Poker Blog & Poker Forum

During the last couple of days Full Tilt Poker had set the poker industry buzzing with their plans to make a major announcement. There were educated guesses that the announcement would involve some sort of land casino tournaments. These guesses were not incorrect. Full Tilt Poker has now made the announcement that it will be hosting land poker tournaments titled the Onyx Cup Series.

The announcement was in the nature of a bikini. Though it revealed a lot, some vital information remained concealed. The series will consist of six major events with buy-ins ranging from $100,000 to $300,000. The Grand Finale event will have a $250,000 buy-in with Full Tilt Poker adding $1 million to the prize pool. The total prize pool across all six events is expected to cross $30 million. The top three finishers of each event will get points, and whoever accumulates the most points by the end of the series will be the Onyx Cup winner. The events will take place in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first event will be held on May 11 and 12 in Las Vegas.

Now for what the bikini does not reveal. The dates and venues of the last five events are yet to be announced. The Onyx series tournaments will be televised, but Full Tilt Poker has not yet announced the name of its television partner. Either the online poker room has not yet decided on the television partner or it will make the grand revelation later.

The Onyx series will obviously feature only the top poker professionals. Though the events are of the “open” type in which any one can enter, the number of players who can afford to commit about a million dollars as buy-ins for only six tournaments is fairly small. The Full Tilt Poker professionals are expected to be participating. Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel, Chris Ferguson, Erick Lindgren and John Juanda have already confirmed participation. Phil Ivey, Tom “durrrr” Dwan, Gus Hansen and Patrik Antonius are expected to follow suit. The million dollar question is whether poker players from competing online poker rooms, like Daniel Negreanu of PokerStars, will join in.

Online qualifiers for the first Onyx event start at Full Tilt Poker on March 15. The buy-ins and other details should be up at the Full Tilt Poker web site.

It is not Vanessa Selbst or Annette Obrestad or Liv Boeree or Jennifer Harman who gets the honor of being the first female player to win an open World Poker Tour (WPT). This honor goes to a totally unknown Russian player by the name of Natalia Nikitina. And just how great is this honor can be gauged from the fact that WPT has been running since 1921 and as yet no woman has won an open competition.

As one poker forum aptly put it, this had to happen in Paris. The event was the WPT National Series, Euro Finals Of Poker Diamond Championship, €5,000 Main Event being held at the Aviation Club de France. The starting field was of 188 players and the final table of eight players. The most known name in the final table was Sam Trickett, who was eliminated in 6th place. Jean Louis Tepper was way in the lead when the table was reduced to three but one deal swung it for Natalia. Tepper was out and she entered the heads up with a slight chip advantage. However Alexandre Brivot controlled the play for most of the time. There was an occasion when Natalia was down and almost out, but then her luck changed and as they say the rest is history. Sporting the Full Tilt Poker logo, Natalia took home €243,830 for this first place win.

After her win Natalia was interviewed by Tatjana Pasalic, the second in Jenny Woo’s sexiest poker plays list. Natalia’s boyfriend acted as interpreter. Natalia said that at first the final table seemed easy but it was taking too long for players to get knocked out. By the time three were left she was feeling extremely sleepy. But in the end she said that she would be back for more WPT tournaments.

It will take a while before the profile of Natalia at poker forums gets filled up. But some statistics are available. After this win Natalia is #31 in the 2011 money list, #28 in the Russian’s all time money list and #53 in the women’s all time money list. The toppers in the Russian’s and the women’s lists are Ivan Demidov and Kathy Liebert respectively.

Caesars Interactive Entertainment (formerly Harrah’s), who are the owners of WSOP, had launched WSOPE in 2007. WSOPE is a series of live poker tournaments along the lines of WSOP in Las Vegas but on a much smaller scale. WSPOE was launched to cater to the growing popularity of poker tournaments in Europe as evidenced by the increasing number of European players on the American poker circuits. London was the epicenter of European poker and till 2010 the annual WSOPE tournament was held there.

Caesars Interactive Entertainment has now announced that WSOPE 2011 will be held in Cannes in France. The tournament will start on October 7, 2011 and will end on October 21. The announcement does not speak of a permanent shift in location but pertains to this year only. Cannes is a popular tourist destination on the French Riviera in southern France and is known for the annual international film festival held there. It is very close to the gambling paradise of Monte Carlo.

The reason for the change appears to be the increasing number of participants in WSOPE. In London the WSOPE events were spread over three casinos. In Cannes they will be held at two casinos, which are the Casino Barriere de Cannes and Hotel Majestic Barriere. These two casinos have two times the space of the three London casinos and hence WSPOE 2011 can play host to double the number of participants. That WSOPE will be a major focus of Caesars Interactive Entertainment can be seen from the fact that the number of bracelet events for WSOPE 2011 has been increased to seven. This though is far short of the number of events in the Las Vegas WSOP. With increasing prize money as well the WSOPE 2011 will be the biggest WSOPE till date.

The Main Event will be the place of pride as usual. Annette Obrestad won the inaugural Main Event in 2007, at an age when she would not be allowed to play in Las Vegas. The subsequent winners were John Juanda in 2008, Barry Shulman in 2009 and James Bord in 2010. The most prominent loser in the heads up was Daniel Negreanu in 2009.

The Aussie Millions Main Event is probably the southern hemisphere’s biggest live poker tournament. It is being held at the Crown Casino. Poker professional Phil Ivey, eight WSOP bracelets winner, was in the news in the context of this event for two reasons. And neither did any good for him.

Crown Casino has restrictions on the use of cell phones at the poker tables and Ivey violated these restrictions from the word go. No sooner had he finished playing his first hand on Day 1A of the Aussie Millions, he started talking on his cell phone. The organizers handed him a five minute penalty. Instead of accepting it gracefully, Ivey began to argue with the floor staff. He first pleaded ignorance of the rules and when that did not work out for him he played the angry young man. He said that such rules were not meant to be implemented on him because he had to conduct important business transactions on phone. It was good to see the organizers sticking to their guns. They told him that he would be held accountable like every other player in the tournament. Apparently this did not shame Ivey. He continued to be on his cell phone, talking or texting, whenever he was not playing.

This arrogant attitude did not help Ivey in his poker play. He was ousted from the Aussie Millions without reaching anywhere near the top. And this despite being a favorite to win with the bookmakers before the tournament began. Even the best of players can have a bad run. Had Ivey’s table behavior been exemplary there would have been not many comments on his defeat. But because of his disregard for tournament rules posters at poker forums are making gibes.
At the time of writing, 265 players were left from a starting field of 721. Tobias Reinkemeier was in the lead with a stack of 560,000 and Sorel Mizzi was next with a stack of 535,000. After an excellent year in 2010, Mizzi is set to begin 2011 with a bang. Among the more talked about poker players left in the fray in the Aussie Millions is Patrik Antonius. Roland de Wolfe, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and 2006 Aussie Millions winner Lee Nelson were shown the door with Ivey.

Just before the commencement of Sydney leg of the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT), poker professional Daniel Negreanu sent out this message on Twitter to his fans. “Hair Maintenance Day: chest lasered, hair cut, eyebrows waxed, junk shaved. All prettied up for Sydney! So excited to go in two days.” Though he was circumspect in referring to the grooming of his pubic hair, calling it “junk”, poker forums across the Internet chided Negreanu for announcing to the world that he had shaved his privates. Ever since he called Annie Duke a f****** c*** on air, Negreanu has become the bad boy of poker and may soon leave Phil “The Brat” Hellmuth behind. Gambling 911 posted that if its star poker reporter Jenny Woo started revealing her really personal details there well could be a Twitter message like “Having my period. Blood everywhere! Not feeling my best! Have to go interview Doyle Brunson now.” With the things that Jenny has done, including streaking during a football game, such a message from her will surprise no one.

Poker players, even professional poker players, are a superstitious lot. Red handkerchiefs in left side pockets may well be the order of the day. So if Negreanu wants to shave unmentionable places for good luck then why grudge him that. He needs it. And it helped him a great deal, but not all the way. In the Sydney APPT, Negreanu just made it to the final table, a feat that he has perhaps not done for a while. But he was the first one to be given the boot from the final table and had to settle for the ninth place and a purse of AUD $36,415. As in the past, the fourth season of the Sydney APPT was won by an Australian and hence the top spot remained in Australia. The title was won by 22-year old Aussie Jonathan “MONSTER_DONG” Karamalikis, who took home AUD $459,510. Karamalikis said, “This is the most meaningful. This is obviously the biggest (tournament) I’ve ever won, by far. It’s quite a prestigious title, so I’m really glad to have it under my belt.”