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2009-07-03
$40 million guaranteed in 45 online events
This year's program for the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) - arguable online poker's biggest tournament series, has been released by Poker Stars.com with a minimum of $40 million in prizes over 45 events that will kick off on September 3rd and run through September 21st.
The 45 events have combined buy-ins of nearly $71 000. Fourteen have guarantees of $1 million or more, with the main event guaranteeing a prize pool of at least $10 million.
A wide range of poker variants is represented in the schedule including Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Seven-Card stud, Razz, H.O.R.S.E., and deuce-to-seven draw. In addition, there are some entirely new events on the schedule such as Badugi, Heads-up Pot-Limit Omaha and big-ante NLHE events.
The Main Event alone should see the winner walk away with over a million dollars.
Players can qualify for WCOOP events via PokerStars satellites, which will be available in a range of low-stakes buy-ins soon.
2009-07-03
Squabble over the spoils from a poker event at Australia's Crown Casino
A long-running legal scrap between two well known New Zealand poker players, Jamil Dia and Constantine Harach, is back in a Wellington court for the fifth time in an attempt to resolve a dispute over shares in a $500 000 win at Melbourne's Crown Casino back in early 2005, reports the New Zealand Herald.
The two men, formerly firm friends who have competed in international poker tourneys, have on occasion shared winnings. But not this time. When Dia achieved a major $500 000 victory and declined to share, Harach, who claims there was an agreement to share 20 percent of winnings between the two, has been angry ever since.
The Herald reports that so far the courts have said Dia holds the winning hand in the legal battle, the fifth round of which played out in the High Court at Wellington this week.
Harach had appealed against the decision of a lower district court judge, who was not convinced the two men had agreed to share the Melbourne winnings.
Justice Forrie Miller reserved his decision yesterday.
Earlier in the case another professional player had told a court that players often formed partnerships or percentage swap agreements to spread the risk of losing.
In the same Melbourne tournament from which Harach says he should have received $100 000 of Dia's winnings, Dia paid $75 000 to another friend, Dino Focas.
It was a handsome return for Focas agreeing to pay 15 percent, or $1 500, of the $10 000 tournament buy-in in return for 15 percent of the winnings.
Dia's lawyer, Andrew Davie, said his client paid Focas promptly, which illustrated that Dia paid his agreed obligations in an honourable manner.
Harach's lawyer said it was not clear why the district court judge had preferred Dia's claim that the two men had stopped sharing their winnings in 2002.
2009-07-03
A new concept for televised poker shows
In the United States, NBC and Full Tilt Poker.com are joining up again, this time to produce Face the Ace, a new concept for a poker show where players who qualify online get to play heads-up against three Full Tilt pros for a million dollar prize.
A spokesman for NBC said that if selected to be a participant on the show, the contestant will have to choose between four smoked-glass doors, behind each of which is a top professional poker player, or the “Aces.” Once one is chosen, the contestant will play that pro in a heads-up No-Limit Texas Hold’em match. Should the contestant defeat the pro, they will have the opportunity to take the money they have won and leave or risk it all and choose another door and battle a different pro for a significantly larger sum of money.
There is as yet unconfirmed speculation that the roster of pros for the show, which will be presented by Sopranos star Steve Schirripa, includes Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, Jennifer Harman, Erick Lindgren, Phil Gordon, Erik Seidel, Allen Cunningham, Andy Bloch, John Juanda, Mike Matusow, Patrik Antonius and Howard Lederer.
Entry to the Face the Ace promotion is free: the classification tournaments are all freerolls, details of which will soon be available at the Full Tilt Poker websites or visit www.face-the-ace.com.
All winners in the online qualifiers will be flown to Vegas with one guest, and lodged at the Golden Nugget for 5 days and 4 nights, where they will get $500 spending money and their chance to audition for NBC’s new poker show.
Filming is imminent, and Face the Ace will premiere on NBC on Saturday, August 1st at 9:00 pm ET. Seven one-hour episodes of the program are currently booked, and they will show from the prime-time August 1st debut through January 2nd, 2010.