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Phil Hellmuth surprises all entering as Caesar

The latest amusing anecdote comes straight from the WSOP in Las Vegas. It involves the no-limit Texas Hold ‘em champion, Phil Hellmuth dressed as Julius Caesar and parading through the entrance to the World Series of Poker last Sunday. He arrived in a car outside the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and was accompanied by dozens of women and trumpeters, which drove the fans into frenzy.

11-time gold bracelet winner Hellmuth had won the WSOP main event 20 years ago and now appears again at the event’s poker table. Female gladiators with body paint and muses carrying rose petals in bags accompanied him throughout. Hellmuth’s words when interviewed by The Associated Press were “When you dress as Caesar you actually feel more powerful. Kiss my ring!” and continued “Hail Caesar!”

The television cameras showed how Phil was rolled in, greeted Jeffrey Pollack, the World Series of Poker Commissioner and then had a quick change into the standard attire for the start of the tournament.

Already during last year’s WSOP, Hellmuth surprised everyone with his Gen. George S. Patton outfit attire, and this year it s Caesar so we are guessing this annual dress up will become tradition. “It’s kind of a fun spectacle. I think it’s great for poker” were his words. Compared to Hellmuth, the other players had the everyday attire without a bombastic entry but some players did have some gimmicks up their sleeve during the tournament of 2008, trying to draw attention to themselves and maybe distract their competition. Such as last year’s number three, Dennis Phillips, who won $4.5 million at the series’ final table and had a dozen supporters dressed in a white collared shirt and a St. Louis Cardinals hat.

Meanwhile the WSOP sell-outs are looking great this year with almost 1,700 players entering this year’s tournament last Sunday. Many are expecting a bigger sale by today, one to reach a record of 2,600 players. In fact, today (6th July) is the last day entries to the tournament are accepted with hopefuls guessing on an additional 800 new tournament applicants. Last year it was the turn of Peter Eastgate to win the event with a prize of $9.15 million. Eastgate had entered the event through a $10,000 buy-in tournament contested by another 6,844 players.

PokerStars recruits Luske and Mercier

It has been reported that Jason Mercier and Marcel Luske are now the newest and latest recruits to the existing Team PokerStars.

Jason Mercier is the 22-year-old professional poker player who won his first bracelet at the $1500 pot-limit Omaha event during this year’s World Series of Poker. Before that he won the EPT San Remo event in 2008 for $1,372,893 and achieved sixth place at the PokerStars EPT Barcelona main event. He also won the PokerStars London EPT High Rollers event and has already staggered up over $3.2 million at this tender age.

Marcel Luske is a professional and smart looking Dutch player. In 2004 he finished second in the WSOP Stud event and then came 10th in the main event. Besides these wins, he founded the ‘Federation Internationale de Poker Association’ /FIDPA which works on improving and keeping up standards of poker regulations.

Proudly being the world’s largest online poker room at the moment, PokerStars was happy to announce this news as they added Luske and Mercier to the strong team profile. This profile already includes heavy weight pros such as Daniel Negreanu and Greg Raymer.

Gus Hansen Loses €1.4 Million Tennis Bet

Gus Hansen probably thought he had found a safe bet in Rafal Nadal the French Open. But Nadal got knocked out of the tournament by Swedish tennis pro Robin Söderling and that loss cost Gus a cool €1.4 Million.

Gus “The Great Dane” Hansen is one of the most famous poker players in the world when it comes to high stakes games. But it is not only when it comes to poker that he is betting big. He also likes to bet on various sports. When the French Open was played in June he places a €1.4 Million bet on Rafael Nadal to win the whole tournament.

Before the start of the tournament Nadal had not lost a game in the French Open for over 5 years but that all changed in his match against Robin Söderling from Sweden. Nadal got knocked out of the tournament and Gus lost his Million Euro bet.

Hopefully Gus Hansen will have a profitable run in this years WSOP to make up for that loss.

Self-identified gambler gets arrested at Casino Resort

Latest casino news involves Michael Evan Roshkind, a 37-year-old Catasauqua man who has been accused of gambling at the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem earlier in June. This was after he had categorised himself through the state’s self-exclusion list; a list which bans the said individuals from the gaming floors of casinos. The police reported that the named gambler was charged with two counts of illegal intrude after having played the slots on June 18 and 20th.

The self-exclusion list is quite a new and popular system nowadays which encompasses a self-identifying tool for the problem gamblers. In this way they can bar themselves from the state’s entertainment hubs for specific periods. These could be from 1 year to life. This means that a self-excluded person also is not permitted to enter, play or collect any winnings and make back losses. The self-excluded persons can still live at the hotel, eat at the restaurants or shop at these gambling facilities as the ban is only valid on the gaming floor.

According to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board / PGCB it states,

“After a person is placed on the self-exclusion list, a licensed facility must refuse to accept the person’s wagers, will ask the person to leave the gaming floor and the person may be arrested for trespass.”

In fact, the PGCB has dedicated an entire page to a detailed explanation about the self-exclusion program and its current regulation.

Soldier jailed after lying to play poker

A soldier named Lee Wittekind has just been jailed and kicked out of the Army after he lied saying that his fiancée had been killed so that he could be granted paid leave. The real reason for the leave vacation was that he could play poker! Wittekind had been given sympathetic leave from his army bosses after telling them that his fiancée had been run over and killed.

The manipulative 31 year old soldier went as far as making contact with some anguished parents of a dead girl. He had never even met them or her but still begged the parents to back up his lie and terrible story. His colleagues realised that he was planning to take part in a pub poker game and told their army officers who followed to inform the police authorities.

WSOP $50K HORSE Event Update

Erik Sagstrom from Sweden will start as chip leader when the final table of the $50K H.O.R.S.E Event is going to resume later on today. Erik was in the lead for the most part of yesterday and he proved to be a really tricky opponent at the table.

Sagstrom will start with $3.6 Million in chips on the final table which is way more than any other player at the table. The player with second in chips have $2.5 Million and that is Vitaly Lunkin from Russia.

Here are the seating arrangements and the chip stacks for the final table:

Seat 1 – Ville Wahlbeck – 645.000
Seat 2 – Erik Sagstrom – 3.675.000
Seat 3 – John Hanson – 1.700.000
Seat 4 – Huck Seed – 1.380.000
Seat 5 – Vitaly Lunkin – 2.490.000
Seat 6 – David Bach – 2.345.000
Seat 7 – Erik Seidel – 965.000
Seat 8 – Chau Giang – 1.075.000

Vitaly Lunkin Chipleader going into day 4 of $50K Horse Event

For our Swedish poker readers out there we are happy to tell you that Erik Sagstrom is through to day 4 of the WSOP Event #49 which is the $50K buy in H.O.R.S.E Event. Erik has $1.3 Million in chip going in to day 4 which gives him a second place on the leaderboard.

The current chip leader of the tournament is Vitaly Lunkin from Russia with $1.5 Million in chips. Other players who are still very much in the game are Ville Wahlbeck from Finland and Full Tilt Poker pro Gus Hansen from Denmark.

This year the $50K H.O.R.S.E Event hit an all time low in terms of participants with only 95 players signing up for the event. Some players say that the reason for this is the fact that ESPN decided not to show the event on television this year while others blame the economy.

Out of the original 95 players only 19 are remaining at the start of day 4 and 16 out of these players will make it in to the money which will guarantee a $72.914 pay day.

Thw winner of this tournament will take a bracelet and a cool $1.276.802 for the first prize.

These are the standings at the start of day 4:

Vitaly Lunkin 1,527,000

Erik Sagstrom 1,315,000

Freddy Deeb 1,300,000

David Bach 1,265,000

Ville Wahlbeck 842,000

John Hanson 815,000

Gus Hansen 801,000

Mike Wattel 779,000

John Kabbaj 678,000

Huck Seed 672,000

Brett Richey 671,000

Tony G 650,000

Chau Giang 616,000

Steve Billirakis 576,000

Frank Kassela 499,000

Erik Seidel 464,000

David Chiu 397,000

Ray Dehkharghani 262,000

Todd Brunson 145,000

Chili Poker launching an online bingo site

It had been reported by the owners of the big online poker site Chili Poker that they are now trying to enter the European online bingo market. Chili Poker is part of Chili Gaming, that was established back in 2006 and they have been offering online gaming, casino games and more to the emerging European market ever since. They have a database of registered players in countries world-wide and now they want to invest in the online bingo market for the very first time. They are following the lead of other major online bingo brands as the trend shows that online bingo is definitely proving to be going through a period of phenomenal growth at the moment The UK online bingo market is packed with the well established as well as the newer online bingo sites. This sector is very interesting to the European markets and particularly gaming companies. The established gaming companies are keen to enter this marker of online bingo and hope to reap the benefits and a good profit while the trend is strong.

Parlay Entertainment is the chosen online bingo software provider for Chili Poker. Parlay already provides for the well known online bingo sites such as Bingos.co.uk and Paddy Power Bingo. It is also used by the International online bingo provider St Minver who uses their services to power their network of the white label online bingo brands. These site brands include Chit Chat Bingo and Shipleys Bingo. Parlay is adequately ready to supply the best online bingo software available at the moment and they have also powered up the very first online bingo site that was launched ten years ago.

The Chili Poker online bingo site will be host to a wealth of side games and a social networking function. It will be available in multiple languages and multiple currencies options. This will all benefit Chili Poker in widening their future and expose their current brand. Alexandre Dreyfus, chief Executive of Chili Poker is looking forward into this venture with Parlay Entertainment. He feels that it will definitely enhance their global ‘brand recognition’ and will generate more income and more revenue throughout for the whole company. He has reportedly stated that “ChiliGaming is looking at the online bingo industry as we are aware of it being the fastest growing segment of the online gaming world, shown clearly in the number of bingo players, which doubled steadily in 2008 in spite of the global financial meltdown”.

New poker pro hails from Wimbledon

Celebrity Wimbledon sportsman star Mr. Boris Becker is now the newest poker celebrity on the scene. Becker is known for having been the youngest player ever to win the men’s singles final almost 25years back. Now at 42, he is showing his never-ending competitive spirit in the poker game and tables and has turned into a pro.

This all started after a tennis match being cancelled due to heavy rain and Becker resorting to playing a set of card games with his tennis colleagues. Becker now, looks forward to playing in Dortmund, his hometown city, this July and then also in the Tour de grand final located in Monte Carlo.

According to reports, Becker has wanting to enhance his poker skills for a while no in aim of becoming a real international poker star. We believe he has what it takes as Becker is used to a pressured tennis career and environment for the past 25 -30 years and Poker is certainly a pressured game with a poker pro lifestyle being like a second home to him. Poker might coincide with tennis skills as they are both sports that require a clear and calm head, collected and continuously anticipating your opponent’s further moves. It also, like tennis involves a lot if travelling from city to city.

Note: Boris Becker is a member of Team PokerStars and can be found playing online at PokerStars.com.

PokerStars Hit Hard by the Recent Asset Freeze

A couple of days ago the American Government froze $33 Million in player transactions coming from poker sites accepting US players. PokerStars is the poker room that got hit the hardest while Full Tilt Poker and Cake Poker takes this as an opportunity to build their player base.

The traffic at PokerStars went down by 7% during the month of June according to PokerScout.com. This is a direct effect of the US players having trouble making a deposit using eChecks which is the most popular deposit option for US players.

FullTilt and Cake Poker on the other hand have taken advantage of the current situation and they have seen their traffic rise by 3% each during the month of June.

Poker players at Full Tilt Poker were also hit these problems in the beginning but the people in charge of FullTilt have been able to set up alternative options for player transactions very quickly. On poker forums around the internet the public opinion seems to be that PokerStars have been taking a very long time to solve this issue and the players are not happy with this.

It will be interesting to see how the player traffic is going to be affected over the coming weeks. Unless PokerStars can find a solid solution to this issue soon they are likely to lose even more of their market share to FullTilt and Cake Poker.

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