New Promotion at PartyPoker.com Helps Build Players Bankroll.

PartyPoker.com recently added a new promotion to their site that is very exciting. The new promotion is called Party Poker Bankroll Builder and new players can gain access to freeroll that will pay out to the top fifty spots. Players can also win a seat to the weekly $2,500 freeroll that takes place on Saturdays to continue to build their bankroll.

In the $2,500 freeroll, the top 200 finishers will cash out and possibly win a seat to the monthly $10,000 freeroll that takes place on Sundays once a month. The top 500 players cash out in the $10,000 event. Players who are new to Party Poker can make a deposit and during the first sixty days after that they will have exclusive access into $100 freeroll qualifiers.

When the month of May ends, Party Poker will have given away a guaranteed $12 million in tournament prizes. Every tournament on Party Poker will have a guaranteed prize pool and the final tournament in May will have a $1 million guaranteed prize pool. Players can buy directly into the final or try their luck at satellites that start out as low as $1. Even the smallest of tournaments will have a guaranteed prize pool, no matter the turnout.

Party Poker has several incentives for players to begin playing on their site or to continue to play. With a special tournament happening almost everyday, ranging from small buy-ins to high roller buy-ins, any player is sure to find the type of tournament they would like. Not to mention the guaranteed prize pools, that’s an added bonus.

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BetUS Poker Using Cake Poker Network Skin.

After being founded in 1994, BetUS has gone above and beyond the ranks of the online gambling world by providing their customers with world-class service and breakthrough technology. Their business model originally thrived off their sportsbook operation, where they have catered to millions of clients over the past 14 years. BetUS offers great features such as live odds, free picks, and popular ‘proposition bets’ as part of their sportsbetting arsenal.

However, as online gambling has evolved, BetUS has been evolving right along with it. Over the past couple of years, the company has unveiled several of the most popular online casinos on the web, and is now focusing a lot of its marketing efforts on promoting their newly-revamped poker room. There has been quite a buzz floating around the industry about their new poker skin, which is now being run off the ever-popular Cake Poker Network.

BetUS.com is hoping that the boom surrounding texas hold’em poker will attract both new and existing players to their online poker room. More importantly, they have their sights set on expanding into the U.S. market, where the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) forced many popular poker rooms out of the country. Armed with an impressive list of deposit options and one of the most advanced poker skins in the industry, choosing a place to play online poker has never been easier. So make the right choice – choose BetUS Poker today.

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2008 has welcomed some new faces to the world of high stakes poker. Two of the most notable of these have to be Hac Dang AKA “TREX313” and his brother Di Dang AKA “URINDANGER”. The biggest winner so far this year is TREX313, the screen name is up almost a million dollars so far for 2008. For February alone, TREX is up almost 500k, much of that coming from long heads up sessions against Phil Ivey.

Di Dang AKA “URINDANGER” is no slouch either. These brothers are reported to be millionaires and play a completely fearless style that seems to be very effective in heads up play, both in NLHE and PLO. Di seems to play more short handed games, crushing the six max tables. This past week he had two sessions winning 50k+ from the likes of Richard Ashby AKA “Chufty”, Brian Hastings AKA “LucLongley” and Ilari Sahamies AKA “Ziigmund”. These brothers are on a tear in the cash game scene, and it appears they will continue to do so. It will be interesting to see if they begin to make a splash in the live tournament scene as well.

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Chris Ferguson shook off his own personal monkey in the National Heads Up Championship this past weekend.

In what was his 3rd trip to the final match in the last 4 years of the event, Chris Ferguson finally took home the crown of Heads Up Champion!  He and fellow Full Tilt Poker professional Andy Bloch battled it out in the best-out-of-3 final, where tensions mounted after each scored a victory on one another in the first 2 matches.

The final match would be decided by an essential coin-flip, as Chris Ferguson held pocket Jacks to Andy Bloch’s pair and a flush draw.  All the money went in on the turn, and the river would give the man they call ‘Jesus’ a winning full house.  The crowd exploded into a fury of cheers, and Ferguson was engulfed in hugs and congratulations from his fellow Full Tilt’ers, friends, and family.

The victory earned Chris Ferguson $500,000, a sweet NBC 2008 National Heads Up Championship trophy, and a $10,000 buyin to the WSOP Main Event.

(Andy Bloch walked away with $250,000 for his 2nd place finish, and Phil Ivey and Huck Seed finished 3rd and 4th for $125,000 each - great Poker News coverage this was!)

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The 2008 National Heads Up Championship will begin play this weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada.  This is one of the most talked-about events of the year, and has certainly drawn quite a crowd over at Caesars Palace.  The event will feature not only past and present WSOP Main Event champions, but it will also showcase some of the top online talent (’durrr’ and ’sbrugby’, for example) around the nation.  Celebrities like Don Cheadle will also be playing, with former baseball pitcher Orel Hershiser even being thrown into the mix.

Here is what the pairings and brackets look like for the initial first round:

Heart Pairs:

Vanessa Rousso vs. Antonio Esfandiari
Shannon Elizabeth vs. Andy Bloch
Todd Brunson vs. Scott Fischman
Jamie Gold vs. Tom Kelly
Ted Forrest vs. Orel Hershiser
Allen Cunningham vs. Chad Brown
John Robert Bellande vs. Sam Grizzle
Paul Wasicka vs. Freddie Deeb

Diamond Pairs:

Jason Alexander vs. Huck Seed
David Pham vs. Brian Townsend
Jennifer Tilly vs. Clonie Gowen
Daniel Negreanu vs. Michael Mizrachi
Barry Greenstein vs. Howard Lederer
David Benyamine vs. Jennifer Harman
Sam Farha vs. Doyle Brunson
Erick Lindgren vs. Eli Elezra

Club Pairs:

Jonathan Little vs. Erik Seidel
Patrik Antonius vs. Gabe Kaplan
Greg Raymer vs. Hooman Nikzad
Kenny Tran vs. Scott Clements
Mike Matusow vs. Joe Hachem
Tom Dwan vs. Phil Hellmuth
Tom Schneider vs. Gavin Smith
Chris Ferguson vs. John Juanda

Spade Pairs:

Don Cheadle vs. Gus Hansen
Scotty Nguyen vs. Bill Edler
Chris Moneymaker vs. Jerry Yang
David Singer vs. Phil Laak
Phil Ivey vs. Alisha Kunze
David Williams vs. Johnny Chan
Daniel Schreiber vs. TJ Cloutier
Annie Duke vs. JC Tran

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As reported earlier, Phil Ivey was the main headline for the final 6 at the 2008 WPT LA Poker Classic. Him and another “notable” Phil [Hellmuth, that is] were the heavy favorites to take down the event, with tournament pros Nam Le and Quinn Do the dark horses looking to spoil their party.

It was a high-flying final table, even though the action was relatively slow when it came down to starting the taping of the event. Phil Hellmuth was surprisingly knocked out very early in the match, and the final 3 players pitted a WSOP bracelet winner (Quinn Do) and a veteran WPT champ (Nam Le) against the almighty one - Phil Ivey himself.

Nam Le was in huge contention to outduel Ivey and Do - that was until his pocket Aces were cracked by Phil’s pocket 3’s when an unlikely turn card brought the “Tiger Woods of Poker” a stunning set. When no Ace came on the river, Nam Le was left in shock as he exited in 3rd place.

That pot brought Phil Ivey’s stack to over $11M, with his heads-up competition in Quinn Do only having a little over $2.5M in chips. It was a daunting and almost-impossible lead to overcome, and unfortunately for Do, there was no miracle comeback that took place.

2 hands into heads-up play, Ivey induced Quinn Do to commit the rest of his stack on the turn, where Phil hit an unbeatable full house. Quinn Do’s two pair was drawing dead, and Phil Ivey was declared the winner of the 2008 LA Poker Classic. The win is Ivey’s FIRST World Poker Tour victory. His previous 7 final tables ended with less-than-favorable results, so his win in this tournament vaulted his career resume even further.

Phil Ivey took home over $1.6 Million for his efforts, as well as a free buy-in to the season-ending $25,000 WPT Championship. When play ended, Phil was ready to pack up his bags to fly back to his home town of Las Vegas, where he is slated to play in the NBC National Heads-Up Championship - which begins play this weekend.

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The Commerce Casino will be home to one of the sickest TV final table lineups ever for the World Poker Tour. The L.A. Poker Classic, normally one of the biggest and most popular events of the year, will pit poker’s greatest tournament “brat” in Phil Hellmuth and poker’s greatest living all-around player in Phil Ivey against one another in a very historic showdown.

In addition, tourney specialists Quinn Do and Nam Le are also apart of the final 6. Both of these “Asian Assassins” (pun intended coming from the Pino himself) will be trying to put the two legendary Phil’s in their place come television taping time, but it will be a daunting task to say the least. Both Hellmuth and Ivey are no strangers to pressure, and both have made their fair share of WPT final tables. However, they’ll have to really watch out for Le, who is one of the best tournament players in the world. And if you all remember, it was he who took down the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star Main Event back in 2006 (for more than a cooooool million bucks).

With Hellmuth and Ivey being the main attractions for this star-studded final table, it’ll be tough to NOT root for a Phil vs Phil heads-up battle. We’ll update who takes down this event as it gets reported.

Here are the final chip counts for the remaining 6 players:

Seat 1. Quinn Do - 1,450,000
Seat 2. Nam Le - 1,180,000
Seat 3. Phil Hellmuth - 2,380,000
Seat 4. Phil Ivey - 4,100,000
Seat 5. Charles Moore - 1,510,000
Seat 6. Scott Montgomery - 2,680,000

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Bodog $100,000 Guarantee (02/25/2008)

Bodog poker has not been seeing very good turnouts for their tournaments especially Sunday ones. This past Sunday’s $100,000 guarantee had a very low turnout, so much so that Bodog had to cough up $21,900 extra just to cover the difference to create the guaranteed prize pool.

Only 781 players signed up for the event created the shortage in the prize pool. Play was short and sweet with the lower number of players competing. An experienced player, 350zoom, who had made the final table before, was up against ETHANSCHASING in heads-up play. 350zoom used his experience and took all of his opponent’s chips and the $25,000 win.

The Final Table Results:

350zoom— $25,000
ETHANSCHASING — $14,300
makeutap247 — $9,200
king silas — $6,900
glH6s — $5,500
charlie h222 — $4,500
OGHowie— $3,500
Tiltyjoker — $2,500
marco1980 — $1,600

PokerStars Sunday Million (02/25/2008)

PokerStars had a good turnout this past Sunday for their weekly Sunday million. Over 3,000 people showed up to create a prize pool of $1,593,500. First place was set to take home $278,000 until a deal was made between the final four. The final four players decided to divide the money up according to their chip stacks. This way everyone went home with a good size payday.

Final Results:

usourcek— $150,000 *
hotmark777 — $121,175 *
tayballer— $126,071 *
annekechillo — $196,751 *
PokerTov — $62,465
backmanslivs — $46,212
HissiProppen — $33,464
Cnew27— $21,034
sami31 — $12,429

*four way deal

Full Tilt $750,000 Guarantee (02/25/2008)

This past Sunday’s Full Tilt $750,000 Guarantee had a record number of entrants. 4,730 players entered the tournament, creating a prize pool of $946,000. First place took home almost $164,000. Heads-up play began between Demonfrost and Philtherabbi with Demonfrost taking the final place.

Final Results Are:

philtherabbi — $163,620
Demonfrost — $99,330
werpennstate23 — $64,328
rfb03deuce — $50,138
maxit22 — $37,840
BB_defender — $28,380
TommySibast — $21,758
pdj316 — $16,555
celtics2 — $12,298

UltimateBet $200,000 Guarantee (02/25/2008)

A new trend is apparently starting on Sundays where attendance is down for guaranteed poker tournaments. Are players taking a break from the strenuous schedules they had faced previously with such tournaments as the FTOPS VII or are they simply not showing up? This past Sunday, UltimateBet had their regular $200,000 guarantee and had only 946 player’s sign up. This number is down from the great numbers the poker site saw in January.

In January, UltimateBet never saw an overlay, and produced record numbers. Now in February, they had to put up over $10,000 to meet the $200,000 guarantee for the tournament. The final two competing for the prize were geirto and Marius “Hulk25” Grotan. Grotan’s “Hulk” status wouldn’t be enough to save him as geirto would take the win.

The Final Results:

geirto— $45,000
Marius “Hulk25” Grotan— $26,500
mr_money57 — $18,000
Jeff “caaashier” Cates— $13,100
ddickel— $10,500
davedopeman — $8,500
Travis Klein— $6,500
judithj — $4,500
BudmansCom — $3,500
Tim West— $2,000

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I have had this site for months now and have neglected it a lot with my other projects. Anyways, I’ll try and get some stories up on HighStakesBlog this week. This will include high stakes poker hand histories, gambling news, and site reviews.

I will also be looking for railbirds who want to post hand updates from the bigger online games, as well as full-time writers who will be able to update the site whenever I can’t make it myself.

I’m looking forward to finishing this site as the weeks go by. Take care!  And I think my grand opening test drive will go a lot smoother than good ol’ Phil Hellmuth’s, right?

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I only railed this game a for a few minutes, but the action I saw within that time was nothing short of amazing. With almost $200,000 at the table between the two, the heads up battle wasn’t without its fair share of swings. ‘Aeron73′ came out the clear winner before he decided to call it an evening against ‘Tie53.’  I would estimate that Aeron left up anywhere from $80k to $100k+ on the session.

Some key hands between them included one of the sickest calls I’ve seen on Full Tilt in a few weeks. Holding Q 3 suited, Aeron73 used his full time bank as he contemplated calling a huge $23,500 river bet by Tie53. On a board of 8 K 4 3 9, he made the call with bottom pair, exposing Tie53’s busted gutshot straight-draw, and earning a very sick $84k pot!  Click the link below to view a screenshot of the hand as it went down.

$84,000 pot shipped to Aeron73.

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