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Ten Years of PokerStars

November 9, 2011

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…

Written by Bea · Filed Under Poker News 

Pius Heinz Becomes the First German to Win WSOP

November 9, 2011

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.

Written by Johnny · Filed Under Poker News 

Russian Poker Phenomena Mikhail Lakhitov Signs with GuruPlay

November 4, 2011

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.

Written by Maria · Filed Under Poker News 

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

November 3, 2011

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.

Written by Mac · Filed Under Poker News 

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