Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

The WSOP is always full of suprises, and this is probably one of the biggest stories ever….

By now, everyone is familiar with Potripper (aka AP’s 7-Million Dollar Super-User), but I bet you didn’t really expect him to be a big story at the WSOP! Well, thanks to some great reporting by our good friend poker-prop, we have since learned that the winner of WSOP Event #11 was non other than Potripper’s (Scott Tom) own father Phil Tom!

Players’ discovered Tom’s true identity after a conversation with him and Full Tilt Poker’s Howard Lederer. Lederer asked him if he was any relation to Absolute Poker’s Scott Tom, to which Phil stupidly replied, “yes, I am his father”. I guess he doesn’t know how hated his son is by the poker community.

The best quotes came from the CardPlayer.com website where it stated an onlooker said:
“[Tom played] absolutely ideal poker” and “his raises and reraises worked so often, it was almost as if he could see everyone’s cards.” Funny enough Cardplayer.com made no mention of the relationship between Phil and Scott.

Scott won the $5,000 no-limit hold’em shootout after winning 3 consecutive sit n gos. Here are the rest of the results from the final table:

1st - Phil Tom - $477,990
2nd - Greg “FTB” Mueller - $298,638
3rd - Leo Wolpert - $187,812
4th - Sirous Jamshidi -$118,440
5th - Tim West - $63,450
6th - Thomas Roupe - $38,070

Time is running out to qualify for the 2008 WSOP, and we have one of the easiest ways to get there. If you sign-up for an account at Bodog Poker today, along with the regular bonuses which can be seen on our Bodog Poker Bonus page, you will get access to our $10 + 1 buy-in tournament where the 2 winners will win a ticket to the Bodog WSOP Main qualifier where 5 people will win WSOP packages. The tickets to that tournament are worth $270, and I only expect a handful of people to join given this such short notice. That means you will probably have a 2 in 5 shot at winning a ticket!!!

Once you create your bodog account, simply send us an email to support [at] bankrollboost.com with your bodog username and we will verify that you signed up through us and send you the password. It is that easy!

The tournament can be found in the lobby with the following details:
Tournament Name: BRB WSOP
Date/Time:  Sunday, June 8th - 1:05pm EST

Good luck!

Two major announcements came from Ultimate Bet this week; they have signed two of the best online poker players: Cliff ‘JohnnyBax’ Josephy and Eric ‘Rizen’ Lynch.  These announcements were most likely done to divert attention from the recent confirmation that insider cheating had occured on the site.

I think the timing of these signings says a lot about these players and really think they have “sold-out” to the poker community by joining up with a site that has been involved with recent insider cheating problems.  This almost says that they do not see this as a problem and are essentially advocating what has happened by putting their names behind them.

Rizen expected the backlash from the poker community and wrote a long blog post about his thoughts on the new relationship.  Unfortunately the one question that was avoided was how much they paid for him to represent a site that has such a black eye in the poker community right now.  Rizen tried to justify the financial aspect of the deal by stating “a significant portion of my proceeds from my relationship with Ultimate Bet will be going towards charity” in his blog.
Many of his readers are not very happy about the signing and have left some of the following comments on his blog:
“I respect your approach…but not the decision. Keep crushing the AP games and repping UB…
I, for one, am going to unsubscribe to your blog now. Not like that matters…but it’s my personal stand I’m taking.” posted by Champ
“You are fueling a cheaters site with fire. So disappointed in you.” posted by Noricha
“BLABLABLA *SORRY BUT I’M A SELLOUT GUYS* BLABLABLA” posted by veertje

JohnnyBax also posted a similar response on 2+2 stating:
“Please understand that I would not sign with UB if I was not confident in current management. My signing with UB is contingent upon a satisfactory resolution of the “superuser” issue. I am hopeful a press release detailing the entire situation goes out shortly, players are reimbursed and satisfied, and UB can move forward and give players what they want.”  He has received a similar welcome to team UB from the poker community.

I am sure this will have an impact on sales at PokerXFactor (an online training site run by Johnnybax where Rizen is also a guest pro).  It is amazing what the power of the dollar can do to some people.

There were many pros in the field, but it was amateur poker player Grant Hinkle that managed to outlast the field of 3,929 players to win the 2008 WSOP $1500 NL Holdem Event.

Hinkle had never played a major event before this and never expected to actually win the thing.

“My goal coming in was just go as deep as I could,” Hinkle said. “After Day One, I was top-10 in chips and once I got there I started to think — how much money can I make and how far can I really go? I kept going and winning pots and I eventually got here.”

27-year-old Hinkle (a businessman from Kansas City, MO) didn’t intend on playing any other events, but after this huge cash he said he is gonna stick around and play the main event.

The tournament was the largest preliminary tournament and fourth longest tournament (53.5 hours) in WSOP history.

Here are the top 10 finishers in this event, plus their payouts:

1) Grant Hinkle - $831,462.00
2) James Akenhead - $520,219.00
3) Chris Ferguson - $388,287.00
4) Theo Tran - $327,148.00
5) Mike Ngo - $268,154.00
6) Aaron Coulthard - $211,841.00
7) Melvin Jones - $158,211.00
David Bach - $117,987.00
9) Joe Rutledge - $83,127.00
10) Jeff Wiedenhoeft - $52,021.00

There is still time left to qualify for the main event. This weekend, pokerstars (the largest online poker site) will be running a tournament where they will be putting up 200 packages for the main event (worth around $12,500), with only a $350 buy-in!

Also check out our 2008 WSOP Satellites page for other ways to there there!

While we wait for some more of the WSOP events to finish, I thought I would write a review of my friends’ site that is completely dedicated to PKR Poker and 3D Poker in general.

His site launched about 2 years ago and since then he has been offering some of the best bonus codes for PKR Poker.  All their codes range from $600 to $2000 which are the highest availble offers for PKR.

One of the best features on the site is his detailed review of PKR Poker.  From screenshots to deposit options, he has everything you could need to know before making your first deposit at PKR.

So, if you want to learn more about PKR, I recommend you click one of the links above and check him out!

The first WSOP braclet of 2008 was just awarded minutes ago to Canadian poker player and Full Tilt Poker pro, Nenad Medic.

The 3 day long $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em World Championship brought out some of the biggest names in poker and a many familiar faces at the final table. This is Medic’s first ever WSOP bracelet but he is no stranger to cashing in many big tournaments. Medic won the 2006 WPT Championship for over $1.7 Million Dollars.

Medic beat out 352 players to take the prestegious title and WSOP bracelet.

“It was a tough field, the whole tournament, all the way to the final table…I always had a decent stack. The ace-king versus kings — I didn’t feel too good about that, but it worked out,” he said to ESPN’s Norman Chad in his post-victory interview.

Finishing 2nd was Andy Bloch who was hoping to take home the bracelet on his birthday. When asked if Medic felt bad about beating Bloch on his birthday, he replied: “Not at all” with a sly smile on his face.

Here are the results from the final table at Event #1 at the 2008 WSOP:
1 Nenad Medic - $ 794,112
2 Andy Bloch - $ 488,048
3 Kathy Liebert - $ 306,064
4 Mike Sexton - $ 248,160
5 Amit Makhija - $ 198,528
6 Chris Bell - $ 157,168
7 Patrik Antonius - $ 124,080
8 Mike Sowers - $ 99,264
9 Phil Laak - $ 74,448

More information about Nenad Medic
Nenad Medic Wikipedia

If you still haven’t qualified for the WSOP, don’t forget to check out some of our 2008 WSOP Freerolls.