The 2019 EPT Sochi played down to a champion. China's Yi Ye faded a field of 879 runners to win 19.3 million Rubles or approximately $300,000 USD. After declining a heads-up deal with Giorgiy Skhulukhiya, Ye went on to victory for his first EPT title. Local favorite, Lidiya Kozenkova, finished in fourth place.

The 2019 World Series of Poker Europe is right around the corner. The 2019 WSOPE begins on Sunday October 13, 2019 at the King's Casino in Rozvadov, Czech Republic. There will be 15 bracelet events on the schedule this year including a pair of Short Deck events and a handful of High Roller events. The €10,350 Main Event begins on October 28.

The PokerStars New Jersey Championship of Online Poker (NJCOOP) returns to PokerStars New Jersey this week. This year's schedule includes 50 events and over $1,000,000 in guarantees for the duration of the 2019 NJCOOP which begins on Saturday, October 12 and runs through Monday, October 28.

Ten days after the Mike Postle alleged cheating scandal hit, new evidence in coming in every day and the story has hit the mainstream media like ESPN and The Ringer. In his latest daily video, Joey Ingram shared intel from a member of the gaming community who pinpointed the date in July when Postle began manipulating his phone to gain an advantage on his opponents. Since then, Ingram estimated Postle won over $330,000 playing low-stakes poker on the stream.

Sweden's Simon Brandstrom took down the 2019 WPT UK Main Event at the Dusk Till Dawn Poker Room in Nottingham for a $330,000 score and he made history by becoming the first player to win a WPTDeepstacks and WPT event. He accomplished both titles in 2019 with a victory in the WPTDS Barcelona in April. Brandstrom's been running hot after he won the 2019 EPT Barcelona for a $1.4 million score.

An alleged cheating scandal has blown up over the last week that Doug Polk referred to as the “biggest story of the year”. Sacramento-based pro Mike Postle got named in cheating scam after he went on a heater to win $250,000 in cash games while appearing on the Stones Gambling Hall live stream. After several days of bad press, Stones Gambling Hall shut down the live stream and hired a third-party investigator with an obvious conflict of interest.

On Wednesday morning, new broke in Dublin about Flutter Entertainment acquiring The Stars Group. Flutter is a Euro-gaming conglomerate that includes Paddy Power, Betfair and Fan Duel. The merger will make Flutter the largest online gaming entity in the world.

The 2019 World Series of Poker Circuit Coconut Creek, hosted at Seminole Coconut Creek in South Florida, attracted 617 runners to the $1,700 buy-in Main Event. The $1 million guaranteed prize pool kicked in and Steven Sarmiento from New York City took down the WSOP Circuit ring and a first-place prize worth over $188,158. Nick Yunis, a pro from Chile, finished in fourth place.

It's never a dull day when Phil Hellmuth sits down at a TV table. During a recent Live of the Bike, Phil Hellmuth played a session in late August with Mike Matusow and a couple of regulars at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles. Big Mike sucked out a gutshot on the river, which sent Hellmuth over the edge.

Daniel Negreanu wondered about potential sequels to the classic cult films 'Rounders', a 1998 Miramax film originally written by Brian Koppleman and David Levien. Probably the best potential script idea appeared on 2+2 as something called 'EuroRounders'. Numerous ideas about 'Rounders 2' have been rejected over the years including Mike McD breaking up a human trafficking ring to a crypto scam to fighting demons in the sideways world to a prequel set in the early 1980s in the Bronx.

Poker pro Ronnie Bardah appeared on the new season of 'Survivor' but if you blinked, you missed him. Bardah became the first player to get eliminated from the new season of Survivor: Island of Idols, which takes place in Fiji.

Imperial Companies, a real estate company based out of New York City, purchased the Rio for $516.3 million from Caesars Entertainment. Imperial will lease back the Rio to Caesars for the next two years. Meanwhile, the Rio will continue to host the World Series of Poker through 2021.

Alfred 'Al' Alvarez, noted poet and author, passed away at age 90. Alvarez is a renown poet but he is highly regarded in the poker industry because of his 1983 non-fiction book "The Biggest Game in Town" in which Alvarez captured the true essence of the 1981 World Series of Poker at the Horseshoe Casino in downtown Las Vegas.

The WPT arrived in Morocco for the latest stop on the WPTDeepStacks global tour. Alejandro Roman from Spain outlasted a field of 545 runners to win the 2019 WPTDeepStacks Marrakech Main Event, which had a 13,200 Moroccan Dirham buy-in. Roman banked 1.1 million MAD for first place. The final table also included Bruno Fitoussi, who finished in sixth place.

The 2019 WPT Borgata Poker Open attracted 1,156 runners and a prize pool worth over $3 million. Donald Maloney, Jr., an ex-hockey player and son of Don Maloney from the New York Rangers, won his first WPT title after defeating Uke Dauti heads-up at the Borgata. Victor Ramdin finished in sixth place. Vanessa Selbst made a cameo at this WPT event and she went deep at the Borgata with a finish in 14^th place.

World Series of Poker vice president of communications Seth Palansky confirmed that the 2020 WSOP is planned to take place at the Rio Casino and Convention Center in the summer of 2020 despite numerous rumors that Caesar's is selling the Rio and the WSOP would migrate to a new convention center off The Strip.

PokerStars has been introducing new games and formats for the last couple of years, but very few of them have stuck around. PokerStars version of Short Deck a.k.a. 6+ Hold'em is still available in cash game form, however, the Spin and Go versions of 6+ Hold'em have been pulled from the PokerStars platform.

It took four attempts, but Paul Richardson finally won a WSOP Circuit Main Event ring. Richardson had previously finished in 8^th place and 4^th place twice before he went the distance at Thunder Valley Resort and Casino just outside Sacramento. Richardson banked $130,667 for fading a field of 414 players.

PokerStars and the Atlantis Casino in the Bahamas have decided to split up. After 16 years, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure will no longer be the place to be in January. PokerStars decided to not continue the PCA for 2020 and instead they will be focusing on the 2020 PokerStars Players Championship in Barcelona.

The 2019 British Poker Open concluded with Event #10 £100,000 NL. Only 12 players took part in the 1.2 million prize pool. The top two places paid out with Ben Tollerene winning £840,000 for first place, while Cary Katz banked £360,000 for second place. Sam Sovervel won two events in London, while other champs in the 2019 BPO included Luc Greenwood, Paul Newey, Sam Greenwood, Stephen Chidwick, and Mikita Badziakouski.