As another week sends us hurtling towards our inevitable doom, it’s time to bring you up to speed with the narratives that have spewed forth from the soap opera that is high stakes poker.
We begin with live tournament poker, and there is only one place for high stakes poker players to be this week, and that’s the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) in the King’s Casino, Rozvadov, Czech Republic.
The €25,500 No-Limit High Roller was a resounding success with 133-entrants ensuring Leon Tsoukernik surpassed the €1m Guarantee by three-times as much. The final table housed such luminaries as former Triton Poker Series Main Event winners, Mikita Badziakouski and Manig Loeser, and the former One Drop High Roller winner, Dominik Nitsche. But it was the Australian Michael Addamo who banked the €848,702 first-prize after beating Christian Rudolph, heads-up, for his second World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet of the summer, after winning The Marathon in Las Vegas.
Outside of the WSOP, but within the walls of the King’s Casino, and the owner, Leon Tsoukernik, announced three more high rollers this week.
Here they are:
23 October – €25,000 King’s Short Deck Championship
30 October – €100,000 Leon’s High Roller
31 October – €50,000 King’s Short Deck Championship II
As you can tell, one of those is old news, and it wasn’t anywhere near as successful as the event Addamo won.
Only 15-entrants (nine unique, six re-entries) showed an interest in the €25,000 King’s Short Deck Championship, and Mikita Badziakouski beat Ivan Leow, heads-up, to bank the €213,750 first-prize, with Ivan Leow taking €142,500 for his efforts.
From the past to the future, and Phil Hellmuth, Doug Polk and Ryan Fee will be amongst the high rollers attending World Crypto Con (WCC) at the ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas on the final day of October.
The trio will compete in the world’s first blockchain poker tournament. Hellmuth is acting in an emcee role, and both Polk and Fee are present because Coin Central (an online crypto news channel co-founded by the pair) is partnering with WCC.
Other celebrities/poker players scheduled to compete are the 1998 WSOP Main Event winner, Scotty Nguyen, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, and former Disney star and crypto entrepreneur Brock Pierce.
Live Cash Games: Bobby’s Room on PokerGo; Baldwin and Co Hit WSOPE
Moving swiftly on to the live cash games, and this week Poker Central announced that Bobby’s Room would be migrating to PokerGo for the week. The Godfather themed Poker After Dark (PAD) show would move away from its traditional No-Limit Hold’em offering by showcasing the $1,500/$3,000 Mixed Game that often takes place in the Bellagio. Bryn Kenney, Gus Hansen, Brian Rast, Scott Seiver and Daniel “Jungleman” Cates were a few of the names scheduled to take part.
Interestingly this week, Dan Smith took to Twitter to list his most ‘fun’ players to compete with when playing live tournaments and the Jungleman was top of that list. I am sure he is just as much of a blast playing live cash games if he can keep awake long enough that is.
HSMTT Players Ranked by how fun it is for me to play with them
1. @junglemandan
2. @steveodwyer
3. @npetrang
4. @Mustacchione
5. @BrynKenney— Dan Smith (@DanSmithHolla) October 26, 2018
The cast of Bobby’s Room may be moving to the ARIA this week, but the man they named the gaff after is not.
Bobby Baldwin is amongst a host of high rollers currently playing in some pretty hefty Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) games in the King’s Casino, Rozvadov during the WSOPE.
The game of choice seems to be €1/2/4k PLO.
As you can see in this snap, joining Baldwin are the likes of Leon Tsoukernik, Ben Lamb, Matt Kirk, Tony G, and Rob Yong.
Little 1/2/4K € PLO. And, as I move all in we stop to take a photograph. Beautiful room here. @PokerroomKings @LeonKingsCasino pic.twitter.com/pLbctNOXtD
— Ben Lamb (@BenbaLamb) October 25, 2018
Listen or Watch: Negreanu on Jon Taffer, and Luckychewy on YouTube
Neither Daniel Negreanu or Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger are at ARIA or King’s Casino, but if you are missing them both you’re in luck.
Negreanu appeared on Jon Taffer’s podcast this week where he talked about his beginning in the game, the need to treat poker as a business, and much more.
And LuckyChewy popped up on his YouTube Channel to share his thoughts on Compassion, Love, Freedom.
Out And About
Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi is on his way to Australia. The four-time WSOP bracelet winner and two-time World Poker Tour (WPT) Champion is in Queensland with the former WSOP Main Event champion, Joe Hachem.
The pair will light up the Australian Poker Open Grand Final with a Masterclass for the fans, before competing in a Best of Three Heads-Up Exhibition match with $5k on the line.
And Dan Smith is taking a mini-sabbatical from the high stakes poker tables by taking up a spot of snowboarding in Japan. Smith wants to learn some basic conversational Japanese ahead of his trip, so if you have any tips, send him a tweet to @DanSmithHolla.
Charity: Smith & Loeser Shine
Sticking with Smith for a few sentences longer and the man who once raised $4.3m for effective charities (with a little help from the Daily Fantasy Sports stars the Crowley Brothers), was firing a few more bucks to charity this week. Smith chose to send $2,000 to the Lineage Project, a non-profit introducing mindfulness programs to the incarcerated, homeless and vulnerable youth.
Check them out, here.
http://www.lineageproject.org/
And the former Triton Poker Series Montenegro Main Event winner, Manig Loeser, was also in a charitable mood this week. It turns out that the German star donated €3,000 to a man who lives in the middle of nowhere so he can take care of over 450 stray dogs.
The location in Serbia was chosen because it was cheap enough and remote enough that it could house so many dogs but doesn’t possess running water or electricity, and with temperatures dropping to 25 below that’s a problem. Loser’s €3,000 donation helped the dog-carers install a solar panel to power a water pump.
Check out the story, right here.
The Best of the Rest
With the $20m Guarantee Online MILLIONS scheduled to take place in a month’s time, partypoker has drafted in a little help to promote the event prompting speculation of potential sponsorship deals in the offing.
Jason and Natasha Mercier ran a competition on Twitter where players had to guess how many nappies Jason had changed in 2018. The answer was a measly 11, and eight people won an online satellite into the big one, including Ismael Bojang.
The other high roller parading partypoker promotions online is Sorel Mizzi. No nappies, just an ad.
Will the Merciers and Mizzi be joining partypoker?
Finally, if you are out of work, and feel you have what it takes to front a Twitch show, then head to Bill Perkins’ Twitter feed. The high stakes star is currently searching for a host for his Thirst Lounge Twitch Channel, and the gig looks better than this one, that’s for sure. The winner gets a staking deal, use of his private yacht for streaming, use of his house in St.Kitts for the same purpose and housing.
And that’s this week’s Pinnacle.