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A total of 205 runners joined the existing 188 on the second starting flight day of the World Poker Tour Jacksonville Main Event. Just 90 players from Day 1b will join the Day 1a survivors. Tommy Vedes, a professional poker player with a resume that includes a previous WPT victory, is the current player to beat with over 209k chips. Vedes’ last major win came in 2009 when he dominated to WPT Festa al Lago to cash for over $1.2 million. Amazingly, Vedes barely made it to the tournament room in time to register for WPT Jacksonville.

Although Vedes is the outright leader for now, there’s little doubt that he’d prefer more breathing room as top pros including Michael Swimelar (158k chips), Barry Wiedemann (162k chips) and Imari Love (172k chips) are hot on his heels. Love’s chip stack actually exceeded 200k for a few levels, but he relented later in the day to make way for Vedes.

Vedes earned a significant portion of his stack by eliminating James Calderaro, who understandably pushed all-in with pocket aces only to be defeated by the trip queens of Vedes.

Other recent railbird at WPT Jacksonville include Todd Terry and Allen Kessler. Kessler also pushed all-in with pocket aces only to face defeat in the form of an unsuited straight. Kessler, Terry, Lee Markholt and Will Failla all bought in on Day 1a and Day 1b, contributing heavily to the prize pool, but ultimately busting before Day 1b came to a close.

Andy Frankenberger, a one-time WPT champion and one of the most successful live tournament players of 2011, busted out as well when his A-K offsuit failed to improve against J-J. Noted pros John Dolan, Kyle Bowker, T.K. Miles, Antony Spinella and Allen Carter hit the rail soon after.

Despite the eliminations, plenty of talented pros remain, including Victor Ramdin, Harrison Gimbel, John Racener, Maurice Hawkins, Raj Vohra and Jared Jaffee. They’ve got some catching up to do, however, if they want to pass Vedes and take the $326k first-place prize.

Over the course of five days of intense action, a field of 336 players was whittled down to just 8 at the European Poker Tour Loutraki Main Event in Greece. Zimnan Ziyard currently leads the charge in pursuit of the 347k Euro reserved for first place.

Just 38 players were admitted to the tables on Day 4 (Day 1 was split into two starting flights over two days). Ziyard handily bested the competition to make the final table with a formidable chip stack totaling nearly 2.8 million.

The pace of play was fast and furious from the first minute of action, with 13 players hitting the rail within 75 minutes of play. Julian Herold, the chip leader on Day 1a, was among them. So was Jude Ainsworth, one of the last players remaining from Team PokerStars Pro. His teammate Toni Judet, the chip leader on Day 2, was eliminated in the next level. Meanwhile, Charalmapos Kapernopoulos built his stack to nearly 1.3 million.

Kapernopoulos began to falter as the day went on, losing massive pots to Hauke Haseding and Ioannis Taramas before eventually giving the chip lead to Haseding. Haseding’s reign on the top of the leaderboard didn’t last long, however, as Rupert Elder and Ziyard began to climb through the ranks.

The tables suddenly turned when Ziyard and Elder became engaged in a heads-up battle. Elder pushed all-in with K-J suited, a fair match for Ziyard’s pocket queens. The board offered no help to Elder, and the former EPT champion hit the rail.

Ziyard maintained the chip lead for the rest of the day, fighting off Mario Puccini and Haseding along the way. Ziyard will enter the final day of action with a massive 1 million chip lead over second place. He’ll need to survive talented pros including Pierre Mothes, Florian Schleps and Andras Kovacs in order to claim victory.

One of the surprises in recent years has been the success of the PokerStars United Kingdom Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT), with the localized tour seeing tremendous turnouts (including some of the biggest names in UK poker) at their stops in the UK and Ireland during the tour’s first two seasons.

Apparently the UKIPT is doing well enough that PokerStars is willing to increase the buy-ins for the Main Events by nearly 30% for Season 3. Historically (if two years counts as historical), the tournaments on the UKIPT have had their buy-ins set at €550 (€500+€50) and £550 (£500+£50), but during Season 3 players will have to fork over €770 (€700+€70) and £770 (£700+£70) to participate in a UKIT Main Event. On a positive note, with the increase comes a higher guarantee for the tournaments’ prize-pools.

In addition to the near 30% increase to the Main Event buy-in the UKIPT also released the details for four of the stops on Season 3 of the tournament series:

There were a total of eight stops on Season 1 and Season 2 of the UKIPT, as well as the UKIPT Championship (The EPT London tournament), so expect more stops to be added to the Season 3 schedule in the future.

Thursday afternoon a story hit the Internet that likely had poker players cheering in unison around the globe as CNNMoney.com reported that Full Tilt Poker had been sold to Groupe Bernard Tapie for $80 million. While the deal must still pass a vote by the Full Tilt Poker shareholders, with the biggest hurdle now out of the way it seems all but a certainty at this point.

According to the article, Full Tilt Poker forfeited its assets to the US Department of Justice which will then sell the assets to Groupe Bernard Tapie for the price of $80 million. Stipulations include that the US DOJ will take on the responsibility of repaying US players while GBT is burdened with the debts owed to players from the rest of the world.

The article also claimed that no current Full Tilt Poker Board members will be involved with the new ownership. The DOJ has also agreed to drop all civil complaints against Full Tilt poker, but key individuals like Ray Bitar, Chris Ferguson, and Howard Lederer, remain in the DOJ’s sights –Bitar is the only one of the three facing criminal charges.

The authors of the article apparently jumped the gun (it seems it was meant for a Friday morning release) and the article was taken down shortly after being posted. But the damage was already done, and the specifics were reposted around the Internet despite an “Embargo” on the article.

Stay tuned as more details emerge in this ongoing story.

It seems that there’s no stopping professional poker player Andy Frankenberger these days. Currently the Player of the Year in the World Poker Tour, Frankenberger scored a World Series of Poker bracelet over the summer. He added to his accolades on Thursday by winning the PartyPoker Premier League Mixed Game Championship. In the annals of poker history, 2011 will likely go down as a year belonging to Pius Heinz, Ben Lamb and – now – Andy Frankenberger.

Frankenberger’s win at the PartyPoker Premier League wasn’t notable for its payout (although $100k is no small victory for even the most successful pros) so much as its incredibly stiff competition. The six-handed table included November Niner Matt Giannetti, James Dempsey, Max Pescatori, Sorel Mizzi and Andrew Feldman.

After surviving three initial heats, Frankenberger entered final table play with fewer chips than all but one other competitor. He gradually gained momentum, eventually besting Feldman in heads-up play to win the title along with the $100k prize.

Heads-up play was far from a gimme, lasting over two hours. In the final hand, Feldman pushed all-in preflop with K-Q offsuit, a clear advantage over the K-10 offsuit of Frankenberger. The board came down J-8-9-A-Q, locking in a straight for Frankenberger along with the victory.

Frankenberger is certainly in good company, joining former Premier League champions such as David Benyamine, JC Tran, Andy Black and Juha Helppi. The final table payouts are listed below:

6. Matt Giannetti – $25,000
5. James Dempsey – $30,000
4. Max Pescatori – $35,000
3. Sorel Mizzi – $45,000
2. Andrew Feldman – $87,399
1. Andy Frankenberger – $100,000

As of his latest win, Frankenberger has amassed over $2 million in live tournament wins over the course of his career.