Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

Pius Heinz, the 22-year-old German professional poker player, who has recently become the sponsored player of the once top rated US poker site: PokerStars, says that he can relax now that he has won over $8.72 million in the Main Event of the World Series of Poker (WSOP). Obviously, this mega win has come as a relief for the online poker pro who lost thousands of dollars playing online tournaments just before the WSOP.

Sharing his experiences with the poker media, the player said that he had decided to go back to school and focus on progressing in life if he did not succeed in the WSOP. He says that he can now continue playing poker tournaments without worrying about money and how to pay the bills.

Heinz’s way to the top, however, was fraught with challenges. He began as the player with the smallest chip stack and ended as a player with the largest chip stack. In fact, it was an Ace High that helped Heinz to win his WSOP millions. The player who finished second Staszko, a chess enthusiast of Czech Republic, was not too pleased that he lost the WSOP bracelet although he collected a cool prize of $5.43 million, but he decided to take it in stride. He stated that finishing second is not too bad, it is OK.

Now that he has emerged as the WSOP champion, Heinz intends to participate in prestigious live poker tournaments held all over the world. He wants to start with the Prague leg of the European Poker Tour (EPT).

But he says that he is exhausted with the non-stop poker action he has been exposed to for the past three and a half months, owing to which he plans to chuck poker for a week and spend some quality time celebrating his success with friends and family members.

Phil Ivey, one the most reputed online poker professionals and winner of WSOP main events has decided not to participate in this year’s World Series of Poker. Ivey is doing this in protest against the US online poker site Full Tilt Poker, which has not yet paid out all its players after the Black Friday incident.

Oskar Garcia, a reporter for the Associated Press, recently discussed the status of the US online poker industry. When questioned regarding the absence of Phil Ivey in the World Series of Poker this year, Oskar Garcia accepted that this would have a major impact on the WSOP since most US online poker fans come out to watch him play.

US online poker has become extremely popular in the country on account of its legendary players and Phil Ivey is a big player. People associate him with the best of poker faces and the perfect composure of a confident poker player who does not give away any information regarding himself through his appearance. That is the level of deception that enabled him to be the legend that he is.

Oskar Garcia went on to equate the incident with Michael Jordan was not playing the NBA Finals. Garcia agreed that the casino industry has been pushing the legalization of online poker to a large extent and they have been focusing on the revenues that would be generated if that were the case. The industry in itself would generate $6 billion in revenue every year and that is a huge amount that cannot be overlooked. Not to mention, the number of jobs and increase in employment rate that would occur due to the legalization of online poker.

While the lobbyists used this angle, the opponents are completely against any kind of online gambling and in this scenario even other games might get affected. Online poker was the one that was targeted since it hangs in the balance between being called the game of skill or that of chance. There are even some in the casino industry who are against this legalization since they think it would take out all other competition and the land-based casinos will take huge hit, in terms of business and revenues.

Jonathan Duhamel’s career can be best described as “unconventional”; he has been a college student and a factory worker, and recently, he found himself to be a poker millionaire. This 23-year-old poker player from Montreal won the World Series of Poker (WSOP) 2010 Main Event, the prize of which is a whopping $8.94 million.

Surrounded by a crowd of 200 admiring friends and family members, he told spectators at Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino that this was the most beautiful day of his life and invited them to join the party.

Duhamel beat 7,300 participants and knocked his last opponent John Racener off the table to become the WSOP 2010 Main Event winner. Expressing his love for poker, he said that he will be back at the WSOP tables next year and that he will participate in many more live poker tournaments.

Duhamel’s friends say that he is still the easygoing and simple factory worker they love; success has not changed him. Two years back, he dropped out of the University of Quebec and decided to become a full-time poker player. Initially, he wasn’t successful and had to get a job. However, Duhamel did not give up; he reviewed his style, learned better strategies, improved his knowledge and tried again. His parents, who were apprehensive at first, are now satisfied about his unconventional choice of career.

Speaking about his passion for poker, his friends said that he began spending more and more time playing poker, which was easy for him because of his competitive spirit. Besides poker, Duhamel is fond of hockey and watching movies. Needless to say, his favorite movie is “Rounders,” a movie based on high stakes poker action. His friends appreciate the fact that success has not changed him and that he is the same down-to-earth, practical person he always was.

It was Chris Moneymaker who almost single handedly (pun intended) created the boom in the online poker industry, when he won the World Series of Poker 2003 championship by making his way to the final table via a satellite poker game from an online casino. This put online poker on the map and saw a boom in poker player traffic across online casinos and poker sites on the web, and, when Greg Raymer repeated this phenomenon and won the WSOP 2004, the splurge in player traffic caused a sudden increase in the number of poker portals and online casinos between 2003 and 2004.

Today, some of these past WSOP winners have dropped off the radar as they have not been able to recover their lucky streak, while others have gone on to make even more millions.

Moneymaker, for instance has not managed to increase his bankroll beyond a few thousands since 2003, despite participating in WSOP events. His current winnings are only ranked at $2,937,439.

After accomplishing a spectacular win of about $5,000,000 in the WSOP 2004 and proving to the world for a second time that online poker could indeed make you rich, Raymer seems to have kept his edge. Raymer has placed in the money at several other WSOP events and has built a bankroll of $6,850,000. Joe Hachem who won the WSOP 2005 has also seen a lot of success since then.

Jamie Gold, on the other hand, who took the 2006 WSOP Title and won $12 million, has added a mere pittance to his bankroll, accumulating a little over $100,000 since his win. Jerry Yang, the 2007 WSOP winner and Joe Cada, winner of the 2009 event have also not done very well for themselves and seem to be slipping away off the radar. Peter Eastgate, who won the 2008 event however, has continued with his successes and has participated in several poker tournament events, while building up a notable bankroll.

Each year at the WSOP, there are a lot of old familiar faces. Players like Johnny Chan, Annie Duke, Matt Affleck, David Benyamine, and Doyle Brunson are certain to show up at the tables. Plenty of other lesser-known players show up again and again too. John Racener has been cashing in live events for the past four years. Robert Pisano took home some cash last year, and he’s back at the felts for another run at the bracelet.

There are some relative unknowns, though, who are making a real splash this year. For example, Canadian player Evan Lamprea finished Day 5 at the top of the chips charts. His first ever cash at a live tournament was this year at WSOP event #56, where he took around $5000 for 164th place. One reason he’s never cashed before at a live tournament is that he’s 21, which could mean that he’d be vying for a name as one of the youngest to grab a bracelet. In any case, he’s sure to get noticed for having gone to sleep a chip leader on Day 5.

The last lady standing is Breeze Zuckerman, and there’s so little information about her on the poker databases that it’s like she came out of nowhere. She hails from California, and she’s sporting PokerStars gear, so it’s a safe bet that she won her entry fee from them. She has a mostly-dormant blog where she talks about whatever’s on her mind that particular day. She seems to like the Obama family and to be an animal lover. Zuckerman is a life coach, but she holds a degree in law from Tel Aviv University and has also worked as a journalist. So far, she hasn’t given any interviews explaining how she got into poker. Her most recent tweet on Twitter (she’s Breezie7) says “Starting today at the ESPN feature table…stay tuned.”

Be sure to keep watching out for these players. You can be certain you’ll be hearing about all of them in the upcoming months.

While the World Series of Poker’s main event isn’t the most expensive event to enter in the WSOP and it isn’t the only no-limit holdem event, it is the one that has gained the most popularity. While real poker buffs watch the WSOP leaderboards for all of the events, all eyes will be on the main event. This year, the event drew 7,319 entrants, many of whom won their entry money on online tournaments. Every major online poker site has been running tournaments with a prize package that included entry fees and travel fees for the the WSOP main event. Due to US restrictions on online poker, the WSOP entry could not be awarded by the site, but players had to agree to go to the event and wear the site’s gear in order to claim the prize money.

With so many entrants, the prize pool is an astonishing $68.8 million. The grand prize is $8.94 million. The top 747 players will cash, meaning over 10% of the players will be going home feeling like a success. For the others, there’s always next year.

It’s exciting to see this much poker action in a time when the economy has so many down and the UIGEA is in effect, trying to prevent Americans from accessing online poker, which is often their only ticket to the WSOP main event. While the WSOP saw more action in the 2006 main event, where the prize pool was $82,512,162 and the grand prize was $12 million, World Series of Poker vice president Ty Stewart said “In this era, it feels like a record.” There are 825 more players than last year, when the prize pool was $61 million. Jason Alexander, former Seinfeld star said “I’m glad people are feeling like the economy’s back enough that they can do it. It wasn’t because the interest in poker went away, so I have to assume people weren’t willing to speculate.”

While the possibility of making millions of dollars in a game they love certainly has its draw, Ty Stewart says that “I just think that the main event continues to transcend the (poker tournament) category. People are pretty obsessed these days about fame, fortune and celebrity, and that’s something that’s 100 percent guaranteed at the main event.” For online poker players, making it to the late tables in the WSOP main event is a good way to get noticed by poker sites that offer sponsorships for top players.