July 25 2011, Elaine Chaivarlis
The weekend is over which means you’re back to the workweek grind and so are we. What do you need to know for that watercooler chit chat on Tuesday? Well, PokerStars dealt its 65 billionth hand on Sunday. How much did the winner of the hand get? We’ll tell you that, along with when the WSOP will air on ESPN, and more.
In Case You Missed It
Part two of the World Poker Tour Seminole Hard Rock Showdown aired on FSN Sunday night. All six final tablists made part two of the broadcast, and someone walked away with $1,122,340.
Another Sunday is in the books, which means another round of Sunday Majors crowned winners. The Sunday Briefing has all the results from the biggest online poker tournaments including the PokerStars Sunday Million and more.
The 2011 World Series of Poker November Nine is finally set. Now that we’ve had some time to digest what happened last week, Rich Ryan brings you his Five Thoughts on how the 2011 WSOP Main Event Final Table stacks up.
Congratulations!
On Sunday, PokerStars dealt its 65 billionth hand. If you’re a frequent reader of the Nightly Turbo, you probably know there was some big money in it for the table dealt the Mega Milestone hand and for the winner of that hand.
Christopher Small, from Christchurch, New Zealand, was the lucky winner. He was playing at a $.10/$.25 six-max no-limit hold’em table, one of 24 tables he was playing at the time.
“I was 24-tabling and saw the popup telling me I was involved in the 65 billionth hand,” Small told the PokerStars Blog. “I had ace-king when I looked at the table. My reaction was one of this must be a dream. I couldn’t believe it.”
The six players at the table had moved all-in and the board ran out 
giving Small the big win. He pocketed $68,420 and the other five players won at least $1,710.
As for what Small will do with his newly found windfall, “It’s still sinking in,” he said.
According to a press release we received Monday morning, the 65 Billion Hand promotion ran for a week and saw $770,588.88 given out to more that 1,600 PokerStars players over 301 Milestone Hands.
Find out more about Christopher Small and his win at PokerStarsBlog.com.
Set Your DVRs
We’re sure you got your fill of 2011 World Series of Poker coverage through the PokerNews Live Reporting Blog and the live feed on ESPN3.com and WSOP.com. If you’re anything like us, you need time to wean yourself of your dependance for WSOP updates, so ESPN is here to help. Coverage of the 2011 World Series of Poker begins on Tuesday night on ESPN and runs for the next 16 weeks, all leading up to the November Nine.
It all kicks off on ESPN Tuesday, July 26 at 8 p.m. EDT with two hours of coverage of the promotional Grudge Matches that were played earlier this summer. The $25,000 Heads-Up Championship and the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship will take up the next two weeks of coverage on ESPN.
On August 16, Main Event coverage begins, and that’s all you’ll get until a winner is crowned. For those of you wondering who will be in the booth, the old standard of Norman Chad and Lon McEachern will be back calling the action and giving us an update on how many wives Chad has had.
Be sure and check your local listings for times and set your DVR. This is your one and only reminder – maybe.
On the Outside Looking In
Colson Whitehead is back with another installment of Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia on Grantland.com. If you don’t know what this series is, then you probably don’t read the Nightly Turbo that much, so you should change that.
In Part 3, Whitehead details his visits to City Center and The Cosmopolitan. He then gets into the stuff we all want to hear — his time at the table of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event and who showed up in the eight seat.
“Eventually Seat 8 showed up. The dealer looked at his ID and said, ‘Oh, shit!’ One thing you do not want to hear is a dealer say, ‘Oh, sh*t!’ when a player joins your table. He was wearing a red World Poker Tour jacket with … was that his name embroidered on the left breast? This motherf***er was so bad, he had a goddamned monogrammed World Poker Tour jacket! Floor managers and players from other tables moseyed over to say hello. Fortunately, he was on my right, and if he went crazy with six-betting or nine-betting or who knew what, I could make a quick muck.”
We know when you head over to Grantland.com for the remainder of this story, you’re going to think we’re crazy for sending you to read a 5,000-word essay, but who knows, you might enjoy it. And you know you want to find out if he made it to Day 2.
A New Event Rolls into Town
HeadsUp Entertainment International, the folks that run the Canadian Poker Tour, Canadian Poker Player Magazine, and the Canadian Poker Player Television Network (pretty much anything that has to do with Canada and poker) announced the SIGA Poker Championship in a press release on Monday.
SIGA, the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority operates six First Nation casinos in Saskatchewan and each one will be holding satellites for the event. The SIGA Poker Championship will take place October 1 and 2 at the Dakota Dunes Casino in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
“We are extremely pleased to be working with SIGA,” said CPT President Dan Forigo. “We look forward to building a long and profitable relationship with them and are confident that the events we are working on for 2012 will continue to grow.”
Check out the press release for more.
Ladies of Luck
In the second episode of In the Tank on PokerPhenoms.com, host Adam Johnson spoke with poker pro Matt Vengrin about his new project called Ladies of Luck. For his new project, he cast a group of women and will train them to play poker.
In the video, Vengrin introduces us to two finalists. The two discuss how they got into poker and how the training process is going.
We would have embedded the video here, but we can’t figure out how to, so head on over to PokerPhenoms.com to check it out.
If you aren’t following us on Twitter or liking us on Facebook you’re probably missing on on up-to-the-minute news.
March 21 2011, Elaine Chaivarlis
Most of you were probably too busy with March Madness and online poker tournaments to enjoy the first day of spring. Maybe by catching up on the latest poker news stories, you’ll have a little bit of time to enjoy the second day of spring. Read on to find out the results from Zynga PokerCon’s $100,000 guaranteed tournament, the next milestone PokerStars is upon, and the latest brag from Phil Hellmuth.
In Case You Missed It
We recently caught up with Joseph Cheong to talk poker, check out his grind station, and find out how life has changed since he became a member of the 2010 World Series of Poker November Nine. Check out the latest Sunday Grind for more.
FSN’s coverage of the World Poker Tour continued on Sunday night with the second episode from the Borgata Poker Open. In case you forgot the outcome or missed the show, you can get caught up on all the action in our WPT recap.
The MiniFTOPS XIX finished up on Sunday night with the Main Event smashing its $1.25 million guarantee. Find out how many players took their shot, who won, and the results to the rest of Sunday’s biggest tournaments in the Sunday Briefing.
The fifth installment of the PokerStars SuperStar Showdown kicked off on Sunday between Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom and Daniel Negreanu. The outcome wasn’t so great for one of the players and the match didn’t even go the full 2,500 hands, but we’re not going to tell you who got stacked, you’re going to have to read the SuperStar Showdown recap to find out.
The action on GSN’s High Stakes Poker continued on Saturday with one of the amateurs taking control. If you missed Saturday’s episode and want to catch up on things, you can check out the HSP recap.
Zynga’s PokerCon
Over the weekend, Zynga held its first PokerCon at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas. By Thursday, the day before the two-day event kicked off, it was sold out. There were poker seminars hosted by Annie Duke and Ali Nejad, and appearances made by some fan favorites like Doyle Brunson, Antonio Esfandiari, Scotty Nguyen, and more.
Zynga also hosted a $100,000 guaranteed poker tournament for the attendants of PokerCon. The tournament was divided into two flights of 250 players. The top three finishers from each flight moved on to the final table, and 54 players made the money. In the end, it was Aaron Alawen who outlasted the field and took home the lion’s share of the prize pool.
If you want to find out more about the event, and check out some photos, you can do so by heading over to Zynga’s Twitter page.
That’s a lot of Hands
PokerStars has managed to deal 10 billion hands in less than a year. Back in September, the online poker site dealt its 50 billionth hand. Now, about six months later the site is poised to hit 60 billion hands and it wants to celebrate. And what better way to celebrate than handing out cold hard cash to the players?
There’s approximately $1 million up for grabs during the 60 Billionth Hand celebration. The amount a player can win is dependent upon the VIP player points a player has won at the table, and prizes are awarded during milestone hands, or millionth hands (ex: 59,700,000,000). The winner of the 60 billionth hand will win at least $60,000.
It’s going to happen in the next few days, so if you want to find out more, check out the PokerStars Blog, and if you want your shot at the money, sign up for a PokerStars account.
PokerStars Backing Nevada Internet Gaming Bill
Earlier this month we told you about a bill that the was introduced into the Nevada legislature that would legalize online poker in the state. According to a recent article in the Las Vegas Sun, former Nevada gaming regulator, Randall Sayre, is now a consultant for PokerStars, and the online poker site is backing the legislation.
“If we don’t approach this in a rational fashion this legislative session, by the time we meet again in two years … we will be left on the sidelines, which is not a good thing for the traditional gaming industry in Nevada,” Sayre said.
The bill would establish Internet poker legislation, and prevent regulators from excluding PokerStars and other sites from a license simply because they accept bets from U.S. players now. PokerStars would also pay a 6.75 percent tax on the rake it collects, which is the same amount Nevada casinos pay on gross gambling revenue.
“We can show the feds that this is a product that can work in the U.S. That it’s not the big taboo, mysterious, ‘Wizard of Oz’ approach to gaming that the feds have made it out to be,” Richard Perkins, a former Nevada assembly speaker said.
There’s plenty more on this issue on the Las Vegas Sun’s website.
Iowa To Look Closer
In more Internet poker legislative news, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad said that he is planning on studying the bill that was introduced in the Iowa legislature and not “prepared to slam the door on an expansion into Internet poker.”
“I’m certainly not advocating it,” Branstad said. “This is kind of a new phenomenon and as I understand it, it’s a pretty significant issue and one that I think deserves to be very carefully studied. I want to make sure the integrity of the state is protected in the process and we certainly want to prevent our citizens from being defrauded by unscrupulous activities.”
Approximately 150,000 Iowans are playing online poker and proponents of the online poker bill have said that the state could collect at least $30 million in annual revenues if it was legalized in the state.
“It’s usually my policy not to threaten veto on anything until I’ve seen it in its final form,” Branstad said. “Things could change dramatically and I think it’s important to learn as much as I can before staking out a position. I learned this a long time ago that it’s important to have all the facts and all the information and not just make a snap judgment based on an inadequate amount of information.”
To find out more, check out EasternIowaGovernment.com.
Honey! I Met the (Former) President!
It seems Phil Hellmuth is on a tour of recent United States Presidents lately. He was previously photographed with former President George W. Bush.
“I love my life! Gonna go hang out with President Clinton for an hour or two, then sitting on floor of Warriors game tonight vs Mavericks,” he tweeted on March 16 and then on March 18, he tweeted a photograph of himself and former President Bill Clinton in San Francisco.
PokerNews’ head honcho, Tony G is offering up $50 to the best caption for the photo, so head on over to the PartyPoker Blog and try your best.
Laura Parties in Snowfest
As you know, the PokerNews Team is in Saalbach-Hinterglemm for the PokerStars European Poker Tour Snowfest. If you checked out the recap from Day 1a of the event, you saw the lovely sights from the Austrian town. Now, new PokerNews hostess, Laura Cornelius gives you an inside look at the Welcome Party and talks to some of the pros.
Be sure to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for up-to-the-minute news.
We have one more $15,000 Sunday Million Freeroll with PokerStars left to qualify for, with $1,000 to the winner and 260 tournament tickets, including 45 Sunday Million Tickets on offer.
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