With an enthusiastic crowd in attendance and a lot of action on the poker felt to entertain them, the 2009 world series of poker (WSOP) Main Event played down to seven participants before heading off to a two-hour dinner break at 7:00 p.m. on November 7th, 2009. Play started after 1:00 p.m. and it started slowly.

There was not much player movement on the overall leaderboard until short stacked British poker pro James Akenhead made his move. Akenhead shipped it in with king-queen and was called by Beg Begleiter before poker pro Eric Buchman re-raised. Begleiter folded and Buchman showed an ace-king.

It appeared that Akenhead would be the first one to go home before he hit a queen on the river and the boisterous crowd of British poker enthusiasts went nuts.

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Phil Ivey apparently doesn’t even enjoy playing poker tournaments. The long hours and relatively small payouts (small to him anyway) make tournaments seem like too much work compared to a high stakes cash game.

That’s why he’s been making side bets with other pros about how many bracelets he can win.

He’s won two already at this World Series. Firstly he won $96,637 in Event #8, the Deuce to Seven Draw Lowball (No-Limit) event. Then on Saturday night, he won event 25, the $2,500 Omaha 8-or-better/Seven-card Stud 8-or-better event for $220,538.

There were rumours that his side bets with other pros were to net him as much as $12 million after the first win alone!

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The Littlewoods Poker World Heads-Up Poker Championship title this year goes to Greece with Bambos Xanthos easing his way to victory. Three matches yesterday would confirm the 2009 champ and in the end the Greek pro outshone his opponents and took home the £65,000 top prize.

First up Russian Victor Ilyukhin took on Xanthos and appeared very confident, saying, “I know how Bambos plays”. His lucky pink shirt that he had been wearing all week was no help to him however as throughout their two-hour match, Xanthos maintained the lead despite some swings. Finally, on a Q 10 9 flop, the two were all in, Xanthos holding J 9 and Ilyukhin with 9 6.

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Players in the Southern California area will soon get the chance to take on — and take out — Celebrity Apprentice star and WSOP gold-bracelet winner Annie Duke.

Duke has confirmed that she will be at the Pala Casino Spa and Resort on Jan. 30 for the $25,000 Annie Duke Free Roll Poker Tournament, wherein players at the Northern San Diego County casino will be able to play against her for a chance to win thousands of dollars.

“We opened our new 15-table poker room in June, and play has been growing on a weekly basis,” said Bill Bembenek, the CEO of Pala. “Ev

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‘It never gets old making money.’With two titles and four final table appearances on the World Poker Tour already, there is little doubt Freddy Deeb is the most experienced player to have booked one of six seats at Festa al Lago Final table Sunday.

But the two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, who has more than $6.2 million in career tournament earnings, will come into Monday’s fight for the Festa al Lago title and $1.2 million first-place prize with something equally as important – The chip lead.

“It never gets old making money,” said the Lebanese-born American. “And I’m feeling very confident. I always feel confident. Otherwise I don’t play.

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Former IT consultant Darren Annis has won his very first GUKPT, beating heads-up specialist Jeff Kimber to take down the Thanet leg and £41,900.

The field of 132 was considerably smaller than most GUKPT main events but with veterans like Julian Thew and double bracelet winner JP Kelly terrorising the tables, any soft spots were hard to come by. 

With 11 players left in, it looked as though WSOP/WSOPE final tablist James Akenhead was yet again going to make a major final table but after losing most of his stack in a race, Akenhead had to settle for a little more than his buy-in back.

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Crown Casino released the schedule for the 2010 Aussie Millions Championship on September 17th, 2009. The schedule include a total of twenty poker events running on January 14th, 2010-January 31st, 2010 at the Crown Casino facility in Melbourne, Australia with the $10,500 Main Event taking place on January 24th, 2009-January 30th, 2010.

In releasing the Aussie Millions Poker Championship schedule, tournament officials took the effort to set some high goals in terms of cash pool and player attendance. Crown Chief Executive David Courtney said that Crown Casino is also announcing an expected 1st place prize of $2.

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After struggling to keep afloat since following Gus Hansen to Full Tilt’s mixed-game tables, Tom “durrrr” Dwan had his first big 7-Game win taking home over $584k last night.

In addition to his 7-Game profit, Dwan made an additional $66k playing Omaha, putting him up over $650k for the night.

Almost the entire online poker world made it out for the action with Gus Hansen and Richard Ashby both making over $100k, and Patrik Antonius, John Juanda, Justin Smith, and David Benyamine all making small profits.

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Phil Ivey used to be terrible at poker. Way before his seven WSOP bracelets and $12 million in live tournament wins, he was the sucker at the table. It’s irrefutable, say Daniel Negreanu and Barry Greenstein. ‘I heard people say he was a good player and I said, “are you kidding me?”’ says Greenstein. ‘He just played too loose and got his money in bad spots. Negreanu, who has known Ivey for almost a decade, reports similar traits. ‘He played, like, every hand. Most people thought he was a sucker.’ Both players have logged hundreds of hours with Ivey and are also close to him away from the table. But their insight into his the earliest days is difficult to comprehend. It certainly gi

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2008 BC Poker Championship winner Daniel Negreanu.The BC Poker Championship is returning to the River Rock Casino in Richmond, British Columbia, Nov. 12-22, 2009.

One of Canada’s largest poker events, the 2009 BCPC will host five events and offer an estimated prize pool of $2.5 million.

The centerpiece of the series is the $2,700 No-Limit Hold’em main event, which will run Nov. 19-22.

Last year Canadian super star Daniel Negreanu stole the show by outlasting all 689 opponents and winning the first place prize of $371,910.

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