WSoP-E | Poker From The Rail

Big Money Sunday and the World Series of Poker Europe

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

I promised a fun weekend in the poker world and it delivered. Between the World Series of Poker Europe, the regular Big Money Sunday games, and some other tiny gathering of online poker players, there was plenty of opportunities to see something interesting.

First up across the pond was the start of the WSOP Europe Main Event and the eventual restart of the Highroller Heads Up match between Gus Hansen and Jim Collopy. It’s probably quite obvious from the picture above that Hansen was able to defeat Collopy after an insanely long pause in play. Hansen collected £288,409 for his victory but more importantly was able to put on his first career WSOP bracelet.

In Main Event action, they played down to their final table 9 earlier today with Full Tilt’s Roland de Wolfe sitting right in the middle of the pack. There was tremendous anticipation of a possible showdown between Phil Ivey and Viktor Blom with all the money on the line but it was not to happen. Ivey was one of the early victims and was quickly followed by the man rumored to be “Isildur1″. Greg “FBT” Mueller and Barny Boatman were the other Full Tilt pros who began the day with a final table shot but came up short.

Final table action can be followed on Tuesday with a 5-hour delay on ESPN3.com for many viewers in the U.S. Here are your chip counts:

1 – Dan Fleyshman – 1,946,000
2 – Ronald Lee – 1,899,000
3 – Danny Steinberg – 1,520,000
4 – Roland de Wolfe – 1,377,000
5 – James Bord – 1,331,000
6 – Brian Powell – 842,000
7 – Fabrizio Baldassari – 677,000
8 – Nicolas Levi – 428,000
9 – Marc Inizan – 349,000

Online action presented one of our big names making the $750,000 final table. David “The Dragon” Pham* was in the mix throughout the day with a top stack heading to the final nine but was unable to finish better than 6th. The end came with another of those fun chop deals which found 2nd place finisher “randomcliche” collecting $10,000 more than winner “Eleon222″ and one of the two 6 digit payoffs of the day.

* – not a real dragon

One of the few top online pros to jump out to get my attention was Mohsin “chicagocards1″ Charania who managed a deep run in the $200,000 and just missed a Sunday Brawl final table. Mario “Pwnasaurus” Silvestri also jumped back into the fray with a runner up finish in the $200,000. As the year begins to wind down, it’s just about time to keep an eye on our friends over at Bluff Magazine and their 2010 Online Player of the Year (here’s a hint, you won’t see my ANYWHERE on that table).

You can look for our first post highlighting this year’s November Nine later in the week and the Big Money Sunday results are after the jump.

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Tags: AlCantHang, Big Money Sunday, Bloggers on the Rail, Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, WSoP-E

Read more | Comments (3) | September 27th, 2010 Play Online Poker at Full Tilt Poker

Poker News for Saturday, September 25th

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

There is never a dull moment around the poker world and this week was no different. I suppose right now the only “dull” place in poker would be in Las Vegas since most of top players have run away to the east, top worldly destinations like London, Paris, and Atlantic City. That last one is questionable but there were definitely some top players gathered at the Borgata for latest WPT tournament and the Empire Casino in London to wrap up the World Series of Poker Europe.

The Borgata has been on the cutting edge the last few years with their stop on the World Poker Tour with some lower buyin Main Events as well as thumbing their nose at many “suggestions”. This time around they lowered the buyin to $3,500 to go along with a $2,000,000 guarantee and smashed the WPT record for participants when 1,042 were among those to put the money down. There were plenty of big names in the field including a few WSOP Main Event winners but it was a WSOP-C champion, Dwyte Pilgrim, who made the biggest splash.

The World Series of Poker Europe has made it through Day 2 and Full Tilt is right in the mix. You can find out below who’s alive and who needs to make a move.

1. The 2010 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event is underway with some huge names including Phil Ivey and someone rumored to be “Isildur1″.

2. The “Highroller” WSOP-E Heads Up event final match was suspended between Gus Hansen and Jim Collopy Thursday morning at 3am and they have yet to resume play.

3. Dwyte Pilgrim, master of the small buyin circuit events, finally wins his first major televised tournament.

4. The Hard Rock is suing the Hard Rock.

5. Tom Dwan’s Full Tilt commercial is a crowd favorite, our friends at PokerNews made a funny spoof of it.

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Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, WSoP-E

Read more | Comments (7) | September 25th, 2010 Play Online Poker at Full Tilt Poker

Barry Shulman wins 2009 WSOP-E Main Event

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

The 2009 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event final table was just about as stacked as you could ask. Granted it would have been nice to see Texas Dolly or Men “The Master” make it through. Tony Cousineau has a shot and who wouldn’t have loved to see former footie star Teddy Sheringham take a crack at the poker stars for a bracelet. No one would complain about having Liz Lieu amongst the final table players. All that being said, we had two member of the WSOP November Nine (James Akenhead and Antoine Saout), the father of a November Nine’r (Jeff Shulman, born of Barry Shulman), two time WSOP bracelet winner Chris Bjorin, 2009 WSOP bracelet winner Matt Hawrilenko, monster player Jason Mercier, and some casual player named Daniel Negreanu.

My completely biased goal of seeing James Akenhead win the title for Team Full Tilt before turning his attention to the big bracelet in November was shot down in flames early. Akenhead busted in 9th but still accomplished a fantastic feat. That left just Matt Hawrilenko as the last Full Tilt pro standing in the field, and out he goes in 8th place. That left me “watching” a 7 handed table for the WSOPE Main Event title and I could be completely unbiased and professional.

It would be great to see a huge run by the other member of the November Nine, Antoine Saout, for a great story leading into that final table. Saout was out in 7th. Quiet Chris Bjorin came to the table with 2 bracelets and nearly $4,000,000 in career earnings. He doesn’t get a lot of press outside the poker media, this time he walked out the door in 6th place. Markus Ristola was a complete unknown to me, apparently an up and coming Finnish player. Out in 5th, thus shrinking the field to a level easily followed and no more hurried research necessary.

All four remaining players previously won WSOP bracelets. Daniel Negreanu with 4 titles. Jason Mercier, Barry Shulman, and Praz Bansi with one each. It was the long fought battle everyone expected. Last year’s marathon heads up match between John Juanda and Stanislav Alekhin went into the morning, this one came damn near sunrise itself. Mercier dropped in 4th and Bansi followed in 3rd leaving a monster match between Shulman and Kid Poker. There were some incredible swings throughout play and I would just butcher the re-telling of it if I tried. I was following along with the PokerNews.com coverage, you can find all of it here.

In the end Negreanu was unable to overcome a classic suck-resuck when he was just a lonely river card away from the winning the WSOPE Main Event title. That bracelet will now belong to Cardplayer Media mogul Barry Shulman who hopes the luck will rub off on his son Jeff when he begins play with the November Nine.

This was a great run up to the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event final table coming in just a few short weeks. Standby for more coverage of the November Nine as we get closer.

No word yet on whether Barry Shulman will follow his son’s example with the bracelet and “throw it in the garbage”.

Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, James Akenhead, Matt Hawrilenko, WSoP-E