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Controversy Regarding PokerStars 70 Billionth Hand Winner

At precisely 1:01 a.m. ET on PokerStars at a $0.25/$0.50 NLH heads-up table, the 70 billionth hand was dealt at the online poker site, ending the 70 billionth hand promotion that had been running at PokerStars to commemorate the event.

However, it didn’t take long after the hand finished for a scandal to surface. PokerStars players DodgeUrOuts and koenigskeba both had $25 chip stacks, which they both immediately shoved, and koenigskeba’s A/J won out over DodgeUrOuts’ suited K/5. Players on the rail surveyed the table’s hand history, and as far back as they could see, the players in the small blind had folded to the big blind, making many believe that the two players were colluding in an attempt to rack up as many hands as possible in hopes of making the 70 billionth hand and winning the $70K promotional prize.

Promotion terms reserved the right for PokerStars to revoke the prize based on the following:

“During the Promotion, strict rules regarding player behaviour will be enforced. PokerStars reserves the right to take action against any player found to be abusing any aspect of the Promotion. Such action includes, but is not limited to, exclusion or suspension from the Promotion or from the Client, and the confiscation of rewards earned as a result of the abuse. The decision on what activity constitutes abuse of the Promotion lies with PokerStars management in its sole discretion.”

However, PokerStars rewarded koenigskeba with a $73,380 prize despite the allegations. DodgeUrOuts claimed less than $1,700.

When asked for a comment, a PokerStars rep emailed the following statement:

“We have reviewed the circumstances around the winning hand, and have determined that while this practice of ‘fast-folding’ may not be in the spirit of the promotion, it does not violate the rules and regulations of the promotion. As such, we have honored our promotional award. Please note, we are reviewing the format of the promotion to try to minimize this kind of activity in future milestone hand promotions. We’ll provide more information on this in the near future.”

iPoker’s Poker Encore Signs UK’s James Williams

iPoker Network skin Poker Encore has expanded its pro roster recently with the addition of UK’s James Williams. Williams is also known as LJAMESL at the NLH cash games who anyone who has played with him knows is a force to be reckoned with. The buzz is that the 25-year-old poker pro started his online poker career with a mere $20 deposit from which he built up his bankroll with more than $200K in winnings and now plays regularly at the $10/$20 tables. He also plays in live tournaments as well, but mostly plays online poker.

Williams’ biggest win yet was in 2009 when he came in second to Priyan de Mel at the GUKPT Blackpool Main Event and won £52,400. He also won the Sky Poker Tour Grand Final back in September taking home a £22,264 paycheck.

Poker Encore co-founder Karl Mahrenholz says, “I first played with James 2-3 years ago and recognized the raw talent he had. Not only is he a fearless player, but he plays the game with a great attitude, which is so important to make it in the poker world.”

Williams himself describes his play style as aggressive and admits he makes some crazy moves. It is harder and harder these days though to find a poker pro who stays humble and plays “with a great attitude,” so it is a refreshing treat to hear of a success story like Williams.

The Poker Encore sponsored pro team already includes Simon “Amatay” Jones, Paul “Action” Jackson, and Constantine Paparestis.

Also on the iPoker Network are William Hill Poker, Titan Poker, and ChiliPoker.

Ten Years of PokerStars

PokerStars has lots to celebrate this year… surviving Black Friday after both Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker did not, dealing out its 70 billionth hand, and its 10-year anniversary. Next month will mark the site’s 10th year offering online poker games, as it first launched in December 2001. To reward their loyal players, a series of online promotional events will be offered, revealed in stages.

First offered is the 10th Anniversary Giveaway with 100 prize packages up for grabs throughout the next month featuring the legendary 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, aka the PCA. Qualify via daily freerolls, 10₵ tourneys, and 10-FPP tourneys. Top finishers in all qualifiers will move on to one of the two weekly finals where 100 players will win a PCA prize package.

The daily freerolls run every 10 minutes and the top 10 finishers move on. The 10₵ tourneys run once per hour at five minutes past the hour, and the 10-FPP qualifiers run at 35 minutes past every hour. Top 20 finishers from these two formats will move on to the weekly finals. Weekly finals run in pairs on Sundays beginning November 13th through December 11th. The top 1,000 finishers in each will earn a piece of the $10,000 cash prize purse, and 10 will win a PCA package valued at more than $15K with the $10K buy-in, hotel expenses, and extra travel money.

The 10th Anniversary $10 Million Sunday Million will take place on December 18th, 2011 at 2:30 p.m. ET with a $215 buy-in. The prize pool, which is typically only $1 million, is guaranteed at at least $10 million, and is likely to exceed that. First place will receive roughly $2 million guaranteed. Sunday Million qualifiers are offered with a range of buy-ins. The $11 Sunday Million Mega Satellite will start one hour prior to the Sunday Million and guarantees at least 1,000 players will move on to the $10 Million Sunday Million.

Finally, the 10th Anniversary World Record Tournament will take place on December 4th when PokerStars attempts to break its own record for a $1 buy-in tourney with a $250K prize pool guaranteed prize pool with $50K going to first place. The first record was set by PokerStars in 2009 with 149,196 players registered. PokerStars wants at least 150,000 playing simultaneously this December 4th.

Seven more promotions have yet to be revealed…

Pius Heinz Becomes the First German to Win WSOP

And the winner is….. Pius Heinz. The 22-year-old German poker pro took home the gold late last night at the 2011 World Series of Poker Championship Main Event –the first German to ever win the title. The two-day final table session began on Sunday at the Rio in Las Vegas in the Penn and Teller Theater.

The grand prize was $8,715,638, which is the third biggest payout ever in WSOP history. He also won the most coveted piece of jewelry in poker—the gold and diamond bracelet that symbolizes his triumph. And a triumph it was. He overcame the third biggest live tournament field with a player field 6,865 poker players deep representing 85 countries around the world. And once he made it to the November Nine table, he was started up the last and most important leg of the competition with only 16,425,000 chips, the seventh highest chip stack at the table.

After the first eight hours of play, Heinz had come up to chip leader, and there were only three players left—Heinz, Martin Staszko, and Ben Lamb. When play resumed Tuesday evening, it didn’t take long for Lamb¸ the 2011 WSOP Player of the Year and favored by many to win the WSOP Main Event Championship, to get knocked out of the competition all together. He didn’t walk away empty handed though. He was paid $4+ million for his efforts finishing in third place. And he also won a bracelet over the summer, had five top 12 finished, and was runner up in another event. He had only entered about 12 events, so his results are pretty impressive even without a Main Event win.

And then there were two. Czech Republic’s Staszko went heads up with Heinz for more than six hours, almost as long as the 1983 finale 28 years ago that set the record for the longest final two in history when Tom McEvoy took the title from Rod Peate. Over the course of the heads up action between Staszko and Heinz, the two passed the chip lead back and forth, playing carefully not to give the other opponent anything to work with as the crowd cheerfully sang and cheered them on.

Finally Heinz’s Ace high beat Staszko and ended the tourney for the year. Staszko though in second place became the most successful Czeck poker player in terms of money when he earned more than $5.4 million, despite the fact that this grandmaster chess player had the least experience in live poker of all final niners. Apparently though, his chess experience came in handy.

This year the WSOP was viewed live in more countries than any other tournament before, as this was the first time the tournament was televised live (with a 15-minute delay), complete with hole cards. Online poker may be oppressed in the US right now, but throughout the rest of the world, poker is alive and thriving.

Russian Poker Phenomena Mikhail Lakhitov Signs with GuruPlay

Russian poker pro Mikhail Lakhitov has recently joined the GuruPlay UK online casino team as a sponsored poker player. Thirty-year-old Lakhitov will now be sponsored at live poker tourneys around the world and will be playing online at GuruPlay as part of his sponsorship duties.

Before he became a pro poker player, the Moscow resident served in the Russian military. It was here that he met and befriended Kirill Gerasimov, whom he studied and played poker with in his free time. When he was discharged, Lakhitov tried his hand a career in poker and entered his first live poker in 2010. It didn’t take long for him to realize that poker was his true calling.

He had five wins on the European poker circuit before he knew it and in 2010 he had cashed nine times, profiting nearly $200K in just his first year. The next year was just as phenomenal and he was on his way to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker. He cashed five times earning more than $850K and received a first place win in the $2500 NL event which earned him $750K. He didn’t even know that to win a WSOP event meant to earn a gold bracelet as well, even though he’d played in the 2010 WSOP the year before.

He says, “In 2010, I finished near the top in one tournament and came in eighth place ($41,645). I did not know there was such a thing as a gold bracelet. Later, I saw there were pictures with the winner and the bracelet. So, this year on my way to Las Vegas, I promised to my lovely wife that I would win a gold bracelet. That was my motivation.”

Thus far, Lakhitov has 2011 earnings total more than $907K, giving him a career total of $1.1+ million. He’s now one of the biggest names in Russian poker with less than two years if professional experience.

Bwin.Party Partners with MGM Resorts and Boyd Gaming for US Market

A recent announcement was made regarding MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming Corporation and a partnership with Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment, the biggest Internet gaming operation in the world and parent company of PartyPoker. The three entities will own a future online poker operation once Internet poker becomes legal in the US with ownership percentages in favor of Bwin.Party. Twenty-five per cent of the company would be held by MGM, while Boyd Gaming would only have a 10% stake in the company.

Once legislation is passed concerning online poker ops in the US, the company will be ready to go. CEO of MGM Resorts Jim Murren says, “We know that millions of Americans are gambling online (and) we know that they’re gambling billions of dollars. We know that the U.S. government is deriving no benefit from this, no job creation, no tax revenue, and we know that many are at risk from unregulated websites.”

CEO of Bwin.Party Jim Ryan says, “It’s all about preparing for the eventual opening of the market.”

The partnership will allow them to enter the US market very quickly once regulations are in place, and brand recognition would allow for high traffic.

MGM and Bwin.Party are not new to each other, as Bwin.Party own World Poker Tour, and MGM Resorts have hosted many WPT events around the world. Boyd Gaming is hoped to bring cash to the partnership for startup costs that they may incur in the future.

While everyone still waits for the go ahead by the US government for online poker, it’s a smart step in the right direction for companies to position themselves for action once regulations are in place and Internet poker is legal in the US.

Bwin.Party formed back in March when Party Gaming and Bwin Interactive merged to create the biggest gambling corporation in the world. It only makes sense that they partner with one of the biggest land-based gambling companies in the US in order to plant the seed to supply legal Internet gambling for the US market. Bwin.Party is one of the only gambling companies that backed out of the US market in 2006 when the UIGEA was introduced, so they have that on their side when it comes time to obtain licensing.

2011 Poker Hall of Fame Inductees

The 2011 Poker Hall of Fame inductees have been announced—Linda Johnson and Barry Greenstein. They are no longer just nominees, they are the 41st and 42nd individuals to be given this exceptional honor and inducted to this prestigious club.

Fifty-six-year-old Greenstein, aka the “Robin Hood of Poker,” has won more than $7.5 playing in poker tournaments around the world and has won six figures or more every year for the past nine years playing tournaments. He has three WSOP bracelets and two WPT wins. He is also an avid and successful super-high stakes cash game poker player. He’s been playing professionally for 20 years since he left his job to play poker full-time. He entered his first tourney in the WSOP Main Event 1992 and took 22nd place, which was a sign of great things to come.

Greenstein is also the author of Ace on the River and has six children. He has donated more than $3 million to charity, hence the nickname. Originally from Chicago, he now lives in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. He frequents card rooms in California and Las Vegas as well as travels the world to play in tournaments.

The second inductee is 58-year-old Johnson, who is the second female to win the honor along with Barbara Enright, who has been the only female in the club since she was inducted in 2007. Currently, Johnson lives in Vegas, but is originally from Long Island, New York. She won her first WSOP bracelet in 1997 playing 7-Card Razz, one of only 15 female bracelet winners. She has seven final table appearances at WSOP events as well. She was named the “First Lady of Poker” by Mike Sexton (also in the Poker Hall of Fame) for her lead role in making poker what it is today. She taught herself to play in the 70s and quit her job at the US Post Office in 1980 to play full-time. She played professionally through 1993.

Johnson now teaches WPT Boot Camp and hosts seminars on poker and tournaments around the US. She has also hosted nearly 90 poker cruises with Card Player Cruises. In fact, she purchased Card Player Magazine in 1993 and grew it into a major publication over the following eight years. She became poker’s ambassador and traveled all over the world sharing her knowledge of and love for the game of poker.

Johnson is also an author and has written three books on poker. She also helped establish the World Poker Tour and sits on the PPA’s Board of Directors and was inducted into the Women’s Poker Hall of Fame in 2008. She is also co-founder of PokerGives.org.

Johnson says, “I am extremely proud and humbled to be voted into the Poker Hall of Fame. I feel lucky to have been involved in many facets of poker over the past 35 years. Being recognized by the industry is a tremendous honor.”

Greenstein commented, “I’m happy to be inducted into the Hall of Fame alongside my friend Linda Johnson who has been the most fervent ambassador for poker for as long as I can remember.

Both Johnson and Greenstein will be formally inducted on November 8th towards the end of the WSOP Main Event Final Table at 4:30 p.m. at the Penn & Teller Theater, immediately preceding the three-hand finale.

Update on November Nine Player Matt Giannetti

On November 5th, less than one week away, the WSOP Main Event final table will reconvene and determine once and for all who will be the world champion of poker. With a chip stack worth 24.75 million, Matt Giannetti will start out in Seat 1 with the third largest chip stack. The 26-year-old US player—the only US player of the nine—this pro poker player resides in Las Vegas.

Giannetti has not stopped playing poker since the WSOP Main Event. In fact, he won the Malta leg of the World Poker Tour, winning $273K off the $25K-buy-in event. He also played in the EPT London on his own poker tour across Europe, and he’s been playing some poker with Phil Collins, which is a great strategy to hone in on his opponent’s strengths and more important weaknesses. And along his way, he met up with and played poker with fellow niner Eoghan O’Dea’s father, Donnacha O’Dea, at London’s Victorian Casino.

In his free time, Giannetti has shared a logo design via Twitter that his fans will wear from the rail. His handle on Twitter is @MattGiannetti.

Since he started playing poker after graduating in 2006 from the University of Texas, he’s won more than half a million dollars. If he finishes 9th, he’ll pocket another $782k. Places 8 through 1 guarantee at least a million dollar payout. Giannetti has a good chance though of at least lasting to 8th place, if not even longer, with the decent stack size he holds.

Update on November Nine Player Sam Holden

The only Brit at the WSOP Main Event Final Table, 22-year-old Sam Holden is one of the nine final players that will compete for the world champion of poker title next month, eight of them becoming millionaires. 2011 was Holden’s first time at the WSOP, and now he will be seated in Seat 6 with 12.375 million chips—the shortest stack of all.

Since the WSOP has been on break, Holden has been playing poker in between media stuff throughout Europe in hopes to prepare for the final table of what is the most important moment in his career as of yet—the final table of the WSOP Main Event. He played in the World Poker Tour Paris, but was knocked out of the tournament on Day 2. He also played in a made-for-television tournament in Edinburgh, as well as some online poker.

While Holden kept much of his preparation strategy under wraps so as not to reveal too much to his opponents, he did admit to studying his own game as well as the weaknesses of the other players. He hopes to learn as much extra information about his opponents as he can before they meet back up in November, taking into consideration that every player will have changed over the break just due to the simple reason that people change and that being in the November
Nine has changed the way everyone will play and feel when they return.

He says, “It’s been crazy,” he said. “As you can imagine it’s pretty life-changing, especially for me who is coming from a low-profile poker background to being in the November Nine. … I like to think that I’m taking it all in stride and doing the best I can.”

Update on November Nine Players Bounahra and Statszko

Being the first poker player from Belize to make the WSOP Main Event Final Table, 49-year-old Badih Bounahra owns a poker room (in the Princess Casino) and a grocery store in Belize City. Bounahra will sit in Seat 2 with the sixth largest chip stack at 19.7 million chips. Since the final nine was determined, Bounahra has been playing in several tournaments in Belize and has traveled a lot to Florida, but hasn’t played outside of Belize. To prepare specifically for the final table, he has been watching videos and taking notes to put himself in the right mindset and plans on doing this more intensely as November approaches.

Also in the running for World Champion of Poker next month is chip leader at the Main Event Final Table, Czech Republic’s 35-year-old Martin Staszko. Like Bounahra, Statszko is the first to represent his country at the WSOP final table. He does have the biggest chip stack with 40.175 million chips and is seated in Seat 9. Since the WSOP, Statszko has vacationed in Sweden, played in the EPT Barcelona, played online poker, and has done a lot of interviews. His plan for preparing for the final table is to keep it local and play in local tournaments as opposed to international ones. He has a friend who is collecting info on other players and plans on adjusting to play against other November Niners.

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