After a year of impressive losses, Gus Hansen has managed to end 2010 on the upbeat. He won the WSOP Europe bracelet a few months ago and recently, his title collection enlarged with the occasion of the Poker Million IX tournament.

Full Tilt is the organiser of Poker’s Million IX, a shoot out tournament that invited 48 players, some of them famous poker pros. The $1 million dollar stake meant quality action at the poker table.

After the first 8 stages of the event, the final table gathered the last 8 players: Gus Hansen, Tony Bloom, James Bord, Barny Boatman, Gary Peniket, Seth Webber, Howard Lederer and Patrick Antonius.

Patrick Antonius was the first to become victim at the final table after losing with A-9 to James Bords’ T-8 on a flop made of 9-7-6.

The next ones to exit the table were Howard Lederer, Seth Webber et Barny Boatman.

James Bord was eliminated on third position after pushing with T-5 only to be paid by Bloom who had 9-8 and for whom the flop brought 2 lucky pairs.

The heads-up between Gus Hansen and Bloom was quick to end. After just a few hands, Hansen showed A-8 against Bloom’s A-6. An 8 on the flop made Hansen the winner of the hand and shortly after he became the winner of the Full Tilt Poker Million IX tournament.

Daniel Negreanu, a poker legend and PokerStars pro, has proved his poker and golf skills at EPT Vilamoura. He has won this innovative tournament that beautifully combines golf, poker and the exotic landscape of Vilamoura, a sea-side resort in Portugal.

On Day 1 players had to compete against each other on the golf fairways and their golf results were converted at the end of the day into chips to be used on Day 2 at the poker confrontation.

After Day 1, Daniel Negreanu boosted his chip stack with $2500 which shows that he had a good performance on the golf course. Day 2 was also a good day for him as he lasted to the final table where he went heads up against Pieter De Korver, whom he eliminated, Negreanu holding Q-J against Pieter’s J-2.

Though the prize money from Vilamoura was not as substantial as some of his previous winnings, Negreanu has surely enjoyed this tournament. The golf fairways and the poker action brought him more excitement than the modicum $8000 which he received for his victory.



In the last few months, attendance rates at the World Poker Tour events have plunged, due to high entrance fees it seems. As soon as the organizers reduced those fees from $10000 to $5000, the positive results soon appeared: 462 players were attracted which created a $2,15 million prize-pool, a little less than last year’s $2,63 million prize-pool, claimed by Prahlad Friedman along with his first WPT title.

The cream of the poker community has come together at WPT Legends at Bicyle Casino of Bell Gardens in California. Some of the poker masters participating at this event were Daniel Negreanu , Barry Greenstein,, Phil Hellmuth and Allen Cunningham, leaving the competition right from Day 2.

The top of the leaderboard so far is Phil“USCPhildo” Collins, leading with a $898,000 stack while the average stacks are around $192,500. Among the other most noticeable players, who stand a chance of winning three quarters of a million dollars, are Jonathan Little, JC Alvarado and Erica Schoenberg.

This is what we call true bad luck! Sothea Sinn, a young man from New Zealand, was enthousiastic about winning 60,000 New Zealand dollars ( i.e. $44,000 US) from a progressive jackpot at a Caribbean Stud Poker table at a casino in Auckland.

Unfortunately, his enthousiasm soon turned to sorrow as the casino officials announced him that they could not give him the jackpot. Even worse, it was Sinn himself that brought this upon himself. In 2004, he asked the casino to ban him and his girlfriend from playing at that casino because he felt he was gambling too much.

Sinn returned to the casino thinking that his ban expired long ago. However, according to the casino staff, Sinn had initially agreed to undergo counseling for his gambling problem and this would allow him readmission. Since he hasn’t undergone counseling, he automatically didn’t comply with this agreement and as a result the ban was still active.

Sinn declared to the Dominion-Post newspaper that he was “absolutely gutted” at hearing this news.

According to some sources, local law would side with the casino. Even if the casino wanted to pay Sinn the jackpot, they probably couldn’t; the self-exclusion list that Sinn had placed himself on is a legal instrument that forbids the casino to pay Sinn his winnings.

Sinn can’t simply accept this situation and he is determined to go to New Zealand’s gambling authorities for investigation.