Ept

When we talk about the poker economy, the first question should be, which one? At the top are the big tours (WPT, EPT, WSOP etc.) but the wider poker economy is the 2/4 or 4/8 cash game at your local casino and then there is the middle or tourist economy in Las Vegas, Hong Kong and London.

At the top, there are signs of weakness but with a fairly easy explanation. The top pros are not playing fewer tournaments but the second tier professionals are not as likely to be traveling from Europe for WPT events or from the U.S. to EPT events. In addition, the "local pros" who actually have other employment are certainly going to be concentrating on holding down the real job and playing less big poker tournaments. You can see this by scanning the registration lists of any big event and comparing it to last year.

At the bottom, this is a real mixed bag story. While the number of local players who have cut back playing is up; there is also the factor of players who have decided not to go on a poker vacation, so they stay home and play locally. The very bottom of the poker economy is benefiting from some reverse trickle down economics.

Vegas etc. here is where the real pain is being felt. The major poker destinations are all way, way off. Look at any of the prime casino clusters around the world and you will see double digit reductions in casino poker room income. It costs for those airline tickets and those hotel rooms before you even get to the poker table.

Overall, it is no surprise that the gaming economy suffers right along with the other sectors in a worldwide economic downturn. The real issue will be: Does the gaming sector turn up with the rest of the economy when the upswing eventually begins. The betting wisdom is that there will be a lot of economic "make up" for individuals to take care of in a long litany of priorities where gaming and poker are not anywhere near the top of the list.

Then there is online poker, which seems to be healthy with numbers up, up and up. Just like in previous bad times, many people stay home and play games. Now because of the internet you can keep playing poker with your only added expense being the internet hook-up and we don't see folks giving up that 21st century necessity.

The European Poker Tour has added two events to its previously announced 2008-2009 tournament schedule. The Hungarian Open in Budapest is a new event. EPT has also put the Caribbean Adventure back on its official schedule after some talk of moving that tournament to the North American Poker Tour. The Caribbean event will again be held at the Atlantis Hotel and Casino.

Here is the current EPT 2008-2009 schedule:

Barcelona Open (Casino Barcelona) - Sept 10-14, 2008 - €8,000
London (Victoria Casino) - October 1-5, 2008 - £5,200
ADDED: Hungarian Open (Budapest) - Oct 28-Nov 1 - €4,000
Polish Open (Hyatt Regency, Warsaw) - November 15-19, 2008 - 20,000 PLN
Prague (Hilton Hotel) - December 9-13, 2008 - €5,000
ADDED: Caribbean Adventure - Bahamas - January 1-5, 2009 - $8,000
Deauville (Barrière Casino) - January 20-24, 2009 - €5,000
Scandinavian Open (Casino Copenhagen) - February 17-21, 2009 - 50,000 DKR
German Open (Casino Hohensyburg) - March 10 - 14, 2009 - €5,000
San Remo (San Remo) - April 18-23, 2009 - €5,000
Grand Final (Monte Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort) - April 28 - May 3, 2009 - €10,000

Now that the World Series is over; oh, sorry it really isn't over...

After the World Series of Poker is put on hold, there is a pause in the poker world. We had a Latin American Poker Tour event and a Asian Poker Tour event and several regional tournaments, one in London and another in East Orangegrove; but basically it has been quiet in the poker world. Which means that poker writers have been pulling out all those old ideas they came up with one drunken night during the WSOP. Here are some fairly good examples of what late nights, alcohol, sleep deprivation and the need for content will produce:

-A two part series by Short Stack Shamus on how Rolling Stone magazine has or has not covered poker over the last 40 years.

-B.J. Nemeth somehow links poker and the Olympics, which one has to guess is simply a way of admitting that since there is nothing going on in poker right now, B.J. is trapped in front of his TV watching team handball at 3 A.M. But the conversation in the comments section are usually interesting at Pokerati where B.J. is writing these days.

-It would seem the Doctor of Poker Darkness has also had some time to decompress from the long, hot summer in Las Vegas. But pitch black or only shades of grey... Dr. Pauly is always interesting to read on poker and life in general.

-If you have rumbling around in the back of your brain that coming to Las Vegas to play poker for a living might be a good idea... Well there are lots of books and articles I could point you to or you could just google: "I lost my ass in a Las Vegas poker room" but for truthful look at poker in the desert from a knowledgeable player... try reading the Poker Grump.

-If you have been watching the ESPN telecasts of the 2008 WSOP then you definitely want to read an August 7th post on Up for Poker by Otis. He talks about how ESPN has looked at their televised commentary and might actually be improving the depth of their coverage.

Yes, Virginia there is poker beyond the World Series and there is news beyond Las Vegas.

The very successful European Poker Tour has announced a somewhat reduced schedule for the coming season. The EPT has grown each year but for 2008-09 they have dropped the Dublin Open, reduced the events in Germany from two to one and the Caribbean Adventure is also gone from last year's tour schedule. Here is the EPT schedule for the coming season:

Barcelona Open (Casino Barcelona) - Sept 10-14, 2008 - €8,000
London (Victoria Casino) - October 1-5, 2008 - £5,200
Polish Open (Hyatt Regency, Warsaw) - November 15-19, 2008 - 20,000 PLN
Prague (Hilton Hotel) - December 9-13, 2008 - €5,000
Deauville (Barrière Casino) - January 20-24, 2009 - €5,000
Scandinavian Open (Casino Copenhagen) - February 17-21, 2009 - 50,000 DKR
German Open (Casino Hohensyburg) - March 10 - 14, 2009 - €5,000
San Remo (San Remo) - April 18-23, 2009 - €5,000
Grand Final (Monte Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort) - April 28 - May 3, 2009 - €10,000

Within a space of less than 36 hours the three major poker tours will all have final tables going off. The World Poker Tour is already down to the final six at the Bay 101 Shooting Star in San Jose, California. The European Poker Tour at Casinos Poland in Warsaw will hold its nine player final table tomorrow and the WSOP Circuit event at Caesars in Atlantic City, New Jersey has a final table of ten set for tomorrow afternoon.

Here are the lucky players who have survive to these three final tables:

European Poker Tour; Warsaw

Michael Schulze 1,162,000
Ricardo Sousa 756,000
Juan Maceira 437,000
Mehdi Ouakhir 360,000
Mathias Viberg 229,000
Trond Erik Eidsvig 220,000
Niclas Svensson 174,000
Daniel Woolson 164,000
Christian Öman 110,000

WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star, San Jose

Noah Jefferson - 842,000
John Phan - 374,000
Brandon Cantu - 3,323,000
Steve Sung - 474,000
Jennifer Harman - 541,000
Mike Baker - 1,964,000

WSOP Circuit Event Caesars Atlantic City

Dan Hicks 1,182,000
Eric Haber 927,000
Soheil Shamseddin 855,000
Steven Merrufield 624,000
Sumeet Batra 579,000
Nicholas Binger 546,000
Scott Blackman 391,000
Steven Greenberg 251,000
Marc Morris 185,000

I love these kind of stories! EPT Copenhagen was won by a player who earned his seat in an online freeroll.

Tim Vance, a 46-year-old American construction company boss from near St Louis, won the EPT Copenhagen and a record first prize of 6,220,488 Danish kroner. Vance didn’t pay anything to enter the 50,000 DKK No Limit Hold’em event – instead he qualified online in a satellite.

Filled with emotion as he picked up his EPT champion’s trophy, father of one Tim Vance said:

“Winning the title was at least as important to me as the money but I knew I was going to win today– I was the best player and I wanted it the most. It was a tough competition though – as tough as anywhere I’ve ever played and now I just can’t wait to call my daughter Nancy. She’s been watching it back home with her grandmother.”

As the European Poker Tour heads for Copenhagen for its 8th tournament of the 11 event Season Four; this might be a good time to take another look at the seemingly successful EPT series.

More and more players are being accommodated at each tour stop. The smallest field is now 400 players with several stops now at 600 and the Grand Finale in Monte Carlo will have no player cap this coming April. Over 700 players entered last year's Monte Carlo Grand Finale. Prize pools are climbing both because of the increased entries and the higher buy-ins now possible with the ever increasing player interest.

The EPT went from eight tournaments in Season 3 to eleven this year with the addition of EPT Prague, EPT Caribbean Adventure and EPT San Remo. With only one week between the end of EPT San Remo and the beginning of the EPT Final in Monte Carlo, we can expect some relaxed and tanned EPT players for the Grand Finale this year.

The remaining tournaments for EPT Season Four:

EPT SCANDINAVIAN OPEN
February 19-23, 2008

EPT POLISH OPEN
March 11-15, 2008

EPT SAN REMO
April 1-5, 2008

EPT GRAND FINAL Monte Carlo
April 12-17, 2008

Full EPT Season 4 Schedule below:

I hinted in my post yesterday that I have a little problem with the press releases and the publicity machines that dispense a lot of the "poker news" we all read. Of course this is not a problem limited to poker, 50% of the news on television and radio "news" programs are really just rewritten press releases. It is all about the "spin" not the facts. My commentary here on PokerBlog will focus often on what I see as the facts that matter in the poker world, maybe not the truth, as that is truly in the eye of the beholder. I will attempt to de-spin some of the clutter and noize that comes out of the corporations that run the major poker tours worldwide.

I will be blathering about this topic on and off over the next several weeks but let me just start with an example. I have spent the last six days following the European Poker Tour's Grand Final in Monte Carlo. Here is there final press release, my comments are in italics.

Date: Monday, April 2, 2007
Venue: Monte Carlo Bay Hotel, Monaco
Event: EPT Grand Final, €10,000 buy-in No Limit Texas Hold’Em poker tournament.

Gavin Griffin arrived in Europe for the first time last week to join 705 other poker hopefuls at the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour Grand Final - the richest poker tournament ever held outside the US.

True! With the first place winner taking home 1.8 Million Euro ($2.4 Million US Dollars) this tournament is by far the richest event not taking place in Las Vegas.

Today he is heading back home to Orange County, California after beating off competition from some of the best players in the world and winning the six-day No Limit Texas Hold’em event.

Maybe! Anyone who tries to compare the "best" players in the world is going to have to come up with a lot more data over a lot longer period of time then any of us has right now. However, the international expansion of all of the "big" poker tours will certainly provide a lot more head-to-head play among the various international players over the next several years.

The gently-spoken 25-year-old became a tournament favourite after it was revealed that his pink-dyed hair was to mark his involvement in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer charity. He and his girlfriend Kristen, 21, who suffered breast cancer a few years ago, set off on their 39-mile, two-day Los Angeles marathon in September.

Good Story and in this case True Story.

Great for poker! The final four players busted out relatively quickly and before we knew it we had the heads up match we were hoping for.
Emad vs Vicky.

But as quickly as they came back from break and we positioned ourselves to see through the crowded stands, Emad had given away half his chips as the two made it a big pot with a pair of 8s vs a pair of 10s. The local Vic regulars were cheering for their girl,

"Go on Vicky!"
"Vicky, bring home the bacon!"

By the third hand her friends were saying that she'd jump on him while he only had a million chips, and that she did.

The flop was 5c 3c 4d
Vicky bet, Emad re-raised, Vicky called
The turn was a 10d and Emad moved all in
Vicky called quickly

Emad showed 8 6=Vicky had the straight with 6 7

The river was a Jack giving Vicky the historical win.

More photos, more photos - keep reading!

We're down to six, and man is this going to be a great TV table. Vicky is beautiful, spunky and mixing it up. She and the grinning Emad seem to be having a tête-à-tête with every hand they're in together. They are fun to watch. Chad Brown has lots of experience and his calm coolness is a good balance to the crossfire spunkyness playing out in front of him. (BTW, did you know he was going out with Vanessa Rousso?) Michael Muldoon and Jan Sjavic are pretty quiet.

Emad Tahtouh 1,100,100
Chad Brown 929,000
Vicky Coren 662,000
Michael Muldoon 636,000
Jan Sjavic 435,000
Jules Kuusik 309,000

Read on for pictures.

Mad Harper of Poker Stars has been busting her ass to get the media information about the players. She gave the A-OK for everyone to reprint the bios as is so we all can familiarize our audiences with the finalists.

It's almost as exciting as the media making their last longer bets (I have Michael Muldoon for a pound), and debating about whether or not Vicky Coren will take the whole thing and make EPT history as the first female champion. In the past two seasons, all winners have been male. This, of course got John of PokerNews.com and Stephen of Gutshot.com betting over whether or not the U.S. was going to have a female for our next president.

Read on for the bios.

Here's an overhead shot of the penultimate final table. They were playing here until they got down to eight. Emad Tahtouh called Oscar Schweinebarch's all in, and eventually busted his pocket fives with KQ when a Queen came on the river. Schweinebarch took home £10,000 for 9th place.

After a 45 min break, the following eight players will resume play at the TV table.

Seat 1 Chad Brown 759,000
Seat 2 Emad Tahtouh 480,000
Seat 3 Sid Harris 270,000
Seat 4 Michael Muldoon 380,000
Seat 5 Jan Sjavik 460,000
Seat 6 Peter Hedlund 380,000
Seat 7 Jules Kuusik 240,000
Seat 8 Vicky Coren 400,000

They got it down to 13 last night by 4am when everyone was getting pushed out of the casino. (It's the law). Michael Muldoon, a 25-year old civil servant from Belfast, N. Ireland, will be the color for today's final table. He had quite the fan club yesterday. A few of his buddies were cheering him on from the rail and calling their other friends back home. Imagine a thick Irish accent saying, "He hit the nine, he HIT the NINE!"

Isabelle Mercier cashed in 16th place for 10,000. Shannon Shorr went home with 6,000 for 21st place, and Barny Boatman got the same cash for 22nd. Both Phil Ivey and the Blonde Ivey busted early on yesterday as they were trying to make their moves.

We're getting there. Last night some big named players got sent home including Joe Hachem, Barry Greenstein, Gus Hansen, Vanessa Rousso, and Londoner Anthony Holden.

104 players begin Day 2 (or the third day of play). Here are the top fifty. The question is, who are these guys? There are so many names I don't recognize. Not that I would expect to know a mix of Euro/Intl online and tourney players. I looked up the top ten chip leaders to get a better idea of who was kicking butt.

1. Chad Brown 127,800
2. Johnny Lodden 126,700
3. Dean Sanders 117,600
4. Emad Tahtouh 110,300
5. Michael Abecassis 87,200
6. Barny Boatman 87,100
7. Arshad Hussain 86,600
8. Daniel Needleman 84,600
9. Torben Snejbjerg 83,100
10. R Pedersen 78,500

LONDON--There's something about a Day 1B that is a bit less exciting than 1A. Maybe it's the sudden rash on the hands, the beckoning of other friends in town. The rain. I only stayed at the Vic for a short while today. Long enough to see that everyone was more interested in the Europe vs. USA Ryder Cup than they were the poker.

Sure there were names in play today. Joe Hachem, Barry Greenstein, Gus Hansen, Andy Black, Mark Goodwin (who did remarkably well in the WSOP Roshambo event), Anthony Holden, Vanessa Russo, Mel Judah, and my fave up and comer, The Blonde Ivey.

But like I said, it was all about the golf. Look at the pics and we'll talk about who lasted in the next post.

LONDON--Here is a list of the top ten finishers from yesterday's EPT London event, Day1A. Of 198 starters, there are 54 remaining.

1.Johnny Lodden, 126,700
2.Barny B. Boatman, 87,100
3.Torben Sneibjerg, 83,100
4.Michael Muldoon, 73,900
5.Stuart Rutter, 61,500
6.Shannon Shorr, 60,200
7.Ivar Rivenaes, 60,000
8.Simon Zach, 58,900
9.Ross Boatman, 56,500
10.Tim Flanders, 55,500

Phil Ivey finished 19th with 42,200 chips. Isabelle Mercier made it through the day with 36,000 chips. Ram Vaswani kept 28,300 for 29th place.It's shocking to see Victor Ramdin's name absent from this list.
Apparently, Ramdin went out on the last hand. That was sometime around 3am in the morning and I was well on my way to the hotel. I've been searching the coverage, but I don't know if anyone got the details.

On to Day1B....

LONDON - To answer Dan's question from yesterday's post "EPT London is Sold Out!" the European Poker Tour is definitely growing. Here's a quick comparison of the past three seasons of the London event.

Season 1(2004)
BUY IN: €4,000
FIELD SIZE: 175
1st PRIZE: €291,276
WINNER: John Shipley

Season 2(2005)
BUY IN: €4,000
FIELD SIZE: 236
1st PRIZE: €408,400
WINNER: Mark Teltscher

Season 3(2006)
BUY IN: €5,197* (£3,500)
FIELD SIZE: 400
1st PRIZE: €743,000 (£500,000/$950,000)
WINNER: ??????

LONDON--The success continues for the European Poker Tour. London's Crown Victoria Casino is a buzz with players keen on having a flutter. Upstairs, Day1A of the poker tournament began with 198 of the 400 players. Unlike last year, there is no TV table, and unlike last week's EPT event in Barcelona, there is nary a Poker Stars brand to be seen. The tables are packed in tight with luscious red drapes and healthy green palms as their backdrop. Smoke swirls throughout the room and no one says much of anything if a player is fussing with his phone at the table. It is very different than the social and excitable atmosphere that we left in Spain.

Notable pros that played today included Phil Ivey, Isabelle Mercier, Luca Pagano, Jeffrey Lissandro, Victor Ramdin, Ram Vaswani, Kenna James, David Colclough, David Plastik, Paul Telstud, and last year's champ, Mark Teltscher.

Victor Ramdin had an early lead, and was the talk of the evening. Eyes were also on Phil Ivey, online pro Johnny Lodden, and the ever-so-handsome, Luca Pagano. Sadly, Luca went out around midnight. Kenna James, David Colclough, David Plastic, online legend Terrance Chan and even last year's champ went out much earlier. They're planning on playing through nine levels tonight which will having the boys up until just about 3am.

BARCELONA--The European Poker Tour began its third season in Barcelona, Spain with a sell out tournament of 480 players. I arrived the night before the final table when they were widdling the field down to 13. The buzz inside the casino could easily be compared to the buzz just outside. Gelato shops, tapas cafes, upscale restaurants, and discos lined the Port Olympico. The view of the Mediterranean sea was soothing

This is my third time watching the EPT (last year I saw the London, ENG and Deauville, FRN events), and I continue to be impressed. A little digging into the history of the EPT reavealed that early on they weren’t expecting many pros because of the smaller buy-ins and prize pools. Clearly, that is changing.

Between Day 1 A&B, players saw Phil Ivey, Mike Matusow, Joe Hatchem, Marcel Luske, Gus Hansen, Isabel Mercier, Humberto Brenes, Andy Black, Jeff Lissandro, Luca Pagano, John Gale, Hendon Mobbers Ram Vaswani, Ross & Barny Boatman, Mel Judah, David Plastik, and former EPT Champion Rob Hollink among others.