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PokerStars.com Blocked for Italian Poker Players

After a change in the law that regulates online gambling in Italy PokerStars players noticed on Monday that they were no longer able to play on the international PokerStars.com website.

When trying to visit PokerStars.com from an Italian IP you will be redirected to the Italian version which is PokerStars.it. This caused a lot of confusion amongst the Italian poker community when they first noticed the change on Monday morning.

At PokerStars.it the Italian players will only be able to play against other players from Italy and they are not able to access any of the cash games that they are used to playing at the international PokerStars.com.

The Italian government have been negotiated with the EU about what restrictions are possible for online poker. On the 27th of July the European Union accepted the Italian governments request for a monopoly.

In short the new law will mean the following:

Only tournament play is allowed, those poker sites operating in Italy will only be allowed to accept Italian tax payers as poker players on their site, the servers of the site must be located in Italy and every single tournament held has to be approved by the Italian government.

These new restriction at PokerStars mean that Team PokerStars pro’s like Luca Pagano and Dario Minieri are no longer able to play at PokerStars.com while in their home country.

EPT Moscow Cancelled

PokerStars recently announced that they will be hosting the first EPT event of the season in Moscow as was originally planned. Instead they will be moving this event to Kiev. The reason for this is the current change in the Russian law that makes it illegal to play live poker tournaments. Before that the government of Russia had already banned gambling in four zones where gambling was recently made legal, all of these zones were outside of Moscow though.

All of the players who have qualified for the EPT Moscow event will now be offered the chance to trade their ticket for the EPT Kiev event instead. The players will also have to option to trade the ticket for another EPT event or to get the money in cash.

The EPT event in Kiev is going to be played between the 18th of August and the 23rd of August in The Kiev Sports Palace in Kiev, Ukraine.

Alexandre Gomes Wins the Bellagio Cup

Team PokerStars member Alexandre Gomes wins the WPT Bellagio Cup after a really exciting heads-up match against the previous chip leader Faraz Jaka. This win awarded Gomes with a cool $1.2 million and he is now one of the few players who have won both a WPT title and a WSOP title.

The Team PokerStars Pro member managed to win his first title last year when he won a WSOP $2K event in No Limit Texas Hold ‘em. After that he has also manage to place fourth in this years edition of PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. His lifetime tournament winnings are no up to $2.8 million.

Faraz Jaka who finished in second place gets rewarded with a $774.780 paycheck.

These are the results from the final table together with the amount won:

1. Alexandre Gomes – $1.187.670
2. Faraz Jaka – $774.780
3. Justin Smith – $464.870
4. Alec Torelli – $271.165
5. Christoffer Sonesson – $203.385
6. Erik Seidel – $164.640 

Niki “Kaibuxxe” Jedlicka Back at Full Tilt Poker

The online poker phenomenon Niki “Kaibuxxe” Jedlicka took the high stakes world by storm when he managed to win $3 million at Full Tilt Poker during three months time. This hot streak came in 2007, when the Austria born poker player was only 19 years old. Full Tilt Poker saw the amazing figures that Jedlicka had produced during a short amount of time and offered him a place in the Team FullTilt stable which he accepted.

Shortly after he made the sponsorship deal with FullTilt he hit a major downswing and some of the bigger names like Phil Ivey was quickly there to take his money. A couple of months later there was hardly any money left from the once huge bankroll that he had built up. Shortly after that he vanished from the world of high stakes poker on the internet.

But now it seems as if Jedlicka is starting to find his way back into old form when he re-appeared on the highest limits at Full Tilt Poker recently. Just a couple of days aho he managed to win $1 million during one signle session. The biggest loser during that session was no other than Tom “durrrr” Dwan who had a less fortunate evening and ended up losing $800.000.

With that latest winning session he is now the biggest winner of the month at Full Tilt Poker. But one has to wonder how long it will take before Phil Ivey comes to take his bankroll once more.

Everest Poker Players Hit Jackpot in 2009 WSOP

When the French poker player Antoine Saout made it to the final table of the 2009 WSOP Main Event he made sure that all players who had qualified for the event through Everest Poker got their share of a $1 million bonus that had been promised by the online poker room.

Everest Poker had promised a bonus to all of the 53 players who qualified to the main event through one of their satellites. The bonus would was going to be matching the total amount won by all of the qualifiers in the main event but had a cap on $1 million which was reached after the frenchman reached the final table.

Since the bonus for the players reached the maximum of $1 million it meant that each of the players got $18.868 each as a bonus from Everest Poker.

Obviously this amount is only peanuts for Antoine Saout as he is going back in Novemeber to battle for the $8 million first price.

DIN_FRU up $1 Million for the year at FullTilt Poker

The Swedish online poker pro “DIN_FRU” continues to win big at Full Tilt Poker. It is still not clear who is hiding behind this alias but it has been rumoured that it is Erik Sagstrom who is playing on this account.

One thing that makes it likely that it is in fact Sagstrom’s account is the fact that he is playing mostly on the fixed limit tables. He is not afraid to face any of the players on the Hold ‘em, Stud and Omaha tables. Most of the times you will find this player on tables where the blinds are $500/$1000 and so far he has been very successful, winning $1 million during 2009.

The player account “DIN_FRU” was first spotted at the tables during November 2008 and from then until the end of the year he managed to win $860.000.

Other rumours are saying that this might be the old “TexasLimitKing” who is back under a new account but here at Online Poker News we would say that is highly unlikely.

Crazy Amounts Won and Lost at Bobby’s Room

There have been some crazy pots played at Bobby’s Room which is famous for their huge games.

On Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies own website, Coinflip.com, it has has been reported that he lost one pot of $2.4 million. This was not the only huge hand though as it has also been reported that several other pots have reached over $1 million. It is not clear who has been winning and who has been losing at the tables.

Some of the players that have been playing in these games are Phil Ivey, Tom “durrrr” Dwan and David Benyamine. Poker legend Doyle Brunson have also been playing in some of these games and in his blog he commented on the craziness going on at Bobby’s Room right now.

“The poker games are out of control at the Bellagio. I’ve never seen games where so much money is won and lost each night”

“Time for poker with the boys from Finland. They have damaged the poker economy around here for the past month”

To see an experienced player like Doyle using these terms is saying a lot about how crazy these games have actually been during these sessions.

Other reports are mentioning a couple of really heavy sessions of Chinese Poker where Ziigmund have lost over $3.5 million. In the game of Chinese Poker you are counting points and in these high stakes games every point is worth $20.000.

Doyle himself told his blog followers that he had lost $2.1 million in less than an hours play.

Tom “durrrr” Dwan Wins Big at High Stakes Tables Online

It’s not every day that you see high stakes players multi-tabling on the highest levels on the net which are usually found at Full Tilt Poker. But yesterday you could find Tom “durrrr” Dwan playing on all of the high stakes tables that had action. That meant that he was sitting in on 9 tables where the limit was 200/400 and the name of the game was Omaha Pot Limit.

The players he was up against were some of the best online poker players such as David Benyamine, Brian Townsend, Di “Urindanger” Dang and Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond. But like most times that these players clash it was “durrrr” that came out with the biggest win. When it was all said and done he had won $800.000 during this crazy session.

After this session Tom Dwan is up $900.000 for the month of July and his total winnings during 2009 is now up to $2.5 Million.

He is not the biggest winner during 2009 though as Patrick Antonius of Finland has won around $4.5 Million in cash games on the internet.

It is pretty amazing that “durrrr” have managed to turn this year around to a good one after losing over $2 Million in the first two months of 2009.

Poker and its variants not to be recognised as a Sport in Russia anymore

The latest poker news is that a government order has removed the sport status from poker. This has already started creating problems as some former casinos had stayed open due to this ‘sport loophole’ that permitted certain casinos to remain open as card halls when the new harsh gaming restrictions on gambling had been made a while ago. Poker was recognised by the sports agency / ministry back in 2007. This poker sports list included various poker variants such as Omaha, Texas Hold ’Em and Seven Card Stud.

The Russian Federation of Sport Poker announced in a press statement earlier on this week saying things were unclear as to whether amateur poker players would be now playing illegally. In fact, minister of sports, tourism and youth politics, Vitaly Mutko said that poker doesn’t exist as a sport.”

He stated that the poker’s registration as a sport in 2007 was set as invalid, “The decision about accepting a sport into the list should be made by a ministerial commission and not by the leadership of the Federal Fitness and Sports Agency. What’s more, the decision should be registered by the Justice Ministry, which wasn’t done.” Mutko also mentions that the Russian Federation of Sport Poker was originally listed as a non-commercial partnership and not as a noncommercial organization as required by law.

This decision to un-list poker from ‘sports’ was finalised according to the ministry’s website last Friday during the ministerial commission. Poker was specifically mentioned in a joint declaration stating to “decisively clamp down on illegal gambling activity, including that done on the Internet, through poker clubs, fruit machines, etc”, according to interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev and Prosecutor General Yury Chaika.

This ruling was still unclear as to whether private poker games were now illegal and whether playing on the Internet or marketing and promoting poker was still allowed or not. Also, the European Poker Tour tournament that was meant to be held in Moscow this August might have to be cancelled. Ironically enough, the current list of ‘sports’ still includes bridge, which is a card game that also requires players to place stakes.

You can now bet on the WSOP Finalists

After the 9 November finalists were released, the bets have commenced with all odds pointing to Darvin Moon as a favourite to win. There is a whole betting market taking charge of the World Series of Poker Main Event such as online operator, Betfair who points Moon as the current favourite to win the 2009 bracelet.

The second favourite is Eric Buchman a New Yorker with tournament experience and hopes to win his first WSOP title. At third place there is Steven Begleiter in the betting odds at around 5/1. Phil Ivey’s odds are just at 13/2 but he is still a popular choice with bets due to his experience and previous wins. Then there is the British James Akenhead with 20/1 and starting with just under seven million chips.

Back in 2008, the odds favourite was Dennis Phillips as he had the highest chip stack but the latter made it only to the third place. The winner was in fact Peter Eastgate that year.

This is how the seats are looking:

Seat 1: Darvin Moon — 58,930,000

Seat 2: James Akenhead — 6,800,000

Seat 3: Phil Ivey — 9,765,000

Seat 4: Kevin Schaffel — 12,390,000

Seat 5: Steven Begleiter — 29,885,000

Seat 6: Eric Buchman — 34,800,000

Seat 7: Joseph Cada — 13,215,000

Seat 8: Antoine Saout — 9,500,000

Seat 9: Jeff Shulman — 19,580,00

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