Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

As if Lacey Jones wasn’t hot enough when we first wrote about her on BankrollBoost.com. Here is a very recent video of her at the 2008 WSOP talking to Amanda Leatherman of Pokernews.com:

Today will be one of the greatest final tables ever at the WSOP for the conclusion of the $5k Rebuy Pot Limit Omaha event at the 2008 WSOP.  Let’s take a look at the line-up:

Seat 1: John Juanda 694,000 - Over $6.3 Million in live event earnings and 3 WSOP bracelets, Juanda will not go down easy.
Seat 2: Phil Hellmuth 119,000 - 11 WSOP bracelets and argued by many as one of the best poker players of all time (though we find him more annoying).
Seat 3: David Benyamine 1,041,000 - Known for playing in the highest stakes poker games online, Benyamine’s specialty is PLO.
Seat 4: Kirill Gerasimov 558,000 - Cashed in 4 of the Omaha events at the 2006 WSOP, he knows the game well.
Seat 5: Phil Galfond 1,393,000 - Another high stakes online poker player, Phil plays online as OMGClayAiken and is often seen dominating the PLO tables at Full Tilt Poker.
Seat 6: Daniel Negreanu 460,000 - Just won his 4th WSOP bracelet the other day, Negreanu is already in this event for $85,000 worth of rebuys.  He wants to win, and he wants it BAD!
Seat 7: Brian “tsarrast” Rast 1,176,000 - Another online player, Brian goes by the handle tsarrast on PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker and has had some experience playing the highest stakes games online.
Seat 8: Adam Hourani 300,000 - The least known of all the players, though Hourani did win a Bellagio Cup II Tournament in 2006.
Seat 9: Johnny Chan 624,000 - Currently tied with Doyle Brunson with 10 WSOP bracelets, Chan wants this bracelet bad to get back tied up with Phil Hellmuth for most WSOP wins ever.

So, if you don’t get the point yet, this table is full of some of the best poker players in the world, all of whom want this win REALLY bad.  We’ll let you know what happened after it plays out.

After 4 years of not winning any bracelets, pokerstars pro Daniel Negreanu is back!  Yesterday he took down the same event where he won his last bracelet, the $2000 Limit Holdem event.

Daniel beat out a table of players who had never played in a WSOP final table before.  That doesn’t necessarily mean they are bad, just did not have the experience and comfort level that most seasoned pros have at these tables.

For his win Daniel cashed $204,874, but rumour has it that he also had some side bets with Ted Forrest and Phil Ivey for $200k per bracelet (which he briefly touches on in his latest video blog entry).

Here are the final 9 from that event:

1. Daniel Negreanu - $204,874
2. Ugur Marangoz - $126,671
3. David Baker - $78,624
4. Richard Li - $63,335
5. Fu Wong - $51,542
6. Jeremy Kottler - $51,542
7. Greg Wohletz - $31,886
8. Derek Lerner - $25,334
9. Hien Tran - $18,782

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

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!

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.