At the WPT, Shawn Cunix was the chip leader (2.77m), followed by James Calderaro (2.11m), and Will Failla (1.535m) as the $5,000 tournament reached its final table of six.

Will Failla was the first one to exit. He called by Shawn Cunix with a Jc-10c flush as he moved all-in with Qc-Jd on a 10c-9c-7c flop. Failla collected $54,704 for his 6th place finish as the As and 5d changed nothing.

For a moment, it seemed that Shawn might go wire-to-wire. By sending Failla down to just 1 million chips while increasing his own stack to 3.755 million, Cunix seized a 1.4 million-chip pot against Failla in the early hours. He was up over 4 million by hand 26 of the final table. To reach 4.71 million, he eliminated Failla in 6th place on hand 40, and then crested the 5 million chip mark two hands later. Cunix had more chips than the other four players at the table combined at that point.

When the tournament was down to four players, Cunix grew his stack to around 5.5 million. However, he began to run into trouble once it got to three-handed. In order to take the chip lead, Darren Elias won the first four hands of three-handed play including three directly against Cunix. Cunix was all the way down to 2.395 million at that point (hand 77 of the final table). Calderaro took off eclipsing 5 million at one point; at the moment Cunix made a run to get the lead back for a short time.

James Calderaro had the chip lead, 5.61 million to 3.97 million going into heads-up play. To begin the day, the two chip leaders were now the last two remaining. Even though Calderaro quickly snatched it back and eventually started growing it, taking a lead of more than 3 million at hand 128, a few hands in Cunix took the lead. Cunix just barely inched ahead of his opponent ten hands later as he kept plugging away. There were a couple key hands that led Cunix to victory after he was able to accomplish that. Cunix has also increased his live tournament cashes to $1,222,676 with his victory in Florida.

As the two leaders are right at about 2 million, it is a fairly top-heavy final table. Thomas Beer is just above 1.3 million, while Steve Watts is at about 1.5 million. Under a million chips are the other five players. The largest stack out of those is barely over 800,000.

Andy Black is the one with the 800,000-chip stack. in the 2005 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event, the emotional Black won $1.75 million for a 5th place finish. Many poker fans will remember how he burst into tears in sympathy for Wang when the rest of the table would not join him. Andy had tried to slow down play when Wang, was late to return from a break.

Black placed 2nd in the $3,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event at the Aussie Millions for $91,855 and then 3rd for $556,695 in the Main Event in 2007. Later that year, he final tabled the European Poker Tour (EPT) for $318,640. In early 2008, he came through with a big title win at the PartyPoker Premiere League and $250,000. Andy Black has won $4.38 million in his live tournament career.

An array of big names hit the rail on Day 3 from the 49 players who started the day including Julian Gardner, Freddy Deeb, end of day 2-chip leader Phil Hellmuth and Manig Loeser. Hitting the rail was the unfortunate bubble boy Jim O’Callaghan when David Dean and his A-10, receiving €17,850 for 10th place, beat his A-9.

Included in the final nine is European Poker Tour Snowfest runner-up Kevin Vandersmissen, Samuel Chartier who has more than $1.6 million in lifetime winnings and Irishman Black who is on the hunt for the prestigious title.

In order for the top end of the €1,606,400 prize pool to be awarded, a slightly later start of 2 p.m. sees the final nine return. The final table chip counts are as follows: Ian Simpson 2,007,000; David “Dixie” Dean 1,986,000; Thomas Beer 1,319,000; Kevin Vandersmissen 492,000; Andrew Black 808,000; Philip Magennis 632,000; Samuel Chartier 582,000; Steve Watts (1,519,000) and Jordan Lewis (685,000).

No 1: Pius Heinz

Total Live Tournament Winnings: $8,876,067

In 2011 Pius Heinz went to the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and made the final table in a $1,500 No Limit Hold’em event with 2,713 players and winning $83,286 for his efforts. He then went on to play the $10,000 buy-in main event and he who won the most prestigious title of the year, along with the $8,715,368 first-place prize.

With his current win, he leads to Sebastian Ruthenberg on the German all-time money list by $5-million. Heinz has already won another live tournament in Barcelona since. In early 2012, he made the final table at a side event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. He also won in the famous show “The TV Total Pokernacht”.

No 2: Sebastian Ruthenberg

Total Live Tournament Winnings: $3,457,185

Sebastian Ruthenberg started his live poker career in 2006. He won at the German Poker Open for €50,000. In 2008, he managed to win main event of the European Poker Tour in Barcelona and a bracelet at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Ruthenberg has completely withdrawn from live poker.
No 3: Benjamin Spindler

Total Live Tournament Winnings: $3,134,924

Spindler is feared for the relentless pressure he applies on his opponents. He is also named “Psychobenny” for his hyper-aggressive style. In the fall of 2011, in EPT London main event rocketed Spindler up the German All-Time Money List.

No 4: Moritz Kranich

Total Live Tournament Winnings: $2,905,460

Moritz Kranich celebrated his first cash in a major tournament series in 2009 at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas. Before that, he got his start cashing in smaller tournaments. He won the EPT Deauville in France, the main event for more than €850,000. He won World Poker Tour Bellagio Cup in Las Vegas for $875,150 in 2010.

No 5: Tobias Reinkemeier

Total Live Tournament Winnings: $2,265,427

Tobias Reinkemeier is one of a select group of young players who moved up the stakes in an extraordinarily short amount of time. In 2007, he won a €500 side event at the European Poker Tour stop in Dortmund for €30,500. In 2010, he won the EPT High Roller Event in Monaco for €1 million. He made Partouche Poker main event and significant cashes in Madrid, Barcelona and Melbourne. In December 2011, at the World Poker Tour main event in Prague, he finished in 11th place.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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