WPT Barcelona Lead for Sullivan

In the World Poker Tour’s Spanish Championship in Barcelona, the anticipated larger field turned up for Day1B, with 122 players registered to take the total number of entrants to 216. It was sure that some fascinating poker action would be witnessed in Barcelona.

It was always going to be a struggle to match last year’s bumper entry of 326, with the World Series of Poker (WSOP) kicking off next Tuesday in Las Vegas and the latest eruption of Iceland’s most active volcano, which has covered much of continental Europe by a massive ash cloud made things all the more difficult.

However, although there is still a rather handy prize pool of €691,200 up for grabs at the Gran Casino in the Catalonian capital city, 120 fewer competitors amounts to a seriously significant drop of 37%. This was a bit of disappointment because of fewer heads.

At the WPT Spanish Championship, youngster Eric Sullivan has taken a chip lead at the Gran Casino in Barcelona. He took control of the World Poker Tour’s (WPT’s) Spanish Championship, although due to recent travel disruption in Europe, the field remained relatively small.

With the likes of Daniel Morgan, Barbara Martinez, Martin Jacobson, Szymon Pieszczoch and Morten Mortensen and all returning with heavy stacks, Sullivan will have stiff competition staying the boss of the room for the duration of the contest.

With the min-cash set at €4,500, a total of 27 players will make the money. With the winner walking away with €206,000 and he will also get to win a seat in the 2012 WPT Championship worth $25,000. The top nine finishers will all bag a five-figure score.

From Tuesday, a total of 62 players joined and the 54 left standing, so there will be 116 players taking their seats for day two.

Patrik Antonius Cracks $193k Win

In another hectic weekend on Full Tilt Poker, Patrik Antonius returned to his endearing ways. He managed to crack his challengers for $193k, although he played only 273 hands.

Once again, it was Antonius who got the better of his fellow Team Full Tilt Pro. Laying a series of $300/$600 heads-up PLO Hi-Lo matches against the Great Dane, the Finn resumed his opposition with Gus Hansen.

The biggest pot of the night was won by Antonius when he flopped a straight flush against XWINK, who had the adversity of flopping an ace-high flush. Antonius raked in a $102k monster pot and the money went in on the turn. XWINK would recover most of his losses later on, despite that hand.

Hansen’s weekend was no different as he suffered heavily last week. A total of $324 in negative earnings was accumulated by the Great Dane. He was never able to find his rhythm and get his money in at the right times, although he played 804 hands against XWINK, Antonius and ronnyr37617.

Hansen is now only in the black by $2.5 million. He was positive by over $4 million for the year in April. Antonius is speedily approaching his position of winningest online poker player of the year.

Another big winner was Kagome Kagome, who furthered Gus Hansen’s decline with a $180,000 win over the Great Dane and moved from super-high-stakes heads-up Limit Hold ‘em to the Draw games.

This weekend, Kagome and Patrik Antonius were not the only big winners as the lesser-known ZIsenamnn dominated PokerStars to win $189k. gavz101 (+$92k), slipped away (+$83k) and Seb86 (+$71k) were some of the other players to stack their way into the winning column.

Von Kriegenbergh Wins WPT Seminole Hard Rock Showdown

In World Poker Tour history, one of the longest final tables rapped up on Tuesday morning at the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida. Taylor Von Kriegenbergh was the winner of the introductory Seminole Hard Rock Showdown. For topping a field of 433 players, he took home $1,122,340, a WPT bracelet, and a seat in the $25,000 WPT Championship. With this big win constituting his fourth cash of the year, he has had a very strong spring to start 2011.

For the win, Von Kriegenbergh amassed $1,122,340, dwarfing his career finest score of $140k earned with a fourth-place finish in The Big Event.

Of the Big Event main event in March, Von Kriegenbergh made the final table (third-place finish) and he followed that up with 18th-place cash in the North American Poker Tour Mohegan Sun main event in April. The next day, at the NAPT Mohegan Sun Bounty Shootout, he made his second final table and cashed in fifth place.

He cashed in the both the NAPT Mohegan Sun main event and Bounty Shootout and came off a big start to 2011 where he final tabled The Big Event at the Bicycle Casino in L.A. With close to twice the chips of anyone near him, he came into the final table.

With three-time WPT finalist Curt Kohlberg and Floridian Justin Zaki, he fell out of the lead in a lengthy three-handed battle. In a sensational hand to double up, he cracked Zaki’s aces and came back to win it all heads-up against the veteran Kohlberg.

The final table standings were – Taylor Von Kriegenbergh – $1,122,340, Curt Kohlberg – $586,109, Justin Zaki – $415,680, Abbey Daniels – $286,819, Allen Bari – $211,997 and Tommy Vedes – $166,272.

Kemal Ferri Wins Peru Main Event

The PokerStars Latin American Poker Tour Peru $2,500 no-limit hold’em main event generated a total prize pool worth $774,000 and it had attracted 350 players. With prize money, the top 48 players had walked away along with some distinguished players like Andre Akkari ($3,870), Humberto Brenes ($3,870) and Leo Fernandez (3,870).

Daniel Ospina was eliminated next in seventh place by Kemal Ferri, after Lopez kicked off the eliminations. With 1.8 million, that knockout gave Ferri the chip lead and he held onto that lead until Raul Pino took out Michael Barham in fourth place.

Against Raul Pino, the only slip-up he made was in a pot. Ferri became belligerent, once play moved to fourhanded with the elimination of Hodali. By out-flipping Michel Barham, he productively tallied the last three eliminations.

Ferri continued and thumped out the final three players to secure his first ever LAPT title and a $207,400 first-place prize, even though he entered the final table in the bottom half of the final eight. Karlo Lopez could do no better than an eighth-place finish.

$207,400 was Ferri’s winning share. Although it is a great score, he did not say how much he will return to the high roller who put him into the tournament and how much of that he will keep.

A stop in Argentina is next up for the LAPT. On June 1-5, the$2300+$200 LAPT Rosario main event will go off.

Gus Hansen – Prevalent Winner with $4,097,298 over Whole Year

Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, 26 year-old US poker pro has made $8,244,053 playing online cash games at Full Tilt ever since 2007. The New York City resident did not get off to the greatest start in 2011, in spite of his desirable results. On his blog, back in early February he had acknowledged to being in the middle of the major downswing of his career of $1.7 million.

Most of Phil Galfond’s losses came at 2-7 triple draw and by putting things into perspective; he made up his mind to learn by jumping in at the high-stakes deep-end of $1,500/$3,000.

On both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, the midweek was jam-packed of online action. With $692,355 in profit, “OMGClayAiken” Galfond came out as the major winner of the midweek, far ahead of the closest competition. On the annual profit list, he is currently ranked 13th.

With total profits of $1,511,085 across 32,289 hands, Gus Hansen made a healthy profit himself and he is second in March’s winners list.

In the third is Phil Ivey. He became the major winner on PokerStars with profits of $816,659 and won $901,730. He is followed by “gavz101″.

Scott “URnotINdanger2″ Palmer was the biggest loser of the month. He lost $990,207. It was quite a substandard month for Palmer. Tom “durrrr” Dwan dropped $907,390 and he follows Palmer. Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom ended his month in an $888,202 deficit.

Seen over the whole year, with profits of $4,097,298, Gus Hansen continues to be the prevalent winner of all followed by Daniel “jungleman12″ Cates at $1,959,267 while “gavz101″ is third with $1,800,648.

XWINK Crashes Hard at Negreanu’s SuperStar Showdown

XWINK lastly crashed in the past few days. He was a newly recognized high stakes online player who turned $4,000 into over $2 million. XWINK lost well over $1 million over the course of the weekend, with the online poker community was anticipating a downswing.

At the hands of Full Tilt’s finest, came the devastating defeat, including NoParasan, Dan “Jungleman12 Cates, Cole South and Phil Ivey.

Over the course of 3,211 hands, the actual sum of $1.2 million was lost, mainly consisting of $500 / $1,000 PLO and $300 / $600 PLO. Cole South was the most triumphant and detrimental challenger as he took $514k. Jungleman12 ($253k), NoParasan ($159k) and Ivey, who swindled XWINK for over $266k were the one in the list of beneficiaries.

At one point XWINK was going to cash out $500k of his profits, which suggests that for now, he is essentially finished with high stakes online poker.

Daniel “Kid Poker” Negreanu session on PokerStars almost lost in the shuffle of last night’s intense XWINK battle. For $214k, Sauce123 completely dictated the Team PokerStars Pro as Negreanu’s recent online education continues to come at a high price. This year, he is now down over $360k. As LooneyGerbil (-$194k), UMD Tennis (-$160k) and kriga (-$131k) all fell into the red, Negreanu was not the only player to have some problems last night.

In the past 24 hours, it is no surprise that “XWINK” has swinged quite a lot and ultimately losing almost $930,000. He has the bankroll to have a few more shots at the nosebleed games, as he is still up over $600,000 this month.

BCLC PlayNow.com Launched Online Poker Game

The online casino web site operated by the British Columbia Lottery Commission (BCLC), PlayNow.com, has launched its own online poker games. The site will also allow players from Quebec to participate, which is originally constructed for use by British Columbia residents.

Players registered with PlayNow.com are now able to play poker in both cash games and tournaments in eight varieties of poker, including Texas Holdem and Canadian stud. Canadian Stud plays the same as five-card stud, except that four-card flushes and four-card straights are also winning hands.

BCLC is a regional Crown Corporation offering socially responsible gambling. The aim of the Corporation is to generate income that benefits the British Columbian public. The PlayNow web site has earned an estimated $34 million dollars since last year for the British Columbia Lottery Corporation making up only one percent of the corporations total revenues. With the addition of new gambling offerings that percentage is expected to increase to about four percent by 2014. Listed as Casino, Bingo, Sports, Lottery and Games, a large variety of online games is available on the PlayNow web site.

The Canadian Poker Network features the state of the art poker software developed by GTECH G2 for its European networks. Designed to handle over 10,000 concurrent players, the system has been thoroughly tested to the highest standards and has received TST and BC Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch approval. The Canadian Poker Network is open only to residents of the provinces of Quebec and British Columbia, Canada. To aid the responsible gamer PlayNow.com uses a number of tools. These tools include GameSense, and free BetStopper software available to block underage use of the site.

France Suspends PokerStars Home Games

In a statement released by PokerStars on its site gave details on why its French home games have been suspended. The statement said that for an unknown amount of time, the French regulatory authority of online games, ARJEL, has suspended the games in order to ensure compliance with French law.

To ensure the “safety and comfort of the players”, the decision was made, and for the temporary inconvenience, the online poker site apologized and said that it hopes to provide the service in the very near future. In PokerStars’ existing database, regular games are unaffected, and all home game clubs and their members, history, and statistics will be held.

In the world, France is one of the hardest jurisdictions to set up an online gambling operation due to strict rules governed by the Regulatory Authority of Online Games (ARJEL). In the regulations, recent changes have prompted the Authority to suspend one of the popular activities offered by the Poker Stars website. With new regulations set out by the French government, the temporary shutdown of the Home Games offering is to give ARJEL time to review the games. This would determine as to whether the games program complies with French government’s new regulations.

Within the Home Games function, Poker Star players are allowed to create exclusive “clubs” and then take part in tournaments and other aspects of other the poker games. A club “manager” is allowed by the Home Games function to establish tournament buy-ins, create ring game tables and at the conclusion of the clubs season, track the progress of each player where the player can win prizes and cash.

ARJEL released the first 30 licenses to online gaming companies in June for three areas of gaming, horse racing, sports betting and online poker. PokerStars restricted access to cash game play from French players in late June before receiving a license from ARJEL in early July, after not being included in the first round of licensing. PokerStars.fr has a seven-day average of 2,850 cash game players and a peak of 5,695.

2011 Aussie Millions Main Event – Day 3

On Day 3, the 2011 Aussie Millions Main Event is down to just three tables after 58 players were eliminated. Chris “Moorman1” Moorman sits on top of the chip count leaderboard. The main event registered a field of 721 participants, thereby generating a huge prize pool of € 5.2 million or AUD $ 7,210,000.

With 1,643,000 chips, Moorman finished play and finds himself ahead of local favorites Mark Vos, Cliff Lee and Randy Dorfman. 2010 BLUFF Player of the Year Sorel Mizzi (965,000) and Patrik Antonius (958,000) are also in contention with better than average chip counts. The others who are in contention are James Keys (880,000), Tobias Reinkemeier (561,000), Randy Lew (488,000), David Gorr (455,000), and Manny Stavropoulos (135,000).

Howard Lederer, Carter Phillips, Erick Lindgren and Mike Sowers were all part of the players who busted out of the Main Event. All of them managed cash for their efforts. Just before the money bubble burst, Eugene Katchalov was eliminated and he immediately bought in to the $250,000 Super High Roller event. Both Eugene Katchalov and Van Marcus made their exits empty-handed and the money bubble burst soon after play began. After that, down to the final three six-handed tables, it was a relatively quick march.

To start the Day 2, there remained only 271 survivors. After these three days of competition, Jeff Rossiter owner of 154,900 chips, Eric Lindgren holder of 186,000 chips and the local pro Keefe Oliver having a huge stack of 198,200 chips are the chip leaders of the three Day 1.

At the end of the Day 3, the former-world’s number one ranked online poker player Chris ‘Moorman1’ Moorman led the 2011 Aussie Millions Main Event. Pro Mark Vos is looming as a big chance to add the Aussie Millions Main Event title to his 2006 World Series of Poker bracelet. He has 1,200,000 in chips.

On Friday afternoon, the final 18 players will return to the felt and play six-handed until reaching the final eight players that will make up the official final table.

At 12:30 p.m. local time, Day 4 will begin tomorrow and the final 18 will play down to the final table of seven in this event. Shifting back from the $250,000 super high roller event, the focus will be on the main event for day 4. $250,000 super high roller event had Studio 3 filled with some of the biggest names of poker yesterday.

Poker: Full Tilt Poker Adds Multi-Entry Tournaments

The world’s second largest online poker site, Full Tilt Poker added another innovative feature to its software this week. Multi-Entry Tournaments have been introduced by the poker room known for pioneering Rush Poker and Cashout Tournaments. Multi-Entry Tournaments will allow players to enter the same tournament multiple times.

Of such online poker innovations as Cashout Tournaments, Rush Poker and Matrix Sit-and-Go tables, Full Tilt Poker has been the home. The site announced that they have developed “multi-entry” tournaments in this week, which will allow players play in multiple seats during multi-table online poker tournaments. Up to four times, the new feature allows players to enter a tournament.

At once, the player can choose to play multiple entries or re-enter a tournament if he has been eliminated during the late registration phase. With the excitement of a no-limit Texas Holdem tournament, the system creates a combination of the multi-table play often seen in online cash games.

To prevent collusion between “players”, the system behind the multi-entry tournaments also has the measures. When a tournament table breaks up, the software will merge the two player’s stack into a single larger stack, if a player has to move to a table with another of his entries. If a player has more entries than tables remaining in the tournament, stack merges will also occur.

Full Tilt Red Pros Michael Craig, Aaron Bartley and Ross Boatman participated in the action when the first Multi-Entry Tournament kicked off. The $1 buy-in event reached its maximum of 5,000 entries. For $990, “Storm667” won the tournament. In the upcoming Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) in February, more Multi-Entry Tournaments will be showing up as they gain popularity and the new events will be included.

In adding new features for online poker play, Full Tilt Poker has often been at the cutting edge. Interestingly, combining the two innovations into one event, Multi-Entry Tournaments are available for Rush Poker Tournaments.