Royal Poker Blog

SCTrojans is at it again! This time in Event 44 - $1,000 No Limit Hold'em w/Rebuys. Be sure to follow all the action on PokerNews.

Maybe this will be Scott's first bracelet win?

Unfortunately I did not get a chance to play in many of Bodog's WSOP Blogger Tournaments. It certainly wasn't due to lack of value though. In fact very few online poker tournaments offer as much value as the Bodog Blogger Tournaments. Normal cash prizes, bubble awards, added tournament credits and even a championship freeroll!

The series championship was held a few weeks ago with GoldenHammer winning the free $12K WSOP Main Event package.

Final TOC Winners and Payouts

1. GoldenHammer - $12,000 WSOP* Prize Package
2. ScottMC - T$540 (enough for two WSOP Main Event semifinal buy-ins)
3. Emptyman - T$379 (enough for a WSOP semifinal and a $100,000 Guaranteed buy-in)
4. MiamiDon - T$270 (enough for one WSOP semifinal buy-in)
5. Cbags - T$109 (enough to buy-in to the $100,000 Guaranteed)

Good luck to GoldenHammer at the main event. The next series of Bodog's Blogger Tournaments should be starting soon and we'll make an announcement once the details are revealed.

A small and not all that surprising setback for online poker. As reported by PocketFives.com and elsewhere.

On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), defeated legislation that would revamp the regulations of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. HR 5767 was brought to the Committee by Frank. Two votes were taken. The first was on an amendment by Congressman Peter King (R-NY) that would have called for the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve to work hand in hand with the Department of Justice to ascertain what identify what kinds of online gambling are legal and what kinds are not. It was defeated after a 32-32 roll call vote, with many of the calls for defeat coming from Republican members of the Committee. HR 5767 was then voted on without the amendment and was defeated by an oral vote, with the Nays outnumbering the Yays by a sizeable margin.

We arrived back home early this morning after an excellent trip. Unfortunately I did no damage in the WSOP. I'll get a tournament writeup and a trip report up in the next few days.

Our flight leaves for Vegas in a couple of hours. See some of you at the Rio tonight!

Congratulations to F-Train and Iggy on their recent scores!

F-Train finished 33 of 453 for $2473 in Event #26. A very impressive finish against a tough field!

Iggy won a main event seat in the PokerStars mega satellite. I guess the big question is play or take the money?

We're flying out Wednesday evening and I'm playing the $1500 donkament (Event #36) on Thursday. One time dealer!

Good luck to Dave "F-Train" Behr today! F-Train made it to Day 2 in Event 26 - $1,500 Razz with an average stack. With the exception of Dr. Pauly's 6th place finish in the 2005 Media / Charity event I don't believe we've ever had a real poker blogger final table a WSOP event yet. It would be awesome if a long time blogger like Dave could be the first!

-----

WSOP Main Event Mega Satellites Start This Weekend

If you want to play the 2008 Main Event then your best chances are coming up. Here's a run down of the guaranteed satellites.

PokerStars
Date: 6/15/08
Time: 4:30 EST
Entry Fee: $350 + $20
Guaranteed Seats: 200
Prize Package: $12,500

Full Tilt Poker
Date: 6/15/08
Time: 6:00 EST
Entry Fee: $500 + $35
Guaranteed Seats: 150
Prize Package: $12,000

Cake Poker
Date: 6/15/08
Time: 5:00 EST
Entry Fee: $200 + $15
Guaranteed Seats: 8
Prize Package: $12,000

Ultimate Bet
Date: 6/21/08
Time: 5:30 EST
Entry Fee: $500 + $30
Guaranteed Seats: 50
Prize Package: $12,000

Very few poker players have accomplished as much as Scott Freeman (SCTrojans, SCTrojans08, SCTrojan08, USCTrojans08).

• Win 9 MTTs in a month (including 3 P5's triple crowns) -- check
• Play 1079 MTTs in a month -- check
• Place 19th in the 2007 Main Event for $333,000 -- check
  

So what's a rising poker star to do? How about finishing your senior year of college? How about taking a break from poker to play more World of Warcraft?

Apparently the short poker hiatus hasn't hurt Scott's game much. He's already cashed in one preliminary WSOP event and he's currently at the final table of Event 21 - $5,000 No-Limit Hold'em. Follow his progress on PokerNews.

I guess the only question is what will Scott do next? It must be rough to make about a million as a party time player!

Online stud Halfrek won $859,000 a few weeks ago. Well, he's back at it again taking down the PokerStars Super Tuesday $1,000 tournament. Add another cool $66,000 to Mr. Halfrek's poker bankroll.

Goodness!

WCG|Rider (WCGRider, WCGrinder) has called it quits about half way through his monster $10,000 NL25 prop bet. Here's the announcement from his blog.

His reasons for failure:

1) I actually believe regs adapted to me(as lol as that sound at nl 25). Basically, the first couple of days i played, i actually made +1200. But even more then that, I was basically breakeven near the end of the first day. So i essentially went +1200 in ~30 hours. But then i totally ran into a wall. I started gettig killed in non sd pots and it just seemed like i wasnt stacking anyone. A few days went by, and i started playing absolutely crazy lag, which actually worked for a bit. But then again, after a couple of days people started to catch up. It seemed like i could always get a couple days in of doing wlel and then it would just stall out, which you really cant have in something like this.

2) I played during the day a bunch. Sort of retarded on my end, but the games can be abolutely so nitty during the day that it is very difficult to even beat them for very much. Playing at night is definetely the way to go when you do something like this.

3) My sleeping was absolutely terrible during this. Actually, for the first week, it wasnt even sleeping. Id lay down for about3-4 hours and then get back up because i just plain and simple could not sleep. Every day, couldnt sleep. It relaly starts to get to you and it started to wear on me very hard.

4) I didnt realize how invalid my prior sample of 140k hands at nl 25 was. I beat it for 7-8 ptbb/100 over that sample and thought wow, i could just light this up. Didnt happen.

It was a good run and certainly had the online poker world abuzz for several weeks. Doug, maybe another crazy prop bet in the future?

Doug (WCGRider, WCG|Rider) is in big trouble in his $10,000 NL25 prop bet. According to his latest blog post he was +$2950 after Wednesday. According to 2+2 he's down again on Thursday and floating around $2600. That puts him about $1600 off the required pace. He isn't done yet, but the attitude of his blog and 2+2 posts seem to indicate he might be giving up.

Keep going Doug. We need this to stay interesting!

ESPN and Harrahs must be pretty pleased with the first week of the 2008 World Series of Poker. The higher buy-in alternate formats (anything other than no-limit hold 'em) have had more entrants than last year. And these star studded fields have not surprisingly resulted in star studded final tables. What is slightly surprising is the number of big time pros, both live and online versions, at the final tables.

Take Event #1 for example:

$10,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em World Championship

Seat 1: Mike Sowers
Seat 2: Chris Bell
Seat 3: Amit Makhija
Seat 4: Patrik Antonius
Seat 5: Andy Bloch
Seat 6: Mike Sexton
Seat 7: Phil Laak
Seat 8: Nenad Medic
Seat 9: Kathy Liebert

Six big name live pros, two online stars (Sowers and Amak) and the relatively unknown Chris Bell.

Or how about Event #4:

$5,000 Mixed Hold'em (Limit/No Limit)

Seat 1: Howard Lederer
Seat 2: Roland de Wolfe
Seat 3: David Rheem
Seat 4: Pat Pezzin
Seat 6: David Williams
Seat 5: Isaac Haxton
Seat 7: Justin Bonomo
Seat 8: Andrew Robl
Seat 9: Erick Lindgren

A stable of Full Tilt pros and a couple more from Bodog. Damn is that one fine table!


Already two monster final tables and a new record for preliminary event attendance with Event #2 having 3929 entrants! The 2008 WSOP is shaping up to be one of the best ever.

Doug (WCGRider, WCG|Rider or WCGrinder if you typo it in Google) continues to pick up cash and progress in his sick NL25 prop bet. He's currently +$400 on the day which makes him up about +3100 for the bet. He still needs to average +$350 a day to win the bet. Here is the latest graph of his progress from early Monday morning.