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Recent poker happenings
Posted by: James Carter. - Sun, 2009-08-09 14:21
August is the month during which the poker world, online and offline, is supposed to come to a virtual halt. Somebody forgot to tell that to the industry though. For starters, the online vert wasn’t just alive and kicking…big things were going down there this past week.
The FTOPS XIII was in full swing, and there was no shortage of registrants regardless of the event. Players were all out to grab a slice of the pie, and to add to their bankroll despite the August heat and the temptation to just head on down to the lake or the beach, grab a cold beer and waste the day away doing nothing useful at all.
Events number 2 and 3 of the FTOPS XIII have already awarded their top prizes to their respective winners. Event #1 of the second day of action, the $300+$22 NL Holdem 4X Shootout 6 max event featured a massive starting field of 1,193. That gave birth to a total prize pool of $357,900, enough to award the winner a massive $62,632.50 prize. The lucky player to score the handsome payday was “jive32”. Second place CoolJohN22222 had plenty of reasons to celebrate as well. He scored a $39,369 prize.
POCKET FIVE finished 3rd, followed by Jsbryan in fourth.
The second event of the day was the $200+$16 Omaha/8 event, which attracted a starting field of 1,086. That meant that the $200k guarantee was exceeded, as the total prize-pool reached $217,200. This event ended in a deal struck by the top 5 players. Eventual third place finisher, “HelloCity” took down the bulk of the goods, scoring a $32,238.44 payday.
The planned Poker Hall of Fame induction was the talk of town lately. Daniel Negreanu – himself among the 10 nominees - and Doyle Brunson, have expressed their views on the induction in their personal blogs. Brunson ran an analysis on all the nominees expressing his opinion on each of them and arriving to the conclusion that Mike Sexton should be the chosen one.
Negreanu on the other hand discussed the various criteria used to determine the winner, and he too opined that Mike Sexton should be the one inducted.
In other poker news: Poker King is set to launch in Asia. The movie will be a Rounders-like take on the rivalry of two professional poker players. Directed by Chan Hing-Kai and Janet Chung, the movie will feature the APT’s Macau stop and it’ll possibly enlist Johnny Chan, the multiple WSOP champion, in a role. According to Chan, due to the much larger potential audience, the movie can theoretically be bigger than Rounders and it will definitely have a significant impact on the way the game of poker is viewed in Asia. Some of the biggest Chinese movie stars will star in the movie, including Stephy Tang, Sean Lau, Ching-Wan and Louis Koo. The area of the world most likely to produce another 2003-like poker boom, Asia has long been targeted by some of the biggest online poker rooms and live poker events, so far with moderate success.
