https://betting.betfair.com/poker/news/2012/08/ Betfair Poker's talented team of poker enthusiasts bring you the very latest poker news from around the globe. Covering both online poker and the live poker scene, the Betfair Poker blog is your one-stop site for the very best in poker related news, views and gossip. Along with select poker news stories, visitors will also find detailed reports and results of major online and live poker tournaments, interviews with some of poker's key figures and players and bespoke poker articles and editorials. Join Betfair Poker Now en Copyright 2026 Fri, 24 Aug 2012 12:12:00 +0100 http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification With the completion of the summer portion of the 2012 WSOP, the other major poker tours have begun their new seasons, with news from those events dominating the headlines as we move through August. Also of note this week was a landmark ruling by a Brooklyn federal judge in which Texas hold'em was distinguished from other forms of gambling as "not predominantly a game of chance." Dan Smith Earns Second Super High Roller Title at EPT Barcelona Dan Smith of Washougal, Washington pushed himself into the top spot of most 2012 Player of the Year races earlier this week by winning the €50,000 Super High Roller event at the European Poker Tour's Barcelona stop. A final table deal with eventual runner-up J.C. Alvarado of Mexico at the start of heads-up play made Smith's final payday €962,925 (worth about $1.18 million). A total of 55 players entered the €50K Super High Roller, with nine of those rebuying to create a total prize pool of just over €3.07 million. Other notables making the final eight and cashing included Mike "SirWatts" Watson, Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies, Mike "Timex" McDonald, and Erik Seidel. The win by Smith marked his second "super high roller" title of the year, following his victory in the Aussie Millions $100,000 Challenge back in January. There Smith outlasted a field of 38 plus a final table that included Joe Hachem, Tony G, and Gus Hansen to win the title and $1,012,000 first prize (AUD). 2012 EPT Barcelona Super High Roller final table payouts: 1st: Dan Smith (United States) -- €962,925 2nd: J.C. Alvarado (Mexico) -- €788,674 3rd: Mike Watson (Canada) -- €399,500 4th: Ilari Sahamies (Finland) -- €291,900 5th: Mike McDonald (Canada) -- €215,100 6th: Erik Seidel (United States) -- €153,600 7th: Talai Shakerchi (Great Britain) -- €138,300 8th: Jim McCrink (United States) -- €122,960 EPT Barcelona Main Event, High Roller Continue In other news from the first stop of EPT Season 9, the €10,000 buy-in High Roller event got underway at the Gran Casino in Barcelona on Wednesday, with 111 players joining in. They've still a way to go in that one, with yesterday's second day of play having been cut short thanks to players wishing to attend the Barcelona-Real Madrid football match. That meant there were still 76 to start play for today's Day 3, with Taylor Paur leading to start the day. And the €5,000 Main Event winds down to its conclusion this weekend as well, with the final table playing out on Saturday. Entering today's fourth day of play, 24 players of the original field of 1,082 remained, with Samuel Rodriguez of Spain leading all with a big lead over second-place Jonathan Karamalikis. Other notables still in the hunt with 24 left included Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies, John Juanda, Roberto Romanello, and Fatima Moreira de Melo. Cartwright Wins WSOP-C Biloxi Main Event, Earns Fifth Ring Elsewhere on the professional poker circuit, Kyle Cartwright of Bartlett, Tennessee made history by winning his record-tying fifth WSOP Circuit ring and second WSOP-C Main Event title in Biloxi, Mississippi. Cartwright earned a cool $107,992 for his victory in the $1,650 buy-in event. An even 300 entered the tournament at the IP Hotel and Casino in Biloxi, the first stop of 20 on the 2012-13 WSOP Circuit schedule. Cartwright earned his fifth WSOP-C ring in just 16 months, tying Mark "Pegasus" Smith as the only other player to accomplish the feat. The final table featured further intrigue with the battle for "Casino Champion" -- i.e. the player earning the most points during events at a particular WSOP-C stop -- was up for grabs, with eventual fourth-place finisher Cory Wood taking that honor when Dennis Pasentine went out in sixth. Like Cartwright, Wood earns a seat in the season-ending, $1 million-added WSOP National Championship for his efforts. 2010 November Niner John Dolan also performed well in Biloxi, taking third in the Main Event while also winning a ring by taking down an earlier $365 buy-in event. 2012-13 WSOP-C Biloxi Main Event final table payouts: 1st: Kyle Cartwright -- $107,992 
2nd: Brad Johnson -- $66,744 
3rd: John Dolan -- $48,429 
4th: Cory Wood -- $35,730
 5th: Jesus Cabrera -- $26,798
 6th: Dennis Pasentine -- $20,421
 7th: Tony Hatley -- $15,804
 8th: Peter Shashy -- $12,420
 9th: Patrick Eskandar -- $9,909 A Legal Victory for Poker as Federal Judge Deems Texas Hold'em Game of Skill The week's other big headline came not from the poker room but a courtroom, with many believing poker won a significant victory in the "luck-vs.-skill" debate. In Brooklyn, New York, U.S. federal judge Jack Weinstein tossed out a conviction in a case involving a man accused of illegal gambling by hosting a poker club in a Staten Island warehouse. In his ruling, Weinstein noted that he'd been convinced by the defense that hold'em "is not predominantly a game of chance" and thus was not to be considered illegal gambling as defined by the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA). Weinstein's ruling was greeted as a major event in the poker world, namely because it marked the first time a federal judge had explicitly ruled poker to be a "game of skill." The Poker Players Alliance played a role in the case, having provided help to the defense including expert testimony from an economist whose findings were influential in the ruling. The ruling will need to survive an appeal, and it should be noted only concerns the IGBA -- that is to say, other laws (both federal and state) continue to define poker as illegal gambling in the U.S. However, many observers believe the ruling will have consequences moving forward by removing a weapon from the arsenal of poker's opponents and perhaps adding one for those fighting to legalize the game. Join Betfair Poker Now. https://betting.betfair.com/poker/news/the-week-in-poker-ept-barcelona-wsop-c-biloxi-and-judge-rules-poker-a-skill-game-240812-77.html https://betting.betfair.com/poker/news/the-week-in-poker-ept-barcelona-wsop-c-biloxi-and-judge-rules-poker-a-skill-game-240812-77.html News Fri, 24 Aug 2012 12:12:00 +0100 There was an interesting story this week regarding a cheating scandal -- not in poker, but in Scrabble, the board game in which players use lettered tiles to spell words on a 15-by-15 grid. The story is quite intriguing in its own right, but perhaps especially so for the several ways it brings to mind stories of cheating that form part of poker's colorful history. The incident took place at the National Scrabble Championship which has been around since the late 1970s, having become an annual event just a few years ago. This year's tournament staged by the North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA) was held this week in Orlando, Florida, with Nigel Richards winning his fourth championship (and third straight). The 45-year-old New Zealander had to play more than 30 matches on his way to overcoming a field of 339 players to claim the $10,000 first prize. Of course, it was the story of a cheating attempt at this year's championship that helped bring the competition a larger audience this time around. According to John D. Williams, Jr., the executive director of the National Scrabble Association, it was the first time a cheater has been caught at a national Scrabble competition since he assumed his role back in the late 1980s. The cheating and ejection occurred late in the competition, as explained by Jen Doll who reported on the incident for The Atlantic Wire. The culprit was just 13 years old, thus making him one of the youngest competitors in the top division (Division 1). There were 28 rounds prior to the finals, with the cheating incident having been found out and dealt with during Round 24. Doll spoke with the cheater's opponent, Art Moore, who ended up reporting him. According to Moore, he and his opponent were clearing the board from the previous match, placing the tiles into the bag from which they would then draw them out during their game. Moore noticed his opponent pick up the two blank tiles along with others, then release all but those two into the bag before dropping his hand below the table. In Scrabble, blank tiles are especially valuable. They are kind of like wild cards in poker insofar as they can be played as any of the 26 letters, thereby considerably helping a player form words with the other letters in a player's rack. In fact, the player had been suspected of cheating in the past, with his high achievements at such a young age drawing further suspicion. Thus was Moore was paying close attention to his opponent's behavior, being on the lookout to see if he would try to cheat in their match. Moore waited until they were finished putting the piles in the bag, then called over the director. The bag was emptied and it was discovered the two blank tiles were missing. Then a player at a neighboring table saw the cheater drop the blank tiles on the floor, and soon after the player was ejected. Doll goes on to describe how a player who had suspected the boy of cheating in the past then went around to all of his opponents during this year's competition to quiz them about their matches with him. He discovered that in those previous matches the cheater "had somehow managed to draw 'close to 90 percent of the blanks,' which is very nearly impossible." In other words, it sounds as though the cheater's ploy of saving out the blanks to use during the matches might have been successful numerous times before he was caught -- both in this year's competition and perhaps in other tournaments, too. Doll explains how the subject of cheating has been hotly debated in the Scrabble world over recent years, with many serious players unsatisfied with how NASPA officials have addressed it. Interestingly, even though the player had been a suspected cheater for quite some time, it took other players catching him in the act and drawing attention to it before he was finally caught. As I say, the story is fascinating on its own -- see Doll's article, "Inside Scrabble's Cheating Scandal," for more. But for those of us involved with poker, it perhaps resonates even more strongly thanks to several parallels with incidents from poker's past. Tile in the Pocket, Card up the Sleeve One connection I think most of us immediately drew when hearing the story was how pocketing tiles in Scrabble reminded us of the proverbial card-up-one's-sleeve method of cheating in poker. Just last week I was watching the 1959 western Rio Bravo starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, and Ricky Nelson in which there appears a side plot involving someone being suspected of cheating at poker. Sure enough, when the player is confronted it is discovered he has three aces up his sleeve, having held them out presumably to reintroduce them into his hand at an opportune time. It does seem a tad more brazen, however, to try to secure the blank tiles before starting a heads-up Scrabble match as opposed to grabbing an ace or three along the way in a full-ring poker game. (It's worth noting the offender's young age when contemplating the decision-making that took place.) Other Methods The article also talks about other forms of cheating that can happen in Scrabble, with each perhaps evoking parallels to forms of cheating in poker. When taking tiles out of the bag, a player might overdraw (i.e., take more than allotted), not unlike a player dealing an extra card to himself. Doll mentions "banking points" as another form of cheating, which would involve adding points to one's total when not deserved, something that resembles trying to pull extra chips into one's stack without being detected. Doll tells of one other form of cheating in Scrabble that no longer occurs, something called "brailling" which would involve a player feeling the tiles inside the bag and searching for the smooth (blank) one before selecting. (Scrabble tiles used in competition are now all smooth, i.e., none feature indented letters.) Such recalls once-used methods of altering cards by cutting them different sizes or etching the backs so a player dealing could know by touch the cards he'd deal to an opponent. Too Good To Be True Another parallel might be drawn from the whole sequence of suspicion, observation, and capture resulting in the discovery of the cheating. I'm reminded of a late-19th century reading assignment I give in my "Poker in American Film and Culture" class, an excerpt from John Blackbridge's book The Complete Poker Player. There Blackbridge describes tactics used by "card-sharpers" to cheat -- much more prevalent then than today -- and how "honest card players (should be) very wary of any man who habitually wins." Such was the case with the young player at this year's Scrabble competition, who in fact played and cashed in the 2011 competition where he achieved eye-popping results as a 12-year-old and thus aroused suspicion. Blackbridge also talks about the difficulty in exposing cheaters -- i.e., catching them in the act -- something also apparently faced by those at the Scrabble tournaments. Community Watch Finally, one other parallel might be drawn from the way the Scrabble players ultimately found it necessary to self-police their game, something we've seen happen as well with online poker cheating scandals at Absolute Poker, UltimateBet, and elsewhere. At this week's Scrabble tournament, that quick survey of players after the disqualification and discovery that the cheater had "drawn" the blank tiles more often than probability would dictate recalls similar number-crunching performed by those analyzing the play of "POTRIPPER" and other "super users." Just as we've seen happen in the poker world, those in the relatively tight-knit competitive Scrabble community are hoping this incident will ultimately prove useful when it comes to improving the integrity of their game. (By the way, that photo of a Scrabble board appearing up top was sent to me a while back by poker author Paul "Dr. Pauly" McGuire, author of Lost Vegas, after he had played a certain slang word for detective.) Join Betfair Poker Now. https://betting.betfair.com/poker/news/the-scrabble-scandal-and-poker-parallels-170812-77.html https://betting.betfair.com/poker/news/the-scrabble-scandal-and-poker-parallels-170812-77.html News Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:06:00 +0100 Less than three months after closing out Season X of the World Poker Tour with a victory in the $25,000 WPT World Championship in Las Vegas, Marvin Rettenmaier made history on Thursday by winning the Season XI opener, the WPT Merit Cyprus Classic. Rettenmaier topped a field of 329 at the Merit Crystal Clove Hotel and Casino to become the first player in WPT history to earn back-to-back titles, earning $287,784. It was a dominating final table performance by Rettenmaier, a.k.a. "The Mad One." The 25-year-old German entered the fifth and final day of play in third position among the final six, but once he assumed the chip lead he would never relinquish it, ultimately knocking out all five of the remaining competitors to assume the title. It took a while before the first final table elimination occurred, coming not long after Kiryl Radzivonau of Belarus committed his short stack with Jd-10s only to run into the Qc-Qd of Rettenmaier. Radzivonau managed to flop a ten, but a queen also appeared among the community cards, and Rettenmaier's set would be sufficient to knock Radzivonau out in sixth. The remaining five battled for some time longer, during which stretch Rettenmaier built his stack up over 4 million to claim nearly half the chips in play. That's when Joseph El Khoury open-raised all in for 1.225 million from the cutoff with Ac-2s and got a single caller in Rettenmaier playing from the blinds with Ah-Qc. The community cards came 4c-8h-6c-3h-8d, and they were down to four. About 15 minutes after that Rettenmaier opened with a minimum-raise to 240,000 from under the gun and it folded around to Victor Paraschiv in the big blind who reraised all in for around 2 million. Rettenmaier quickly called, tabling Ks-Kd while Paraschiv had but Kc-5c. The board rolled out 4c-Qd-10s-5h-Jd, and the Romanian Paraschiv was out in fourth. It wouldn't take much longer to settle things, as Rettenmaier had more than 7.3 million while his two remaining opponents, Ran Azor and Artur Voskanyan, were both sitting with less than 1.5 million. First it was Azor of Tel Aviv, Israel challenging Rettenmaier with 7c-7d versus the latter's Qs-9c. Azor remained tenuously ahead after the Jd-10c-6s flop and 5c turn. But the Qc fell on the river to pair Rettenmaier, and Azor was out in third. Just two hands later, Rettenmaier was open-shoving from the button with Jd-9d and Voskanyan called with Ac-10h. The flop came 9c-8s-4h to pair Rettenmaier's nine and snatch the lead away from the Russian. The turn was the Qh and river the 7d, and Rettenmaier had won. 2012 WPT Merit Cyprus Classic final table payouts: 1. Marvin Rettenmaier -- $287,784 2. Artur Voskanyan -- $184,020 3. Ran Azor -- $118,360 4. Victor Paraschiv -- $87,610 5. Joseph El Khoury -- $65,770 6. Kiryl Radzivonau -- $52,590 Others making deep runs in this inaugural event of the World Poker Tour's 11th season were Erik Cajelais (7th, $43,690), Sam El Sayed (11th, $19,110), Robert Mizrachi (15th, $15,670), Per Ummer (21st, $11,750), David "Chino" Rheem (22nd, $10,450), and Dominik Nitsche (30th, $8,070). As mentioned, Rettenmaier also won the final event of WPT Season X when he bested an especially tough 152-player field to earn a cool $1,196,858 payday at the WPT World Championship at the Bellagio. The intervening period wasn't too bad for Rettenmaier, either, as he managed to cash six times at this summer's WSOP, including making it to the quarterfinals of Event #6, the $5,000 no-limit hold'em "mix-max" event eventually won by Aubin Cazals. With the win, Rettenmaier joins a select group of players with multiple WPT titles, although none had ever won them in successive events. Fourteen different players have two WPT titles currently, with Gus Hansen and Carlos Mortensen the only players with three. Rettenmaier had already secured a place inside the top 10 in the Global Poker Index, moving into seventh-place in the current rankings, and his finish in Cyprus will surely improve his status. Jason Mercier remains atop the list of the world's top tournament poker players (Once owned by Federated Sports & Gaming, the parent company of the failed Epic Poker League, the GPI was sold to Pinnacle Entertainment in June and was recently purchased by Zokay Entertainment who now operate the rankings.) The World Poker Tour next moves to the U.S. for the WPT Parx Open Poker Classic in Bensalem, Pennsylvania (August 10-15) and the Legends of Poker event at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, California (August 24-29). Join Betfair Poker Now. https://betting.betfair.com/poker/news/rettenmaier-scores-wpt-back-to-back-with-cyprus-win-090812-77.html https://betting.betfair.com/poker/news/rettenmaier-scores-wpt-back-to-back-with-cyprus-win-090812-77.html News Fri, 10 Aug 2012 00:05:00 +0100 Last week's much anticipated German Masters was the latest stop on the European Backgammon Tour, sponsored by Betfair. We caught up with legendary tournament director Chiva Tafazzoli for the lowdown on the most prestigious backgammon tournaments in Europe. https://betting.betfair.com/poker/backgammon/betfair-backgammon-european-poker-tour-interview-with-chiva-tafazzoli-030812-163.html https://betting.betfair.com/poker/backgammon/betfair-backgammon-european-poker-tour-interview-with-chiva-tafazzoli-030812-163.html Backgammon News Fri, 03 Aug 2012 12:25:00 +0100 The 2012 London Olympics are well underway, filling the gap for a lot of us during what is a relatively quiet period, poker-wise. The Olympics, of course, provide all sorts of opportunities to contemplate the meaning of competition and how -- like happens in poker -- skill and luck often combine to affect outcomes. Many have noted connections between poker and the Olympics. At the culmination of his 1990 classic Big Deal: One Year As a Professional Poker Player, Anthony Holden alluded to Olympians' training and the momentous occasion of their competing when describing his return trip to play in the 1989 World Series of Poker Main Event. "In no way had I expected the sense of foreboding that now overwhelmed me," writes Holden, thinking back to how the story had begun a year before at the 1988 WSOP and the year-long odyssey of playing and study that had intervened. "Suddenly I knew what it must feel like to be an Olympic athlete, or a golf or tennis pro, arriving at the venue appointed for the year's main event, burbling about a rendezvous with destiny." Every Olympics we read stories about the athletes passing time in the Olympic village playing poker. Brett Collson of PokerNews provided a recent example earlier this week, reporting on several Olympians enjoying a game of cards when they are not competing. Of course, in some cases the athletes continue to play poker even after the Olympics have ended. We've known for quite some time that the U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps has a fondness for poker and has several friends within the poker community. Indeed, following his earning an all-time Olympic record 19th medal earlier this week, there were some well-known poker pros among the many to whom Phelps tweeted thanks for their congratulatory messages. We first learned Phelps was a poker player a few years ago. Just a couple of months after his stunning performance at the 2008 Beijing Olympics where he won a record eight gold medals, Phelps made a splash (pun intended) in the poker world when he final tabled a $1,500 buy-in event at the Caesars Palace Classic. The tournament drew 187 entrants, and Phelps made it all of the way to ninth before being eliminated on the second day of the two-day event. The poker room manager at Caesars cheekily gave Phelps a ninth-place gold medal for his finish to go along with the $5,213 prize. There have been a few other Olympic athletes among the celebrities showing up to play the World Series of Poker Main Event of late. The Swedish cross-country skier Marcus Hellner played in the 2010 WSOP Main Event. Earlier that year Hellner had won two gold medals at the winter games in Vancouver in the 30 km pursuit and 4x10 km relay. Another Olympian from Scandinavia, Petter Northug, has played in the Main Event the last several years, in fact. Also an elite cross-country skier -- a rival and friend of Hellner -- Northug won four medals at the 2010 Vancouver games, including two golds in the 50 km classical and team sprint events. Northug actually made the money in the Main Event in 2010, finishing 653rd for a cash of $21,327. British boxer Audley Harrison is another Olympic champ who likes going for knockouts in poker tournaments, too. Harrison won gold at the 2000 games in Sydney in the Super Heavyweight division, a highlight of a stellar career. Harrison has been playing poker for several years, turning up at tournaments frequently in Las Vegas and California. He often plays at the WSOP, and was there participating in a few events this summer. "A-Force" has a couple of WSOP cashes to his credit, and in 2010 took third in a $2,000 deep-stack event at the Venetian that drew over 500 entrants, earning a $90,298 payday. Another boxer, Jeff Fenech who represented his home country of Australia at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, has played some poker during recent years. I remember him playing in the 2010 WSOP Main Event at the feature table against Johnny Chan. Fenech would be back again the following year to play the Main Event, too. Olympic champion Fatima de Moreira de Melo, is also a regular participant at the WSOP. The Dutch field hockey player won medals with her Netherlands team on three separate occasions -- bronze in 2000 (Sydney), silver in 2004 (Athens), and gold in 2008 (Beijing). She has numerous cashes to her credit, including four at the WSOP and several on various European tours. Perhaps the most accomplished tournament poker player with an Olympic background is Donnacha O'Dea who swam for Ireland in the 1968 Summer Olympics. While O'Dea won no medals that year in Mexico City, he did win gold at the WSOP when he took the bracelet in a pot-limit Omaha event in 1998. He also made the final table of the WSOP Main Event in 1983, finishing sixth. Incredibly his son, Eoghan O'Dea, would replicate his father's feat 28 years later with a sixth-place finish in the 2011 WSOP Main Event. Donnacha has earned over $1.2 million in tournaments worldwide during a lengthy poker career extending back three decades. At the WSOP he's made 26 cashes and reached eight final tables during that span, including a fifth-place finish in Event #37, the $2,500 eight-game mix event, at this summer's Series. No wonder Holden -- who also writes about playing with O'Dea in Big Deal -- chose the experience of training for and competing in the Olympics as a suitable analogy when describing his return trip to the WSOP. Of course, it could be the comparison occurred to Holden because his grandfather, Ivan Sharpe, was an Olympic champion! Sharpe won a gold medal way back in 1912 in Sweden along with the rest of the Great Britain football squad after they defeated Denmark in the final 4-2. Thanks to John Wray for the illustration up top. Wray and Jay Rosenkrantz are the co-creators of The Micros -- see their videos on YouTube and follow them on Facebook. Join Betfair Poker Now. https://betting.betfair.com/poker/news/from-medals-to-chips-poker-and-the-olympics-030812-77.html https://betting.betfair.com/poker/news/from-medals-to-chips-poker-and-the-olympics-030812-77.html News Fri, 03 Aug 2012 02:01:00 +0100