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Tom Schneider, WSOP Comeback Kid

Tom Schneider, one of the world’s most well-rounded cash game and tournament poker professionals, made a comeback at Event #15 of the 2013 WSOP to become a three-time gold bracelet winner. In 2007, he won two gold bracelets and received the Player of the Year award.

After a seven-year wait for his third WSOP victory, the Scottsdale, Arizona businessman, country-western singer, and poker pro made away with $258, 960 and the H.O.R.S.E. title in the $1,500 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. tournament held at the Rio, Las Vegas. The tournament combines the finesse of limit poker with multiple poker games, and this falls perfectly under Schneider’s skill set.

This year’s series qualifies as a comeback since Schneider’s last final table was in 2008. The mature player was up against as tough and young a final group of players as has come to be expected each passing year. The last two tables had the likes of Dan Heimiller, Frankie O’Dell, Owais Ahmed, James Mackey, David Bach, Rep Porter, David Singer and Dan Kelly. This made his victory even more meaningful than other high points of his poker career.

“I’ve been cashing a lot in events. Last year, I cashed in six events, but I seemed to be missing out on going deep and making a final table,” said Schneider. ”It had been a while. It’s nice to know I can still play. There are a lot of good players now. The events are tougher than they’ve ever been. It’s just nice to get some validation that I can still play with these younger kids.”

Julie Schneider, Schneider’s wife and a tournament player in her own right- earlier in the series she came in eight at an event- was the first person to congratulate him. Julie and Tom are one of the few husband-wife duos that make same-year WSOP final tables, the others including Harry and Jerri Thomas, and Max and Maia Stern.

This event was this series’ Schneider’s fourth cash. Finishing runner-up was Owais Ahmed from CA. This was the poker commentator and analyst for Live at the Bike’s second final table appearance and it made him the fifth player this summer to make multiple final tables. Earlier in the $2,500 Stud 8/Omaha 8 event, Owais came in fourth place.

Epic Heads-Up Battle Delivers Bracelet to Taylor Paur

As the final table of Event 18 began, it looked like this was going to be a mere walk-over for Taylor Paur. The 24-year-old California poker pro had the chip lead and the stack continued to grow when he knocked out both Ryan Austin and Kyle Cartwright in a single hand by picking up pocket aces to their pocket jacks and pocket queens.

The $1,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em final table was decidedly smooth sailing for Paur until he faced Smithtown, New York’s Roy Weiss. The heads-up play started with the two combatants content to spar in small pots.

In the next stage of the game play, after dinner, though, Weiss changed tactics and started open-shoving every hand. This is a rather unorthodox tactic, but it did manage to transform a match that seemed to favor Paur into a memorable bout that was wildly swingy and that saw countless double-ups, all-ins, and even a bit of emotion and frustration from Paur. He could only cross his fingers waiting for the best hands, and then pray earnestly that they held up.

At last, Paur overpowered Weiss and won $340,260 plus his first gold bracelet. It was his first win and his third career WSOP final table. Last year’s WSOP Main Event saw him make a deep run and finish in 33rd position. Weiss’ performance was also impressive, as he collected $211,794 for his first cash in his first-ever WSOP event.

The event attracted 2,071 players and generated a prize pool of $1,863,900. There was a payday of at least $1,901for the top 216 finishers. The notables who finished in the money included Phil Ivey (14th), Shannon Shorr (22nd), Men Nguyen (85th), Andy Bloch (101st), Jeremy Ausmus (139th), and Amanda Musumeci (182nd).

The results for the $1,000 No Limit Hold’em Event 18 final table are as follows:

1. Taylor Paur – $340,260
2. Roy Weiss – $211,794
3. Tai Nguyen – $147,220
4. Alexander Barlow – $106,027
5. DJ MacKinnon – $77,491
6. Phillip Hui – $57,324
7. Daniel Idema – $42,962
8. Ryan Austin – $32,608
9. Kyle Cartwright – $25,041

Two-Bracelet Winning Swedish David Kitai

Belgian poker pro Davidi Kitai captured the $5,000 Buy-in Pot-Limit Hold’em title and the $224,560 that came with it at the Rio on Tuesday night, becoming the first non-North American winner at the 2013 WSOP. At the time, gold bracelet winners comprised 13 Americans, 5 Canadians, and the now 1 Belgian.

With this win, the 33-year-old hit a number of both professional and personal milestones. It was his second WSOP gold bracelet, making him the first Belgian player in history to post two wins of that kind. He also joined the exclusive club of the few players holding multiple gold rings on top of wins on the World Poker Tour and European Poker Tour. What’s more, he became the 259th player in WSOP history to cross the one-million dollar mark in earnings with his current total wins of $1,041,745.

This victory was the first for the mild-mannered player from Brussels since 2008, when he also won in Pot-Limit Hold’em. It was quite a feat even though he selectively plays in the toughest poker events of the world and at the highest level- he was up against a rock-solid field of competitors.

Asked about his future goal, Kitai’s response was a rather cosmopolitan view of poker and of where he hopes to end up in its history.

“I want to become the first double Triple Crown winner,” Kitai said. ”My dream is to make the final table of the WSOP Main Event. But it will not be so easy. The fields are so big. I do have a lot of dreams. I am motivated to achieve even more.”

The tournament attracted 195 players and the top 27 finishers had a payday. The runner-up was Cary Katz from Las Vegas, who got a consolation prize of $138,794. So far, with players from the United States, Belgium, France, Italy, and France, it’s the most international final table of any event at the series.

Athanasios Polychronopoulos Makes WSOP History

Athanasios Polychronopoulos became the first player in WSOP history to win two large fields with buy-ins of $1,500 or less when he hit his second gold bracelet late Monday night at the Rio, Las Vegas.

The 29-year-old poker pro from Greece claimed his second gold bracelet in Event 17, the $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em tournament, two years after his first WSOP bracelet win. This bracelet had also come in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event. His total WSOP earnings are now in excess of $1.27 million.

The former restauranteur faced off the German Manuel Mutke at the final table to capture the $518,755-worth title. Mutke earned $322,908 for finishing as runner-up, and this was his first WSOP cash.

The event drew 2,105 players, generating a $2,841,750 prize pool. The top 216 finishers enjoyed a payday, some of the notables among them including Barry Greenstein (11th), three-time bracelet winner Matt Matros (27th), Jake Balsiger (31st), Matt Jarvis (37th), Ari Engel (78th), Allyn Jaffrey Shulman (111th), Jake Cody (126th), Steve O’Dwyer (134th), bracelet winners Simon Charette (160th) and Sean Getzwiller (206th), and Layne Flack (210th).

The final table featured high profile pros stacked in a line-up that seemed unaffected by the large field in the event. Two of the summer’s hottest players made a repeat final table appearance. David “Bakes” Baker finished eighth place, which coupled with his previous fourth and sixth place showings made him the first player of the summer to make three final tables. Joe Cada’s was his second final table this summer and his fourth career final table appearance.

Other notables at the final table were Circuit regular and former high-stakes golfer Everett Carlton who was after a bracelet to compliment his gold Circuit ring, and pro Joe Ward who posted 28th position after a deep run in the 2010 WSOP Main Event. The $224,455 prize was Carlton’s highest cash to date.

The $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Event 17 final table results are as follows:

1. Athanasios Polychronopoulos – $518,755
2. Manuel Mutke – $322,908
3. Everett Carlton – $224,455
4. Joe Cada – $161,652
5. Samuel Taylor – $118,145
6. Michael Kurth – $87,398
7. Joseph Ward – $65,502
8. David “Bakes” Baker – $49,716
9. Thomas Nicotera – $38,178

Another Two-Bracelet WSOP 2013 Winner in Event #16

Seconds after being locked in a tense death stare with the other last standing man in the $10,000 buy-in Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em event, Mark Radoja was all over the ESPN television stage shouting “I don’t believe it!” in celebration as a cheering rail of supporters mobbed him.

The final two combatants for the WSOP gold bracelet were in a face off in the last moments of a grueling three-day journey. The 27-year-old Canadian poker pro has won a gold bracelet before, but the tough rising player Don Nguyen proved quite an opponent. He finished as runner-up.

Last year Radoja came so close to bagging the gold bracelet that he could almost touch it, and perhaps the memory of the pain of finishing runner-up was what gave his legs wings as he ran around the stage incredibly transformed from the stoic poker-faced player to a gleeful athlete.

“Last year when I finished second, it was tough. It was like a dagger.  It’s true that the deeper you go, the worse you feel right after you get eliminated….coming back in this one was very exciting for me,” Radoja said.

This was a much more emotional Rodoja than was seen in his last victory. Asked about it, the pro said, “There wasn’t much emotion until I started to come back (from a deficit) and thought I had a chance. I knew I had a chance going into [the final heads-up match against Don Nguyen] but once I got down I had started to write it off in the back of my mind, even though I still had hope. Then, all the sudden a lot of chips came my way and I thought this might actually happen. That just excited me more.”

This victory gives Radoja two WSOP gold bracelets and one second place posting in three years, a mark surpassed only by the New York City Limit Hold’em specialist Matt Matros who boasts wins in three consecutive years. Radoja won his first gold bracelet two years ago in the $5,000 Buy-in No-Limit Hold’em Shootout and last year he finished second place. This year’s win comes with a $336,190 prize, totalling his WSOP earnings to nearly $1.5 million. He has had 18 cashes, 4 final tables, and 2 gold bracelets since 2007.

The $10,000 buy-in Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em event drew 162 entries, and the last 16 standing had a payday. Pro Phil Hellmuth was a top 8 finisher though Radoja eliminated him. The event marked Hellmuth’s first cash of this year’s series and his 97th in-the-money WSOP finish, which is the most any player has ever had in history.

Chad Holloway Wins First WSOP Bracelet of 2013

The 2013 World Series of Poker opening event unfolded at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas early Friday morning with Chad Holloway emerging the winner. This victory was in the Casino Employee event, whereby the Pokernews.com senior editor was awarded the coveted WSOP gold bracelet on top of $84,915.

No stranger to final tables, Holloway has been providing live-reporting coverage for some of the biggest poker names in the world for the last several years. The roles became reversed on Friday, though, when gold bracelet champions Antonio Esfandiari and Jason Mercier were the ones wishing the Wisconsin resident luck. This could very well mark the defining moment of Holloway’s professional life because of the irony in him now holding the very trophy every player he covers in his live reports desires.

There were 898 entries in the $500 buy-in Casino Employees event, up 22% from a field of 732 last year, making it the largest field since 2006. This is the 17th Casino Employees event hosted by WSOP and the high participation was as a result of an uptick in prize pool and $404,100 offered for grabs. It brought a payday for the top 90 finishers, and there was at least $6,000 for everyone at the final table.

Noteworthy participants of this year’s field included the Executive Director of the World Series of Poker Ty Stewart, two-time Circuit ring winner and Wynn Casino employee John Harris, and former online poker pro Josh VanDuyn. There were also a number of reporters from the PokerNews live updates team, among them Holloway and Josh Cahlik. Cahlik came in 12th position, just short of the final table.

The results of the final table are as follows:

1. Chad Holloway – $84,915
2. Allan Kwong – $52,318
3. Robert Rooney – $33,903
4. Brian Pingel – $24,811
5. Daniel Ellery – $18,426
6. Sean Small – $13,868
7. Tyrone Smith – $10,567
8. Michael Trivett – $8,146
9. Hieu Le – $6,348

Robert Rooney participated in this very event in 2009 and took 6th position. Sean Small came in 6th right after his victory last week of earning a seat into the 2013 WSOP National Championship in New Orleans.

2013 WSOP Summary of Events

This year the 44th Annual WSOP unfolds at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas from May 29 to July 15. It is open to poker players over 21 years old and involves satellite events or cash games, daily deepstack tournaments, and WSOP gold bracelet events. The prices range as low as $1/$2 in cash games and $75 in tournaments, which is affordable for any bankroll.

This years, there is a record 480 poker tables to be spread, which could mean a higher player turnout than the 240,000 entries of last year’s 50-day extravaganza. A total of 62 coveted WSOP gold bracelets are up for grabs.

Notable Events

Every weekend in June will be a No-Limit weekend, with No-Limit Hold’em bracelet events happening to cater to the national and regional players visiting on weekends. There will be a $1500 NLHE each Saturday and a $1,000 NLHE each Sunday.

Event #2- The $5,000 buy-in Eight-Handed No-Limit Hold’em tournament is scheduled for Wednesday, May 29 AT 5:00 p.m. It is the first open WSOP gold bracelet event.

Event #3- The 1,000 buy-in Single Re-Entry No-Limit Hold’em tournament is scheduled for Thursday, May 30. Players who take part in the 3A event at 11:00 a.m. and are eliminated get to buy in to the 3B event at 5:00 p.m. The final battle is on day 2, Friday, May 31.

Event #6- The $1,500 buy-in Single Re-Entry No-Limit Hold’em tournament, “The Millionaire Maker”, is scheduled for Saturday, June 1. It includes Flight 6A and if players bust, they can enter 6B. The final battle for the survivors is on Sunday, June 2, with the victor getting $1,000,000.

Event #34- The $1,000 buy-in Turbo No-Limit Hold’em tournament is scheduled for Wednesday, June 19 at 12 noon. It features the first Turbo format of the WSOP.

Event #47- The $111,111 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em tournament is scheduled for Wednesday, June 26 at 12 noon. The “ONE DROP High Roller” is a WSOP gold bracelet event and the 3% house fees will go to the ONE DROP organization as a donation from Rio.

Event #52- The $25,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event is scheduled for Friday, June 28 at 5:00 p.m. This popular variant is where the world’s best short-handed specialists will converge to look for a huge payday and a gold bracelet.

Event #55- The Poker Players Championship returns on Sunday, June 30 at 5:00 p.m. The world’s greatest all-round poker players part with a $50,000 entry fee and participate in an eight-game mixed event, with the winner receiving a WSOP gold bracelet and getting to add their name to the prestigious Chip Reese Trophy.

Event #58- The “Little One for ONE DROP” is scheduled to kick off on Wednesday, July 3 at 12 noon. It features the only unlimited re-entry tournament on the WSOP schedule, a $1,111 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em tournament that has two start days and unlimited re-entry through the first four levels. For every buy-in, ONE DROP will receive $111.

The $5,000 buy-in Open Face Chinese tournament is a non-bracelet but equally exciting WSOP event scheduled for Saturday, July 13 at 5:00 p.m. The WSOP staff will monitor this event and determine its viability of being added as a bracelet event in future.

Event #62 2013 WSOP $10,000 NLH Main Event to begin on July 6, 2013.

Trevor Pope Takes WSOP Event #2 Bracelet

When a player takes the chip lead into a final table, sometimes it turns out to be a curse. It is expected that you will do great but when this doesn’t happen, it becomes one huge disappointment. Today, though, there was nothing cursed about Trevor Pope’s chip lead.

Pope took a large chip lead into the Event 2’s final table and in this $5,000 Eight-Handed No Limit Hold’em tournament, the Wisconsin-born poker pro emerged with a $553,906 payday and his first gold bracelet.

Pope’s tablemates suffered heavy punishment in a dominant wire-to-wire action at an eight-handed final table that had not a single soft spot. The pro came into the table with nearly half of the chips in play and about six times the number of chips his closest competitors had, giving him quite an unreal chip advantage. He maintained his big stack position throughout the play without being at any risk. The last standing player between him and the title was EPT winner David Vamplew, but not even doubling up the one time could help Vamplew slow down the Trevor Pope Express.

There was something else working in Pope’s favor other than the chips. The Las Vegas-based pro had a number of his friends on the rail, most notable being his four-legged canine friend Revis. Revis is a dog remembered as a lucky charm last year on Joey Weissman’s rail, and he has once again proved to be a lucky charm. It seems that the presence of canines translates into six-figure paydays and massive wins, and at this rate it won’t be surprising to see more canine companions in the dog-friendly Rio hallway.

The results of the final table for Event 2, the $5,000 Eight-Handed No Limit Hold’em Event are as follows:

1. Trevor Pope – $553,906
2. David Vamplew – $342,450
3. Darryll Fish – $215,286
4. Jared Hamby – $154,518
5. Jamie Armstrong – $112,695
6. Dan Kelly – $83,532
7. Brandon Meyers – $62,915
8. David Peters – $48,130

These are all accomplished poker pros with millions in career tournament earnings but only Dan Kelly, who came in 6th, has a bracelet in his resume. Others have made the final tables at the WSOP before, like Darryll Fish (3rd) and Jamie Armstrong (5th), but they couldn’t come in the way of Trevor Pope getting the coveted gold piece this time round.

New Poker Book Straight Flush

Author Ben Mezrich is renowned for spawning films like “21″ and “The Social Network” through his works. In the new book, Straight Flush, he weaves a dramatic plot full of twists and turns, telling a rise-and-fall story without ruining the ending.  The story is about a group of University of Montana fraternity brothers who are inspired to start an online poker company and how the government’s decision that it’s illegal affects them.

Mezrick says the actual online poker operation was started in Seattle, in a basement. “The ma in character, whose dad lived in Seattle, started the business in his dad’s basement.”

It was established in the early 2000s, a time when the rules of online poker were almost non-existent. According to Mezrich, “There was no specific law that said online poker is illegal, and there was no reason to think that you could get arrested for having an Internet company like that.”

The online poker gaming market was definitely huge and soon enough, the founders of the site found themselves with a Costa Rica operation earning them $1 million a day.  “Essentially they were bringing in $1 million a day, there were about 15 million U.S. people playing poker online and it just grew into a massive industry.”

One fateful day, though, the government made its judgment on online poker, thus changing the story of the online poker company.  Mezrich said, “There was a day which is known as black Friday. It was April 15 of 2011 when the U.S. government raided all these sites,” adding that “This was the sort of moment [...] known when to hold them, know when to fold them.”

This is a book likely to follow in the footsteps of Mezrich’s other books and land on the big screen someday, but the writer says there is yet to be a movie deal in place. So for now, if you like the sound of the story, just pick up the book.

Skepticism Raised with UltimatePoker.com

The 2008 Russ Hamilton scandal has erupted again, this time ensnaring the new UltimatePoker.com. Hamilton, the former poker champion and consultant to Ultimatebet.com, cheated players out of millions of dollars using software that allowed him to peek at the hands of other players. Officials of the Kahnawake-licensed and Costa Rica-based poker site Ultimate Bet said Hamilton had been acting alone, and his reputation ended up ruined.

UltimatePoker.com opened for business at the end of April in Nevada and calls itself as “America’s first and only regulated online real money poker site.” This is true only since the Black Friday, when the Department of Justice crashed the few online poker sites that were still operating within the U.S. borders. Unfortunately, hardly two weeks after the poker site’s launch, the five-year-old online poker scandal re-emerged to remind everyone that the industry can be shady even as operators bill themselves as legitimate businesses with no intentions of shutting down abruptly and taking off with players’ money.

Two weeks ago, Travis Makar, a former Ultimate Bet employee, posted secret recordings on an online poker forum that show the scandal was on an even larger scale than originally imagined. These recordings have confirmed Hamilton as the primary actor, with him bluntly saying, “I did take this money and I’m not trying to make it right, so let’s get that out of the way.”

However, the tapes have also shown that there were other officials at Ultimate Bet who knew of the scheme, such as the founder Greg Pierson who is heard talking of ways of containing and covering up the scandal. Pierson currently runs Iovation, an online security company, and as was noted by poker writer John Mehaffey, “The tapes imply that Iovation may have even been founded and floated with money stolen in the cheating scandal by Hamilton and others. Iovation was Ultimate Bet’s software company and provided Hamilton and others with the ability to see player’s hole cards in real time.”

This gets messy for Ultimate Poker because at the time of its launch in April, the poker site was using Iovation’s software to verify the identities of the players. As soon as the Makar tapes went public, though, the site dumped Iovation.

As much as Ultimate Poker claims its games are wholly legitimate, using Iovation, whose co-founder seems complicit to one of the world’s biggest online gambling scandals, is inexcusable, and in the least raises skepticism.

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