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Turning disappointment into redemption. That's what happened for the champion of tonight's $50,000 guaranteed SCOOP Event #23-L $11+R PLO 6-Max, Turbo tournament. Just last night Serginh0 would climb through 2,653 players during Event #20-M (also a turbo tournament) only to be knocked out on the final table bubble. Tonight after making the final table it looked as though Serginh0 would fall short of victory in third place. But, with some timely jacks finding their way to the board and a lot of aggression, Serginh0 would claim tonight's champion's watch and (thanks to 9,718 rebuys and 3,242 add-ons) $26,838.69 after missing out last night. There's no surprise of seeing Team PokerStars Pro Marcin "goral" Horecki cashing in a lower stakes tournament, after he is the MicroMillions I and III Player of the Series. Now it seems he has his sights on a SCOOP Player of the Series title as well. With under 200 players left tonight Horecki was still in contention but short on chips. With the blinds at 10K/20K he would trade bets with Nessilita until all of his tournament funds and 278,538 chips total sat in the middle. Aces [Js] [As] [3h] [Ad] for Nessilita against Marcin's wrapped ladies [Qh] [Qd] [Ts] [Ks]. The flop was a good one for the Polish Pro but two blank eights later [Kc] [5s] [Jd] [8h] [8s] Horecki would acquire his seventh cash in low buy-ins tournament breaking the tie with iwonthurtyou for second place on leaderboard after a 194th place ($116.14) finish. Despite cashing, Marcin would actually lose ground to the leader, JacktShipper, as the Russian would add a sixth cash of the series after finishing in 110th place ($184.76). Just four hours into the tournament after mahowny777 finished off chris288 in 13th place ($1,103.33) we would be down to the final two tables. Another two minutes and JONAH J (United Kingdom) and 12228056 (Colombia) decided to take a breather on the rail in 11th and 12th place respectively both earning $1,495.74. In what seemed to be hurry to reach the final table, just four more minutes saw DickPrice (Germany) earning $1,935.67 and ratskerops (United Kingdom) bit less $1,495.74 in 9th and 10th place. With the blinds up to 300K/600K Muhartz (Germany) would take kings [3c] [Kc] [Kh] [4d] up against el gum's [Qh] [2h] [Ks] [4c] and watch the river card slide two pair into el gum's hand along with the 3.3 million chip pot. Muhartz would take home $1,935.67 in eighth place starting up hand-for-hand play. Hand-for-hand play would take longer than the last five eliminations combined as the blinds moved up to 500K/1MM G's zee would raise to three million from the small blind as Serginh0 re-raise to nine million effectively setting G's zee all-in to call. Calling for less G's zee did with [2s] [3h] [Kc] [Qc] as Serginh0 flipped up a suited ace [Tc] [7s] [Ac] [Jd]. Both players would hit their club flushes [Td] [9d] [Jc] [5c] [9c] but Serginh0's was the higher as G's zee who earned $1,935.67 in seventh place starting up the final table below: Seat 1: ninototoroko (13331377 in chips) Seat 2: mahowny777 (7104178 in chips) Seat 3: florim (7342176 in chips) Seat 4: Serginh0 (17229118 in chips) Seat 5: el gum (8674743 in chips) Seat 6: labros80 (5593408 in chips) No longer laboring The shortstack labros80 would only have three big blinds after the level moved up to 600K/1.2MM. Holding a decent [Jh] [Kh] [8h] [As] labros80 would raise all-in to 3.59 preflop from the cutoff as Serginh0 made the call out the big blind with [6c] [Ac] [Th] [Td]. labros80's dreams of a double up sparked with two pair by the turn [Qc] [Ah] [Qs] [Ks]. But, the [Tc] river that gave labros80 a straight, gave Serginh0 a full boat ending labros80's tournament in sixth place ($2,991.49). mahowny777 owns Up to the 800K/1.6MM blind level mahowny777 would set ninototoroko all-in with a three-bet preflop. Watch below as this 16.5 million chip hands plays out below: RSS readers please click thro

The run of consistent success in PokerStars' Spring Championship of Online Poker of Shaun Deeb -- a.k.a. "SCOOPerman" -- continues unabated, and we have yet another report to bring you of such tonight. Event #23-M, the $109+R 6-max. turbo pot-limit Omaha event nearly saw Deeb earn one more SCOOP title, and in fact after making it to heads-up and chopping, he'd walk away from the event with the biggest cash of anyone. But in the end it would be Florian "FA_Morgoth" Langmann denying Deeb the win to claim the victory in this one. As to be expected, the tournament was played at a blistering pace, taking almost exactly four hours to complete. Deeb ended up taking away $63,463.68 for his runner-up finish, while Langmann earned $62,837.82 for the win. There were about 570 players in their seats when the tournament began, but by the time late registration and the re-buy period ended following the first hour there were 1,153 all told who had signed up. Of those just under 1,000 remained, with th'Kick leading all with a stack of just over 60,000. Ultimately players took 2,243 re-buys and 922 add-ons, which built a total prize pool of $431,800, more than four times the event's $100K guarantee. The top 156 finishers made the money, and thanks to the five-minute levels it would only take about 75 minutes more for the cash bubble to burst, with kurakasa, MrCoco, and Deeb sitting atop the counts as the field continued to rapidly shrink. The next stretch saw four different members of Team PokerStars make the money in the event, with Team Pro Chad "ChadBrownPRO" Brown the first of them to hit the rail in 132nd ($669.29), followed not too long thereafter by Team Online member Shane "shaniac" Schleger who was eliminated by HighTimesSwe in 89th ($863.60). Next George "Jorj95" Lind III risked his last chips with [Qs][Jc][9c][4s] versus ihaveAAdream's [Kd][Kc][6c][5c], and when the board came [3h][10c][Qh][3d][9h] Lind was out in 50th place ($1,165.86). That left just Team PokerStars Pro Richard Toth, but soon he was all in with [Ac][10h][9c][4d] versus Aquasces1 who held the nice [Qc][Jc][10s][9s] starting hand. Aquasces1's hand ended nicely, too, as the board came [Js][8c][9d][3h][Kd] to make a straight and knock out Toth in 41st ($1,468.12). Soon they reached the three-hour break with just 34 players remaining, led by opferlamm11 with more than 1.39 million and MrCoco next with just a few chips over 1 million while no one else had more than 775,000. Within 10 minutes they were down to 20 with Shaun Deeb having climbed back up over 1.5 million and into the chip lead. A couple of eliminations later Deeb earned a huge pot while knocking out Fresh_oO_D in 17th ($3,627.12) to near the 3 million-chip mark, at the time nearly twice that of the nearest competitor. Minutes later just 12 remained, with Deeb still on top and way out in front. It took just minutes more for six more eliminations to occur, with ezepoker90 (12th), FattieBat (11th), and opferlamm11 (10th) each earning $5,397.50, then kurakasa (9th), JayP-AA (8th), and culibrk1 (7th) taking away $7,556.50 apiece. Just a little over three-and-a-half hours after the tourney had begun, the final six-handed table was underway. Seat 1: Shaun "shaundeeb" Deeb (Mexico) -- 4,535,356 Seat 2: PALblCH (Belarus) -- 1,023,480 Seat 3: papier_mashe (United Kingdom) -- 1,728,353 Seat 4: CMoosepower (Denmark) -- 1,569,455 Seat 5: Florian "FA_Morgoth" Langmann (Austria) -- 3,042,535 Seat 6: Ifold2ndnuts (Netherlands) -- 2,898,821 On the final table's fifth hand, the blinds were 80,000/160,000 when Florian "FA_Morgoth" Langmann raised to 320,000 from the button, Ifold2ndnuts reraised to 1.12 million from the small blind, Langmann reraised all in, and Ifold2ndnuts called with the 1,458,821 remaining. Ifold2ndnuts had [Kc][Kh][Tc][3c] while Langmann had [Qd][Qh][4d][4h]. The board then came [9d][8s][Th][Td][2d], giving FA_Morgoth a flush and knocking Ifold2ndnuts out in sixth. Just

Free rights this and liberalism that. It’s enough to make you puke! Speaking of puking. Last year, during the WSOP I was walking through the Amazon room during the Main Event when I noticed a plume of smoke and scenes of chaotic madness. I was trying to figure out what on earth was going on when I realized that I couldn’t breathe. I know this sounds melodramatic but I immediately thought it was a terrorist attack. Why would terrorists want to attack the WSOP? I know, but that’s not what goes through your mind when you are struggling to breathe and can see everyone coughing, spluttering and running around like headless chickens. It turns out that a young lad had mistakenly picked up his friend's pen that was filled with pepper spray, and whilst screwing around with it at the table it went off. Everyone thought he was a terrorist. Now a backpack search isn’t going to uncover a pen filled with Sarin gas, and I doubt we have any Police Squadesque villains who are going to walk in with a bomb inside one. But what’s the big deal? Isn’t it just sensible to have a quick check of your backpack? If the WSOP were doing their job properly they would have completed a risk assessment for the event. This risk assessment would have prompted some action to be taken to reduce said risk. It’s just part and parcel of the health and safety business world we live in. Backpacks are checked in European casinos all of the time. It’s as standard as having them checked at an airport, pop concert or sporting event. When you consider the amount of money we're playing for in these tournaments, the security presence is abysmal. Has everyone forgotten what happened at EPT Berlin a few years ago? Poker events have been targeted for robberies before.   In the recent WSOP Annual Conference Call, the team said that players may be subject to random checks, but they are still allowed to bring in their bags. They will not rule out any additional security options, but things will be pretty much the same as last year. Wouldn’t everyone benefit from additional security? I don’t understand where the problem lies with wanting to feel safe? We all know what normally happens in these circumstances. The organization listens to the general public whining about it, they choose to do nothing, something tragic happens and then they implement what they should have implemented in the first place. Let’s not allow that to happen at our WSOP. If the WSOP does increase security - and I hope it does - let’s make sure it isn’t just a paper exercise. Last year whilst working at the World Poker Tour event in Johannesburg the casino security were armed and manning metal detectors at each entrance. On my first day I walked straight through the detectors with my backpack on and off it went. “Do you have any guns in your bag?” The security guard asked. I just looked at him and shook my head from side to side. “On you go then laddie, on you go.” He said.Visit www.pokerlistings.com

INT. POKERSTARS ISLE OF MAN OFFICE - CONFERENCE ROOM SCOOP SCHEDULER 1, SCOOP SCHEDULER 2 and SCOOP SCHEDULER 3 are sitting around one corner of a conference table which is covered in stacks of paper. Someone has drawn a May 2013 calendar on a dry erase board that takes up a whole wall of the room. The calendar is filled with scribbles. Many can't be deciphered, but phrases like "SCOOP 2013", "$40 million gtd", and "Lee Jones sings!" are legible. A red circle is drawn around May 19. Several red arrows point to the phrase "EVENT 23" written in block letters on that date. SCOOP SCHEDULER 1 Alright. We can't do just another PLO event. The players have figured out that we toss PLO events into things as an excuse for being "creative". Plus it's not gamble-y enough anymore. We need to make it crazier. What have you got for me? SCOOP SCHEDULER 2 Make it a turbo. SCOOP SCHEDULER 3 That's your answer for everything. SCOOP SCHEDULER 2 Fine. Make it a 6-Max. SCOOP SCHEDULER 3 Hmmm. Still not enough. Rebuy, maybe? SCOOP SCHEDULER 1 Yes! I like it. All three combined. Can we get Lee Jones as table host? SCOOP SCHEDULER 3 I don't think he ever came back from Monaco. SCOOP SCHEDULER 1 Damn. And so it was that PokerStars decreed that SCOOP 2013 Event 23-High would be a $1,050+R PLO 6-Max Turbo affair. It was the ultimate gamblers' gamble that ultimately was taken down by Crazy Elior. The Team PokerStars Pros tried their best in Event 23-H but came up well short. Jose "nachobarbero" Barbero was the highest placing Team Pro, but his 118th-place finish was well outside of the money. He was joined in the Loser's Lounge by Ike Haxton, Eugene Katchalov, Victor Ramdin, George Danzer, Johnny Lodden and Bertrand "ElkY" Grospelier. It took about three hours for the 266 starters to reach the final table of six. Seat 1: Crazy Elior (971301 in chips) Seat 2: Dan "Danny98765" Smith (470206 in chips) Seat 3: nizmo jiz (207706 in chips) Seat 4: mime477 (175184 in chips) Seat 5: deagledan (666657 in chips) Seat 6: Noah "Exclusive" Boeken (722946 in chips) Level 33: blinds 20k-40k Average: 535,666 (13.5 BBs) Turbos being what they are, and PLO being the game that it is, the final table of Event 23-H didn't rate to set any records for length of play. All told, it was over in less than 45 minutes. mime477 started off the final table as the short stack and almost immediately received a double-up from Boeken. Sitting with the button, mime477 shoved for 115k with [ks][qd][jd][8s]. Boeken was in the big blind and probably would have called with any four. Here, he had [kh][qs][5c][3s]. mime477 paired a jack on the river to double up to 250k. That was just enough for mime477 to avoid finishing in 6th place. The next hand, Crazy Elior eliminated nizmo jiz, the other short stack at the table, with all the chips going in pre-flop. Crazy Elior's [As][qd][6d][5h] flopped the joint, [qh][ac][qs], to take care of nizmo jiz's middle cards. That one hand represented $18,000 to mime477, who busted immediately after nizmo jiz. Mime477 opened from first position to 175,000, then called all in after Boeken shoved. Boeken's pocket kings, [kc][kh][7d][6s], did the trick against mime477's [as][kd][6h][2s] when mime477 could only pair 6s by the river. Smith doubled once through Boeken; Boeken doubled back through Smith. All of this happened in the first 10 minutes of the final table. When blinds rolled up to 30k-60k, the remaining four players decided to talk deal. The final table host presented both the chip-chop numbers and the ICM numbers. The ICM numbers essentially took $10,000 off of Crazy Elior's chip-chop number ($162,000) and re-distributed it to the other four players. It was perhaps not a surprise that Crazy Elior didn't care for that. deagledan tried to talk reason: deagledan: this tournament is so random crazy. U get more than nr.2 crazy... U think u got big edge w/10bb? deagledan: U loose 1 all in and get in w aces and then out foir 73k. d

This weekend was an exciting one at PokerStars because of the 2013 Spring Championship of Online Poker that was well underway. For a week, players had been flocking to the virtual tables with the hopes of winning a SCOOP title and collecting some of the tens of millions of dollars in guarantees available. Today was no different, as there were two NLHE tournaments and a PLO from which to choose. Thus far in the 2013 SCOOP, women were proving to be formidable opponents in SCOOP events, with more than a few making final tables. And one of the more well-known women in poker - Ana Marquez - already took down a title in this series. Meanwhile, the Women's Sunday was going strong with a solid field for its $10K guarantee tournament. The final registration numbers were: Total players: 227 Guarantee: $10,000.00 Prize pool: $11,350.00 Paid finishers: 36 There were four members of Team PokerStars in the field today, each with a $50 bounty on her head. The first to exit did so later in the tournament but before the money portion of the day, as Team Online's Adrienne "talonchick" Rowsome was eliminated in 80th place. Team Pro Leo Margets followed shortly after in 68th place. After the money bubble burst, two bounties were still in play, however. Friend of PokerStars Charlotte "Sjlot" Van Brabander and Poker SportStars Fatima Moreira de Melo were still in action but found themselves close to the bottom of the chip counts with three tables remaining. Fatima was soon eliminated in 17th place at the hands of sabaeva-elen. The 11th place elimination of domilid started hand-for-hand play, and it didn't take long for a big hand to develop. Jakwad_LV raised from the small blind, and Callisto 5 reraised from the big blind all-in with [As][3d]. Jakwad_LV called with [Ah][Jh], and that hand stood up to the [Ks][4c][9h][Tc][4h] board. Callisto 5 departed in tenth place with $181.60. Jakwad_LV jumps in with chip lead The final table began in Level 19, with blinds at 2,000/4,000 and a 400 ante, along with these players and their chip counts: Seat 1: jakwad_LV (134,170 in chips) Seat 2: Haufniensis (117,428 in chips) Seat 3: zzzFFFzzz (110,286 in chips) Seat 4: filosovsky (99,153 in chips) Seat 5: Yana Lipec (68,620 in chips) Seat 6: sabaeva-elen (43,814 in chips) Seat 7: Kosyan13 (31,351 in chips) Seat 8: donKK69 (40,138 in chips) Seat 9: Sjlot (36,040 in chips) The very first hand was a big one that changed the chip counts for several players: RSS readers click through to see replay Only a few hands later, sabaeva_elen was down to little more than 6K chips and pushed all-in with [Kh][Jd]. Kosyan13 reraised to isolate, which worked, and showed [Ac][Ts]. The board only improved that hand to a straight when it came [Jh][8s][Qd][As][9s], and sabaeva-elen was eliminated in ninth place with $215.65. Jakwad_LV ran into trouble when zzzFFFzzz took a pot worth 177,200 chips from her, and it again changed the makeup of the final table leaderboard. DonKK69 then doubled through zzzFFFzzz, and Sjlot doubled through Haufniensis. Jakwad_LV then doubled through DonKK69. Filosovsky sought a double-up as well. The hand started with an UTG raise from Kosyan13 and reraise from Haufniensis, at which point filosovsky came over the top all-in with [Ah][Qc]. Kosyan13 folded, but Haufniensis called with [Ac][As]. Nothing on the board of [Kc][2h][3h][9c][3s] changed anything, and filosovsky exited in eighth place with $283.75. DonKK69 then doubled through zzzFFFzzz but remained on the short stack. Sjlot doubled through jakwad_LV, and Yana Lipec did the same through Kosyan13. Sjlot then found another double opportunity, this time to climb into the top three: RSS readers click through to see replay Two hands later, Yana Lipec pushed her 1,380 chips all-in UTG with [4c][4h], and donKK69 reraised. Haufniensis raised it up again, and donKK69 called all-in with [Ah][Ks]. Haufniensis showed [Ad][Kd] and made the flush on the [7d][5d][9d][5s][2d] b

I’ve played legal, real-money online poker in Nevada.  Crazy Daisy! Once the Verizon issue was worked out, it seemed a few more cell phone issues were resolved and I was able to log-in, deposit, and play — as noted in … Continue reading →

State gaming regulators are looking into the relationship between 2-week-old Internet poker website Ultimate Poker and an unlicensed service provider used to identify new players. In an email, Gaming Control Board Chairman A.G. Burnett said gaming agents are working with officials from Ultimate, which is majority owned by Station Casinos. Over the weekend, Ultimate Gaming, parent of Ultimate Poker, said in a statement through a spokesman that on Thurday , it “discontinued” using services from Iovation. The company according to poker news resources, was linked to a 2008 online cheating scandal that brought down Ultimate Bet, which is not related to Ultimate Poker. Burnett said Iovation was not a registered service provider with Nevada but the company’s services were utilized by CAMS, an Nevada-approved service provider. “This is in the category of where the ultimate responsibility rests upon the licensee (Ultimate Gaming), and I know that they are addressing the issue,” Burnett said. “We, in turn, will analyze what we received back from Ultimate, and then decide how to proceed from here.” The issue was first brought to light by players on several online gaming websites and chat rooms. Software provided by Iovation, according to PokerNewsDaily.com and QuadJacks.com, was used by insiders of now defunct Ultimate Bet to “look in” hole cards of other players. According to the websites, poker players saw Iovation linked to the Ultimate Poker website and warned other players via message boards. Ultimate Poker launched in Nevada on April 30. The website can only accept wagers from customers gambling on computers or mobile devices located in Nevada. Contact reporter Howard Stutz at hstutz@reviewjournal. com or 702-477-3871. Follow @howardstutz on Twitter. ________________________________________________________________ Copyright 2013 Stephens Media Interactive GamingWire.

It was the 30th time Rafael Nadal had stood at the net with Roger Federer, and the King of Clay made it count. Today at the Italian Open, Nadal beat Federer 6-1, 6-3 for the title. It was the seventh time Nadal had won the championship there and the 20th times he'd beaten Federer. If there was any question about Rafa's recovery from his 2012 injury, Rafa has put it to rest. This is his fifth title since the comeback. Now Rafa heads to Roland Garros for the French Open where he will attempt to win his 12th Grand Slam. Congrats, Rafa, on another great performance. Brad Willis is the PokerStars Head of Blogging

Are you ready to scoop as much cash as possible in PokerStars Spring Championship Of Online Poker (SCOOP)? The 2013 edition is going to be the biggest and richest SCOOP festival to date and PokerStars' guarantee of $40,000,000 should send you...

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