Poker Gremlin

Graham Pound of Reading just won the £500 Main Event played at Summer Series event in Luton for £8,740. This was a 5 days event that started off with Guiseppe Fontana winning the £150 No Limit Freezeout. Then Alex Burton beat a field of 69 in the £250 NL Freezeout. Chen Ten won the £250 PL Omaha Double Chance Freezeout before Ian Wilmott took down the £100 NL Hold’em Bounty Freezeout.

Deborah Masson became the first female to win a GUKPT main event. She had the luck to defeated the 33 strong field in the £300 No Limit event. She won £3,670. Other winners were: Alisha Skene (£200 NL Hold’em Freezeout), David Gooch (£150 NL Hold’em Freezeout) and Richard Scott (£100 NL Hold’em Bounty Freezeout).

Tomorrow night, at the fabulous ARIA Resort & Casino at City Center the officially one-table high-limit poker room will be opened for business. It is called “The Ivey Room” and will open May 22nd with an invitation-only $1 million pot where VIP players will have a shot at a $250,000 first-place prize along. There is also a $100,000 bonus for eliminating the room’s namesake, Phil Ivey. There are also 24-hour tableside dining, and a 42” flat-screen television– essential for sweating all those sports bets.

The event had 2 days and attracted about 109 competitors. 89 players exited the competition in the first day and the final table was formed of 12 people. The battle became intense at level 17. George Stewart was the first to exist as Tom Fielding had an ace. The remaining four chopped the pot for £9,000 each.  At the end, Dave Harris won £15,910, Tom Feilding £9,000, Mark Trett £9,000, Dave Swan £9,000, Rod Buckman £3,380, George Stewart £2,290 and Antonio Pietragalla £1,960.

Vanessa Selbst, is an online player and she is coach at DuecesCracked.com under the name “fslexcduck”. She went to the final tabled the ladies event at the 2007 WSOP and finished 3^rd. Then she made a return to the semi-final, a year later. But then, over night she disappeared form the event scene.

Despite her good games and a reputation for Internet’s best coaches, Selbst decided she wanted a life away from poker and decided to live a more “intellectual” life. But now she is making a comeback. Now Selbst is ninth on the EPT list. We can watch her in the summer at WSOP for two weeks.

The final table of the NAPT Mohegan tournament for high rollers saw Jason Mercier as the major star and winner of this event, which had a $25,000 buy-in. It wasn’t that easy though, as Mercier had a major opponent in Sam Stein, whom he thought for over 4 hours, until he finally got the first prize, a $350,000 check.

Since this was a tournament with shootout bounties, every single finalist went home with a profit. Each bounty was $5,000 and the winner of a table got $60,000 (or $50,000 if it was a five hand table). Below you can see the final table and their final pay out, including the bounties:

1st: Jason Mercier — $450,000 (with 7 bounties)
2nd: Sam Stein — $75,000 (with 3 bounties)
3rd: Faraz Jaka — $80,000 (with 4 bounties)
4th: Matt Glantz — $70,000 (with 2 bounties)
5th: Shawn Buchanan — $80,000 (with 4 bounties)
6th: Luis Vazquez — $70,000 (with 4 bounties)