Poker News Snippets 1st October 2009

Much of this weeks poker coverage is dominated by the WSOPE Main Event final table reports. The tournament t is proving to be a fantastic demonstration of the skill involved in poker with many top professionals enhancing their reputations and bankrolls further by making it to the final table. To keep you up to date with what else is happening in the poker world here are a few snippets of news filtering through the community this week.

I was reading coverage in the newspapers today that Guy Laliberte, the billionaire Cirque De Soliel founder, has paid $35 million to visit a space station for a few days. He will be using it as a platform to advertise his many philanthropic causes including clean drinking water for all. Laliberte is famous within the poker community for the way he took up high stakes poker in a big way in 2008, challenging the likes of Durrrr, Antonius and Benyamine online in the nose bleed stakes. He is reported to have lost (according to some of the data mining sites) around $28 million last year although some of the data mining sites are reported to be inaccurate. Players like Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan are likely to be disappointed that Laliberte appears to prefer donating to proper charities now rather than their bankrolls.

I reported the Pitbull Saga a few weeks ago and it appears that further disturbing updates are being made public. A poster claiming to be Dave Brenes of Pitbull Gaming posted on 2+2 that he had had his account on that forum taken away by the owners of Pitbull Poker and that the owners were arrested by Costa Rican authorities when removing equipment and computers from the offices of Pitbull Gaming. Although unconfirmed, the website of Pitbull gaming and others on the Flash network are now partially down so it looks like this may be the end of the road for the site. Whilst it is good news that no further players will be exposed to cheating from Pitbull, it is a bad development for the players feeling they were cheated if the website owners look like disappearing in the face of scrutiny. Hopefully positive developments will be made but it certainly does not look good at the moment.

Phil Hellmuth has been mocked by many top professionals for his bizarre entrance into the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event. Regarding as a failed stunt, some of scantily clad models brought to the event by Phil were refused entry into the casino for lack of ID. Doyle Brunson went public with his disdain for Hellmuths performance, saying it detracts from the game of poker. The severe backlash he has received for his publicity stunts put into question whether he will continue this uncomfortable tradition of high profile entrances to the World Series of poker main events.

In his popular poker blog Daniel Negreanu has commented on the increasing toughness of Poker. He starts his entry made today with this quote “Poker just isn’t what it used to be. Not even close. This is the second year in a row where I’ve made the final table here at the WSOPE and last year was the toughest final table I’d ever been at… until this year.” He comments that it is becoming impossible to simply “get lucky” and win an event.

The WSOPE main event has a much smaller field with 334 than the main event proper with over 6000 players, so the frequency of professionals to amateurs will always be higher for the European main event. This makes it more likely that a professional player will make the final table. The buy in is also higher. Rather than being $10,000 it is £10,000 so less amateur players would both travel to London to participate and put up the extra $6000 or so to play. All this could indicate that the WSOPE was simply a tournament with fewer amateurs in it and nothing unusual is occurring. 

Look out for more news snippets next week.

By Malcolm Clarke

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Tags: daniel negreanu, doyle brunson, news snippets, pitbull poker, poker, Poker News, WSOPE