Category: The Pinnacle

Round up of news in the poker world.

The teachers in Los Angeles have been striking for better working conditions; astronauts have been learning that a trip to Mars is likely to increase their risk of cancer – so what’s been going on in the world of the high stakes professional poker player?
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Pinnacle.
We begin our ride on the rainbow of risk with the most famous face in poker: Daniel Negreanu.
What a tough week it’s been for the outspoken hero/anti-hero/villain (delete as you feel fit) as his willingness to share his thoughts with the world came back to bite him in the arse this week.
Three streams of tweets seemed to annoy a large contingent of the poker community.
There were a series of tweets focusing on ‘loaning money’ and taking ‘100% responsibility for your life.’
I’ve loaned money and been stiffed. It’s unfortunate, but I don’t hate those people. I don’t whine about how “unfair” it is, because I know who made the decision to loan the money: me.
No one put a gun to my head.
I’m not at “fault”, but I am responsible.
You are 100% responsible for every decision you make
Sometimes people will lie to you, and YOU will make a bad decision as a result
Sometimes you will make a bad decision under stress.
However it happens, it’s always YOU making the decision. Always. 100%
Negreanu aired his views on what constitutes a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ poker player, amending his ‘bad’ tweet after a tsunami of pain rained down on him.
5 things that make you good for a poker game:
– Lose Money
– Act Quickly
– Friendly/Engaging
– Generous/Give Action
– Positive Attitude
If you are 4 of these things but also win money, you are likely to be a pleasant addition to any poker game.
Here are Negreanu’s views on what traits constitutes a ‘bad’ poker player.
– Winner
– Slow
– Quiet (Also miserable)
– Nit (Cheap/Selfish)
– Hater (Complainer/Negative)
If you match all of these categories then you are probably a real treat t have at parties. 2 out for 5 is still bad.”
And he continued.
“This type of player is a cancer to poker. The Nits are like a disease. Some just don’t know any better, they aren’t bad people, but they do way more damage than good by playing poker.”
In response, Unibet Ambassadors, and Chip Race co-hosts, Dave Lappin & Dara O’Kearney both wrote blog posts airing their disappointment, and criticism of Negreanu’s actions, who in turn wrote a blog post apologising for the tweet, but pointing out that he felt some of the accusatory feedback felt too personal, and likely a smear campaign against him.
And then came the old chestnut courtesy of Sam Greenwood.
“How much damage does receiving a salary to promote a site that stole millions of dollars from its players do?”
Shaun Deeb was more personal than most in his vitriol predicting that Negreanu’s marriage to Amanda Leatherman will only last two years.
“I am a flawed human being as we all are to a certain extent, but I am always striving to be a better version of myself, and digesting feedback both positive and negative to look for areas where I can be better,” Negreanu wrote in his apologetic blog post. “I’d love to see a return to “I hate your ideas” rather than “I hate you.” Would do us all some good.”
You can read Dave Lappin’s thoughts right here (http://rocshot.com/lappin/265-yesterdays-faith/), similarly Dara O’Kearney’s view (http://dokearney.blogspot.com/2019/01/oh-danny-boy.html), Daniel’s reactionary blog post (https://fullcontactpoker.com/the-state-of-poker-2019/), and and my opinion on the debacle (https://calvinayre.com/2019/01/30/poker/negreanu-stars-enemies-musings-bad-faith-things/).
In stark contrast to the abuse Negreanu experienced, a terminally-ill man, Zachary Butler, suffering from the genetic disease Friedreich’s Ataxia, had his wish come true when the Dream Foundation (a non-profit that helps the terminally ill’s dreams come true), organised for him to visit Daniel Negreanu at his home to play poker with him.
To Butler, Negreanu is a star, who makes him laugh.
Pure.
Simple.
Negreanu will also be the emcee at the next Charity Series of Poker (CSOP) event scheduled to take place March 2 at Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa with proceeds going towards St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Jason Koon Joins Triton Poker, Andrew Robl Interview Airs, Badziakouski Joins partypoker; Leonard Wins Triple Crown

Jason Koon agreed to join Triton Poker in an ambassadorial capacity this week. Koon will promote the Triton Super High Roller Series to his buddies in the west, and will personally attend each tour stop throughout 2019.
The first of these stops are in Jeju, South Korea, and this week the Triton crew announced a schedule that includes six events including for the first time a No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck Ante-Only Bounty tournament.


And that schedule:


Although unconfirmed, one person you would imagine will be in Jeju, taking his daily pew in the biggest cash games in the world, will be Andrew Robl, and this week we released our interview with the man during his time at the 2018 Triton Super High Roller Series in Montenegro.
Check it out.


The current Triton SHR Series Main Event champion of the Montenegro and Jeju series is Mikita Badziakouski, and this week, the Belarusian joined partypoker as an ambassador. And finally, partypoker Ambassador, and high stakes star, Patrick Leonard, won an online Triple Crown (he thinks) by taking down the $500 buy-in Blade on the GG Network for $19,663.10, the $1,050 Thursday Thrill on PokerStars for $19,342.01, and the partypoker Sunday High Roller Bounty Hunter for $40,100.15.

Phil Hellmuth Wins a Title; Gets His Hair Done; Plans for Brazil.

Phil Hellmuth was in the news this week for a variety of different reasons. The World Poker Tour (WPT) Raw Deal host took down his first title since winning his 15th World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet in the summer.
Hellmuth defeated 64-entrants to win the $37,248 first prize in the $1,590 No-Limit Heads-up side event at the WPT Borgata Winter Poker Open. Hellmuth beat Joseph Cappello in his final heads-up match.
If you ever wondered what was underneath that ARIA cap, now you know.
Nothing.


Finally, Hellmuth set himself a new bucket list goal of winning “at least four WPT’s”, told himself to “man up”, “attend more WPT’s”, and then declared an intention to do that by “ramping up my poker schedule.” Although it may not be a WPT event, Hellmuth is sticking to his word by appearing in South America for the first time as a guest of partypoker in the MILLIONS South America event scheduled for Rio.
Take ten!

Live Tournament News: Kempe and Lewis Pick Up Wins in Melbourne; Elias Likewise in California

Three high stakes live tournaments to get you up to speed on, and we will start in Melbourne at the Aussie Millions. There seems to have been a resurgence in High Stakes Action at the Crown Casino, after a dismal showing last year.
The AUD 25,000 Challenge attracted 151-entrants, and Rainer Kempe agreed on a heads-up deal with Toby Lewis before winning the flip for the title. Lewis would go on to win the deciding flip in the AUD 50,000 Challenge after overcoming 62-entrants, including Manig Loeser in heads-up action to round off a fantastic few days for the man from the UK.
Here are the podium places.
$25k Final Table Results
1. Rainer Kempe – $595,055*
2. Toby Lewis – $566,074*
3. Chino Rheem – $300,067
4. Guillaume Nolet – $221,789
5. Gautam Dhingra – $156,557
6. Luke Marsh – $110,894
7. Jack Salter – $84,802
*Denotes a heads-up deal
50K Final Table Results
1. Toby Lewis – $588,999*
2. Manig Loeser – $556,017*
3. Thomas Muehloecker – $296,856
4. Dominik Nitsche – $233,244
5. Bjorn Li – $169,632
6. Tobias Ziegler – $148,428
7. Michael Zhang – $127,224
*Denotes a heads-up deal
The WPT Gardens Poker Championships also held a $25,000 event, but with people jetting between the Bahamas and Melbourne it didn’t pull in the numbers the organisers hoped. Darren Elias defeated 11-entrants, including Chance Kornuth, heads-up, to win the $192,500 first prize.
Finally, Dan Smith beat the seven-time US Chess Champion, Alex Shabalov, in a PRO Chess League match, showing he has many arrows in that quiver of his.
And that’s this week’s Pinnacle.

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I’m listening to William Shatner on Spotify.
What’s going on?
William Shatner?
He’s banging on about mountains in the air, and the need to get it together man. I would have thought a man like Shatner would have been on the scrapheap by now. What versatility.
TJ Hooker.
James T. Kirk.
Singer.
I need serenity.
I need peace.
It hasn’t happened yet.
Well, let’s see if I can bang out the week’s top stories from the world of the High Rollers before it does.
Online Poker News: Record-Breaking Online MILLIONS; Greenwood Doing His Bollocks; Talal Shakerchi Making Sunday Million Final Table
I don’t know how much air to put into a tyre. I don’t understand when the oil needs topping up. Temperature means nothing to me.
But I know this.
partypoker made history this week.
The online poker behemoth hosted the wealthiest online poker tournament since the days of the Allosaurus, when 4,367-entrants created a $21,385,000 prize pool, easily beating the $20m guarantee that many (including me and Shatner) thought they had no chance of achieving.
Four people had their siblings hoping for a handsome handout.
Manuel Ruivo won the world-record prize of $2,329,944 after cutting an ICM deal with Pim de Goede that saw the Dutchman become only the fourth player in history to win a $2m+ prize, collecting $2,309,995.
And check this out.
The Slovenian, Scarmak3r, parlayed a $5 online satellite win into a $1,364,688 windfall.
The dream is still alive.
Pedro Marques was the fourth player to bank a seven-figure score = $1,091,750.
And there was another record, but one Sam Greenwood likely didn’t want.


So that’s how they make these imperious guarantees!
partypoker didn’t reserve all big money for the partypoker tournament tables. Sam Trickett and Rob Yong had a good week, collecting $300k+ each from a $200/$400 Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) game that included the likes of Matt Kirk. Trickett used the money to buy himself a nice new shirt in preparation for handing Team USA their first Mosconi Cup win since 2009.


Moving from partypoker to PokerStars, and Talal Shakerchi, finished sixth in the $215 buy-in Sunday Million, showing his love for the game. The Global Poker Index (GPI) World #1, Alex Foxen, also had a good week picking up his third PokerStars High Roller Club title. Fellow high rollers, Joao Vieira, Ivan Luca and Alex Papazian also picked up PokerStars High Roller Club titles.
Live Poker News: SHRB Draw; Million Dollar Cash Game; WPT Garden and WSOP Sydney HRs
 
Super High Roller Bowl
The organisers of the Super High Roller Bowl V (SHRB) had a brain fart this week. The live lottery to determine the first 24-picks should have gone ahead on Nov 27, but Poker Central cancelled it without telling any of the players.


The lottery did happen, albeit late, and 34-names came out of the hat, not 24.
Here they are:
1. Justin Bonomo
2. Daniel Negreanu
3. Fedor Holz
4. David Peters
5. Dan Smith
6. Bryn Kenney
7. Phil Hellmuth
8. Jason Koon
9. Jake Schindler
10. Brian Rast
11. Mikita Badziakouski
12. Isaac Haxton
13. Christoph Vogelsang
14. Stephen Chidwick
15. Cary Katz
16. Rainer Kempe
17. Dominik Nitsche
18. Adrian Mateos
19. Nick Petrangelo
20. Igor Kurganov
21. Steffen Sontheimer
22. Sean Winter
23. Koray Aldemir
24. Ben Tollerene
25. Sam Soverel
26. Alex Foxen
27. Dan Cates
28. Ben Yu
29. Talal Shakerchi
30. Bill Klein
31. Matthias Eibinger
32. Ali Imsirovic
33. Seth Davies
34. Chris Kruk
That leaves 14-spaces left.
The SHRB V takes place December 17, 18 & 19.
One player who is not on that list is Patrik Antonius, and this week the fabulous looking Finn was in India where he guested at Deltin Corporation’s 10th-anniversary celebrations aboard the Deltin Casino in Goa. Antonius finished runner-up to Justin Bonomo in the inaugural Super High Roller Bowl China earlier this year, earning $3.1m.
In other high rolling live tournament news the World Poker Tour (WPT) announced a $25k buy-in event as part of the WPT Gardens Festival 16 January, and the World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) at The Star in Sydney has an AUD 20,000 buy-in event penned in for 12th/13th December.
From tournaments to cash games and the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles has announced a million dollar cash game. The game is $100/$200 No-Limit Hold’em with a $100k Minimum buy-in scheduled for ten hours of action Friday, December 14 – Garrett Adelstein and Nick Vertucci feature.
And Ben Lamb seems to have created a new game.
Short-Deck is so last week.


Lamb joined Justin Bonomo, and a whole host of degens as Short-Deck, Medium-Deck, Call-It-What-You-Want-Deck appeared on Poker After Dark for the first time this week.
Thor Hansen Passes; Smith Charity Drive; Bathroom Bet Update
The Norwegian legend Thor Hansen finally lost his battle with cancer this week, but boy, did he put up a fight. Six years ago, doctors gave Hansen three months to live after diagnosing him with cancer, and yet Hansen was still riffling chips at the WPT Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open in Hollywood, Florida last month. Tributes poured in from all over the poker globe, but I particularly like this one from Mike Sexton.


Rich Alati’s father (also Richard) has told the poker media that the $100k Bathroom Bet is more to do with the personal challenge than the money. Cash game grinder, Rory Young bet Alati $100k that he couldn’t stay in a darkened bathroom without human contact or any external stimuli for 30-days, and although his father is ‘concerned’ about the bet, you sense he feels confident that Alati junior will get the job done.
Finally, Dan Smith launched his fifth annual charity drive. This year, Smith has labelled his philanthropic effort DoubleUpDrive, and the plan is for Smith and his team to match donations up to a ceiling of $1,140,000.
If you want to make a difference in the world, then donate to one of Smith’s charities, and send your receipt to receipts@doubleupdrive.com.
And that’s this week’s Pinnacle.

Stop licking those envelopes. Christmas can wait. Put down that cheap wine. Listen up. It’s time to find out what the high stakes poker players have been up to this week.
It’s time for The Pinnacle.
We begin with a new record.
partypoker successfully breached the $20m guarantee slapped onto the wrapping paper covering the $5,300 buy-in MILLIONS Online event. All told, 4,367 entrants created a total prize pool of $21,835,000, and leading the pack going into Day 2 is the high roller and partypoker ambassador, Philipp Gruissem with 26,865,379 chips.
Gruissem has earned more than $3.6m playing online multi-table tournaments (MTTs), so expect him to run deep, if not win the thing. If he does, it will rank as his Jolly Green Giant of wins as the first prize is $2.5m and not even the man with the best tash in the business has won money like that before.
Here are the other high rollers who have made it through to Day 2 (that I know of).
68th: Fedor Holz, Team partypoker: 11,946,929
305th: Sam Trickett, Team partypoker: 5,576,388
505th: Dzmitry Urbanovich, Team partypoker: 2,432,447
270th: Viktor “Isildur1” Blom: 6,303,392
285th: Chance “ChanceSeeYou” Kornuth: 6,006,067
425th: Talal “raidalot” Shakerchi: 3,600,564
You see the name of Sam Trickett in 305th place, well the lad from the UK has had a good week. Trickett and Dusk till Dawn (DTD) owner, Rob Yong, both pulled $300k+ off the $100/$200 and $200/$400 Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) tables at partypoker this week. At his peak, Matt “SwordfishAA” Kirk sat with more than $600k in front of him.
They may have begun with the goal to become the End Boss of live tournaments, but they are also demonstrating the power to go head-to-head with PokerStars in the online realm.

Super High Roller Bowl Ruling; Brian Rast Musing

From what is now the Whole Foods Green Nutty Buddy of an online poker tournament to it’s equivalent in the live realm. I am, of course, talking about the Super High Roller Bowl V (SHRB).
Poker Central scheduled the event for May 2019. Then they pulled it back to December 2018, told people to pay a $30,000 deposit by Nov 26, and promised to select the first draft of players via a live lottery on PokerGO on Nov 27.
Well, it’s 4 Dec.
Tick.
Tock.
2017 Poker Master, Steffen Sontheimer, had to ask Twitter if Poker Central had postponed said lottery. ARIA Tournament Director, Paul Campbell, confirmed the rumours were true. The deposit deadline had moved to Dec 3, and the lottery would take place on Dec 4.
I reached out to three players who will be in that live lottery, including Sontheimer, and they all confirmed that nobody from ARIA or Poker Central served notice.
Bad form for a $300,000 buy-in event if you ask me.
The first-ever SHRB took place in 2015. Back then the price point was $500,000, and Brian Rast beat 43-entrants to win the $7,525,000 first prize, and Brian has been battering Twitter this week.
Rast showed that he’s not a fan of nationalism, reposting a blog post he wrote in 2016 entitled Citizen of Earth.
Here are some pieces of gold from that one.
Nationalism has become an intellectual poison, a virus.
The more I age, grow, and travel, the more that this is clear to me: Despite what my passport says, I am not fundamentally an American, but a citizen of the pale blue dot that is Earth.
But in poker, I’ve learned that I am not defined by what I’ve done. Every day that I go play, I forget what I’ve accomplished because that only exists to serve my ego. And serving my ego, while perhaps emotionally satisfying, is but a crutch and will only hold me back. I’m only as good as the next hand that I play. And the same is true of just about everything else you do in life.
The post also included this peach of a video from Carl Sagan.
Check it out.

Birthdays, Books and the Bathroom Bet

It was an excellent week for the three-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, Eli Elezra. Not only did he celebrate his birthday, but his autobiography: Pulling The Trigger, finally shipped to the printers and will be on sale January 2019.
You can buy a copy on presale here:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1880685604/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=cardplayerlif-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1880685604&linkId=66ad04e12f3f8e20f36684da321e2419
Elezra wasn’t the only high stakes poker player enjoying a birthday this week. The former One Drop winner, Antonio Esfandiari, turned 40 and celebrated in his usual imitable style throughout the Las Vegas Strip.
Remember the time that Esfandiari pissed in a bottle underneath a poker table at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), so he could win a bet with Bill Perkins?
Well, this week we learned of an even more insane bet.
High stakes live cash game grinder, Rich Alati, stands to win. $100,000 if he can live in a bathroom for 30-days.
I nearly forgot.
The bathroom will be sealed shut.
There is no light.
No personal possessions except a yoga mat.
No contact with people.
Fellow high stakes live cash grinder, Rory Young, is the man likely to win the $100,000 even money bet.

Doyle, Dan, David and Dandelion Tea

David Peters continued his pursuit of Alex Foxen in the race for the Global Poker Index (GPI), Player of the Year, after defending his $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em crown at the Seminole Hard Rock Rock ‘n’ Roll Open.
Peters topped a field of 95-entrants to win the top prize of $143,159, 12-months after conquering a field of 61-entrants to bank the $104,309 first prize.
Peters later told the press that he wore the same sweatshirt during both tournaments. Maybe poker isn’t bringing in enough bacon to pay the bills? If so, then I have just the job for him.


Last year, Fedor Holz kindly contributed $250,000 to Dan Smith’s fourth Charity Drive, and this week, the man in the ten-gallon hat released details of his fifth Charity Drive where he will match any donations to the tune of $1.4m. Once again, effective altruism is at the heart of his decisions.
Learn more here.

CHARITY DRIVE KICK OFF


And nobody wears a ten-gallon hat better than the next man.
Doyle Brunson believes that the host of the Waking Up Podcast, Sam Harris, is an idiot after Gus Hansen tweeted that the famous atheist suggested you could walk him blindfold into a library and he would pick out a book with more wisdom on how to live your life than the bible.
And I bet that’s precisely how Brunson felt when in the days before giant corporations turned a stretch of the Las Vegas desert into The Strip, he turned down the opportunity to buy a prime piece of land for $60,000 because he lost a big bet on the Dallas Cowboys.
And that is this week’s Pinnacle.

The lawn looks like a group of moles have held their annual mole manicure convention. The sofa is covered in dirt. My daughter’s toys float amongst the hairs in the dog bowl.
Barbara Woodhouse, I am not.
Crufts is never on this television.
One of the downsides of sharing Airbnb accommodation with strangers, is now and then, they bring an animal into the home, and carnage ensues.
I have a two-year-old daughter who loves dogs. Unfortunately, dogs don’t love two-year-olds. There was a time in our dim and distant past when dogs would have enjoyed the same hierarchial status as the forerunners of humanity. They would have feasted on our harmonicas and used our flesh as icing on their cake.
These days, man is in charge, and the dog knows this, but when a kid walks into the room, the dog sees an opportunity to elevate its status. Watch the way a dog imbues shame as a toddler pets it, pulls it’s ears or shoves a chopstick up its arse.
It’s all about status folks.
Dogs, like us humans, exist to maintain the status quo of our status or to increase it, and this week, the people who live in the top tier of poker’s hierarchy were turning the Bahamas into a dog-eat-dog world.

The partypoker Caribbean Poker Party

cpp
It’s going to be a defining few months for partypoker. The Caribbean Poker Party (CPP) moved to the Baha Mar Resort in the Bahamas, and as part of the festivities, they guaranteed $10m in the $25,500 MILLIONS World, and the same quota in the $5,300 Main Event. With the $20m GTD Online MILLIONS around the corner, it’s safe to say that the online giants are taking a shot.
And like a blind man taking a leak, they have missed the mark.
The $25,500 MILLIONS World attracted 394-entrants, and on any other given day, you have to say that’s a monumental achievement, but it fell short of the guarantee by $150,000.
The winner was Roger Teska, a man who spends more time playing rock, paper, scissors that live tournament poker, but squeezed that limited experience into a few halcyon days that netted him $2m after beating Steve O’Dwyer, heads-up.
O’Dwyer was one of three people who banked million dollar scores. It’s been an incredible year for O’Dwyer, who has now earned more than $6m playing live tournaments in 2018, and more than a million in the online realm (where he currently ranks #10 in the PocketFives World Rankings).
The other player to win a million bucks was the regally named Charles La Boissoniere. It’s the first time the Canadian has ever cashed in a $25k, but it’s not the first time he has made a deep run in a partypoker LIVE event after finishing fifth in the MILLIONS North America event for close to half a million dollars back in April.
Here are the final table results:

Roger Teska Wins $25,500 MILLIONS World

Roger Teska
Final Table Results
1. Roger Teska – $2,000,000
2. Steve O’Dwyer – $1,300,000
3. Charles La Boissoniere – $1,000,000
4. Paul Tedeschi – $700,000
5. Andras Nemeth – $550,000
6. Ben Tollerene – $450,000
7. Rainer Kempe – $350,000
8. Niall Farrell – $300,000
9. Joao Vieira – $250,000
Notable High Rollers who went as deep as stones at the bottom of a pond in this one include Leon Tsoukernik (14th), Isaac Haxton (17th), Nick Petrangelo (23rd), Benjamin Pollak (36th) and Timothy Adams (39th).

Giuseppe Iadisernia Wins The $50,000 High Roller

Giuseppe Iadisernia
The named etched into the $50,000 High Roller trophy was another we are not familiar with in high stakes circles.
Giuseppe Iadisernia defeated a stacked field of 54-entrants to take down the $845,000 first prize. The word on the street is the Venezuelan made his money punting on the gee-gees.
Here are the final table results:
Final Table Results
1. Giuseppe Iadisernia – $845,000
2. Sean Winter – $550,000
3. Ali Imsirovic – $400,000
4. Talal Shakerchi – $299,000
5. Sorel Mizzi – $225,000
6. Markus Prinz – $175,000
7. Benjamin Pollak – $125,000
Steffen Sontheimer wins the $250k Super High Roller
The biggest buy-in event of the series attracted 34-entrants, and the 2017 Poker Masters winner, Steffen Sontheimer, earned a personal best $3,685,000 score, after beating Sean Winter, heads-up.
Winter added $2,430,000 to the $550,000 he crammed into his piggy bank after losing to Iadisernia in the $50,000, and two of 2018’s biggest high stakes stars, David Peters and Mikita Badziakouski also ended up on the podium.
ITM Results
1. Steffen Sontheimer – $3,685,000
2. Sean Winter – $2,430,000
3. David Peters – $1,420,000
4. Mikita Badziakouski – $710,000

Filipe Oliveira wins the Main Event

The $10m GTD Main Event failed to hit the guarantee by $925k, leaving partypoker with more than a million bucks in overlays. Three players earned a million dollars. None of the high roller fraternity sneaked into the running, although these guys deserve a silver star for effort.
Vladimir Troyanovskiy (56th), Brian Hastings (69th), Jason Koon (74th), Chris Kruk (77th), Alex Foxen (82nd), Matt Berkey (90th), Chance Kornuth (109th), Aymon Hata (116th), Ryan Riess (122nd), Sam Soverel (125th), Stephen Chidwick (126th), Lucas Greenwood (142nd), Dzmitry Urbanovich (165th), Samuel Panzica (175th) and Peter Jetten (176th).
Here are the final table results:
Final Table Results
1. Filipe Oliveira – $1,500,000
2. Craig Mason – $1,200,000
3. Marc MacDonnell – $1,000,000
4. Pascal Hartmann – $800,000
5. Konstantin Maslak – $600,000
6. Diogo Veiga – $400,000
7. Alex Turyansky – $300,000
8. Joe Kuether – $218,500

Roberto Romanello wins the $10k High Roller

The Main Event may have been a few high rollers shy, but the same cannot be said of the $10k High Roller.
The event attracted 196-entrants, almost doubling the $1m guarantee, and Wales’ All-Time Live Tournament Money Earner, Roberto Romanello, topped a stacked field to bank the $450,000 first prize.
Look at the wizards who made the rostrum in this one.
Final Table Results
1. Roberto Romanello – $450,000
2. Mustapha Kanit – $271,200
3. Daniel Dvoress – $210,000
4. Justin Bonomo – $160,000
5. Garik Tamasian – $125,000
6. Guillaume Diaz – $100,000
7. Joao Simao – $80,000
8. Adrian Mateos – $65,000
And these wand waving wonder men and women weren’t far behind.
Benjamin Pollak (9th), Joseph Cheong (11th), Steve O’Dwyer (12th), Orpen Kisacikoglu (15th), Thomas Mülöcker (16th), Lauren Roberts (17th), Mike Watson (18th), Jonathan Duhamel (20th), Isaac Haxton (21st) and Sam Soverel (22nd).

The $1,100 Finale and $1,650 H.O.R.S.E

Two more events to catch up on.
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, Chris Bolek, won the $1,100 Finale and High Rollers who featured prominently in that event were Aymon Hata (5th), Rainer Kempe (8th), David Peters (10th), Fedor Holz (36th),
The WSOP bracelet winner, Joseph Couden, won the H.O.R.S.E, and two players who have each spent considerable time on the high stakes cash game tables of the past, Mike Sexton (2nd) and Bruno Fitoussi (3rd), also made money.

The Best of the Rest

In the summer of 2017, Patrick Leonard won three high rollers, back-to-back in the Bellagio and ARIA for a combined sum of then declared a live tournament hiatus so he could concentrate on his online game, partypoker responsibilities and leadership at bitB Staking.
Leonard fans are in luck.
It seems live tournament poker is on his 2019 schedule, and that will mean more sightings of him at the high stakes tables.


I remember trying to interview David Peters after he had won the $1.1m first prize in the HKD 500,000 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Max event at the Triton Poker Series in Jeju.
The man could barely speak.
Intercontinental travel is one of the impediments to success for high rollers, and this week Daniel Negreanu pointed people towards this article from Harvard Business Review as A ‘Fast’ Solution to Jet Lag.
Check it out.
https://hbr.org/2009/05/a-fast-solution-to-jet-lag.html
As well as helping people overcome jetlag, Kid Poker is also assisting disadvantaged children. This week the PokerStars ambassador announced plans to host the St. Jude Against All Odds Poker Tournament in March, with all proceeds going towards the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.
If you want to support Daniel, then follow the blue line.
https://www.stjude.org/get-involved/find-an-event/dinners-and-galas/against-all-odds.html
Philipp Gruissem is one of the busiest high rollers in the media at the moment. The partypoker ambassador featured in another interview this week, this time spilling the beans on his penchant for rapping (unless they misspelt crapping), his role at partypoker, and much more.
Check it out.

Philipp Gruissem: “It has been an amazing journey“


Sorel Mizzi has had a good month. The Canadian high roller who finished third in the World Poker Tour (WPT) Main Event in Montreal finished fifth in the $50,000 Super High Roller at the CPP, popped up on Twitter with a savvy idea for live tournament organisers to turn unused time bank buttons into big blinds to promote faster play.


What do you think of Sorel’s idea?
And that’s this week’s Pinnacle.

cpp
The Bahamas is going to get a tad busy in November.
Tiger Woods, the Phil Ivey of golf, is in town, leading 16 of the world’s best 23 players in The Hero World Challenge, and partypoker LIVE has set up camp in the Baha Mar Resort, Nassau, for their annual Caribbean Poker Party (CPP).
The first two flights of the $25,500 MILLIONS World are in the books. The event created as a direct response by PokerStars to build a $25,000 buy-in, PokerStars Player’s No-Limit Hold’em Championship, pulled in 77-entrants on Day 1A, and 205-entrants on Day 1B, for a combined 282-runners. Late registration is open for the first four levels of Day 2, and as they are more than 100-players shy of the $10m Guarantee, one suspects the CPP begins with a healthy dose of free money.
Here are the top five chip stacks going into Day 2.
1. Geraldo Cesar – 4,315,000
2. Chance Kornuth – 3,840,000
3. Calvin Anderson – 3,700,000
4. Isaac Haxton – 3,660,000
5. Andreas Eiler – 3,645,000
Also on the CPP roster is a $50,000 Super High Roller and a $250,000 Super-Duper High Roller.
Two players who made it through to Day 2 of the $25,500 MILLIONS World are Sam Soverel (1,200,000) and David Peters (900,000), and if you have a few bucks to spare, it may be worth a punt if you can find a book on the event.

David Peters

Soverel and Peters were the stars of the ARIA Poker Room’s recent Fall Madness. The series consisted of seven events, three of which had buy-ins of $25k+
Event #1: $10,500 Pot-Limit Omaha (Anthony Alberto – $128,800)
Event #2: $10,500 No-Limit Hold’em (Jared Jaffee – $132,000)
Event #3: $10,500 No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck (Sam Soverel – $81,000)
Event #4: $26,000 No-Limit Hold’em (Stephen Chidwick – $283,500)
Event #5: $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck (Sam Soverel – $102,600)
Event #6: $52,000 No-Limit Hold’em (Matthias Eibinger – $575,000)
Event #7: $103,000 No-Limit Hold’em (David Peters – $1,104,000)
Here are the updated High Roller of the Year Top 5 Spots.
1. Sam Soverel – 1,560
2. David Peters – 1,325
3. Cary Katz – 1,255
4. Justin Bonomo – 1,025
5. Dan Smith – 1,025
Remember, the HR Series only includes tournaments held at ARIA or ARIA’s partner casinos, and the top five will avoid the Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) lottery should they choose to pay the $300,000 buy-in, which I am sure they all will.
Finally, the World Poker Tour (WPT) and partypoker LIVE completed the first joint event of their new four-year deal. WPT Montreal took place at the Playground Poker Club, and despite not having a High Roller in the schedule, several of the mob put up a decent showing – Sorel Mizzi finished third, Mike Leah finished 18th, and that man David Peters was at it again finishing 83rd.

The Best of the Rest
Moving from the live arena to the digital one, and Fedor Holz will stream his involvement in the $5,300 partypoker MILLIONS Online Main Event on Twitch. The $20m GTD event promises to be the most significant ever held online and runs 25 Nov through 5 Dec. Holz is a member of the No-Limit Gaming stream team, a poker/esports streaming team created by the former Triton Poker Series Macau Six-Handed Champion, Stefan Schillhabel.
PokerStars has extended their online High Roller schedule. While the buy-ins might not feature in the $25k+ realm you are used to reading about here; they are the highest buy-ins that you will find week-in-week-out in any online poker room.
Here are the events for Mon, Wed & Sat.
$530, $150k GTD Bounty Builder High Roller
$530, $50k GTD Daily 500
$530, $50k GTD Daily Supersonic
$1,050, $100k GTD Daily Warm Up
$1,050, $100k – $225k Daily Themed $1k
$1,050, $100k Daily Cooldown
On Tue, Thu & Sun there is also a $530 Omania High Roller.
Each Sunday, the Daily Themed $1k turns into a $2,100 Sunday High Roller, the buy-in for the Sunday Cooldown inches north to $2,100, and the Supersonic moves up to $1,050.
In other news, Philipp Gruissem appeared on The Chip Race podcast this week. The two-time WPTAlpha8 winner talked about the effect that ego played during his meteoric rise to fame, drugs, and effective altruism.
Check it out here.

Dan Smith is donating 5% of anything that he makes in the $25,000 MILLION World and $250,000 Super-Duper High Roller at the partypoker CPP. The recent WPT DeepStacks Joberg winner Maria Ho immediately declared she would join him.
One area Smith might want to take a look at is smoking. There are 9 million deaths directly contributed to smoking, and Smith recently asked on Twitter if there were any two packs a day poker players? It turns out that Doyle Brunson used to eat two packs a day for breakfast.


Dietrich Fast is one of the players who recently took advantage of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) by removing his content from Hendon Mob. Poker stat fanatics were undoubtedly angry about the WPT Champions’ decision, including an old guy from Scotland.


Had that old man ran over Daniel Negreanu then we are pretty confident he would have blocked him on Twitter.


And we end with a song.
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday Erik Seidel. Happy birthday to you.
And that’s this week’s Pinnacle.

073584
Welcome to another round-up of all the news, views and gossip from the world of high stakes poker, and we will begin with the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE).
The 2018 WSOPE ended with Jack Sinclair taking down the €10,300 buy-in Main Event for €1,122,239, and although Sinclair doesn’t spend most of his time hanging out in the bowels of the high stakes universe, he did win the €25,000 No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) High Roller at the 2017 partypoker LIVE German Poker Championships for €250,000, and came 16/132 in the €111,111 NLHE One Drop High Roller at the 2017 WSOPE, so the British pro is likely to dabble when the bankroll suits, and it suits.
Regular high rollers that went deep in this one included the former WSOP Main Event Champ Ryan Riess (4th), the former Triton Poker Series Champion, Koray Aldemir (7th), the Russian powerhouse Vladimir Troyanovskiy (11th), PokerStars ambassador Igor Kurganov (22nd), and the Triton Poker High Roller Sochi winner Aymon Hata (24th).
The most profitable high roller throughout the WSOPE was Martin Kabrhel. The #1 All-Time Czech Live Tournament Money Earner, won two gold rings in the World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) side of things before beating 95-entrants to bank the €2,624,340 first prize in the €100,000 NLHE Super High Roller, and then finished second to Ivan Leow in the €100,000 NLHE LEON’s High Roller for another €773,457 (the second event wasn’t a bracelet event).
LEON’s High Roller attracted 23-entrants, and Leow banked €1,251,455. Leow also finished second to Mikita Badziakouski in the €25,000 NLHE King’s Short Deck Championship. The planned €50,000 Short-Deck Championship didn’t run.
Here are the final table results from those two €100k events.
 
€100k LEON’s High Roller

  1. Ivan Leow – €1,251,455
  2. Martin Kabrhel – €773,457
  3. Michael Soyza – €521,471
  4. Tony G – €351,579
  5. Dominik Nitsche – €237,038

 
€100k Bracelet Event

  1. Martin Kabrhel – €2,624,340
  2. David Peters – €1,621,960
  3. Julian Thomas – €1,116,308
  4. Mikita Badziakouski – €789,612
  5. Dominik Nitsche – €574,466
  6. Jan Schwippert – €430,217
  7. Adrian Mateos – €331,943
  8. Michael Addamo – €264,110

 
Not everyone was thrilled with Martin Kabrhel’s promising run. It seems Daniel Negreanu feels the Czech star is a little noxious. During an appearance on Dat Poker Podcast, (http://datpodcast.libsyn.com/) around the 40-min mark, Negreanu had this to say about Kabrhel.
“If I ran a tournament series, I would seriously consider banning Martin not because he is cheating but because he is disruptive to the players in several ways,” said Negreanu. “His tanking, his poor behaviour and incessant whining and complaining and just being a disruptive force. Every time Martin is at the table, there are problems.

“I would let him play my series first. Then I would say to him, you are on the shortest leash ever, if you are UTG and take 30 seconds to make any fucking decision, you are out. I am going to take your chips and throw you out of the tournament. If you say anything past four words to a Tournament Director, you’re out. He is the number one worst experience player to play with in all of poker, today. We can’t let behaviour like that destroy the game.”
Ouch.
Rounding off the news from the WSOP, and Shaun Deeb took down the Player of the Year award. He is the 14th player to win the prize (Negreanu won it twice), and every single one of them has had experience playing high stakes poker.
Here are the final results of what turned out to be a one-horse race.
 

  1. Shaun Deeb – 5,073.92 pts
  2. Ben Yu – 3,746.04
  3. Joe Cada – 3,531.86
  4. John Hennigan – 3,499.91
  5. Scott Bohlman – 3,155.88
  6. Michael Addamo – 3,028.78
  7. Paul Volpe – 2,859.76
  8. Anthony Zinno – 2,593.34
  9. Eric Baldwin – 2,516.30
  10. Romain Lewis – 2,460.14

 
Super High Roller Bowl Changes
I won’t go into great detail here, because I covered the full story in my article Super High Roller Bowl: December Move, Lottery, Aria Picks, Hr Leaderboard Selections – Have They Got This Right? (https://paulphuapoker.com/super-high-roller-bowl-december-move-lottery-aria-picks-hr-leaderboard-selections-got-right/), but here are the cliffs.
The ARIA and Poker Central have shifted the 2019 SHRB from May to December of this year, so they can use it as a way of putting the cherry on the top of the High Roller of the Year Series.
In moving the SHRB back to December, it means that the Triple Crown of Poker Masters, US Poker Open, and SHRB are all contained within the calendar year.
The other change the SHRB has made is giving the players who finish in the top five positions in the High Roller of the Year leaderboard a spot in the SHRB should they choose to pay the $300,000 needed to compete.
This means those five will avoid the lottery. Yes, there will still be a lottery, this time choosing 25-entrants, and the ARIA will handpick the final 18 positions.
 
partypoker High Roller News
partypoker’s high rollers were in the news, this week.
I was fortunate enough to spend an hour talking to Jason Koon at the Triton Poker Series in Montenegro, where he put a lot of his success down to his relationship with his girlfriend Bianca Armstrong, and this week, she became his fiancee.


 

 
 
 
View this post on Instagram

Biancée my fiancée.

A post shared by Jason Koon (@jasonkoon) on


Sam Trickett knows how Koon feels after getting hitched in 2015, and this week the former One Drop runner-up, talked to the UK daily rag The Mirror about his high stakes jinks, including talking about players competing in pots worth $50m during his time in Macau. You can check out the nitty-gritty, right here (https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other-sports/inside-life-high-stakes-poker-13515378).
Finally, Kristen Bicknell isn’t someone that we consider a regular high roller, but hopefully, that will change after the Global Poker Index (GPI) #1 Female Poker Player competed in her first €100,000 at the WSOPE. Bicknell didn’t make it past Day 1, but speaking to PokerNews, she confirmed that the experience didn’t feel that much different than playing a €25k. Let’s hope the experience has left her wanting more because we could desperately do with some female players in these games.
 
The Best of the Rest
Doug Polk doesn’t seem to be doing a great job of quitting poker. This week, the YouTube star was a guest on Joe Ingram’s Poker Life Podcast where he talked about poker’s corporate shills, suggesting that for most people, a PokerStars contract is the Holy Grail and that being the person shouting from the rafters is not the way to go about landing that sort of lucrative gig.
Check it out, right here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qnS5UpIjJA
Patrik Antonius continued his recent decision to spend more time in the limelight by making a surprise appearance at the €500 buy-in Battle of Malta this week, and the ARIA is running a full schedule of events that include several $10k and $15k events. The ARIA is also considering hosting a nightly $140 or $240 Short-Deck event, in a bid to boost interest in the format that became a global superstar thanks to the Triton Poker Series.
Here is the schedule:
10/30 – $10K PLO
10/31 – $15K PLO
11/1 – $10K NLH
11/2 – $10K Short Deck
11/3 – $25K NLH
11/4 – $10K Short Deck
11/5 – $50K NLH
11/6 – $100K NLH (2-day event)
 
And that’s this week’s Pinnacle.
 

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.


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.

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.


View this post on Instagram

Just before cards in the air. Very first hand( no word of a lie) get it all in JJ<AK lol fastest match in history #apt

A post shared by Joe Hachem (@josephhachemofficial) on


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.

84d9d031f2
The Pinnacle is our weekly round-up of all things related to high stakes poker catching my attention in the past week, and I begin by firing Cupid’s arrow straight into your heart.
It’s been an excellent week for poker love.
Alex Foxen overtook Stephen Chidwick at the top of the Global Poker Index (GPI) World Rankings, in a move that saw Chidwick’s strive to equal Fedor Holz’s 30-week straight record fall to pieces. The New York native also took the lead in the 2018 GPI Player of the Year (POY) standings.
What does this have to do with love?
For the first time in the GPI’s history poker has a couple of lovers sitting on top of the world with Foxen’s squeeze, Kristen Bicknell leading the GPI Female Poker Player Rankings.
Foxen and Bicknell isn’t the only couple smashing things up this week. Maria Ho and Rainer Kempe also bagged a couple of honours at the WPT DeepStacks Event in Johannesburg.
Ho defeated 387-entrants on her way to a $69,166 payday in the ZAR 13,500 (USD 940) buy-in WPTDeepStacks Main Event at the Emperors Palace Casino, and
joining her for the ride was her beau, Rainer Kempe. The German star beat 15-entrants to win the ZAR 200,000 (USD 14,000) No-Limit Hold’em Super High Roller for $81,270, and then beat 59-entrants to win the $28,358 first prize in a ZAR 20,000  (USD 1,400) No-Limit Hold’em event.
It seems there’s more to love than taking the digging of fingernails as you watch The Haunting of Hill House.
 
bitB Staking Concerns; Hellmuth Skips WSOP; Deeb Dominates
Patrick Leonard might be on a high roller live tournament hiatus, but he’s still extremely active in the online poker circuit and on social media, and this week one of his ripples turned into a tsunami after posting the following image on Twitter and Instagram.


Leonard is the co-founder of bitB Staking, and the photo is from bitB HQ in Budapest, Hungary. After Leonard posted the image, a section of the poker community reacted angrily suggesting a high proba
bility of ghosting, collusion, and all manner of infractions that would see your driving license revoked.
Leonard posted a rebuttal trying to alleviate the community’s fears, explaining how competitive the bitB Staking group is internally, and reminding everyone that staking houses like this have been around since Adam pointed the finger at Eve.
Onto the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE), and one high roller (sometimes) missing from the lineup is Phil Hellmuth. The 15-time WSOP bracelet holder and the only winner of WSOP Main Events in both Europe and North America skipped the event – the first time he has missed a WSOP bracelet series since 1989.
What is Hellmuth doing instead?
This week, he will be representing PokerVR in the world’s first Virtual Reality (VR) Multi-Table Tournament.
Here is virtual Phil.


Sticking with the WSOPE front, and at the time of writing none of the high roller fraternity has secured a bracelet, but Shaun Deeb is currently running away with the Player of the Year title, cashing in two of the first three events, although it helps that none of his competition made the trip.

Lambs, Elephants and Pigs
Ben Lamb doesn’t often air his thoughts on Twitter, and this week he was reminded why. Lamb posted a video of a hunter in Nambia killing an elephant.
“I never post basically any opinion on anything here. But, trophy hunting is really sickening.  Intelligent creatures just minding their own business and these jackasses open fire.  I don’t understand it. Sad.”
Daniel Negreanu was one of the first to respond, reminding Lamb that pigs are intelligent creatures just minding their own business. A challenge for the purveyors of cognitive dissonance, for sure.
Finally, Nick Petrangelo has released an online training course on Doug Polk’s Upswing Poker. Winning Poker Tournaments retails at $999, and given that Petrangelo is a beast with close to $16m in live tournament earnings on his resume its work smashing up that piggy bank to invest (think twice about posting on Twitter about the damage you did to your piggy bank).
And that’s this week’s Pinnacle.