Online Poker News Blog

PE Teacher Wins $1 Million Dollars Playing Poker

Grant Levy, 28, won the Asia Pacific Poker Tour at Star City Casino beating 561 players who entered the poker tournament. Levy is a Physical Education teacher from Kingswood who has been playing poker for only 2 1/2 years! He is mainly an online poker player and the APPT tournament was only his 3rd live tournament.

His wife cheered him on during the tournament and after said,”The last few hours of the tournament were torture to watch”. It took about 2 hours after the tournament went heads up but Grant Levy came out victorious and took first place. The tournament was sponsored by Poker Stars and they had players from team poker stars in the tournament including: Chris Moneymaker , Joe Hachem and Greg Raymer.

Source: SMH

2008 WSOP Schedule Announced

Harrah’s has just released the schedule for the 2008 WSOP. The 2008 WSOP will have 55 events and will begin on May 30 and run through July 16th. The World Series of Poker is the largest poker tournament in the world and has been running annually for 39 years.

Harrah’s has announced that they will not be hosting any of the WSOP tables in their casino tent. This was a hot topic in the 2007 WSOP because players were unhappy with the conditions in the WSOP tent. Jeffrey Pollack (WSOP commisioner) was quick to point out in the press release that they heard players concerns and will make sure no tables are played outside a casino.

Check out the recently released 2008 WSOP Schedule. This schedule has been known to change, we will make to sure to keep the page up to date with all the changes or additions to the 2008 WSOP.

The countdown to the 2008 WSOP begins: A little over 6 months!

Chip Reese Passes Away at 56

David “Chip” Reese has passed away at his home in Las Vegas. He was 56 and was a very successful poker player. A frequent player at the high stakes games in Las Vegas and poker tournaments all over the world. He was one of the best live cash game players in the world and played for 30 years.

“I knew him for 35 years, I never saw him get mad or raise his voice,” Brunson said. “He had the most even disposition of anyone I’ve ever met. He’s certainly the best poker player that ever lived.”

Everyone in the poker world is very sad to see him go. He was a class act, everyone that knew him personally had only good things to say about him. Find out what Barry Greinstein had to say about the tragic event that occurred two days ago.

The poker world has lost a outstanding poker player and he will be missed…
Source: Google Ap

Update

Here is an excellent article from a local newspaper on the life of Chip Reese.

Phil Ivey - Ivey Glue Factory at Full Tilt Poker.net

Online poker professional Phil Ivey Played FinddaGrind at the Ivey Glue Factory. This is a special table at Full Tilt Poker and is reserved for Phil Ivey, (Players can sit in and challenge him heads up) the stakes were $2000/$4000 and the poker game played was HORSE.

The average hand at the table was $8k. When I started watching Phil Ivey had $108k and in about 100 hands had $300k! A profit of $200k in about 20 minutes. Phil Ivey was in control the entire game and was able to pull in a lot of high stakes pots. I was unable to watch the entire game so FinddaGrind may have battled back.

Poker a True Sport? WSOP 11th Place

The World Series of Poker was voted the 11th most popular sport in the USA by 12,000 sports fans. This is a huge accomplishment and is very telling on how popular poker has become. I think another factor is the constant airing it gets on ESPN the most popular sports network in the world.

Poker ranked ahead of popular sports such as the Arena Football League, PBA, LPGA and more! The research was done by the marketing company Turnkey Sports & Entertainment.

Source: CNN

Poker Blast in Australian Poker Room

In the Cessnock’s Wentworth Hotel in Australia there was a blast in the poker room from what looks like a bomb. No one was hurt from the explosion but police and bomb experts think that someone may have been trying to blast open a poker machine to try to get money out. This was cited as a very unusual situation and they are still looking into how this could have happened but they were able to find the explosive device that was used.

Source: Daily Telegraph

Gaming Executives Believe Poker Will Become Legal Within 1-2yrs

In a panel discussion at the Global Gaming Expo top executives including CEO of MGM Mirage have said that poker will become legal within 12 months to 2 years. The mainly Las Vegas companies have also stated that they are ready to go if gaming is legalized with software and advanced age verification checks. In 2001, MGM Mirage opened their own online casino in the Isle of Man but soon closed after they couldn’t compete with online casinos that had lest stringent verifications.

There was some disagreement when online casinos would be legalized in the US. It was agreed on by most executives that with poker’s popularity it is only a matter of time before it is legalized. But Casinos are a different story with one executive stating it may be up to 8-10 years before it is fully legalized.

Source: Review Journal 

House Judiciary Meeting on Internet Gambling

The US house judiciary met today and discussed internet gambling. Annie Duke was at the judiciary meeting and was taking on many of the advocates to ban internet gambling. She did a great job arguing her point that the US has legalized gambling in 48 states so it hard for people to claim a moral standpoint when people can walk into a brick and mortar casino in almost every state. Why would internet gambling be any different?

The trend in the meeting was the people against internet gambling were against all gambling in the first place. So it isn’t that internet gambling is worse then any other gambling but it is easier to try to ban then already established offline gaming laws so they are focusing on it.

From what I watched it looked like people are leaning towards Barney Frank’s bill of regulation. I think they are starting to realize that banning internet gambling won’t work and if we regulate there will be a huge flux of money that stays in the US rather then going offshore.

German Court Over-Rules Previous Internet Gambling Ban

A German court has just over-ruled a lower courts decision on whether Bwin could provide gambling to German citizens. They over-ruled the previous ban because of the impossibility of enforcing an online gambling ban. This puts German more in line with the rest of the European Court justice system who have ruled similarly to allow internet gambling. This puts even more pressure on the US as the rest of the world seems to be going ahead with regulating the industry instead of trying to ban it.

Source: The Register 

Bodog.net Life Poker Promotion - One Billionth Hand

Bodog.net is celebrating their poker room dealing its one billionth hand. They have estimated that the hand will be dealt near the end of November and to celebrate they are giving away $50 dollars to 10 poker players everyday from November 5-26th. They will also be giving away $10k to the table that is dealt the 1,000,000,000, $5k for 995,000,000, $4k for 990,000,000, $3k for 985,000,000 and $2k for 980,000,000. Each player sitting at the table will also get $109 in tournament credits. To cap the promotion off they will be giving away $1,000 dollars monthly bankroll for a year to the grand prize drawing winner. There is no better time to be playing at Bodog Life.