Speedyfold Poker Blog

Kent Lundmark has won the main event at the EPT Barcelona. He crushed the final table knocking out 5 of the players on the way to the title. 758 players entered at a buy-in of €5300.

Top Prize Winners in Euros (€)

1 Kent Lundmark 825,000
2 Jesus Cortez Lizano 525,000
3 Konstantin Puchkov 300,000
4 Shander De Vries 222,000
5 Giuseppe Pantaleo 170,000
6 Thor Stang 130,000
7 Georgios Skotadis 90,000
8 Francesco Notaro 70,000
9 Candido Gonçalves 50,000
10 Luis Rufas 50,000
11 Ognjen Sekularac 36,000
12 Jorge Lores 36,000
13 Zachary Korik 28,000
14 Jani Kristian Rasinen 28,000
15 Marco Bognanni 23,000
16 Alessandro Longobardi 23,000
17 Roman Makhlin 20,000
18 Todd Sisley 20,000

Daniel Negreanu has reached the final table of the EPT Vienna, as the chipleader no less. He could become only the third player in history to win a WSOP Bracelet, a WPT title, and an EPT title. The other two are Gavin Griffin and Roland de Wolfe

If he wins it will also catapult him to the top of the All Time Money Winners list.

Griffin did the triple first:

WSOP Bracelet in 2004 - Winning $270,420
EPT Monte Carlo in 2007 - Winning $2,434,061
WPT Borgata Open in 2008 - Winning $1,401,109

De Wolfe was next to complete it:

WPT Paris in 2005 - Winning $574,419
EPT Irish Masters 2006 - Winning $696,970
WSOP Bracelet in 2009 - Winning $246,616

Can Negreanu become the thrid, in 2010. We will find out soon.

Update: He finished 4th for 175,000 Euros. He will need to wait a little longer for the triple. Michael Eiler was the winner of the 700,000 Euros first prize.

This year’s WSOP has seen some of the biggest prop bets ever. Not only has there been the Durrrr ones we have already discussed, but Phil Ivey has got some massive ones booked in. Howard Lederer has laid 5 million dollars against him getting 2 bracelets over the course of the next 3 years. Phil Ivey is already half way there after winning Event 37, the $3000 horse event. Following that win Ivey also booked bets running into the millions at 7-1 about him getting a 2nd bracelet this year. eg Phil’s $50,000 to villians $350,000

Phil has also got bets direct with Durrrr over who will get the most bracelets over 2 years. After nearly a great start for Durrrr (finishing 2nd in Event 11) Ivey has lept ahead with that Event 37 win, making it 1-0 to Ivey. Things look like a big uphill struggle now for durrrr, as Ivey is a bit of a bracelet machine given the proper motivation (ie money) and already has a total of 8 lifetime bracelets to his name now. Durrrr is still looking for his first one, but no doubt has the talent to get there.

Bets and talk about bracelets have been frantic of late, with Ivey vs Hellmuth also a lot in the news. Hellmuth has had a couple of deep runs (most recently 7th in a PLO8 event) but no bracelets this year. Most people in the industry seem to think it is only a matter of time before Ivey overtakes Hellmuth, some thinking in less than 5 years. Many are also speculating on Ivey even reaching the dizzy heights of 30 bracelets in his career. He’s sure come a long way since his No Home Jerome days.

Since Tom “Durrrr” Dwan became a member of Team Full Tilt there has been a promise to play more tournaments, so this year at the WSOP Durrrr is really going to go for it on the tournament volume. As a bit of encouragement he has been taking bets on himself getting a bracelet. He offered 3.25-1 on him getting a bracelet this year (including the WSOP Events in London) and 2-1 on him getting 2 bracelets in 3 years. In other words to bet against him you would need to put up $32,500 to win a $10,000 profit if he didnt win one this year. Those odds look pretty decent. Durrrr is a great player, but pretty much unproven in majors MTTs, and the WSOP does have many events with huge field sizes, so winning a bracelet is going to be far from easy. Whether he wins the bet only time will tell, but as a betting man I would bet against it for sure. Nevertheless, good luck Durrrr.

Liv Boeree has just picked up the title in the EPT San Remo. Liv is part of Team UB and her previous best tournament win was a mere $42,000 (small in comparison to the €1.25 million win from San Remo, that is!).

Liv has rapidly become a bit of a celebrity on the poker scene and is someone who is known for her love to party and have a good time, and also for being pretty intelligent (for a bird).

Well done Liv (just joking about that last part btw)

1 € 1,250,000 Liv Boeree
2 € 750,000 Jakob Carlsson
3 € 420,000 Toni Pettersson
4 € 345,000 Michael Piper
5 € 270,000 Alexey Rybin
6 € 210,000 Giuseppe Diep
7 € 150,000 Claudio Piceci
8 € 90,000 Atanas Gueorguiev
9 € 63,500 Claudio Rinaldi
10 € 63,500 Dmitry Stelmak
11 € 50,000 Ramon Demon Cserei
12 € 50,000 Allan Bække
13 € 40,000 Per Albin Linde
14 € 40,000 Erik Tamm
15 € 35,000 Dermot Blain
16 € 35,000 Mohsen Tayfeh
17 € 30,000 Paul Berende
18 € 30,000 Thang Duc Nguyen

Liv satellited into the event for just $500, so not a bad return on investment.

Sadly Liv’s parents couldnt make it to watch the final due to the travel chaos caused by the volcano in Iceland. Dont worry Mr and Mrs Boeree, there will no doubt be a next time.

If you fancy trying you luck against Liv, then you can play against her at Ultimate Poker

Ultimate Poker

Has Pokerstars got too much of a stranglehold of the poker tour world? It is certainly open to debate. Pokerstars owns and operates numerous live poker tours such as:

EPT - European Poker Tour
NAPT - North American Poker Tour (including the PCA)
LAPT - Latin America Poker Tour
APPT - Asia Pacific Poker Tour
ANZPT - Australia and New Zealand Poker Tour
IPT - Italian Poker Tour
UKIPT - UK and Ireland Poker Tour
RPT - Russian Poker Tour
CSPT - Czech-Slovak Poker Tour

It is an impressive portfolio for sure. But is it too much? We have seen recently the Full Tilt pros not being allowed to play in the NAPT because it is basically heavily promoting the Pokerstars brand.

I would tend to disagree though. It isnt like they’ve been buying up existing poker tours and taking them over. They are new tours, providing some great tournaments for poker players. Their immediate success is a product of the power and pockets of the Pokerstars brand. They have generated field sizes that any fledging tour could only dream of. If some of the major competing brands stop their players playing it is both unfortunate but also fully understandable. On the flip side I doubt Pokerstars will be allowing their main guys to play in any Full Tilt live tours either.

The saving grace to all this is that more well run and reliable live tournaments is a good thing for the average well-rolled poker player, and that the ultimate of all poker tours the WSOP remains unaffected, largely independant and the utlimate unifying tour for every player. In many sports and skill games such as Boxing, Darts, Chess etc there have been major splits at the top basically creating more than 1 world title. Thankfully with Poker this situation doesnt exist and long may that continue

If you are interested in qualifying for any of the above poker tours then signup with a $600 deposit bonus to Pokerstars who have plenty of online satellites available for all the tours

Darvin Moon, a likeable lumberjack and WSOP Main Event final tablist lost out to Joe Cada in the Heads-up battle to be crowned world champion.

Moon, who has refused many endorsement and martketing deals is fully commited not to let the $5 million winnings change his lifestyle. He is going to go back to his job chopping trees, and his wife has been told she cant have a new lawn trimmer, as the old one is just fine.

Perhaps the sites and the poker industry in general are happier to have Cada as the winner. At least there will be some marketing miles in him. Joe Cada became the youngest Main Event champion ever, surpassing Peter Eastgate’s record of last year. He won $8.5 million and the much coverted WSOP ME Bracelet. He has been signed up by PokerStars.

yes my friends, you did indeed hear it here first, at the hands of super fast speed typer speedyfold.

Two players from the WSOP 2009 Main Event table (November Niners) have also made it to the final table of the WSOP Europe Main Event (WSOPE ME Niners). Sick Sick Sick. When you run good you run good! wow.

The November Nine men in question are James Akenhead (of Hitsquad fame) and Antoine Saout (a baguette munching, garlic chewing man from a medium sized town somewhere in northern Europe)

When I called up my pal at a local bookermakers and enquired on some odds of this sort of thing, he said he havent got a clue. After further prompting he/we agreed on 850,000-1. Wow again. Epic? For sure

over and out, Speedyfold (fastest blogger in town)

Every poker player on the planet must at some point in their career pay a visit to the gambling mecca of Las Vegas, Nevada

Las Vegas is truely unique. It is like no other city on earth. Out in the desert rises up some of the most fantastic and elaborate buildings you could ever imagine. A visual bombardment of extravagance and more entertainment than you can shake a stick at.

Here is a map of the strip to give you a general idea of getting around and where some of the most major hotels and resorts are located. Enjoy your trip

If you are looking for one particular time to go, then around June time each year is WSOP season. Although the action is very much 365 days a year, so you’ll always find plenty of games going on whenever you choose to go.

It is a difficult task to negociate 6494 poker players, but if anyone can then Phil Ivey surly can. He is still going strong with just 19 players left. The final table is almost in touching distance. Lets hope Phil can make it. He’s already picked up 2 bracelets this series, so it’s proving to be an excellent WSOP year for Phil, who is one of a very few people ever to get 3 bracelets in one series (in 2002).

Another biggish name is also still alive in the tourney, that being Jeff Shulman. So, a slightly smaller cheer for Jeff too