Dan Bilzerian rode a bicycle from Las Vegas to Los Angeles in under 48 hours to cash a $1.2 million prop bet against high-stakes gambler and futures trader Bill Perkins. In addition, Bilzerian did not lose his private plane to Hollywood impresario Rick Solomon in a side wager. The original prop bet by Perkins entailed Bilzerian riding a bicycle from his home in the Hollywood Hills to the Welcome to Las Vegas sign, which he had to complete the 300-mile journey in under 48 hours. Bilzerian, who was not an avid biker, trained vigorously to win the wager and even employed Lance Armstrong to advise him with training. A couple of weeks earlier, Samantha Abernathy earned $10,000 by winning a prop bet against Bilzerian for completing a similar bike ride from Vegas to L.A. in under 60 hours.
The first batch of “wild card” picks from the Global Poker League were announced this week. Most of the team managers confirmed, as expected, that they will be playing on their team's rosters. The Paris Aviators' team manager, Fabrice Soulier, confirmed he would be one of the wild card picks for the Aviators along with French pro Alex Luneau. Other GPL wild card picks included Todd Brunson (Rome), Igor Yaroshevsky (Moscow), Sam Trickett (London), Jonathan Jaffe (San Francisco), Scott Ball (Las Vegas), and Dan ‘Jungelman' Cates and Bill Perkins (Berlin). The first event is scheduled for April 5th and the we're awaiting for five other teams to submit their final wild card selections.
The Cash Game Festival at Aspers Casino in Westfield Stratford City, London is currently underway. For the next five days, Aspers Casino will host the biggest cash game action in Europe. The Cash Game Festival has its own Twitter feed (@CashFestival) and dedicated Twitch channel, which is live right now. Watch it here.
The race for United States President is in full swing with only seven months to go before Election Day in November. At the start of the month of March, it looked like we were headed for an inevitable showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump after both dominated the polls on Super Tuesday. However, by the end of the month, the Clinton-Trump title bout is no longer looking like a sure thing. Trump is fighting an all-out war with a splintered Republican Party, while GOP insiders and their billionaire puppet masters are in a frantic, full-court press to thwart a Trump nomination. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's lead shrunk dramatically against a surging Bernie Sanders, who has successfully mobilized a political insurgency of millennials to fight the elite ruling class that hijacked the Democratic Party. At the present moment, Hillary Clinton is the odds-on favorite at 2/5 to become the next President of the United States.
David Baazov, CEO of Montreal-based Amaya (a.k.a. PokerStars), announced he is taking a voluntary leave of absence from the company for an indefinite amount of time. Baazov will use the time off to focus on buying Amaya and fighting insider trading charges by Quebec's stock market regulator, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF).
All In: The Poker Movie, directed by Douglas Tirola, is a documentary film about the rise of poker. The documentary began production in 2009 at the height of the online poker boom and wrapped in late 2011. The film finally debuted in March 2012, nearly a year after Black Friday decimated the American online poker community and altered the online gaming marketplace.This doc features interviews with notables such as Matt Damon, Kenny Rogers, Ira Glass, Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, Howard Lederer, Daniel Negreanu, Greg Raymer, and Frank Deford.
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It's the Elite 8 portion of March Madness. Two games are slated for Easter Sunday with #1 North Carolina vs. #6 Notre Dame and #1 Virginia vs. #10 Syracuse. The winners advance to the Final Four to join #2 Oklahoma and #2 Villanova. Two top seeds (Carolina and Virginia) are heavily favorited against two teams (Notre Dame and Syracuse) no one expected to go this deep. Will the #1s prevail? Can #10 Syracuse continue its Cinderella story? Or is it foolish to bet against Notre Dame on Easter Sunday?
The WPT's first-ever Tournament of Champions is slated for April 22nd at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida. This special invitational event added a new twist with the introduction of a 30-second shot clock to expedite action and prevent tanking. Players have 30 seconds to act on every decision, but they are also awarded five additional extensions, which gives them a full minute to make a decision. If you're someone who loathes tanking during live streams, then the Action Clock might be the exact thing that will speed up the action. Will the WPT's shot clock become the next standard in tournament poker? We will find out soon enough!
PokerStars is always coming up with different tournament series to cater to players with bankrolls of all shapes and sizes. The newest promo, the Mountain Series, consists of ten events starting on April 7th. The first event will have an $11 buy-in leading all the way to a $2,100 buy-in Everest main event championship with a $1.5 million guarantee. This four-day series contains escalating buy-ins and guarantees.
It's official. PokerStars New Jersey is open for business to all New Jersey state residents. So long as you are 21-years old and are within the borders of New Jersey, then you are eligible to play on PokerStars NJ against other NJ players.
Club Poker Radio's gossip girl Gaëlle Jaudon sat down to speak with the always vociferous and highly-opinionated Daniel Negreanu. In this extensive interview, Negreanu touched on a variety of topics including his humble roots in Toronto with a first job at Subway, the Twitch online poker revolution, veganism, why he'll never weigh more than 170 lbs, and the controversial changes PokerStars implemented which incited a boycott from high-stakes pros.
Another German in the winner's circle? Not so fast! Instead of a second WPT crown inside of three weeks, Dietrich Fast's epic run at the WPT Vienna ended in fourth place. Rather, Romania's Vlad Darie took down his first-ever WPT title in Vienna. Darie's payday was worth €170,800.
Only three weeks ago, Germany's Dietrich Fast shipped the WPT L.A. Poker Classic outside of Los Angeles. Fast is trying to win a second title in less than a month. The tour is now currently in Europe at the WPT Vienna, where there are six players left in the hunt out of 234 original players. First place pays out $192K, or a hefty cut of the $767,283 prize pool. Although Zoltan Gal started the WPT Vienna final table as the chip leader with 1.8M, Dietrich Fast is right behind in second with nearly 1.6M. Also rounding out the final table are… Matt Davenport, Vlad Darie, Dominik Bosnjak, and Georgios Zisimolpoulos. Watch the live stream of the final table… here.
For a third-straight stop, the World Poker Tour hosted an event in California. Germans had shipped the last two WPT events -- L.A. Poker Classic and Bay 101 Shooting Star. However, at the WPT Rolling Thunder, American Harrison Gimbel won his first WPT title and denied Mohsin Charania a third-career title. First place paid out $275,112 for Gimbel, who faded a field of 409 runners at the Thunder Valley Casino outside Sacramento.
Aspers Casino in Westfield Stratford City will be hosting the Cash Game Festival from March 30th through April 3. This five-day carnival of poker will run nonstop cash games for 120 hours with added bonuses and high hand promotions. This London-based event is expect to draw in players from all over Europe and over 30 countries in total. Cash games at Aspers Casino will include NL Hold'em, PLO, DC (9-game), ROE and Sviten Special, Open Face Chinese…plus any other game per request.
PokerStars returns to New Jersey…almost. There's a soft launch underway. PokerStars New Jersey opened for business for 500 selected residents of the Garden State. This “test play” time trial runs for the next five days and will be monitored closely by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement. If all goes well with this soft launch, then PokerStars NJ's site will go live for all New Jersey residents on March 21. Read more details on the soft launch from the News & Observor here.
The Grand Prix Poker Tour will launch a new tournament series called GPPT Mini. This spin off of the GPPT will consist of 20 different legs across six casinos throughout the UK. Each GPPT Mini event has a $109 buy-in plus a $50K guarantee. Just like in the GPPT, if you make Day 2 of the GPPT Mini then you will make the money. There will also be options to play Day 1s online. The first GPPT Mini event kicks off at Aspers Milton Keynes on March 23rd.
Over the weekend, Samantha Abernathy pocketed a cool $10,000 for successfully riding a bicycle from Las Vegas to the Los Angeles city limits for a total of 320 miles. Despite a batch of rare monsoon-like weather, Abernathy completed her journey just under the pre-established time limit of 72 hours. Dan Bilzerian now has to fork over $10,000 for losing the prop bet against Abernathy. Meanwhile, Bilzerian has been training for his $1.2 million prop bet (against Bill Perkins) in which he rides a bicycle from his home in Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 48 hours.
It's been a good year for Mustapha Kanit. Most recently, the young Italian was the #1 overall draft pick for the Rome Emperors in the inaugural season for the Global Poker League. Four weeks earlier, Kanit put his live skills on display when he shipped a High Roller event at the EPT Dublin. Just last night, Mustapha "lasagnaammm" Kanit demonstrated his deft online prowess by winning the Sunday Million on PokerStars. Impressive feat for Kanit, considering he faded a field of 5,717. He earned every cent of the first-place payday of $177,229.
Lee See-dol finally won a game against AlphaGo, Google's Deep Mind AI program! AlphaGo locked up the best-of-five series the other day with a third straight victory in Game 3, but 18-time world Go champion Lee See-dol wanted to save face and win at least one game in the contest. A humbled Lee Se-dol was greeted with a raucous applause after his victory in Game 4 at the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Seoul, South Korea.
Chalk up another victory for Germany. 2016 kicked off as the Year of the Germans after Fedor Holz and Fabian Quoss binked High Roller events in January. Just last week, Dietrich Fast took down the WPT L.A. Poker Classic. The stoic Stefan Schillhabel, a student from Dusseldorf, Germany, continued the German domination by winning nearly $1.3 million and shipping the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star. Schillhabel faded a field of 753 players, which included Shooting Star bounty player Maria Ho, at the final table. Ho attempted to make history by becoming the first woman to win a WPT crown, yet she busted in sixth place.
The rise of the machines! In another stunning performance, Google's Deep Mind AI program AlphaGo defeated Lee Se-dol in Game 3 of a 5-match series. Korea's Lee Se-dol, who won 18 world championships in Go, lost the first two matches against AlphaGo earlier this week. Lee desperately needed to win Game 3 if he wanted a shot at the $1 million prize. Alas, for a third consecutive game, AlphaGo defeated Lee Se-Dol. Even though AlphaGo clinched the series, Lee Se-Dol can save face by trying to win at least one of the two remaining games.
Six remain at the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars. $1.3 million up for grabs in San Jose, CA. There's only one Shooting Star bounty left in the tournament… and it's Maria Ho. She's third overall in chips and trails leader Stefan Schillhabel, sitting on a monster stack. Griffin Paul is second in chips and seeking his second career WPT title. Final table resumes at 4pm PT on Friday.
Another upset? Google's DeepMind AlphaGo program defeated the world Go champion for a second consecutive match testing man's wits against one of the top artificial intelligence programs in the world. On Thursday in Korea, Lee Se-dol lost the second bout against AphaGo. He's now trailing 2-0 in a best-of-five series that also has a $1 million payout to the winner. The third match resumes on Saturday.
Go is a 3,000-year old Chinese board game played with black and white stones between two participants. The goal is simple: surround all of your opponents' pieces to achieve victory. Google's DeepMind, the most advanced version of AI in history, created a program called AlphaGo. Could DeepMind's AlphaGo defeat Lee Se-dol from Korea, otherwise known as the top Go player in the world? Lee Se-dol agreed to five matches, but in a remarkable upset, he was defeated in the first match by AlphaGo. After 3.5 hours, a stunned Se-dol resigned. The second match will be broadcast live on YouTube on Thursday.
One of the most talented writers in the history of Hollywood has been harboring a dark secret over the last decade – a crippling addiction to gambling – which supposedly cost him his entire $100 million fortune. David Milch, a former English Lit professor at Yale and best known as the creator of hit TV shows NYPD Blue and Deadwood, is currently $17 million in debt and being sued by the IRS for over $5 million in back taxes. Another lawsuit details Milch's atrocious gambling problem in which he squandered at least $25 million on horse racing between 2000 and 2011.
For a second year in a row, 888poker will partner up with the World Series of Poker as one of their major sponsors . The 2016 WSOP, hosted at the Rio Casino in Las Vegas, features a special Crazy Eights event ($888 buy-in with a $888,888 guaranteed first-place prize). 888poker will also be running satellites from now through the WSOP.
Say hello to the newest WPT champion. German pro Dietrich Fast took down the 2016 L.A. Poker Classic at the Commerce Casino outside Los Angeles. The Berlin-based Dietrich Fast shipped $1,000,800 for fading a 515-player field. Fast denied Mike Shariati a second WPT crown this season by defeating Shariati heads-up for the victory. Shariati had previously won the WPT Legends of Poker earlier in the season.
The WPT's latest stop is Commerce Casino outside Los Angeles for the 2016 L.A. Poker Classic Main Event championship. The $10K buy-in event attracted 515 players with $1M set aside for the champ. Johnny World Hennigan bubbled off the final table in seventh place last night (he ran Jacks into Queens). The final table is set with Anthony 'holdplz' Spinella as the chip leader. Mike Shariati is seeking his second WPT title this season (he won the WPT Legends of Poker last August. With six to go... Anthony Spinella (3.7M), Farid Jattin (2.6M), Mike Shariati (2.5M), Sam Soverel (2.4M), Dietrich Fast (2.3M), and Alex Keating (1.8M). Final table resumes at 4pm PT. Follow live updates via World Poker Tour's coverage team... here.