While it wasn’t a PokerStars WCOOP victory, Team PokerStars Pro Liv Boeree did make a major score on the site Monday, winning the $100 Second-Chance tournament during the site’s WCOOP tournament series. The win netted Boeree over $40,000, and is her second big win on the site this year –Boeree won the Sunday Warm-up in February where she pocketed nearly $150k.
Boeree’s career in poker began as a UB sponsored pro, and despite some marginal successes she was long considered one of the many “pretty faces” in poker; long on looks and short on talent. However, Boeree has worked really hard on her game, and in recent years has proven that she is amongst the top female poker players in the world. In addition to her big online scores, Boeree also won the 2010 EPT San Remo tournament worth $1,250,000 to the British astrophysicist/rocker-chick/poker-pro.
After her EPT San Remo win, Boeree was picked up by PokerStars and quickly became one of the leading faces of the site along with Daniel Negreanu and Viktor “Isildur1” Blom. Boeree also works as a host for the UKIPT and European Poker Tour on the British channel 4, working with TV veteran Nick Wealthall on the broadcast.
Boeree now has over $2 million in career tournament winnings in live events, and has surpassed the $200k mark in online poker winnings with her win yesterday in the second-chance tournament at the WCOOP.
Boeree is currently partaking in the numerous poker tournaments taking place in France and the UK in the coming weeks.
Although the seventh day of action at the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker only included two events compared to the normal four or five, Event 19 – the $100 NLHE with a guaranteed $800k prize pool – gave rail birds plenty to cheer about. With a low buy-in of just $100+$9, Event 19 attracted a huge crowd of 11,741. A resulting prize pool of nearly $1.2 million easily topped the guarantee and the race was on for the $163k grand prize.
A few members of Team PokerStars Pro managed to cash in the event, including Pierre “Zoutechamp” Neuville, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier and Fatima Moreira De Melo. The latter player was the only PokerStars Pro to advance to the meaningful stages of the event. She won $1,820 after hitting the rail in 49th place. Grospellier has been very successful in the WCOOP overall, cashing in four separate events so far.
After a grueling 15 hours had passed, you’d think the event would have finally played to completion. In reality, the final table was just starting and it would take another 3 hours before a winner was declared.
The first final table eliminations belonged to BANTEX, Merk2517, spel91 and maxover, who earned prizes between $7.4k and $35k for their efforts. Daskalos20, a native of Cyprus, was next to face the rail. His 5th place finish was slightly disappointing given the fact that he entered final table play with a healthy chip lead.
After two more eliminations, heads-up play commenced between dreeniee82 and erickie, who held chip stacks of 55.3 million and 62.1 million, respectively. After completing two pair on the flop, erickie held strong through the turn and river to topple dreeniee82′s single pair. Dreeniee82 received $117k for his second-place finish.
Sep 13 2011
Svenska Spel adds two more Swedish poker players to roster
written by: Steve Comments: Comments Off
With the online poker market shifting away from the US market, and focusing more on Europe and the emerging markets like Asia, Africa, and South America, many online poker rooms and gambling sites have also been shifting their marketing dollars more towards European poker pros. A clear sign of this is the Swedish online poker room Svenska Spel adding Michael Tureniec and Anton Wigg to their roster of sponsored players that already included Swedish superstar William Thorson.
In a press release issued earlier this week the Brand manager for Svenska Spel, Martin Bengtsson stated:
“It is our task to create a positive image of Swedish poker and this work means it is our duty to constantly develop and improve our poker. We see the recruitment of Michael and Anton as yet another stage in this work… we are heading in the right direction and now we are strengthening that with our two new ambassadors. It is incredibly fun and a very great honour that three of the highest ranked Swedish poker players have chosen to work with us and Swedish poker,”
Wigg and Tureniec are two of the European poker scenes emerging poker stars. Wigg has amassed over $1 million in career tournament earnings in his short career including his win at the 2010 EPT Copenhagen main Event. Tureniec matched Wigg’s EPT Copenhagen in 2011, as well as a runner-up finish in the 2008 EPT London Main Event. In all Tureniec has over $2.6 million in career tournament earnings.
Sep 13 2011
Matt Waxman Victorious in WPT Grand Prix de Paris
written by: Will Comments: Comments Off
The World Poker Tour Grand Prix de Paris has finally wrapped up at the Aviation Club de France, and American poker professional Matthew Waxman emerged victorious following six total days of action, two of which represented Day 1 starting flights. He bested a final table that included Martin Jacobson, Mikko Sundell, Byron Kaverman, Fred Magen and Hugo Lemaire to win a grand prize of 518,750 Euro along with a massive WPT trophy.
The first elimination of the day went to Martin Jacobson, whose A-J suited received no help on the board and lost to the J-J of Mikko Sundell in the 27th hand. Jacobson earned a respectable 89k Euro for his sixth-place finish.
Waxman built his chip stack significantly just five hands later when heavy action from Sundell created a pot worth 3.7 million chips. Waxman completed a flush on the flop, winning the hand and leaving Sundell highly vulnerable. Byron Kaverman, who started the day with the chip lead, took advantage and knocked out Sundell on the very next hand.
Kaverman himself was the next player to hit the rail, though it took several hands and finally a massive initial bet from Fred Magen to draw his chips onto the table. Magen scored a Broadway straight, easily besting Kaverman’s pair of queens. Kaverman received just over 155k Euro for his efforts.
The 100th hand saw Waxman eliminating Magen on the strength of his A-K suited over K-Q suited, given a garbage board. Magen headed to the cage to collect 211k Euro and heads-up play started between Hugo Lemaire and Waxman. Thanks to Waxman’s huge chip lead (7.8 million over 1.5 million), heads-up pay was over in just three hands. After losing to Waxman’s flush, Lemaire scored a cool 311k Euro for a runner-up finish.
Mike “Timex” McDonald has been through a lot in his brief poker career; starting out as an online phenom in his teens; then moving into the world of live poker where he found just as much success; followed by an unprecedented retirement from the game; and finally coming back to poker.
Now McDonald can add yet another major title to his resume as the young superstar has become the second Epic Poker league Champion –Joining Chino Rheem—after outlasting a very tough final table on Friday that included Erik Seidel, Fabrice Soulier, and Dutch Boyd.
Seidel was appearing at his second consecutive final table, but failed to improve upon his runner-up finish in the inaugural EPL Main Event where he lost heads-up to Chino Rheem. This time around Seidel would have to settle for 2nd place and a $184k payday.
Even though the overall attendance was down for the second event of the Epic Poker League season, this was actually anticipated due to the WPT Grand Prix de Paris, EPT London, and WSOP Europe gearing up half a world away. The real test for the Epic Poker league will be the performance of the third stop on the tour, when there is less worldwide competition.
Here is a look at the final tabled payouts from the EPL Main Event:
- Mike McDonald — $782,410
- David Steicke — $506,260
- Fabrice Soulier — $299,160
- Erik Seidel — $184,100
- Nam Le — $126,570
- Isaac Baron — $92,050
- Sean Getzwiller — $69,040
- Dutch Boyd — $57,530
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