Even though the Main Event of the 2008 World Series of Poker just played down to the final nine, the action is just beginning on ESPN. The cable network will begin airing several tournaments from the 2008 WSOP every Tuesday night, leading up to the broadcast of the Main Event final table on November 11th. Read more »
GigaMedia Limited (Nasdaq: GIGM) announced today that the World Series of Poker, sponsored by GigaMedia's Everest Poker, has successfully completed the first portion of the main event and will begin airing this week on ESPN. The broadcasts will ultimately reach in excess of 300 million households globally. Read more »
In a House Financial Services Committee hearing on June 25th, the topic was HR 5767, which would have blocked the regulations of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) from becoming a reality. Congressman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) led the opposition to the bill. Bachus centered his arguments not on the merits of the UIGEA or even on whether the law could ever actually be enforced. Instead, Bachus took the moral road, focusing on the deleterious effects of gambling on our nation's youth. Read more »
Tiffany Michelle's battle against PokerNews rages on. The controversy surrounds the poker player signing a sponsorship agreement with UltimateBet after Jeffrey Lisandro and PokerNews owner Tony G bought her into the $10,000 World Series of Poker Main Event. In the latest development, Tony G responded in his blog. He summed up his portrayal of the arrangement he had with his former reporter: "She is considered to be an official representative of PokerNews, and in all matters of honor and integrity, how can she discard her responsibility to PokerNews and step into a contract with someone else as their official representative?" To find out the answer, PokerNewsDaily spoke directly with Tiffany Michelle to learn her side of the story. Read more »
It was business as usual in the online poker world this past weekend and the action in the major Sunday tournaments was brisk as usual. One week removed from the PokerStars $2 Million Guaranteed as part of the site's 2X program, thousands of poker players flocked to the virtual felts of Stars, Full Tilt Poker, and Party Poker to try and claim their share of life-changing money. Let's check out the action this week as we recap some of the largest weekly guaranteed prize pools offered online. Read more »
Following on the radio interview she gave last week, Tiffany Michelle has issued a thorough rebuttal of Poker News' accusations against her, hoping to clear her name and to put to rest all talk of betrayal and lack of ethics on her part. Read more »
Poker News Daily: How did you get started playing poker? Duke: When I was 16 years-old, my brother went to New York in order to learn how to play chess. He read all of the books and even played on the tournament circuit. There was a Grand Master in New York that he was going to study with. In New York, the games are all connected, so he got involved with people who played backgammon and poker. When he was 18 years-old, he started playing poker. Read more »
The Russ Hamilton saga has been sweeping the online poker world in the last week. Ever since January, UltimateBet has come under fire for the actions of one of its founding fathers, leading many to wonder whether he is the man who is directly responsible for cheating in the top-level games that UB offers. Recently, on a major poker radio show, Barry Greenstein, a PokerStars pro and the owner of three World Series of Poker bracelets, defended Hamilton after paying the former UB owner a visit in Las Vegas. Greenstein met with Hamilton along with his son, Joe Sebok, who is also a heralded poker pro. Read more »
Last week, the World Poker Tour announced that it had signed an agreement with cable network Fox Sports Net to broadcast the seventh season of the wildly-popular poker tournament series. The first five seasons aired (and in the case of Seasons II through V, continue to air) on The Travel Channel. Last year, the WPT entered into negotiations with GSN, the Network for Games, to broadcast the sixth season of the show. GSN abruptly elected not to pick up the exclusive option that the network had on the seventh season of WPT programming, which began last weekend with the Bellagio Cup. This left the future of fellow poker show High Stakes Poker in jeopardy. However, according to Jennifer Minezaki, Director of Public Relations for GSN, the network has opted to pick up the fifth season of High Stakes Poker. Read more »
As if poker players worldwide needed another reason to play on PokerStars, the online poker site is now doubling its new depositor freeroll prize pools. Between now and the end of the month, PokerStars will be running a pair of $2,222 freerolls each and every day. All you have to do is use the bonus code FIRST2X when you sign up and you're automatically qualified. It's all part of the site's 2X promotion, which has been going on during the entire month of July as PokerStars continues to draw attention away from the recently-completed World Series of Poker. Read more »
On Wednesday, word broke in the online poker world that Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced HR 6501, the Investing in our Human Resources Act. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means as well as the Committee on Education and Labor. Two co-sponsors have already signed onto the bill, George Miller (D-CA) and John Larson (D-CT). The Act will provide up to $40 billion in assistance to those in foster care as well as those in declining job markets. McDermott has been unavailable for comment throughout the course of the week after the bill's introduction. However, PokerNewsDaily.com met with Mike DeCesare, the main spokesperson for McDermott, to learn why the Congressman introduced this important piece of legislation. Read more »
Just a few hours after announcing that Fox Sports Net had become its newest television poker, the World Poker Tour doled out $6.5 million, the prize pool for its fourth annual Bellagio Cup. The very first tournament that will air on Fox Sports Net as part of the new Season VII television package, the Bellagio Cup has been dominated by online poker stars in recent years. Mike Watson took home $1.67 million for the win in the Bellagio Cup IV, outlasting poker pro David Benyamine heads up. John "The Razor" Phan was also at the final table. Read more »
Poker rooms open, slot machines are rejected, and legislation goes every which way – here is a brief overview of the poker and iGaming news in Europe. Read more »
Barry Greenstein is a unique and cherished member of the poker community. Not only is he the only poker player to have won at least 3 WSOP bracelets and 3 WPT events, he's the only player to give all of the money won from those 3 WSOP victories and 3 WPT victories to charity. For more than a decade, Greenstein aka "Robin Hood of Poker" has been donating every penny of his tournament winnings to children's charities. That would mean that Barry has given away about $8 million. Read more »
Poker News Daily: When you first started playing poker, did you have any aspirations of it becoming anything more than a recreational game? Laso: Definitely not. During my freshman year in college, I started moving up in levels a bit. During my sophomore year, I started taking it more seriously, so I dropped out of school. When I first started playing poker, I was a sit and go player. Then, I started playing tournaments. Then, I went on to cash games and got up in the higher limits. I met Annette Obrestad and she started teaching me how to play tournaments. Read more »
The World Poker Tour announced on Thursday that it's packing up its bags and heading to Fox Sports Net after a one-year stint on GSN, the Network for Games. Last month, GSN elected not to pick up its option for exclusive rights to the seventh season of the WPT, prompting a last-minute effort by the California-based poker tour to seek out a new television partner. The latest news came as the Bellagio Cup, which is the first tournament that will be aired as part of Season VII, played its final table. PokerNewsDaily spoke to Steve Lipscomb, CEO of the World Poker Tour, and George Greenberg, Executive Vice President of Production and Programming for Fox Sports and Fox Sports Net. Read more »
Phil Ivey was born in California in 1976, but his family moved to New Jersey when he was months old. Growing in a city famous for its gambling, Ivey's family wanted to prevent him from becoming another hustler, so his grandfather famously cheated Phil Ivey while teaching him to play Five-Card Stud at the age of 8. But Ivey was not discouraged, and he was playing for money as early as 16. Read more »
Some players get their fifteen minutes of fame at the WSOP Main Event final table and are never seen from or heard from again. 2007 WSOP Main Event champion Jerry Yang is a good example of that. Read more »
The third largest stack in the 2008 November Nine (the WSOP Final Table) is a young Canadian player with the perfect poker pedigree: Scott Montgomery, born in 1981 to a card-playing family in Perth, Ontario, grew up to study mathematics at the University of Waterloo (like other poker legends such as Bill Chen.) Read more »
Young Danish pro Peter Eastgate could make history at this year's WSOP – at 22 years old, he could beat Phil Hellmuth's record as the youngest player to win the Main Event (Hellmuth was 24 at the time.) Eastgate looks every bit as young as he is, and a definite advantage of all the publicity stemming from the Final Table is that he probably will not be carded as often when entering a casino. Read more »
Kelly Kim will enter the November 9 WSOP Main Event Final Table as a significant short stack with 2,620,000 in chips, about 8,000,000 less than the next shortest stack. Read more »
Ivan Demidov is the latest in a series of Russian natives finding incredible success at the WSOP. Last year's WSOP saw Russian pro Alexander Kravchenko win the first bracelet in Russian history to go along with 6 other cashes, while this year saw Nikolay Evdakov obliterate the previous single WSOP record of 8 cashes by making 10 cashes himself. Read more »
Dennis Phillips was a truck driver. At 53 years old, the St. Louis native has worked his way up from behind the steering wheel to behind a desk and now serves as an account manager for a trucking company. Read more »
Darus Suharto could be a blast from the past: the former accountant based out of Toronto, Canada gained entry to the WSOP Main Event by first winning an $80 satellite on Poker Stars. He parlayed that victory into another Poker Stars satellite victory; a $640 tournament for a Main Event package. Accountant, satellite entry into the WSOP Main Event paid for by Poker Stars – this could be easily mistaken for Chris Moneymaker's pre-Main Event victory resume. Read more »
David Rheem is a successful tournament pro based out of Miami, FL. His trademark sunglasses and hooded sweatshirt disguise an extremely talented up and coming player. Read more »
