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Is Patrik Antonius too nitty for the regulars in Macau? Does Guy Laliberte have an issue with the former Full Tilt Poker Pro? Is Johnny Chan up over $1 million? Did Andrew Robl win and then lose $2 million in a single session? These are just a taste of the rumors and gossip hitting the 2+2 poker forum as information trickles out of the ultra-high-stakes cash-games that have once again sprung-up around the APT Macau Main Event.

According to some of the people on hand, Johnny Chan headed for the cash-game as soon as he was eliminated from the APT Macau Main Event (finishing in 60^th place), and has been there ever since. Reports have the poker legend nick-named “The Orient Express” up some $11 million HKD, or in the neighborhood of $1.5 million USD.

Another odd story that has come out of Macau was the fact that Patrik Antonius was denied a seat in the game; with Cirque de Soleil founder Guy Laliberte the player protesting Antonius’ inclusion in the game… There will likely be a lot of digging to get to the bottom of that story, beginning with its veracity, and then possibly finding the reason Guy doesn’t want Patrik in the game.

Other players reportedly in Macau for the cash-game action include Sam Trickett, James Bord, Tom “durrrr” Dwan, and the aforementioned Robl, Chan, Antonius, and Laliberte. No word yet if Phil Ivey has been participating, but he was in Macvau for the tournament. We’ll be sure to keep our eyes on the 2+2 thread for any more information coming out of Macau: Big winners, Big losers, as well as who’s in and who’s out.

The final Sunday of major poker tournaments at PokerStars before the site’s 10th Anniversary celebration went down this past weekend, and as usual, multiple players received six-figure scores. The biggest winner of the week was Robert Chiro, who dominated the Sunday Million to earn a grand prize worth $201k.

Attendance in the Sunday Million was down slightly this time, given that many players were probably traveling home following the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Still, 6,609 runners bought in for $215, generating a prize pool worth over $1.3 million. In the final table, Chiro initially trailed Phantomes124, but turned it around with 9-9 over A-7 offsuit in the final hand of three-handed play.

Chiro held a small chip lead at this point, and steadily built his stack through the final hand. The tournament ended with Chrisf44 pushing all-in with A-Q suited against the 8-8 of Chiro. The board was equally advantageous to both players, giving Chiro the victory and chrisf44 second place and $149k.

The Sunday Warm-Up also managed to shatter its $500k guarantee with a $707k prize pool, albeit with slightly lower attendance numbers than is typical. The final table ended with a three-handed deal in which Adrian Marin took the victory and $90k. Runners-up Vincent Van Der Fluit and vincelis received $85k and $77k, respectively.

The biggest buy-in event of the weekend was the Sunday 500, which saw 737 runners pay $530 buy-ins to amass $368k in prize money. No deal was struck at the final table, allowing bearsfan775 to take the $67k along with the title. Finally there was the Sunday Storm, which managed to exceed 35,000 competitors. Inorogul_13 entered into a six-handed deal at the final table and emerged victorious, winning $26k in the process.

After a grueling weekend of a fast paced play, Mohamed Ali Houssam emerged victorious from a field of 246 talented poker professionals to win the grand prize of $267k in the World Poker Tour Marrakech Main Event. In addition to the prize money and the title, Houssam won his seat in the WPT World Championship. That event, which features a $25k buy-in, will undoubtedly attract the biggest talent in poker when it goes down in May at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

With a buy-in of 3,000 Euro, the stakes at WPT Marrakech were just a bit lower. Houssam, a native of Morocco, began the final day of action with the largest chip stack. He still faced a challenging battle, however, as the final table was stacked with experienced pros including Sebastian Ta, Maksim Martinov, Toufik Ourini, Hassan Fares, Rodney Assous and Team PokerStars Pros Arnaud Mattern, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier and Jonathan Duhamel.

The first player eliminated was Sebastian Ta ($28k), followed quickly by Grospellier ($31k, eight place) and Jonathan Duhamel ($34k, seventh place). Mattern lasted longer than his teammates, eventually hitting the rail in fourth place for $70k after a showdown with Maksim Martinov. Martinov’s pocket sevens held strong through the board to dominate Mattern’s A-8 offsuit.

Rodney Assous and Hassan Fares were eliminated just prior to Mattern, earning $41k and $51k, respectively. Three-handed play didn’t last long, as Martinov ($107k) was victimized by a bad beat at the hands of Toufik Ourini. Ourini and Houssam entered heads-up play with matching chip stacks, ensuring a fair and decisive battle. On the final hands, Houssam scored trip 8s on the flop. Ourini drew to top pair, but it wasn’t enough. He received $166k for his impressive runner-up performance.

It seems that Full Tilt Poker’s patents on Rush Poker are being challenged. While challenges to intellectual property patents are nothing out of the ordinary (especially with the years-long process involved in being issued a patent) but what is out of the ordinary is that the Full Tilt Poker patent of Rush Poker is not being challenged by PokerStars or Party Poker, but instead by the mobile poker provider InstaDeal.

InstaDeal is not only challenging the patent, but they have also unveiled their own version of Rush Poker; a fast-paced version of poker where players are put into a large pool and randomly sent to different tables as soon as they fold their hand.

Full Tilt Poker was extremely adamant from the outset that they would pursue legal action against any infringement on their pending Rush Poker patent, but InstaDeal’s CEO, Per Hildebrand (the former CEO of the Entraction Poker Network), has claimed that the legal advice he was given points to Full Tilt Poker’s chances for receiving a patent on Rush Poker slim at best, saying Full Tilt poker had only met one of the three requirements to receive a patent. “From that time on we were confident they were never going to get a patent for it and so we felt it was safe to start moving forward with InstaDeal,” Hildebrand was quoted as saying by the website PokerNewsReport.com.

With the site in turmoil after Black Friday it is extremely unlikely that Full Tilt Poker has the capability to mount a defense against InstaDeal, and if Hildebrand’s attorney’s are correct the only thing it would do is bleed money from both company’s coffers. If the Full Tilt Poker deal with Groupe Bernard Tapie does go through then the new Full Tilt may in fact try to protect one of its babies in Rush Poker.

For more on InstaDeal you can check out this article that appears on their website: Instant Gratification

With a little more than a month to go in the 2011 tournament campaign, the Player of the Year races at Card Player Magazine and BLUFF Magazine are far from decided. The Card Player Magazine Player of the Year race is currently a heads-up duel between Ben Lamb and Chris Moorman with Oleksii Kovalchuk still within striking distance; while over at BLUFF Magazine its Eugene Katchalov out in front of the field but followed closely by Lamb, Matthew Waxman, and Bertrand “ElkY” Grosspellier.

The BLUFF Magazine race is usually a closer affair as the magazine uses a different formula than Card Player Magazine, taking into account (but not ascribing as much weight to them) a player’s results from the previous year as well as their 2011 results –Card Player Magazine simply looks at a player’s 2011 results for their rankings.

Here is a look at the current POY leader-boards at both BLUFF Magazine and Card Player Magazine:

BLUFF Magazine POY Top 10:

1. Eugene Katchalov — 1,077.38 points
2. Ben Lamb — 988.10 points
3. Matthew Waxman– 968.20 points
4. Bertrand Grospellier — 966.48 points
5. Sam Trickett — 938.32 points
6. Marvin Rettenmaier — 926.05 points
7. Elio Fox — 920.45 points
8. Pius Heinz — 884.00 points
9. Chris Moorman — 879.98 points
10. Stephen O’Dwyer — 841.32 points

Card Player Magazine POY Top 10:

1. Ben Lamb — 6,036 points
2. Chris Moorman — 5,875 points
3. Oleksii Kovalchuk — 5,380 points
4. Marvin Rettenmaier — 4,554 points
5. Sam Stein — 4,505 points
6. Elio Fox — 4,320 points
7. Galen Hall — 4,284 points
8. Eugene Katchalov — 4,258 points
9. Sam Trickett — 4,096 points
10. Matthew Waxman — 4,005 points