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The World Poker Tour made its latest stop in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where 460 players arrived at the ballroom in the Borgata Casino for the WPT Borgata Poker Open. After the first of two Day 1 starting flights, the field of 460 was reduced to 245. Abe Korotki currently leads with just over 260k chips. He received an early prize of $5,000 simply for leading the first day.

Korotki has a long list of live tournament cashes on his resume, including a win at the WSOP Circuit Atlantic City ($433k), another win at the $2k Borgata Summer Open NLHE event ($122k), and various other cashes that bring his career earnings to over $700k. The prize pool at the 2011 WPT Borgata Poker Open will not be finalized until all registrants have bought into Day 1b.

A number of noted poker professionals will be joining Korotki on Tuesday’s Day 2, including Christian Harder, Ebony Kenney, Kenney Nguyen, Cornel Cimpan, Roy Winston, Vanessa Selbst and Will “The Thrill” Failla. Failla’s most recent win came just a few weeks ago, when he took the title in the WPT Legends of Poker Main Event along with $758k.

A long list of high stakes grinders weren’t so fortunate on Day 1a. Among those to hit the rail early were Andy Frankenberger, Ali Eslami, Eugene Todd, Gavin Smith, Dan Shak, Hasan Habib and Dwyte Pilgrim. Pilgrim won the WPT Borgata Poker Open in 2010, so it’s likely that he’ll pay the buy-in once again on Day 1b. Allen Bari, Brent Hanks and Dan O’Brien are also expected to re-enter the tournament after facing early elimination.

Tournament organizers are expecting the overall field to surpass 1,000 players, a goal that seems highly reasonable given the double-entry nature of the event. Stay tuned as coverage continues throughout the week.

Day 15 at the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker was especially busy, with events including WCOOP 38 ($500 NLHE HU Two-Day), WCOOP 40 ($200 NLHE Two-Day), and WCOOP 42 ($1,000 NLHE Two-Day). The most exciting event of the day, however, was WCOOP 41 – an NLHE High Roller tournament with a $10k buy-in and a heads-up, one-on-one format.

PokerStars guaranteed a prize pool of $150k, but their expectations were exceeded when 32 of the biggest names in poker arrived to create a prize pool of $320k. The buy-in was actually meager in comparison to last year’s High Roller, when RaiseOnce emerged victorious after buying in for $25k. RaiseOnce did not make an appearance in this year’s event.

Some of the players that did buy-in but faced early elimination included Brian Hastings, Shawn Buchanan, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Ben Tollerene, Dan Kelly and Jonathan Jaffe.

While a number of stars made the final eight, the most recognizable by far was the legendary Daniel Negreanu. Although Negreanu’s performance was strong enough for a cash finish, it wasn’t enough to top Ankush Mandavia’s.

The top eight was paired down to a final four after Rachid Ben Cherif defeated John Duthie, akut defeated Fishenzon, Negreanu beat 26071985 and Mandavia eliminated Maxim Lykov.

The first match of the final four pitted Mandavia directly against Negreanu. In the final hand of the match-up, Negreanu pushed all in with K-Q offsuit. Mandavia managed to turn 7-6 offsuit into a straight on the turn and the same card appeared on the river, sealing Negreanu’s fate.

After akut defeated Ben Charif, heads-up play began between akut and Mandavia. The pair opted to strike a deal in which both would receive $105k, with an additional $14k on the line for the winner. After about 1.5 hours, it appeared as though akut had the upper hand when he pushed all in with A-Q offsuit against Mandavia’s K-Q offsuit. A king on the flop turned the tables and sealed Mandavia’s win. Cherif and Negreanu received $48k each for their 3rd and 4th place finishes.

With a star-studded lineup featuring one of the poker world’s top young talents the 2011 Partouche Poker tour has erased most of the memory of last year’s controversial 2010 final table that saw Ali Tekintamgac disqualified from the tournament just prior to the final table getting underway.

Once again the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event final table will use a WSOP-style format, taking an extended break of six weeks before resuming on November 12^th, 2011. The nine remaining players will be battling for one of the biggest tournament prizes of the year, a €1,000,000 first-place prize, with the 9^th place finisher taking home €100,000.

The final table participants include UK sensation and Titan Poker pro Sam Trickett, French poker pro Roger Hairabedian who will add to his $2.6 million in career tournament winnings, and one of the four Ukrainian poker players who won a bracelet during the 2011 WSOP Oleksii Kovalchuk.

When the tournament resumes in November it will be Trickett in the driver seat, raking a slight chip-lead into the final table. Here is a look at the complete final table chip counts and seating assignments for the 2011 Partouche Poker Tour Main Event:

• Seat 1:  Alexander Dovzhenko – 944,000
• Seat 2:  Mads Wissing – 2,124,000
• Seat 3:  Salman Fouad Behbehani – 2,446,000
• Seat 4:  Mustapha Kanit – 2,047,000
• Seat 5:  Samuel Trickett — 2,605,000
• Seat 6:  Oleksii Kovalchuk – 1,626,000
• Seat 7:  Roger Hairabedian – 1,890,000
• Seat 8:  Ilan Boujenah – 1,216,000
• Seat 9: Alexandre Coussy – 2,473,000

We’re now a full two weeks into the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker, and dozens of players have received win measured in tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. The latest among them is Steve “gboro780″ Gross, who emerged victorious from WCOOP Event 39 to win a cool $33,333.

WCOOP 39 was a $300 HORSE event played in one day. A total of 591 players registered, creating a $177,300 prize pool that easily exceeded the $125k guarantee.

Gross entered the final table with the leading chip stacks after struggling a bit on the last few tables. Kaas81 and CACAFOGO were first to hit the rail due to a double elimination, followed by Kyle Julius, bisbiki78 and Alex “joiso” Kostritsyn.

With just three players remaining, playitsafe flopped a full house in Omaha Hi Lo. ViTaMin_F22 delivered something of a bad beat when he entered the showdown with his aces full of 8s, and ultimately finished with quad aces from another ace on the river.

Regardless of the bump in momentum, it only took seven hands for ViTaMin_F22 to fall to Gross in heads-up play. During the final hand, Gross produced a 6-5 low to best ViTaMin_F22 8-5 low. ViTaMin_F22 received over $24k for his impressive performance.

Gross has now won a total of three tournaments at PokerStars since he relocated from New Jersey to Canada in order to maintain his online poker career. The list of players that have joined him is becoming too long to track and the illegality of online poker in the U.S. means that the list will just get longer.

Next up is WCOOP 38, a $5000 two-day NLHE Heads-Up tournament with 765 entrants and $382,500 on the line. Just 32 players remain, including Torsten Brinkmann, Andras Nemeth, Chad Brown, Ello Fox, Evan Parkes and Grayson Ramage.

An amendment proposed by Massachusetts legislator Daniel Winslow (R-Norfolk) that would begin the process of legalizing and regulating online poker in the state was able to make it into the final bill that passed the state legislature on Wednesday by a margin of 123 to 32.

While Winslow’s original proposal was to license up to five online poker rooms in the Commonwealth, the end product that made it into the bill will see the Gaming Commission, that will be set-up should the bill make it through the State Senate and then be signed into law by Governor Deval Patrick, “analyze and develop model legislation for Internet Poker” according to the bostonherald.com.

Over 150 amendments were voted on during the debate held in the state legislature and very few were able to make into the final bill that would license three mega-casinos in the state as well as a single slots parlor. This is a terrific sign for online poker proponents as the Winslow amendment was one of a scant few to gain enough traction to be included –even if it was heavily modified.

The bill’s next stop is in the State Senate where further amendments could be added (if they are the bill would then head back to the legislature to be voted on once again in its new form) and once both houses pass the same legislation the final stop is the desk of Deval Patrick. In 2010 the pro-gaming governor vetoed a bill that would have created two mega-casino licenses in Massachusetts. Patrick cited the exclusive slot licenses that would be granted to existing racetracks in Massachusetts as his reason for pulling out the veto pen.

This time around, with just a single slot parlor license, and no exclusivity clause, it’s likely Patrick will quickly sign the bill into law if it reaches his desk in its current form.