“The Poker Brat” Phil Hellmuth Makes WSOP History With 11th Bracelet!

Phil Hellmuth, arguably one of the game’s greatest players, added yet another piece of history to his stellar career with a record-breaking 11th WSOP bracelet in the $1,500 NL event at the Rio earlier this week.

On the final hand of the $1,500 NL (Event #15) it seemed as if Phil Hellmuth’s dream of an elusive 11th bracelet were in question as he called the all-in of his opponent, Andy Philachack, with an A 3 offsuit.  The other “Phil” turned over A 5 and was in a somewhat demanding lead going into the flop.  In what seemed like karma giving ACTUALLY giving one back to the Poker Brat (remember, this is the guy who believes if there was no luck involved in the game, he would win every tournament he played in — lol), a miracle 3 peeled off on the flop!  And as the board bricked on the final turn and river cards, the dream of a record-breaking 11th bracelet was suddenly an all to amazing reality.

Before Hellmuth took down his 11th bracelet, he was tied with poker legends Johnny Chan and Doyle Brunson as being the top bracelet holders with 10 apiece.  In a very fitting moment of comraderie and respect, both Chan and Brunson presented Phil with his record-breaking bracelet.  It could get very interesting from here on out during the remainder of the Series, as now Johnny and Doyle both have something to shoot for in regards to chasing Hellmuth down in the bracelet department.  Congratulations Phil….you may be one of poker’s most hated citizens, but god damn you are one entertaining S.O.B.! 

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Daniel Negreanu and Full Contact Poker to Merge with PokerStars!

In a stunning announcement made on Daniel Negreanu’s website, Full Contact Poker will be merging with PokerStars.

It looks like it’s finally official.  Full Contact Poker has announced plans that it will be merging with PokerStars as part of a sitewide transition of its members and founder Daniel Negreanu.  It has been speculated for months that high stakes professional Daniel Negreanu would be leaving the very poker site that bears his name, and jump aboard the greener pastures of Team PokerStars.  As of today, that speculation has become a reality. 

The news has spread like wildfire over at the community forums at Full Contact Poker, with questions arising over how player balances will be transferred over from the FCP poker skin, as well as how the migration in general will play out.  From what I’ve read on the news release, it looks like everything will be taken care of automatically and smoothed out before the end of the week.  In addition, automated emails from PokerStars will be sent out to all members involved in the migration, hopefully putting its new players at ease.  Personally, I’m sure the transition will be a quick and painless one, especially with PokerStars at the helm. 

Now as far as the other big news involved in this merger, it looks as though Daniel Negreanu will also become a representative of Team PokerStars.  He joins the team during a big time for the site, as its traffic is doing nothing but increasing and its popularity has exceeded that of its former rival PartyPoker.  DN also has jumped on board a crew that already houses three WSOP Main Event champions (Moneymaker, Raymer, and Hachem), as well as an array of other top pros (Isabelle Mercier and Humberto Brenes to name a few) — it seems like the fit is almost too perfect.  The arrangement will no doubt take PokerStars into yet another heightened level of success, as it continues to shatter revenues worldwide and bring its customers the largest guaranteed tournaments on ANY poker site.  Hopefully this will be just the thing to get Negreanu out of his recent slide in cash games and tournaments, as he has been relatively under the radar since his stellar year in 2006. 

2007 WSOP Results Posted in the Forums.

Instead of writing the same old blogroll about the results from all the events of this year’s World Series, I’ve decided to just post event by event coverage and final table results in the forums.  You can access them by clicking the link below or you can go straight to them via the link on the top right of the sidebar on the PokerOwnage.com main page.  Enjoy folks!

 2007 World Series of Poker Results and Coverage.

Brian Townsend Finishes Up $1.8M Against Farha And Other High Stakes Pros.

A story that has been reported all week has concluded with a HUGE final day for online pro Brian “sbrugby” Townsend.  With the stakes approaching $1k/$2k, and the games getting mixed between PLO and No Limit Hold Em, it was all just the beginning to an end for high stakes bad ass Sammy Farha.

Following up on one of the biggest heads-up matches in history, it looks as though Brian Townsend has completely annilihated PLO guru and uber high stakes pro Sammy Farha, cleaning him out for a cool million over 18 hours of play.  Overall, Townsend swept up shop for $1.85 Million in total!  As the game between he and Farha was coming to an end, notable pros such as Brandon Adams, Rafi Amit, David Benyamine, Patrick Antonius, and even Bellagio President himself Bobby Baldwin would eventually join the match.  From what I’ve read up on his blog, ’sbrugby’ will most likely be calling it a week and going back home to California.  There has been no confirmation on whether he will be playing any more WSOP events. 

Brian “sbrugby” Townsend versus Sammy Farha…A Heads-Up Cash Game Battle For The Ages?

Online poker pro Brian “sbrugby” Townsend currently involved in a huge heads-up match with high stakes specialist Sammy Farha (2nd place runner-up in 2003 WSOP Main Event) over at Bellagio, the official site of the “Big Game” itself.

It was a little over a year and a half ago when Brian Townsend, nicknamed ’sbrugby’ or ‘aba20′ online, got his official start playing poker.  Townsend, who started out playing at $.50/$1 NL, has since progressed into a cash game phenom.  The young 20-something has ridden his small-stakes glory all the way to the biggest games on Full Tilt Poker. playing $200/$400 NL, $200/$400 PLO, and $500/$1000 NL Cap on a daily basis.  More importantly, he was (and still is) crushing the greatest names in poker regularly.  Last month in May, ’sbrugby’ managed to win almost $2 million alone from cash games — consistently beating out other big names like Phil Ivey, David Benyamine, Doyle Brunson, and Patrik Antonius!

His most recent transition has been live poker.  Townsend’s appearances on GSN’s ‘High Stakes Poker’ solidified what most online and live players already had pretty much known — that this kid from Santa Barbara was the real deal, and ready for action. 

With this year’s World Series of Poker now underway, Brian isn’t the only one looking for action, and definitely not the only one looking for a big game.  Enter Sammy Farha, who’s trademark style and unlit cigarette has been a staple of poker notoriety ever since his heads up battle with Chris Moneymaker at the 2003 WSOP Main Event.  Farha, who is also known for being ultra-aggressive in the biggest games in the world, is probably one of the biggest action junkies Las Vegas [and maybe the world] has ever seen.  I guess it was only a matter of time that Sammy and Townsend would meet for one of the largest HU games to ever take place.  Even internet speculation said this match was inevitable after Townsend reportedly had been staring down Farha and his stack on a number of occasions when they both were playing on the television show ‘High Stakes Poker.’

Well, after all the speculation and rumors, the match a lot of people expected has been going on all this week in Las Vegas.  And let’s just say from what I’ve read over at Card Runners (where BT’s daily blog is housed), the match hasn’t been pretty.  The first night they played was $500/$1000 PLO, where most pros will tell you Farha has a distinct advantage in, mainly because it’s his best game and he’s very intimidating with his ultra-aggressive nature and endless bankroll.  The young phenom, who is up over several million in the $200/$400 PLO shorthanded games on Full Tilt, confirmed what most already knew — that Farha was a beast heads-up, and that playing him over a long period of time was very exhausting to say the least.  The 1st session between these two netted Sammy a profit of over $500k, with Townsend noting there were 4 to 5 pots in the half-million dollar range alone during the game. 

The next session [reportedly lasting 12 hours], which Brian updated the community on over at his CR Blog, fared much better for him.  The young pro actually ended up reversing his huge loss from the first session, turning it into a $50,000 profit OVERALL during the several marathon sessions he and Farha had this week.  Townsend said his “comeback was…quite satisfying,” especially considering he was down $800k at one point during the last match, and $1.2 million overall!  So, IMO to end up $50k against a player of Sammy’s caliber is still a nice accomplishment, even given the stakes that were being played out.  My favorite part of the story thus far was the last hand they played, where Sammy asked Townsend straight up if he wanted to just flip for the $450k he had just won from him the pot before  — Townsend kindly declined, however, stating his unsuredness of being able to get more money in play if he had lost.  All in all, just another day for the high stakes pros, right?

PokerNews.com and Tony G. Accuse CardPlayer Magazine of Stealing Their 2007 Live WSOP Updates!

PokerNews.com. along with majority shareholder and world-renowned poker player Tony G, have officially called out CardPlayer magazine over its apparent theft of their chip counts and live updates during this year’s World Series of Poker.

As if the 2007 World Series of Poker couldn’t have gotten any more loopy, right?

Well yesterday, it OFFICIALLY did.  With rumors already circulating around both the online and live poker community that CardPlayer was deliberately stealing the live chip counts and updates from PokerNews.com, the drama worsened even more when PokerNews Limited’s majority shareholder - Tony G. - wrote an official statement in his blog regarding the ordeal.  In an excerpt taken straight from his blog, Tony G. doesn’t hold back his displeasure for the situation:

“We are having our best year ever and right now we should be enjoying the finest moment of our life as a company.  We are at the WSOP and are supposed to have an agreement with Bluff to be the exclusive provider of updates and chip counts. But unfortunately over the last few days, we have been pirated and simply stolen from by many of our competitors  - including Cardplayer.  Cardplayer is hiding behind a legal fence that they were standing on top of just this time last year– kicking anyone who dared try to climb it in the teeth. ”

His statement also directly implicates CardPlayer as using PokerNews’s updates and copy/pasting them onto their own site.  Not only that, but CardPlayer is refusing to give any credit to PokerNews for the work being done by its staff of over 40+ employees who do both the official chip counts and live media updates at the Rio!  Now what makes this story ever more intriguing is that CardPlayer just LAST YEAR accused Bluff Magazine of doing the same thing — and just as Bluff did last year, CP is now clearly hiding behind a legal loophole that doesn’t exactly stipulate what kind of coverage it can and can’t use from other media outlets.

Jeremy Enke, who is both a chairman for PokerNews and the owner of PokerAffiliateWorld, has stated his distaste for what CardPlayer is doing in a post over at PAW.  Now from what I’ve been reading, it looks as if PokerNews might have some sort of leg to stand on if they did indeed pursued some sort of legal action against CardPlayer.  It was clearly stated months ago that PokerNews had earned the exclusive rights to do both the official chip counts and live updates.  In fact, PokerNews is the ONLY media outlet allowed in the Rio poker room to cover the event.

It has been roughly 24 hours now since this story broke, and there has yet to be any statement issued by Jeff Shulman, who with his brother, own and operate CardPlayer.   With the poker community already looking down at CP, I think it would be very interesting to see what the response will be.  I’m hoping that CardPlayer will step up and do the right thing eventually, but I’m not holding my breath at the moment.  If CardPlayer wanted the updates so bad, then they should’ve done a better job at negotiating a deal with Harrah’s and the WSOP.  PokerNews paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to be the official provider of WSOP updates, and its only fair that CardPlayer respect that from a business standpoint — get your head out of your ass Jeff and save your company from any further embarassment.

Mansion Poker Ambassador Erica Schoenberg Gets Naked on Strip Poker DVD!

Poker princess Erica Schoenberg caught topless on a new strip poker DVD! Men and women alike unite in happiness.

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Seasoned poker player Erica Schoenberg has apparently been showing down A LOT more than just her cards lately.  In a story that seems almost too good to be true, Erica was caught with more than just her pants down in fact, from what I’ve seen completely devoid of both pants AND bra!  The gorgeous 28-year old poker professional, who is also the official ambassador for Mansion Poker and the former girlfriend of high stakes pro David Benyamine, is clearly seen topless in a new DVD titled Carmen Electra’s Strip Poker.

There has been no official confirmation that the person in the screen capture (from the DVD) is indeed Erica, but the internet forums are buzzing over the prospect of yet another big time poker name being busted for naked shenanigans.  But from what I’ve seen and read, this is definitely the real deal. The shot in question is posted below, and maybe you can determine if this her just try not to get too overly excited over there, ok?

Now on a side note, this isn’t the first time a well-known poker player has been caught doing indecent acts with their bodies. In fact, online poker player Jennifer ‘Jennicide’ Leigh caused quite an uproar several years ago when racy photos of her in lingerie were plastered all over NeverWinPoker. And just last year, photos of a naked Gavin Griffin were leaked onto the same site - with 2004 WSOP Main Event 2^nd place winner David Williams foot fetish porn video being found and posted all over the interweb shortly after that!

The moral of the story kids?  If you get naked in front of a camera and are a big time poker player the evidence of it will eventually be found and posted on the internet for our viewing pleasure. Just food for thought.

P.O. Veteran ‘Sm34t’ Takes 3rd in $5.50 MTT on PokerStars!

PokerOwnage veteran Sm34t takes 3rd place in the $5.50 MTT this morning on PokerStars!

Our boy Sm34t cruised to the final table of the $5 Stars donkament earlier this morning, taking in a nice little score of $400 and change! Also, the return of the PokerOwnage shoutout returned in the process! Congrats again Sm34t — and daaaaamn am I looking forward to doin’ this stuff again!

-PINO

(Click the link below to see the Final Table shot!!!)

Sm34ts’s $5 MTT Final Table