It would appear Daniel Negreanu got carjacked the other day in Los Angeles.  His car and money was (allegedly) stolen by a group of guys when he stopped to ask for directions.

The car itself was a rental Dodge, and the money was said to be around $10K.   Daniel seems in comparitive good spirits following the event, although no doubt a little shaken up and annoyed by the whole experience.  We wish him well.

After 2 days of the inaugral event of the NAPT at The Venetian in Las Vegas there are 149 players remaining.  Here are the main leaders:

Andrew Lichtenberger (LuckyChewy)  618700  
Andy Seth (BKice) 602600 
Steve Billirakis (MrSmokey1)   591200 
Jason Dewitt   482900 
Mark Ketteringham   460000  
Tom Marchese   378500  
Men Nguyen (The Master)  378400  
Nam Le   364100
Dwyte Pilgrim   359000  
Jonathan Aguiar   327700 
Fabrice Soulier   321700  
Vanessa Rousso (LadyMaverick) 313600 
Steve O’Dwyer   307100   
Bill Chen  304200 
Danny Wong   296700 
John Cernuto   292500  
Greg Raymer (Fossilman) 242200   

Notable Others:
James Mackey (mig.com) 198800
Jimmy Fricke (Gobboboy) 90100
Jon Turner (Pearljammer) 85100
Blair Hinkle 68000

128 players get paid.  Here is the prize structure:

1 $ 827,648   
2 $ 522,306  
3 $ 309,366  
4 $ 241,064  
5 $ 184,816  
6 $ 144,639  
7 $ 104,461  
8 $ 60,266 
9-10 $ 44,195 
11-12 $ 34,151
13-14 $ 28,526 
15-16 $ 23,303
17-24 $ 20,089 
25-32 $ 18,080  
33-40 $ 16,071   
41-48 $ 14,866   
49-56 $ 13,660   
57-64 $ 12,857  
65-72 $ 12,053  
73-88 $ 11,250   
81-88 $ 10,446   
89-96 $ 9,643  
97-104 $ 8,839   
105-112 $ 8,035  
113-128 $ 7,232  

The NAPT (North Amercian Poker Tour) comprises of 3 events in this the first season.  The next event of the season takes place at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut between 7th April and 11th April.   If you fancy trying to qualify then signup to Pokerstars with a bonus of up to $600.

PokerStars 40th Billion Hand Celebrations

It only seems like yesterday that Pokerstars had a player base of 2 men and a sheep, and now look at it, 150,000 players online 24/7 and rapidly approaching 40 Billion hands played.

To celebrate this milestone Pokerstars have loads of things going on including a $4 million guaranteed tournament this coming Sunday, with $1 million of that guaranteed for the winner.

There are also special F40 SNGs (you see them in pink in the SNG lobby) which are 40-seaters.  Every winner during this week shares in a $40,000 prize.

And one of the biggest things is the milestone hands.  Every million hands on the lead up to 40 Billion they are giving cash out to people playing at the table where the hand is dealt.

For the actual 40 Billionth hand the prize is 400 times the frequent player points you earnt at that table in the preceeding 40 hands.   So this could be anything up to $120,000  (400×7.5×40)

If you fancy getting into the action then signup to Pokerstars with a deposit bonus up to $600

No fewer than 19377 entrants lined up for last nights PokerStars Sunday Million, giving it a astronomical prizepool of $3.875 million.  3150 of those players got paid, with the money starting at $266.03.    After 12 hours of play OX45AL took down the $550,011.29 first prize.  

1st OX45AL $550,011.29
2nd celofyz33 $333,540.00
3rd eMarkM $244,616.42
4th OBVAMENTS $166,270.00
5th S.Takmaziyan $133,016.00
6th Kostya 77777 $99,762.00
7th Gmelkonyan $66,508.00
8th austinlewis $44,227.82
9th hunter10999 $29,928.60

OX45AL has an ABI (average buy-in) of just $13 so this win will no doubt propel him upwards into the bigger buy-in tourneys. Good luck to him

Full Tilt have introduced a new and innovative form of poker called Rush Poker.  Is is fast and furious and you can end up playing 400 or 500 hands an hour to compared to the normal 60 odd hands.

With Rush Poker the instant you make a decision to fold your 8 opponents are swept away and 8 new opponents appear and you have a new hand right there in front of you.  So you can literally click click click through hands until you find one you like.  It works a treat it really does.  A whooshing sound sweeps those players away the second you click “quick fold”.  You dont even have to wait until it’s your turn to act.

If you fancy giving Rush Poker a go you then sign up to Full Tilt here and get a bonus up to $600

To play just look at the left of the main Full Tilt lobby where you have the options of Ring Games, Sit-and-gos, Tournaments, or Rush Poker.  Select Rush Poker then simply select your prefered stakes, and buyin for your prefered amount.  And then you’re away.  It’s very easy.

Lots of Rush Poker stategies can be used.  Raising each time can be effective as many players have already left the table (their avatar is still there but they’ve long since clicked “quick fold” and moved on).  When you raise you often get a lot of instant folds and not much opposition.    Another strategy is to flick through loads of hands until you find something really big like pocket kings or aces, and then playing them really hard.

Each hand you are at a table with different players, therefore no-one really knows if you’ve been stealing the blinds a lot all the time.  Talking of blinds, the big blind just gets allocated to the player who’s gone the longest without paying it.  Therefore it evens out and you pay the big blind on average every 9 hands.

Rush Poker really is something new and refreshing, so why not give it a try now

The 14th Mini FTOPS on Full Tilt Poker gets underway today.  Here is the schedule of events:

Event #01 Wed Dec 09th 21:00 ET $22 NL Holdem 6-max
Event #02 Thu Dec 10th 13:00 ET $22 7-Game
Event #03 Thu Dec 10th 21:00 ET $55 NL Holdem Shootout
Event #04 Fri Dec 11th 13:00 ET $22 NL Holdem 1R1A 
Event #05 Fri Dec 11th 21:00 ET $22 Stud8 
Event #06 Sat Dec 12th 13:00 ET $55 PLO 6max 
Event #07 Sat Dec 12th 15:00 ET $11 NL Holdem w/rebuys 
Event #08 Sun Dec 13th 13:00 ET $26 NL Holdem Knockout 6max
Event #09 Sun Dec 13th 15:00 ET $55 NL Holdem Heads Up 
Event #10 Sun Dec 13th 17:00 ET $33 NL Hold em 
Event #11 Mon Dec 14th 13:00 ET $22 PLO8  
Event #12 Mon Dec 14th 21:00 ET $109 NL Holdem 6max 
Event #13 Tue Dec 15th 13:00 ET $33 NL Holdem 6-max Shootout   
Event #14 Tue Dec 15th 21:00 ET $55 HORSE 
Event #15 Tue Dec 15th 21:00 ET $22 NL Holdem Turbo
Event #16 Wed Dec 16th 13:00 ET $26 PLO Knockout 
Event #17 Wed Dec 16th 21:00 ET $33 NL Holdem 6max Rebuy
Event #18 Thu Dec 17th 13:00 ET $22 NL Holdem Cashout  
Event #19 Thu Dec 17th 21:00 ET $22 Limit Holdem 6max  
Event #20 Fri Dec 18th 13:00 ET $22 NL Holdem  
Event #21 Fri Dec 18th 21:00 ET $33 Razz 6max 
Event #22 Sat Dec 19th 13:00 ET $266 NL Holdem Ante From Start
Event #23 Sat Dec 19th 15:00 ET $11 PLO Rebuy 
Event #24 Sun Dec 20th 13:00 ET $13 NL Holdem Knockout  
Event #25 Sun Dec 20th 17:00 ET $55 NL Holdem

The latest cash action on Full Tilt Poker has been crazy.  Huge games everywhere with durrrr and Isildur1 ploughing through tens of thousands of hands over the space of just a few days. 

On Sunday they played around 7500 hands with hundreds of them reaching 100K or above.  A massive 21 hands topped $400K.

Dwan finished Sunday around $1.2 million down and came back on Monday looking to get some of it back.   Monday saw a mind boggling 12,000 hand session, with Dwan losing a further $600K.

Tuesday it continued with Dwan dropping a further $850K to Isidur1

On Wednesday Dwan was tied up with filming High Stakes Poker, much to his frustration no doubt.    While the cat’s away the dog must play.  Isildur1 went up against Antonius, Cole South and Brian Townsend.   He finished up around $400K from that 4-way encounter.

Then Dwan was back, keen as mustard to start getting un-stuck, and went on to lose yet again, this time around $700K

Overall after this somewhat crazy week Durrrr was about $3 million down.   That sure did screw his overall stats over for 2009.

All this action flying around reached fever pitch today with Isildur1 and Patrik Antonius competing for a pot of just under $900,000.  A world record online pot.  Antonius emerged the victor, liberating Isildur1 of around $450K

What craziness will follow over the coming days, god only knows.  But one thing’s for sure it’s going to be exciting to watch.

The Sunday Million on PokerStars this Sunday brought a record breaking field to the felt.  A whopping 18283 registered at $215 a pop, making a prizepool over $3.6 million, the largest Sunday Million in history.

There was a 6-way chop before Zadman5311 went on to win the title

1st: Zadman5311 ($282,662.86)
2nd: m8675309a ($200,844.74)
3rd: call110 ($250,037.00)
4th: ZyeD3 ($144,353.10)
5th: waWe ($205,477.38)
6th: Guldlemmen4 ($177,650.76)
7th: The Omaholic ($54,849.00) <- Well known online pro, Mark Roland
8th: MATPOC28 ($32,909.40)
9th: E-Daddie ($21,939.60)

 The tourney took 12 hours and 21 mins to complete

We were spot on with that news blogpost on 2nd Oct regarding Tom Dwan.   A month and a bit later it was announced to the world that he had indeed become a member of Team Full Tilt.   I guess we were way ahead of the game on that

Dwan becomes the youngest member of Team Full Tilt, and the last member since Patrick Antonius to join.

Unlike standard red pros who get a base deal of 100% rakeback and $35 an hour, the actual “Team Full Tilt” members are cut in for a small percentage of the profits of the whole site.

So expect to see Dwan promoting the site heavily everywhere.  He’s likely to appear on commercials and various online marketing images.

He’s certainly a great signing for them, and will help increase appeal to a slightly younger audience.    He has a very big following through numerous very high profile live events, and his exceptional results and play at the highest levels both live and online.  The shear level of widespread exposure is surly excellent for the marketing of Full Tilt

It looks very much like Tom Dwan has signed for Full Tilt. Howard Lederer and the team have been after Tom “Durrrr” Dwan for a while to join their team. Whilst browsing the schedule for the FTOPS I noticed he was listed as a host. Slightly suspiciously he was then removed from the list a couple of hours later. Luckily I took a screenshot of it before they changed it. So, if this is good enough evidence it looks like it may have finally happened: