On today’s Daily Deal, a well-known pro takes down a twenty-one hundred player tournament at the World Series of Poker and poker players are allegedly taking performance-enhancing drugs. All this and more on the Friday edition of the Daily Deal!
Hello, I’m Sean Gibson and welcome to the Daily Deal by Poker News Daily.
In Event number five of the two thousand ten World Series of Poker, British pro Praz Bansi took down his second bracelet after conquering the field of a fifteen-hundred dollar buy-in No Limit Hold’em event. Bansi collected $515,000 and bested Canada’s Vincent Jacques heads-up.
Despite the large field, the top twenty of Event number five was stacked with poker talent. Bansi finished third in last year’s World Series of Poker Europe Main Event, which aired on ESPN. PocketFives.com ranked player David Sands, who plays online as “Doc Sands” took eighth for $49,000 and WSOP Circuit veteran Dwyte Pilgrim landed in twentieth.
Elsewhere at the Rio on Thursday, Joshua Tieman defeated Neil Channing to take down the five thousand dollar No Limit Hold’em Shootout. The event attracted three-hundred fifty-eight players and online poker pro Brent “bhanks11” Hanks took sixth for seventy-two thousand dollars. Three of the six players at the final table hailed from the United Kingdom.
You’ve all heard about the controversy with Roger Clemens. We’ve all painfully had to watch the drama with Mark McGwire. Well, according to an article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, researchers from … Nova Southeastern University – which by the way I am guessing you have never EVER heard of – found that poker players frequently ingest performance-enhancing drugs. Twenty-eight percent of the nearly two-hundred poker players that were surveyed – which apparently constitutes a proper sample size of the amount of people player poker worldwide – said they had taken at least one prescription med. Seventy-three percent of those players said that the drug in question was to help them concentrate.
The survey revealed that poker players admitted to taking tranquilizers, painkillers, and even drugs that are traditionally used to treat ADD. Dietary supplements were common, as were caffeine, energy drinks, marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol.
SO It’s great to know that if I show up with my caffeine-rich starbucks at a poker table I’ll be put into the same class of person that shows up hopped up on coke and quay-ludes.
Finally, if you’re looking for a last-minute seat into the WSOP Main Event, UB.com will be holding a twenty-five seat guarantee this Sunday at four o’clock P-M Eastern Time. The qualifier will cost five-hundred and thirty dollars to get into. UB.com and Absolute Poker, continue to accept players from the United States so all are welcome to try to get in to the world’s biggest poker event.
Thanks for joining me on The Daily Deal. Be sure to check in with us every Monday through Friday for a new episode as well as exclusive interviews with your favorite poker pros. This is Sean Gibson, wishing you a great poker weekend!