrrr, real name Tom Dwan. Cates has won $1.1 million in August at Full Tilt Poker and Dwan has won $0.7 million. Cates and Dwan make an interesting combination because they have a challenge going between them, which is popularly called The Durrrr Challenge 2. The first challenge, between Dwan and Patrik Antonius, went into hibernation after 19 months of slow paced progress because Antonius is so far behind that he has no hope of catching up. Fortunately for poker fans the second Durrrr Challenge has started at a brisk pace and 10% of the slated number of games has already been completed. As things stand now, Dwan is down by half a million dollars but it is early days. Fans are hoping that this contest will not become one sided and slow down to a snail’s pace. Dwan started playing at Full Tilt Poker in November 2006, about the same time as Ivey. However Dwan has had a volatile life with maximum cumulative winnings at $8 million in April 2010. He is currently at $5 million.

The biggest loser in August 2010 is Gus Hansen at $2.9 million. Like someone at a poker forum remarked, Full Tilt Poker should change his password and forget to tell him.

There is speculation that ace swimmer Michael Phelps may soon become a brand ambassador for UB.com and the reason for this speculation is that Phelps has started figuring a lot in Phil Hellmuth’s Tweets. Hellmuth even has a special name for Phelps, which is MP3. The Tweets do not directly state anything about Phelps joining UB.com. They are about sundry things like Phelps signing a swimming cap for Hellmuth’s deceased sister, Miss USA contestants walking into Phelps, Phelps beating Hellmuth at golf and Phelps being a gentleman and warrior.

Hellmuth wooing Phelps is nothing new. The same scenario was played out in 2008 after Phelps landed in the US of A with a bagful of gold medals. Among the things Hellmuth then said was “… he’s a 14 time Gold Medal winner. I’m an 11 time gold bracelet winner! Marry me, Michael!” At that time Hellmuth was having competition from Doyle Brunson. Brunson was seen escorting Phelps to all the Vegas hot spots and it was even rumored that Brunson had introduced Phelps to his special girl friends, but Phelps did not bite. With his own girl friend like Caroline Pal why would he. Phelps even took Caroline to meet [...] Continue Reading…

Two female brand ambassadors associated with the online poker room UB.com have been in the news this week. Both are completely different from each other, have different roles to play and have been in the news for completely different reasons.

Trishelle Cannatella is the poker babe face of UB.com. Known as a “hot tub three-way specialist” it is her role to bring the punters to the UB tables. This is what she is doing in UB.com’s Online Poker Championship Series, which guarantees over $4 million in prizes. On Tuesday she hosted several events, which had about 500 players each. They were vying for a share of the prize pool but were also there to “hang and chat” with the vivacious Trishelle. UB player Discomonky will never forget the evening because he succeeded in knocking out Trishelle, something he could only do at the poker table, and winning the bounty. Players at UB.com will be missing their poker babe for a few days because she has decided to spend time with the seals in an Alaskan cruise. But in her last post before signing off she said, “Hope to see everyone playing the UBOC million dollar championship on Sunday.”

The other UB [...] Continue Reading…

Daniel Negreanu, known as “The Kid”, has always had strong views and has never shied of expressing them. Some time back he referred to some poker players as cheaters. But he has never, till now, crossed the limits of propriety in addressing his fellow poker professionals no matter how much he hates them. In an interview to Poker Player Negreanu hurled a childish invective at Annie Duke that can give a new meaning to his being called The Kid.

The issue was the perennially hot topic of women’s only poker. Negreanu was commenting on the Ladies Event in WSOP 2010 in which men like Shaun Deeb were allowed to participate. He pointed out that he found men using tampons as card protectors and dressing up as women very irksome. Negreanu had a very unusual reason for the continued existence of ladies only event. He said, “…I’m thinking, there are 1,000 women who love to play poker with each other, and don’t want to have to deal with guys burping, farting and using tampon card protectors and stuff like that.”

And it was then that he took on Annie Duke. Annie has always been a strong proponent of the abolition of ladies [...] Continue Reading…

A very unusual strip poker tournament has been organized in London next month. It is a part of the London Poker Festival, which kicks off on August 28 and runs till September 30. Apart from the strip poker event, the London Poker Festival will be hosting the London leg of the WPT, the WSOPE events and Poker in the Park, which will be inaugurated by poker babe Liv Boeree.

The strip poker event is called the Baller Strip Poker Championships. It will take place at the legendary Stringfellows gentlemen’s club in London’s Covent Garden on September 21. Stringfellows is the most famous gentlemen’s nightclub in the world and the ideal location for the event. However this strip poker tournament has a twist. The poker players will not be relieved of their clothing when they lose. According to the Baller Strip Poker rules, the Stringfellows girls will be doing the undressing on their behalf. Each player will be assigned a Stringfellows dancer and she will strip by removing an item of clothing instead of the player. The Baller Strip Poker Championships will raise money in support of cancer awareness charities. London hosts the regular type of strip poker championships as well. [...] Continue Reading…