Poker Blog & Poker Forum

Kid Poker, aka Daniel Negreanu shipped most of his stack today to an amateur player who fortunately hit a set of 7’s against Daniel and his top two when the flop came A K 7 at today’s Festa Al Lago event on the World Poker Tour. This would set up a strange turn of events when, as the bubble approached, three top players went out with at least two of them thinking they were in the money.

Daniel, Jennifer Tilly, and Ted Lawson wound up splitting 50th place money taking home a little over $7 grand each. After losing his stack on the money bubble, Daniel was sent to the rail. Ted Lawson followed suit immediately afterwards. Then, after the bubble burst announcement was made, Jennifer Tilly lost a hand and her remaining chips with it. The only problem was that the hand with Tilly was still in progress during the announcement. After some wrangling (and the story is murky here), the tournament director decided that the three would split the $21,135 50th place money.

For the remaining 34 players that will head to day four, there are still some hills to climb. With big names such as Bertrand Grospellier (the Joker), Joe Sebok, Nenad Medic, and Brad Booth still in the hunt (they’re all in the top ten) it’s anyone’s game to win. Day  four action resumes tomorrow at 12 PM EDT.

Poker Stars.net is poised and ready for its third installment of this years Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT). On October 9th the tour makes a stop in Auckland New Zealand where the tournament is expected to draw many talented players from the Pacific Rim and Australia. The stop will also certainly be chock full of talented Poker Stars.com sponsored players. Lee Nelson, Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer and Grant Levy are just a few of the big names slated to attend the main event of the tournament.

The Auckland event is being held at the beautiful and prestigious Skycity Casino. Auckland’s Skycity casino is part of a towering space needle like building that has a dominating presence in the Auckland skyline. Players from around the world will be converging at Skycity not only for some amazing poker action but to explore all that New Zealand has to offer as well. For those interested in really getting the adrenaline flowing, there is a six hundred foot bungee jump available off the top of the Sky tower. The city is very excited to be hosting such a large event and hopes that players will explore all amenities of the unique city.

Action for preliminary events has been underway in Auckland since October 4th but the main even is slated to run from Thursday through Sunday and features a buy in of $NZD 3000. There is also a prestigious high rollers event that starts on October 11th that features a buy in of $NZD 10,000. APPT Auckland is expected to be the largest poker tournament ever hosted by New Zealand and there is currently over 275 players registered for the main event. There are live event qualifiers that will be running right up until the start of the main event for those lucky enough to win their way in.

If you don’t live in the Auckland area, you can qualify for other events just like this including all APPT, EPT, and WSOP events at Pokerstars.com.

The Fourth Annual Road 2 Recovery Celebrity Charity Poker Tournament takes place tomorrow at The MGM Grand poker room in Las Vegas at 4PM. The event was founded by motorcross racer Jimmy Button who, after hurting his back in a serious accident decided to raise money to help other riders who suck as bad as he does.

Expected to attend are several poker players who have likely never ridden a motorcycle, much less crashed one. Andy Bloch, Jennifer Harman, Joe Sebok (he’s my pick for most likely to crash a motorcyle), and November Nine player Dennis Phillips are all set to appear and play at the event.

Guys that are able to ride motorcycles and not crash like Chad Reed, Jason Thomas, and Grant Langston are also expected to play in the event. Even regular folks who may or may not like motorcycles are welcome to play as well. The recommended donation is $300.00 and there are unlimited rebuys for the first hour for $100.00.

First prize is a seat in the 2009 WSOP Main Event with second and third place finishers taking home some pretty cool watches from Curtis and Company. Everyone else gets a free ride on a motorcycle from the founder Jimmy Button. He promises not to wreck this time.

Unlikely contender in second place after strange hand

If day one was the calm before the storm then day two was Hurricane Borgata. After a relatively sedate day one the players at this years Borgata Open picked up the pace considerably. With over 100 players being eliminated in the first three hours of the event day two was a whirlwind of activity.

The strangest hand of the day wasn’t a bat beat but the result of a floor ruling. An unknown player opened the betting with a 20K bet. Ryan Young then reraised to 65K. The original bettor then went all in prompting a dejected Young to say “I knew I should have just called”. While agonizing over his decision the unknown player and the dealer called a floor person over to say that Young had verbally CALLED his all in. Ryan was then forced to flip up his cards and call the all-in. It was the classic coin-flip with the unknown showing AK and Young turning up pocket 9’s. The AK didn’t catch up and Young wound up raking in a 687K pot, later finishing the day in second place with 837K in chips.

The rest of the top five are:

1. Thayer Rasmussen - 904,500
2. Ryan Young - 837,700
3. Andrew Knee - 697,900
4. Adam Gerber - 610,000
5. Sang Kim - 570,800

Since this post is kinda boring, lets show a video with Tiffany Michelle at the Borgata:

Germans again flooded the field on the second day of play in this years EPT Barcelona Main Event. By the time the smoke cleared the top list looked like a German Army with only a few confederates amongst them. A total is 321 players sat down for the action on day 1B bringing the total field to 619 players. With first place paying out 1.9 million US dollars, the remaining action will be very exciting!

Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier (AKA The Joker) would not get the opportunity to come back and play his now infamous version of the Batman nemesis as he took an early hit and was sent to the rail in the first hour of play. Fellow PokerStars pro Daniel Negreanu was eliminated as well when his top pair was crushed by a flopped set. The money got all in on the flop as Daniel had the flush draw as well but the board didn’t bring any help and Negreanu was given a pass to enjoy the scenery for the remainder of the tourney.

An interesting hand played out with William Thorson who saw a flop of Q-Q-4 against an unknown opponent. It had to feel great seeing his hole cards A-Q connect big on this flop so he bet the flop and got one caller. The turn brought the Ace, filling up his boat and he fired at the pot again and was smooth called by his lone opponent. The river brought the harmless 9, Thorson moved all in and was insta-called by his opponent who tabled pocket Aces for a bigger boat. If that happened to me it’d be a long, miserable trip back home after taking that kind of beating.

As the action starts again this afternoon in Barcelona the top ten chip counts from Day 1B are as follows:

Sebastian Ruthenberg - 110,000
Mikael Lundell - 110,000
Brice Cournut - 95,000
Jonas Klausen - 90,000
Jonathan Stal - 66,000
Stephen Chidwick - 64,000
Kristian Ulriksen - 49,000
Maz Nawab - 40,000
Sorel Mizzi - 39,000
Joe Pelton - 38,500

EPT Events are all organized by PokerStars.com.  To qualify for the next EPT event, sign-up at Pokerstars today!