Cash game hijinks. Pocket Jacks versus 8-6 suited. Doug Polk titled his video -- "The Most Insane Call in the History of Poker." That's a slight exaggeration, but Alec Torelli made a sick hero call on the river against Polk during a taping of a $25/$50 cash game from Live at the Bike at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles.

Darren Elias won the WPT Fallsview in Niagara Falls, Canada for his third overall World Poker Tour title. Elias is now tied for most wins with familiar faces such as Gus Hansen, Carlos Mortensen, Anthony Zinno, and Chino Rheem. Elias faded a field of 489 runners to win his third WPT. Elias previously won two titles back in 2014. For first place in Niagara Falls, Elias won $449,484 Canadian Dollars, or approximately $335K US Dollars.

The 2017 L.A. Poker Classic at Commerce Casino outside Los Angeles is in full swing. Locals got to witness the Poker Brat take on the Mouth in a heads-up battle. Phil Hellmuth won Event #49 PLO8 event and beat Mike Matusow heads-up for the title and coveted Remington trophy.
PokerStars TV sifted through hours and hours of tape in various international events to pinpoint the best hands from the 2016 calendar year, which included action from Australia to the Bahamas to Barcelona. PokerStars released a new compilation video featuring the Top 5 Hands from 2016 . Some of the players featured are Samantha Abernathy and Mustapha Kanit. The Top 5 includes a couple of wow moments like the guy who had Aces cracked twice at the EPT Barcelona and Sebastian Malec dropping Scotty Nguyen's iconic line, "You call and it's all over, baby!"

Daniel Negreanu posted two more videos. The first vid on his YouTube channel featured a hand breakdown between Mike Gentili vs. Christian Harder at the PokerStars Championship in the Bahamas. In his weekly poker tip video, Negreanu discussed tournament bubbles and offered up three tips to improve your bubble play.

It's another year and it's another attempt by California to legalize and regulate online poker. Last year's attempt failed, but it was the farthest any bill had ever gotten. Will the newly introduced AB-1677 finally go all the way? Or will the Internet Poker Consumer Protection Act fall short of the mark like previous attempts over the last decade in California?

Two-time U.S. chess champion and PokerStars mind games ambassador, Jennifer Shahade, is so skilled in both games that she easily multitabled both! One of her most recent videos included a simultaneous session of online poker and heads-up bullet chess.

Ema Zajmovic won the WPT Playground in Montreal on Valentine's Day and made history. She became the first woman to win an open event in the history of the World Poker Tour. Van Nguyen won the 2008 WPT Invitational at Commerce Casino in Los Angeles, but that was an invitation-only freeroll. Ema Zajmovic faded a field of 380 runners in the $3,500 CAD buy-in event. Zajmovic earned a payday worth $261K CAD or roughly $200K USD. She also won the coveted championship belt.
Comign soon... Power Up! PokerStars has been pushing the innovation envelope. In the last couple of years, PokerStars programmers launched nuances such as Beat the Clock and Spin&Go. And now, there's some buzz surrounding their newest innovation called Power Up. It is still in “alpha” testing, but some of the basic elements of the game have been discussed in a blog post from PokerStars HQ. Looks fun with special powers like X-Ray, EMP, Clone, Disintegrate, Engineer, Intel, Reload, Scanner, and Upgrade. The newest variant draws inspiration from esports and video games. Power Up is reminiscent of kitchen poker games with wild cards and other bizarre rule amendments.

Daniel Negreanu's full-court press in the social media world continues. The garrulous Negreanu uploaded a new Full Contact Poker Podcast with three pros including Michael ‘Timex' McDonald, Jonathan Little, and Jake Cody. British pro Cody chatted about cash games in Macau and a couple of hands Negreanu played at a recent tournament. Timex discussed his newest venture Poker Shares, and Jon Little discussed his coaching business. Over on his YouTube channel, Negreanu posted a couple of new videos about a hand breakdown between Dan Shak and Fedor Holz, plus a tip video on raising.
The crew at PokerStars TV spliced together their top 5 "controversial" hands involving poor etiquette and angle shooting. Some of the pros involved in these hands were Andy Black, Daniel Negreanu, Mike Matusow, and Phil Ivey.

Say hello to the newest PokerStars Team Pro, Igor Kurganov. The Russian pro is the latest player to get tapped by PokerStars to become one of their ambassadors. Kurganov has been dominant in both live and online poker with over $12 million in live earnings. He's been a regular on the Super High Roller circuit the last few years. Kurganov has donated a percentage of his winnings to charity, specifically Raising for Effective Giving (REG).

The PokerStars Festival circuit will now include 5 new stops on three different continents. The new Festival locations include Spain, Chile, Uruguay, South Korea and the Philippines. The first event kicks off in Vina del Mar, Chile in May and the last one will take place in mid-September in Uruguay. There will be two stops in the summer in Asia, if you are seeking out an exotic location to visit this summer.

Daniel Negreanu is stepping up his social media game in 2017. He's been actively podcasting and his latest episode of the Full Contact Poker podcast is an excellent discussion with Nick Schulman. Negreanu also announced the relaunching or rebooting of his YouTube channel. Danny Boy promises vlogs (a.k.a. video blogs) along with guaranteed weekly content with a poker tip every Monday and post a hand breakdown on every Thursday.
The two biggest stars in the athletic world are at it again. Dwyane Wade and Cristiano Ronaldo have been engaging in various trick shot challenges on social media the last couple of months. They have been trying to out duel each other using their athletic prowess. The two have finally ended their #RaiseIt campaign. They topped it off in style using drones.
