Paul Sandells
Tuesday 25th August 2009
Dave Masters defeated Michael Grayden heads up to win the inidivual title and lead his team to victory in the Team Championship of Poker. In a key hand in the heads up battle both played got all their chips in the middle almost even stacked. On a 7-9-3 board with two spades.
Graydon showd the 6-8 of spades and was a favourite over Master’s Queen-7, but Graydon missed all of his sixteen outs twice to end up crippled with a ten to one chip deficit.
In the final hand Graydon once again put his chips in as favourite with Queen-6 against Jack-Ten and hit a dry Queen high flop meaning his opponent needed runner runner to finish him off, but the dealer duly obliged and turned an Ace and a King to give Master a backdoor straight and the individual title.
Having reached the final table Masters only needed to secure third place in order for his team to take the overall title on points. Four handed the team were gifted the win when he isolated an all-in from a short-stacked player with Ace-9 from the button.
Paul Sandells
Tuesday 11th August 2009

DevilfishPoker.com today announces its August European Masters of Poker Malta promotion which sees 18 free seats given away to the EMOP grand final main event throughout this month.
The fifth and final leg of the inaugural EMOP tour takes place in Vittoriosa, Malta from Sept. 23 to 25 and is expected to draw up to 500 players creating an estimated prize pool of €750,000.
Europe’s leading new poker tour, EMOP, has taken in stops in Spain, Estonia, Bulgaria, and Czech Republic since February 2009 and fields have steadily grown in size to last month’s penultimate leg in Barcelona which attracted 399 players, creating a prize pool of €399,000.
Paul Sandells
Friday 7th August 2009
paddypowerpoker.com have announces weekly Irish Winter Festival Ticket-Only satellites, with the first $200 + $15 freezeout super satellite scheduled for Thursday, August 13th at 8pm.
An Irish Winter Festival main event ticket will be awarded for every $2,300 in the prizepool. Feeder satellites will run daily from Monday, August 10th and buy-ins start from $2.20.
“We are thrilled that players can avail of a wider variety of Irish Winter Festival qualifiers than ever before; our ticket-only satellites have been designed to give players ‘more bang for the buck’!” said Paddy Power, Communications Manager for paddypowerpoker.com. “Since players who win a seat in one of our ticket-only sats will also be eligible for our IWF Sole Survivor promotion and be in with a chance to capture a tasty €20,000, we expect them to beat a path to our tables each and every Thursday evening!”
Paul Sandells
Tuesday 4th August 2009
Anton Wigg from Sweden topped the field of 399 players at the European Masters of Poker in Casino Barcelona last weekend taking down €55,502 for his victory. The EMOP Barcelona event attracted the largest field of the tour so far.
After Viktor Manfred Kåvenstam was eliminated at 4th place, the final three players made a deal according to their chip stacks, deciding to play for a small amount of money, and the EMOP trophy.
Maciej Swicarz then knocked out Kristian Eriksson and got heads-up with Wigg. Swicarz dominated the table for a short period but in the end Wigg managed to take control. In the final hand, the players were all in on the flop, both players holding top pair but the Swede’s pair of nines with an ace kicker was enough to win.
The final table results and payouts were:
Paul Sandells
Tuesday 4th August 2009

Boylepoker.com have launched its innovative VIP Club points promotion for the International Poker Open 2009. The promotion gives players the opportunity to increase their starting stack at the live tournament in Dublin in October from 8,000 to 10,000 by simply playing at Boylepoker.com during August and September and accumulating VIP Club points.
Players who earn 250 VIP Club points in August get 1,000 chips added to their starting stack of 8,000, and 250 VIP Club Points earned in September gives them another 1,000 chips bringing the total to 10,000.
Paul Sandells
Wednesday 29th July 2009
Online qualifiers for tickets to the seventh annual Irish Classic Poker Festival main event are now in full swing with Boylepoker and PaddyPowerPoker offering seats to the €100,000 guaranteed €1,000 + €100 buy-in main event taking place at the Macau Sporting Club, Cork, Ireland from Aug. 10 to 16, 2009.
Feeder satellites take place on Boylepoker.com on Thursday Jul. 30 and Tuesday Aug. 4 at 9 p.m. BST for $25.00 + $2.50 with one rebuy and one add-on. This will give one seat to the Irish Classic Poker Festival super satellite on Aug. 6 at 9 p.m. (value $100 + $10) for every $110 in the prize pool. Players can also buy in directly to the super satellite on Aug. 6.
paddypowerpoker.com hosts two remaining satellites tonight Jul. 29 and Wed. Aug. 5 at 9.30 p.m. Entry is $100 + $10 with a rebuy and add-on and each satellite has one ticket guaranteed.
Paul Sandells
Wednesday 22nd July 2009
With the GUKPT online series underway and additional ranking points up for grabs, Ireland’s Martin Silke has overtaken Sunny Chattha at the top of the Leaderboard.
Silke won the main event of the London leg of the live series for £172,000 back in March of this year then followed this win up with another in a £200 side event at GUKPT Manchester for £10,860.
This week the GUKPT online series began with five tournaments over five days with buy-ins ranging from $215 to $1060.
Silke won Event #1 which had a $215 buy-in for $3,520 and picked up 30 GUKPT ranking points.
Sunny Chattha “gasman85″ did all he could to fight Silke off, but 4th place for $1,100 and 12 ranking points was not enough to maintain his overall lead.
Paul Sandells
Tuesday 14th July 2009
The World Series of Poker Main event is now down to just 8 tables, and one very familiar name sits ominously among the chip-leaders.
Phil Ivey has always been regarded as one of, if not the best poker player in the world.
He has won seven world series bracelets including two this year, but surprisingly has never won a bracelet in a holdem event. What better time to do it than in this years Main Event?
Day 6 was the end of the road for the two remaining former champions, Peter Eastgate and Joe Hachem.
Eastgate was elimiated in an unfortunate hand where he re-raised all-in from the big blind with Ace-Jack and found two callers.
On the turn the board read 6-A-4-J giving the Dane top two pair but the board four flushed on the river and David Kopp’s pocket eights with the eight of hearts brought an end to Eastgate’s reign as defending World Champion.
Paul Sandells
Monday 13th July 2009
In 2005 Greg Raymer had what was widely regarded as the best back to back performance of all time in a World Series of Poker Main Event.
Having won the event in 2004 Raymer returned the following year to make the final 3 tables in a field of 5619 runners and was battling for the chip-lead only to have his stack crippled in a painfully unfortunate hand with Aaron Kanter.
2008 champion, Peter Eastgate took home over nine million dollars (four million more than raymer in 2006) and this year the Dane is still on course to complete what could go down as one of the greatest achievements of all time in tournament poker.
Of course it will be far from easy but with just 185 of the 6,494 entrants left it is still anyone’s tournament to win.
Some huge names in Poker including Phil Ivey, ELKY, Antonio Estefandari, David Benyamin and former champion Joe Hachem are also still in the hunt.