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 his parents but the wedding bells are silent so far.

UB.com and Michel Phelps would make a perfect pair. UB.com likes brand ambassadors who are always in the news and Phelps likes to be in the news, even if it is for the wrong reasons. Soon after his record breaking stint at the Beijing Olympics he was caught smoking marijuana through a bong. Daniel Negreanu, who has strong views on everything, surprisingly said that Phelps smoking pot was no big deal.

Whether Phelps does join UB.com remains to be seen, but what is signed, sealed and delivered is Blanca Game’s purchase of the Cereus Poker network. Cereus Poker includes UB.com and Absolute Poker. It is surprising that such a scandal ridden network finds buyer after buyer, but undoubtedly Tokwiro must have been glad to get rid of it. Stuart Gordon, the CEO of Blanca games, said that the target market for him is players in their 20s and 30s and this is where Phelps comes in perhaps.

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 woman in the news is Annie Duke, who represents the professional face of the poker room. Her spat with Daniel Negreanu, in which he called her a f****** c***, seems to be splitting the poker world into two groups. Negreanu is the brand ambassador of rival poker room PokerStars. When some women players at PokerStars spoke against Negreanu, the poker room stood up for their ambassador. Katja of the support team responded to the protests by stating that there is bound to be some friction between outspoken poker players. The response went on to say, “Although Daniel Negreanu is a Team PokerStars Pro, he is an entity to himself and as such will always be encouraged to express his views and speak his mind as he would otherwise do so, PokerStars Pro or not.”

Annie was not amused. Her response to the matter earlier had been a dignified one, but she really let fly at PokerStars in an open letter. She pointed out that the words “f****** c****” were not a view or an opinion but an “abusive epithet”. The least that PokerStars was expected to do was distance themselves from Daniel Negreanu’s remarks. She also drove home the point that a Nike sponsored NFL footballer would have been thrown out by both Nike and NFL for using such language at a female reporter.

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 only events in poker. And she has called herself the best female poker player in the world. This contradiction upset Negreanu. He pointed out that if Annie was against gender discrimination when it came to separate events for women she should not be calling herself the best female poker player in the world. The innuendo was clear – the only way Annie could be best was when she was compared to other women poker players only. It was at this point that Negreanu went into the abusive mode. He said, “So I’m like ‘how offensive are you, you f***ing c***? You want to say you’re speaking for women, yet you claim superiority over all of them.”

Annie’s response was most restrained and dignified, but nothing else could be expected from her. Replying to a fan’s Tweet she said, “Thank you for the support. I was certainly shocked at the language myself. I welcome criticism but not abuse.” But Jenny Woo the aggressive correspondent at Gambling 911 was never the one to take shit from men lying down. She said, “Calling a female that word is the lowest any male can go. When people start calling others those types of names, they completely discredit themselves. Daniel owes Annie Duke an apology for those remarks, irrespective of the other criticism lodged against her.”

The poker community knows Leeann Tweeden as the sexy hostess of the NBC late night television show Poker After Dark. Many may also recall her as the even sexier model who has posed for leading magazines like Playboy and Swimwear USA. But very few know that Leeann is the daughter of an Air Force mechanic who served in Vietnam and the wife of an Air Force pilot. Therefore it is but natural that she understands the country’s armed forces and in her own way she has supported them over the years.

Leeann’s latest endeavor in this regard is her participation in the Letters From Hollywood campaign. This project was started by actor D.B. Sweeney and allows celebrities from the entertainment industry to send a personal message thanking the men and women who have donned the uniform for the United States. Leeann’s hand written letter has been put up at the Letters From Hollywood web site along with photographs of her numerous outings to visit the troops in different parts of the world. She has visited Iraq and Afghanistan 13 times since 9/11.

In her letter Leeann recalls the ecstasy she felt when she was first asked if she would entertain the troops on a USO tour. She writes, “I couldn’t believe it…I just said YES YES YES, hung up the phone and immediately called my dad and said Guess what?!” Her dad had told her how the morale of the troops in Viet Nam was raised when Bob Hope and Raquel Welch visited them and now she was doing her bit. Leann also reaches out to the families of the service men and women because she knows from personal experience what it is like to have a loved one fighting a war. She writes, “When he’s gone, I sleep with my laptop on my bed next to me so I can hear the ‘you’ve got mail’ chime in the middle of the night letting me know that he made it back to the base safe and sound.”

Back to poker, poker babe Leeann has just shot an episode with six of the most eligible bachelors of poker for Poker After Dark. It is called Lonesome Shark and features Erick Lindgren, James Akenhead, Antonio Esfandiari, Mike Matusow, David Williams and Brad Booth.