World Poker Headlines
Titan Poker Players Prepare For Record-Breaking $2,500,000 Prize Tournament
Leading online poker room Titan Poker will stage its biggest ever tournament this September with an unprecedented $2,500,000 Guaranteed Prize Pool.
Titan Poker, the largest online poker room on the iPoker Network, is set to stage its biggest ever guaranteed prize tournament on the 7th of September 2008, a $2,500,000 Guaranteed Prize tournament. For nearly four months, skilled Titan Poker players will compete in Sit ‘N Go and Multi-Table Satellite tournaments to qualify for a seat in this monumental event.
Qualifying satellites to the $2,500,000 Guaranteed started this week at Titan Poker. These qualifiers start from as low as $2.75 + $0.20 to enter, so players can potentially win a share of $2,500,000 for an investment of less than three dollars. Players that wish to skip the satellites can also buy-in directly to the Main Event and compete for the chance to win an opulent lifestyle in just one day of exhilarating game play.
The upcoming $2,500,000 Guaranteed tournament is just the latest in a series of record-breaking tournaments. In March, nearly 1,400 players competed for a share of $2 Million in Titan Poker’s $2,000,000 Guaranteed tournament, and in May, Titan Poker gave away $3,600,000 over 11 days in its second European Championship of Online Poker (ECOOP II).
Robin Steele, Manager of Titan Poker, commented by saying, “Titan Poker keeps on upping the ante. In addition to these huge tournaments with unprecedented prize pools, the value of our guaranteed monthly prizes continues to increase. In just a few months, we doubled the amount of our monthly guaranteed prizes from $8,000,000 to $16,000,000 and this number will rise further as we hold more record-breaking tournaments like the $2,500,000 Guaranteed.”
In addition to staging tournaments with huge guaranteed prize pools, Titan Poker also regularly awards its players with seats at the world’s most well-known poker tournaments, such as the Aussie Millions and the European Poker Tour. Titan Poker will send a delegation of players to participate in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas next month and to the Asian Poker Tour in Macau this August.
Top-10 stories at the 2008 World Series of Poker
We’re at the midway point for this year’s World Series of Poker, and what a Series it’s been so far. From stars reasserting themselves to brothers winning bracelets, this Series has had a little bit of everything. Here’s a look at the top-10 stories from the WSOP so far:
10. Nikolay Evdakov
Entering the World Series of Poker, very few people had heard of Nikolay Evdakov. Now, midway through the series, the Russian pro is a marked man. He’s cashed in six events and is chasing the record for most WSOP cashes in a year, which stands at eight. Michael Binger (2007), Chad Brown (2007), Phil Hellmuth (2006), and Humberto Brenes (2006) share the mark. So far, Evdakov has cashed in the $5,000 Pot Limit Hold’em with rebuys (Event #28), the $5,000 No-Limit 2-7 Draw with rebuys (Event #18), the $10,000 World Championship Mixed Event (Event #8), the $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em with rebuys (Event #5), the $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em (Event #2) and the $10,000 World Championship Pot-Limit Hold’em (Event #1).
9. Video blogs
Blogs are a nice way for poker pros to let us into their world. But a good blog takes time to produce. It’s not easy sitting in front of blank screen and putting thoughts on paper. And time is one thing players don’t have at the World Series of Poker. By contrast, video blogs don’t take very long (for the player) to produce. And it’s much easier to spill your guts on camera (This is what reality TV is based on, isn’t it?) than it is to blog. And the video blogs do a great job of providing a window into parts of the WSOP most people don’t get a chance to see. Some of the best video blogs from the WSOP can be found at rawvegas.tv, which boasts a lineup that includes Vanessa Rousso, Patrik Antonious, Gavin Griffin and Daniel Negreanu. Negreanu is a natural for the medium. He’s at ease in front of a camera and comfortable with sharing “insider tidbits” from prop bets (with Phil Ivey and Antonius) to funny stories about dealers and the need to get eight hours of sleep. Antonius does his video blogs in both English and Finnish (though I don’t know if they’re different — I suspect they are — or the same). Right now, he’s not too happy with his golf game. And Rousso’s mathematics background shines through in her video blogs. She effortlessly breaks down the odds on almost every action she describes at the poker table. And to make it a little more interesting, she adds in a few details on her personal life. She’s also revealed that she’s now a Wii Rock Band addict (she likes the drums).
8. Increased participation
Almost every event has seen an increase in the number players participating. This year’s Razz tournament (Event #26) saw a 33% increase from last year. The second event of the Series, a $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event, set a new non-Main Event record with a field of 3,929 entries and is the fourth-largest tournament in poker history. And the the $3,000 H.O.R.S.E. event saw an 8% increase in players from last year even though the buy-in had increased by $500.
7. Women
Last year, outside of Katja Thater who won the Razz event, it was pretty hard to find a women at a final table. Nothing could be further from the truth this year. Vanessa Selbst has already won a bracelet in $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha (Event #19) and cashed in two other events (finishing third and and 34th). She’s also third in the WSOP Player of the Year rankings. Kathy Liebert finished third in the $10,000 Wolrd Championship Pot-Limit Hold’em tournament (Event #1) and has cashed in three other events. And Jennifer Harman-Traniello finished eighth in the $3,000 H.O.R.S.E. tournament (Event #22).
6. Erick Lindgren
Lindgren won his first bracelet this year in the $5,000 Mixed Hold’em tournament (Event #4). He’s also final tabled the No-Limit 2-7 Draw with rebuys (Event #18), finished 10th in $1,500 Limit Hold’em (Event # 12) and 18th in the $10,000 Heads-Up tournament (Event 25). It doesn’t get much better than that in the poker world, and it’s why he’s currently sitting atop the lead for the WSOP Player of the Year.
PokerStars Sunday Million and Full Tilt $750,000 Guarantee Put On Hold for Huge WSOP Qualifiers
The two biggest weekly online poker tournaments, the Sunday Million at PokerStars and the $750,000 guarantee at Full Tilt, were put on hiatus for one week when the events were replaced by huge World Series of Poker main-event qualifiers on both sites last night.
At PokerStars, a $350 buy-in main-event qualifier guaranteed 200 $12,000 prize packages. The qualifier had 8,076 entrants, which meant 226 players would win a coveted main-event seat and $2,000 for travel and expenses (with the rest of the money going to places 227th-231st). That entry number for the event is astounding considering the qualifier took the place of the normally scheduled Sunday Million, which sports a buy-in of only $200 and usually lures around 7,000 entrants. Some of the big-name players to earn a package in the qualifier inclJames ‘jcamby33′ Campbelluded Peter “Apathy123” Jetten (pictured above), Jim “jcamby33” Campbell (pictured at right), J.P. “JP 5-time” Kelly, and Sasha “bikocruz” Rosewood.
eChecks Provide Options to Online Players
After the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was signed into law, several of the biggest names in offshore financial institutions withdrew their services from US customers. Neteller was the most famous of them, and most recently, ePassporte has been added to that list.
In April of 2008, ePassporte, with no official notice to customers, abandoned US customers in the wake of an investigation into internet gambling by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Southern New York. The virtual debit card company reportedly told poker sites catering to US customers-like Full Tilt Poker and Cake Poker-that it no longer wished to be, “associated with anything that might be considered illegal by the United States governnment.” Unlike the Neteller case, ePassporte customers were luckily able to withdraw their funds immediately using the service. But the exit of another company from the US market left players with even fewer choices to assist in financial transactions with online poker sites.
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