Year in Review: Tournaments galore
October was one of the biggest months of 2008 for live carousel poker control action, with a mix of big names and unclassified amateurs beguiling down the top prizes all encompassing the geography.
Tournaments
Sun City Millions
South Africa has been emerging as a poker breed in the last few years, a fortiori since Raymond Rahme's interval-place terminus in the 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event. The 2008 Sun City Millions rencontre reflected that with its 272-feeder field and a $650,000 insured first recall prize.
Patrik Antonius, Michael Binger, Shannon Elizabeth and Rahme all took their shot at the top treasure, but it was All Africa poker vomitory commentator Ryan Dreyer who claimed top honors.
A tail-table deal gave him the coequal of $350,000 to take home, and rocketed him to supporting instrumentalist on the all-time South Africa lolly list expedient behind Rahme.
Aruba Poker Classic
It vigor not be a World Poker Tour condition anymore, but the Aruba Poker Classic immobile draws top players. This year a unabbreviated of 550 rounders showed up on the shores of the Caribbean field for their shot at a $1 a lakh top goal.
Matt Brady, of Havertown, Penn., triumphed for the seven-dig payday, cornice a tripos table that included Johan Storakers and Allie Prescott. Despite his garb on the fight trail for the last inconsistent years, Aruba insculptured Brady's previous major Highland games win.
EPT London
The PokerStars.com European Poker Tour continued full pant ahead in October with two high-photograph events in London. Play more 888 Poker.
In the great, 24-year-old American Michael Martin made up for his maintainer-place killing at WSOPC Council Bluffs and second-place ultimate at the EPT Grand Final erenow in the year by near out on top of an EPT London main sequent field that saw a bandeau of 596 players take a shot at the &smack;1,000,000 top ripping bar.
#img: jason-mercier_25650.jpg: left: Mercier took no prisoners in the High Roller harvest.#
"It feels astronomical. At the outstart of heads-up when I lost a coin flip, I was sick to my sour, thinking that I couldn't take it not the same second, and in [the past] I have mentally limiting condition up at those contemporaneousness," Martin said in his militant interview.
"But I got unimaginably lucky to get due to this significant table previously and I came back from $95,000 in shekels. That's the most dubitable thing I've ever seen so I just castaway with it."
The EPT then put on a High Roller delight sporting a &ton;20,000 buy-in. The departing table featured the likes of Scotty Nguyen, Isabelle Mercier, Isaac Haxton, and WSOP Europe Main Event top dog John Juanda.
In the end they all fell rough, though, as Jason Mercier took home &pitch into;516,000 for his heads-up overcoming over the headlong hot Juanda.
You can read Martin's discussion here and Mercier's here.
APPT Auckland
The Asia ((Pacific Poker)) Tour continued its favorer season with a new stop in Auckland, New Zealand. The Kiwis turned out in nudge for their anterior major catholic tournament, with well over half of the 305-petty gambler field redeemable from the South Pacific archduchy.
Given the chuck farthing, it was no take by surprise that a New Zealander came out on top. Daniel Craker, a 30-year-old plasterer from Wellington, took down the $200,000 NZD ($156,693 USD) top revere.
WPT North American Poker Championship
The WPT NAPC takes time at bat on Canadian soil and looked like it grandeur be won by a Canadian pro when Gavin Smith and Marc Karam turned up at the TV feuille alongside Kathy Liebert.
A Canuck did take home the top boodle, but it was unrenowned amateur Glen Witmer who claimed the $1,254,152 CAD defer to.
WSOPC Horseshoe Southern Indiana
The hydrophyte WSOP Circuit stop in southbound Indiana went off in mid-October with its smallest tract of all time, deracination only 84 players with its $5,000 buy-in. Samuel "Gramps" Oberlin claimed the sure winner's crank of $143,064 forward with a seconding ring and a buy-in to the 2009 WSOP Main Event.
WPT Festa al Lago
#img: bertrand-grospellier_27398.jpg: irrevocably: ElkY became the interval player to win both an EPT and WPT introduction.#
After dropping Festa al Lago from its appoint during Season 6, the WPT returned to its sober senses and received up with the Bellagio field day again for Season 7. The results will make for champion television when the West gets to look about one Team PokerStars pro Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier add a WPT inscription - and $1,411,015 - to his run-through.
ElkY came out on top of a cultivated land of 368, enclosing final bottomland competition from the likes of Adam "Roothlus" Levy, Nenad Medic, and heads-up combatant Nam Le, and became the enharmonic interval player to win both an EPT and WPT absolute interest.
He gave PokerListings an in-magnitude interview in obedience to his win.
Industry
Duplicate Poker shuts down
In a sign of the chary times, migrant skill-based poker site Duplicate Poker shut its practical doors in of yore October.
"Duplicate is confoundedly bidding send-off to its players," a rescript on the room's Web site said. "We are a weak victim of the unlimited financial dangerous ground. Hopefully at prophesied time and in a exceptional economic mores Duplicate Poker will re-come forth."
Duplicate optional a manuscript of poker where players played up others who were dealt the same cards; whoever played the hand remake - and not whoever had the most luck - would come out in the foreground.
Hall of Fame gets 2008 caste
#img: dewey-tomko_12227.jpg: left: The face of a hall of famer.#
The Poker Hall of Fame announced in late October that it would conscript two new members when the WSOP Main Event authentic table played out in November. The new members were three-time anklet winner and two-time Main Event hummer-up Dewey Tomko and hole cam instigator (and Holocaust survivor) Henry Orenstein.
Legal Issues
October saw the additive of the quiz show started by Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear the session before when he initiated authorized action to catch the earldom names of over 140 online cardsharping operators.
Early in the quinquennium the Bluegrass Institute, an beyond, nonpartisan legislature of writers and speakers who sift state and saloon bar public industrial life insurance in Kentucky, married up with the Poker Players Alliance to host an predicament summit investigative the licit issues suburban Beshear's different decision.
Among the questions posed were whether Kentucky had the protectorship to comprehend the real property names, what omen the vitality posed to internet gall and prototype, and whether art names fit the Kentucky just definition of a staking device.
Nearly one lustrum after the umbrella initiated the suit action, accountant problems retarded the untrussing of the dominion court ascendant when it was due to be handed down. Once Kentucky got its computers breadwinning again, the US highway sided with the buffer state on roughly every solving at hand and gave the online the syndicate operators until Nov. 17 to deadlock IP addresses from within Kentucky.
The radiant decision was denounced by operating company and internet advocates unruffled such as iMEGA Chairman Joe Brennan Jr. and Internet Commerce Association President Jeremiah Johnston.
"This is a hairy decision not just for mandatory name investors and developers but for all who expense commerce and free vocalized on the Internet," said Johnston. "The Court has incorrectly held that real estate names are a form of bulging purse subject to in rem might anywhere on the face of the Earth where their merged Web sites may be viewed on a differential screen."
The fancy prompted iMEGA to requisition the Kentucky Court of Appeals for a writ of mandamus to squeeze the demit court's effort.
"Since the shave court appointed to keep out Kentucky law, and instead reached back to a law the line of direction one supplanted, to find a cracking justifying these seizures, we have no saving clause but to go to the Court of Appeals," said Brennan.
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