February 21 2011, Chris Hall

While spring is indeed on the horizon, snow was still falling in Copenhagen as the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour’s second event of 2011 returned to the Danish capital where last year Anton Wigg bested a field of 423 to take home the title and roughly $672,000 in prize money.

The chip leader at the end of the day was PokerStars online qualifier Mark Hirleman from the U.S. who finished the day with 163,400 in chips. Around 135 players remained from the initial 213 who entered Day 1a. Hirleman took over the chip lead during the last level of the day after winning several key pots to push himself just ahead of talented Swede Per Linde.

Wigg was one of the many players who signed up for Day 1a’s field. He briefly led the pack before losing a 100,000-chip coinflip with pocket jacks against Koen Schiepers’ ace-king, although he survived with enough to make it through to Day 2. Other players playing Monday included three of the winners from Sunday night’s Nordic Poker Awards, Ilari Tahkokallio who won Best Performance for his magnanimous turn at EPT Berlin, Team PokerStars Pro Theo Jorgensen who won the award for Best Live Player, and EPT Tallinn winner Kevin Stani who was named Rookie of the Year. Both Tahkokallio and Jorgensen were eliminated from Day 1a, but Stani, who found Day 1a a real grind, had a good final couple of levels to send him to Day 2 with a medium-sized stack.

Dominating a lot of the talk coming into Monday’s play was the return of Peter Eastgate. The Danish former World Champion had taken an eight-month sabbatical from poker but showed no signs of rust as he finished the day with an above-average stack on a fairly tough table.

Copenhagen has a reputation as one of the tougher EPTs, so the number of non-Scandinavians playing Monday was fairly small, although there were the occasional familiar faces from the European circuit such as PokerStars Team Pro Arnaud Mattern. The Frenchman managed to lose with aces twice and kings once yet still recover his stack well enough to make it through the day. James Akenhead was leading the British contingent but succumbed fairly early on and was reduced to supporting his friends from the rail Tuesday. No one, however, traveled as far as PokerStars qualifier and former APPT Macau winner Victorino Torres. The Northern Marianas islander traveled over 10,000 km to make it to the EPT. He previously made the trip for EPT Vienna where he made a deep run. This time he didn’t fare so well, and despite a memorable hand where he flopped quad aces, he was one of almost 80 casualties on the day.

As expected, the Scandinavians almost completely dominated the leaderboard. Annette Obrestad sits with over 100,000 after a late rush, Per Linde (nominated at the Nordic Poker Awards for Best Live Player) looks to be in second place with about 130,000, and Team PokerStars Johnny Lodden and EPT San Remo runner-up Jakob Carlsson have both also gotten through to Day 2.

Tomorrow the tournament organizers are expecting a slightly bigger field, which is expected to include Team PokerStars Pros Sebastian Ruthenberg, Viktor Blom and JP Kelly as well as former EPT winners Toby Lewis and Jake Cody.

Day 1b gets under way Tuesday at noon local time and the PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be there to follow all the action from the first shuffle to the final river.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news.

March 27 2011, Elaine Chaivarlis

Got caught up watching the March Madness games and missed out on a Nightly Turbo this week? It’s OK. We’re here to bring you all the top stories of the week, including the announcement of the FTOPS XX schedule, why we think Phil Ivey is going to teach us to win, and more.

FTOPS XX Schedule Announced

About a month after the books closed on FTOPS XIX, the schedule for FTOPS XX was announced.

It all kicks off April 17 with a $200+$16 no-limit hold’em multi-entry event with a $3 million guaranteed prize pool. There will be 45 events spanning the two-week series with over $38 million in guaranteed prize pools. Thirteen of those events will feature $1 million or more in guaranteed prize money.

Multi-Entry tournaments are still on the schedule, as are the Rush Poker tournaments, and a bevy of poker variations for you to test your skills. The $600+$40 buy-in Main Event features a $7.5 million guarantee and is also a multi-entry event. If FTOPS XIX is any indication of what’s to come, the entrants for that event alone will top 10,000, and smash the already huge guarantee.

Here’s a look at the entire FTOPS XX schedule, and if you’ve got gold jerseys on the brain, the first step to getting one is signing up for a Full Tilt Poker account.

I’d Like to Teach the World…to Win…

If you didn’t have the 1971 Coca-Cola commercial in your head, you do now. This has nothing to do with that. While we were Twitter stalking perusing TwoPlusTwo, we stumbled across www.philivey.com.

Our initial thought was that Phil Ivey had someone create a Web page for him that would be just like any other celebrity’s page, complete with a biography, blog, tweets, etc. We were shocked to find that it wasn’t that. In fact, we were met with Ivey’s intense stare and some boding music. After a fancy graphic of the world spun into the center of the screen, the words, “Now I’m going to teach the whole world to win at poker,” popped up. That’s it.

We wish we knew more. We’d like to state on the record, however, that if Ivey’s teaching, we’re in. Until there’s more news on this, you can find us working on our Ivey stare.

EPT Champion of Champions

The PokerStars European Poker Tour has announced the first EPT Champion of Champions tournament. It will take place at the end of season seven, the day after the Grand Final Main Event final table in Madrid. The invitational event will pit the EPT Main Event winners from seasons one through seven against each other in a special freeroll, for a chance to win up to €50,000 worth of EPT season eight event buy-ins.

There are four different EPT Passports up for grabs for the top four finishers. First place will receive a Passport valued at €50,000, second place will receive €25,000, third place will get €15,000, and fourth place will take home a Passport worth €10,000.

In all, 70 players will get this opportunity, including Noah Boeken for winning EPT Copenhagen in season one, Patrik Antonius for winning the Baden Classic in season two, Jason Mercier for taking down EPT San Remo in season four, and Liv Boeree who won EPT San Remo in season six.

The event kicks off on May 13 at the Casino Gran Madrid, and will be filmed for a future television broadcast and streamed on PokerStars.tv.

For more, head on over to the European Poker Tour’s website.

Quite the Katch

Eugene Katchalov has joined Team PokerStars Pro. The 29-year-old pro will begin sporting the PokerStars patch at the Russian Poker Series in Kyiv, which kicks off March 26 and runs through April 3.

“I feel very fortunate in having the opportunity to represent PokerStars. It is the largest and, in my opinion, the best-run poker site in the world, with a great team of pros. I look forward to continuing my great run in poker and helping PokerStars successfully expand and evolve within the ever-changing world of poker,” Katchalov said.

Earlier this year, Katchalov won the $100,000 Super High Roller event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, and just a few days later at PCA, he finished in second place in the $10,000 High Roller Six-Max event. He has a total of $6,104,132 in career tournament winnings.

“Eugene has always flown under the radar, but among his peers, his game is well respected and he is considered one of the best in the world, both in tournaments and cash games. I’m thrilled to see Eugene as part of the team. He’s a great guy and an excellent poker ambassador,” Daniel Negreanu said.

Want to take Katchalov on at the tables? Sign up for a PokerStars account today.

UB Has Heart(land Poker Tour)

UB.net has announced that it will be joining season seven of the Heartland Poker Tour as its sponsor. The HPT is broadcast 52 weeks a year and reaches over 100 million U.S. homes.

“What HPT has been able to do is fantastic. The best kept secret in poker with their homegrown events and national television exposure, they simply get bigger and better every year out. For us, to come in and back their product, we know we’ll help to shine a spotlight on HPT like never before. So, expect more players having some fun at the HPT tables and overall richer prize pools across the tour,” Team UB Pro Joe Sebok said.

UB will be prominently featured in all episodes of the season seven HPT coverage, as well as on-site at the HPT events. The site will also host a series of online tournaments for players to win entries to the HPT and other prizes.

“Tiffany Michelle and Maria Ho are fan favorites after playing a few HPT events. We’re looking forward to seeing them more often, as well as other members of Team UB,” HPT executive producer and co-founder Greg Lang said.

You can read more about this sponsorship in the press release.

New PokerStars Execs

PokerStars has just announced that it has hired Guy Templer and rehired Lee Jones for its executive team.

Templer, the former chief operating officer of Netplay TV, will now be taking on the role of corporate business development director for PokerStars. He will now manage all business development for the site, including introduction into newly regulated markets.

Lee Jones was PokerStars’ poker-room manager from 2003 to 2007. During that time, he became well-known and respected among the site’s players. His new role with PokerStars will be head of home games, the new venture from PokerStars that allows players to create and manage their own poker clubs.

For more, check out the press release.

Cake Partners with PokerListings

PokerListings and the Cake Network have formed a strategic partnership.

“We are extremely excited to become a major component of PokerListings.com’s massive online presence,” Cake Network Marketing Director, Andrew Turner said. “The value of being integrated into one of the premiere leaders in new player acquisition and poker-related search cannot be overstated and will have a significant impact on the Cake Network ecosystem and overall liquidity. This partnership positions the Cake Network for future growth in terms of new depositing players as well as for the addition of several strategic network partners.”

The Cake Poker Network includes Victory Poker, Unabomber Poker, and OnlyPoker, among other online poker sites. DoylesRoom and LockPoker left the network last year, and Lee Jones, who was the card-room manager for Cake Poker, left last year, as well. The network came under fire in 2010 when PokerTableRatings discovered a security flaw that was similar to the one found on the Cereus Network.

To find out more, check out the press release.

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