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The PokerStars and Monte-Carlo Casino EPT Grand Final is one of the most reputed events in the live tournament poker circuit. The final table for this season’s event was set late last week and was billed as the best final table ever. This is heartening news for the poker fraternity, because of late final tables have often been devoid of star power. This final table included Jake Cody, Jason Mercier, Andrew Pantling, Grant Levy, Steve O’Dwyer, Daniel Negreanu, Noah Schwartz and Johhny Lodden.
O’Dwyer defeated Pantling in the heads up to win the €1,224,000 first prize from the €5,310,000 prize pool. O’Dwyer also won a stunning watch worth €9,000 from luxury Swiss brand Slyde, the Official Watch Sponsor for the event. This was O’Dwyer’s fourth EPT final table in 18 months, which include two at the ETP London. O’Dwyer said that he is still in shock at winning such a tough final table. “At the start of the final, I knew I needed to get lucky to win because these guys are so good.” Dwyer’s live tournament winnings now exceed $4 million.
Pantling won €842,000 for coming second. The biggest name on the final table was Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu. He finished fourth for €321,000. Negreanu’s total live tournament winnings have reached nearly $18 million. Jason Mercier was another star on the final table, having won the EPT San Remo event. Mercier was eliminated in seventh place for €137,000.
The action in Monte Carlo is not yet over. All eyes are now on the €100,000 Super High Roller event. O’Dwyer has announced his participation in that event. “It’s very satisfying to finally have that title. I will play the €100k Super High Roller tomorrow, and then on to Season 10, and the race to see who can win two EPT titles.” O’Dwyer is currently sixth in the ETP 9 Player of the Year leader board with 1,650 points. Jan Bendik is leader board topper with 2,745 points. Bendik’s most recent wins were at €1,000 No Limit Hold’em Turbo event in Monte Carlo and in the same event in EPT UK & Ireland.

The Asia Pacific leg of the World Series of Poker, termed as WSOP APAC, is currently running. Some big ticket events have been completed while the Main Event is in the final stage. The final table for this event was set on Sunday and is as follows.
Seat 1: George Tsatsis (Australia) – 2,321,000
Seat 2: Benny Spindler (Germany) – 2,931,000
Seat 3: Mikel Habb (Australia) – 551,000
Seat 4: Winfred Yu (Hong Kong) – 367,000
Seat 5: Russell Thomas (USA) – 490,000
Seat 6: Daniel Marton (Australia) – 2,160,000
Seat 7: Kahle Burns (Australia) – 905,000
Seat 8: Daniel Negreanu (Canada) – 2,437,000
It is great to see so many players from the Asia Pacific region in the last eight, because it is after all their event. However, all eyes will be on Poker Kid Daniel Negreanu. The WSOP write-up describes Negreanu thus: “This poker icon is one of the most liked players of all time, with his charismatic persona only equaled by his tournament results.” Since the start of the final table Poker Kid has taken his chip count to over 4 million. At the time of writing no one had bust. Earlier Antonio Esfandiari was a strong contender to make it to the final table, but was eliminated in the 9th place.
WSOP APAC also featured the Caesars Cup, which is played between intercontinental teams. Phil Ivey led the American team consisting of big names like Antonio Esfandiari, Daniel Negreanu, Greg Merson and Phil Hellmuth. The European team was led by Sam Trickett and included Marvin Rettenmaier, Phil Gruissem, Dominik Nitsche and Sam Holden. Joe Hachem acted as captain for Team Australia. Trickett and company won. This is the second Caesars Cup win for Europe, the first one being in 2009 at WSOP Europe, when Annette Oberstad was captain.
Poker pro Phil Ivey won his 9th WSOP bracelet in the $2,200 Mixed Event of WSOP APAC, fending off challenge from Negreanu. His 8th bracelet had come eons back in WSOP 2010. Ivey is now tied for 4th place with Johnny Moss Those ahead of him are Phil Hellmuth with 13 bracelets and Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan with 10 bracelets each.

A slugfest has been organized on the sidelines during the EPT London next weekend. Full Tilt Poker’s “The Professionals” headed by Gus Hansen will take on PokerStars’ “Team Pros” led by Daniel Negreanu.
The event originated from Twitter banter between the two team leaders. Hansen set the ball rolling by reminding Negreanu, who Tweets as RealKidPoker, how he took $575,000 off him in one of poker’s most famous hands during the High Stakes Poker TV show in 2006. Hansen added, “Wonder if I ever get another chance to take your money .” Negreanu, not one to let a jibe go unanswered, responded in kind. He ended up by releasing a video on YouTube challenging Hansen, and his teammates at Full Tilt Viktor Blom and Tom Dwan, to a live battleship-style heads-up tournament. Isaac Haxton and Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier would play in Negreanu’s team. The rivalry between Haxton and Blom has shot up since their face off in two SuperStar ShowDowns last year. Haxton eventually lost $500,000 to Blom in the $1 Million Challenge on PokerStars.

The event has been structured as follows. Each heads-up match will take place on three simultaneous freezeout tables, with the player who wins two out of the three tables taking the individual match. The winning team will be the one that has at least two of the winning players. The challenge will take place on Sunday, March 10 and will be hosted online by Full Tilt Poker, The online poker room will allow everyone to log in and rail the match. The winner of each clash will collect $50,000 from his opponent and each member of the overall winning team will receive $10,000 in tournament buy-ins from the rival online poker room.
All contestants have confirmed participation in what is being billed as PokerStars versus Full Tilt challenge at the online poker forums. Viktor Blom was the last to confirm but he did so in his characteristic style. He Tweeted, “Yes I will play. I will always play anything.” The pairings are to be as follows: Negreanu versus Hansen, Haxton versus Blom and Grospellier versus Dwan. There is more at stake than the money – it is the bragging rights till the next such encounter.

America remembers the recently deceased Dr. Jerry Buss as the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers. Not many people recall his passion for the poker game Seven Card Stud. It has been reported that the WSOP administration would like to honor Dr. Buss in this year’s tournament. At the appropriate time they would seek permission from the family and acknowledge Dr. Buss’ contribution by either naming the WSOP Seven Card Stud Championship after him or awarding the victor a special perpetual trophy in his honor.
From the early 1990s Buss was active on the tournament poker circuit. His first cash was in a WSOP Seven Card Stud tournament. Over the next 20 years, Buss earned 38 cashes in various card rooms across the Southwest. His largest win came in 2005 at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles. Buss was also known for playing the biggest cash games in America and around the world. His passion for poker was so great that he would often forgo crucial games of his basketball team in order to play poker. One such event remembered by his poker colleagues was in 2009. He was playing poker as the Lakers were winning their fifteenth NBA World Championship.
Doyle Brunson, the grand old man of poker, is always the first to stand up for old timers. He Tweeted, “Nobody mentions Jerry Buss’ contribution to Poker Nation. He helped many struggling poker players.” But he was not the only one. Many voices have been raised acknowledging De Buss’ contribution to poker. Former Victory Poker CEO, poker player and entrepreneur Dan Fleyshman said that Jerry Buss loved the Lakers, the city of Los Angeles, poker and life. He affected many people’s lives in a positive way and will be missed. The 2013 National Heads Up Poker Champion Mike Matusow expressed his gratitude at having met Buss and becoming friends with him.
Dr. Buss will not be the first poker professional to be honored this way. Chip Reese, the winner of the inaugural $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. World Championship in 2006, passed away untimely in 2007. WSOP has honored Reese by naming the event’s trophy after him. Along with the bracelet and prize money, winners of the event, now called the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, are awarded the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy.

Online poker’s richest weekly tournament, Sunday Million, will be celebrating its seventh anniversary in the first week of March. PokerStars has removed all stops for its flagship event and has offered a massive $7 million guaranteed prize pool for the March 3 Sunday Million. The first place will offer an unprecedented $1 million guaranteed. The actual payout is expected to be higher.
The excitement has been building up at the online poker room since this announcement was made. Team PokerStars Pro Lex Veldhuis is a veteran of previous Sunday Million Anniversary tournaments. He remembers them well because of the gigantic prize pools. Veldhuis said, “I’m going to stock up on food and drink so I’m ready to grind this one! It’s so big that it’s like playing an EPT online.”
The buy in for the seventh anniversary Sunday Million has been fixed at $215. But online players at PokerStars may not have to shell out this amount. They can qualify through one of the many low buy in satellite tournaments that will run on the online poker room from February 24. A special deadline satellite has been scheduled for March 3 which will guarantee 1,000 seats for the Sunday Million. The deadline satellite will have $1 feeder satellites running hourly from February 24 and running every 30 minutes from March 1. There will also be some one-off ‘VIP Bash’ satellites on March 2, which players can enter for 50 FPPs.
PokerStars has a practice of hosting special anniversary Sunday Million events. The sixth anniversary Sunday Million event was won by ‘slyfox151’ for $480,761 over a field of 33,732 players. The fourth anniversary tournament winner in 2010 took home over a million dollars. ‘RichieRichZH’ topped a field of more than 36,000 players to win a first prize of $1,141,510. The biggest ever Sunday Million and largest online poker tournament till now was the PokerStars 10th Anniversary event in December 2011. That tournament had a field of 62,116 players, creating a record prize pool of $12,423,200. ‘First-Eagle’ from Canada won the $1,146,575 first prize. Everyone at PokerStars is hoping that the seventh anniversary tournament will break that record.