Dates have been announced for the 1st Latin America Poker Tour (LAPT)

From 3rd May to 5th May 2008 there will be a $2500 event in Brazil

From 22nd May to 24th May 2008 there will be a $2500 event in Costa Rica

From Aug 7th to Aug 9th 2008 there will be a $2500 event in Uruguay

It will be interesting to see the attendance numbers for these events, but my initial thoughts are that they will be quite high.  You can qualify for the LAPT at PokerStars

PokerStars has annouced that they aim on providing enough qualifiers so that they can send a whopping 1000 players to the 2008 WSOP Main Event.  There will be satellites available at all buy-in levels from $2 upwards.

 Players will win a $12,500 package, including the entrance money for the main event, and money for expenses

Additionally if any Pokerstars qualifying player makes the final table of the main event there will be a bonus reward of between $100,000 and $1,000,000.   If you are lucky enough to win the event, that means they will pay that person $1million extra!   No easy task to final table it, but the extra bonuses sure are a nice extra incentive.

Harrah’s has announced the dates and venues of the 2nd World Series of Poker Europe. The 2008 WSOPE will be at the same 3 casinos in London as last time (Fifty, The Casino at the Empire, and The Sportsman). The 2008 WSOPE will run from Sept 19th to Oct 1st, 2008.

 There were 3 events last time.  The schedule of events for 2008 may see more, we shall have to wait and see for that part.

It took the best part of 3 months, but the first player of 2008 to hit the ultra exclusive club of SuperNova Elite on PokerStars has emerged.  jorj95 achieved the very tough VPP target, to put him in line for some great bonuses.

These bonuses include Supernova Elite VIP Store Access.  Items available using the FPPs include a Porsche and an Aston Martin.  In 2007 several SuperNova Elites bought 3 Porsches.

More SuperNova Elite bonuses include a $50,000 freeroll (Saturdays at 14:00 – free entry) and a $100,000 freeroll (Last Saturday of each month – free entry)
 
Also free entry to selected major tourneys:
 Automatic free entry to the WCOOP main event. Plus one out of these options:

Option A: Any two packages from PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, WSOP Main Event, EPT Monte Carlo, APPT Sydney.
Option B: Any one of the above packages plus $10,000.

 Congrats to jorj95 for being the first of 2008.  A total of 39 people made it in 2007.  Well see if that basemark can be surpassed in 2008.

The $1050 buy-in Super Tuesday on PokerStars was won by crice25 this week.  357 players stumped up the chunky buy-in and the field was lead for large periods by ShankingYou, with both NoraFlum (remember him…CrazyMarco to the uninitiated) and lilholdem954 (Chad Batista) lurking in the top 5 for much of the tournament.

 In the end, NoraFlum finished 17th and lilholdem954 finsihed 16th, and long time shortstack sheets emerged for a very handy 5th place.

 Here is the final result

 1st crice25 - $78,540

2nd hoodini10 - $53,907

3rd Stevie444 - $36,771

4th ShankingYou - $28,560

5th sheets - $21,420

7445 people entered the $215 buy-in PokerStars Sunday Million on this occasion, and Tsipor emerged the victor.

This was the final result, following an earlier 3-way chop: 
1. Tsipor — $147,561
2. Maluko0 — $122,670
3. Djemps — $119, 887
4. Big_Col11 — $59,560
5. soren2006 — $44,670
6. mayer zs — $32,758
7. jaywks — $23,080
8. blanconegro — $13,401
9. Joshua “pbdrunks” VanDuyn — $8,785

Himclip85 was 11th, and NoMercy (Isabelle Mercier) was 49th

pbdrunks (Josh VanDuyn) had a great weekend on PokerStars.  He final tabled both the Sunday Million and the Sunday Second Chance.

In the Sunday Million he finished 9th, which was good for $8785, and in the Sunday Second Chance he finished 3rd, which was good for $28,680.  Not bad for a days work.

pbdrunks is a well respected MTT player, and is often seen deep in the big Sunday tourneys

Online tournament legend JohnnyBax, had another great score on Sunday, final tabling the Full Tit Sunday Mulligan, and winning just over $23K for his troubles.  

Final Result:

1. CapTinBisKuit — $133,991
2. terhahn — $80,977
3. GhettoFabolous — $52,976
4. XJUSTRUNX — $41,775
5. Mur917 — $31,331
6. Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy — $23,233
7. janwillemsxm — $17,406
8. SkyyistheLimit — $13,622
9. GinjarBear — $10,141  

Team PokerStars Pro Hevad Khan (RainKhan) won the Sunday Warm-up

There were 2504 entrants for the $215 buy-in event, and the WSOP final tablist bettered them all, taking down $97,856.32

RainKhan, famous for multi-tabing around 25 SNGs simultaneously, has been having increasingly good MTT results of late, no doubt very confident as table captain off the back of his sizeable WSOP induced bankroll.

High stakes/High volume cash player ADZ124 won the $5,200 Freezeout event on PokerStars on Sunday.   This is a winner-takes-all tournament, limited to 20 entrants, with $100,000 for the winner.

 Notably bigegypt (ultra high volume player) was 2nd, Barry Greenstein (barryg1) was 4th, and Niki Jedlika was 5th (RealAndyBeal)