This year’s WSOP, the 43rd edition, kicks off on May 27 at The Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino with the $500 buy-in No Limit Hold’em event that is only open to casino employees. In this event last year Sean Drake outlasted a bumper field of 850 to walk away with $82,292. This year’s first open event begins at 12:00 on May 28, a $1,500 buy-in No Limit Hold’em event that is expected to attract upwards of 2,000 runners.

It appears that the management team at the WSOP have realised there is less money in the poker community after Black Friday and have lowered the buy-ins for the vast majority of the events on the schedule. Gone is the $25,000 No Limit Hold’em Heads-Up Championship that Jake Cody won last year, in its place is a $10,000 version. In total, including the Main Event, there are only seven so-called $10,000 Championship events but 23 of the 61 events in total have a $1,500 price tag.

Two tournaments that are certainly much more than the most popular $1,500 are the Poker Players Championship and The Big One for One Drop, event numbers 45 and 55 respectively. The Poker Players Championship, won by Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi last year costs an eye-watering $50,000 to enter but if you think that amount is ridiculous then what words cross your mind when you see the $1,000,000 buy-in associated with The Big One for One Drop! That is correct, a $1 million buy-in tournament, the biggest ever in the history of the game.

This special one-off event takes place at 1:11 on July 1 and sees 11.1% of the buy-in, or $111,111, taken out and given to the One Drop charity. Just how many people will participate is still anyone’s guess but rumours circulating suggest at least 15 players will be sitting down in this unbelievable tournament.

Although the focus of the media will be fixated on the $1,000,000 buy-in event the tournament everyone wants to win is Event #61, the much more modestly priced $10,000 No Limit Hold’em World Championship, better known as the Main Event. This year there are only three starting days thanks partly to the Rio creating more space that can accommodate a further 92 tables meaning they can fit in up to 4,700 players each day! Last year’s Main Event was the second largest in the history of the WSOP with 6,865 runners, can the 2012 edition at least match that or could it even surpass the 8,773 of 2006? We will wait with baited breath to find out.

A total of 889 players from 51 countries competed in this season’s €5,300 EPT Deauville creating a total prize pool of €4,267,200. This is just two short of last year’s 891 total. 128 places are being paid; first prize is €875,000.
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EPT Deauville is running from January 31 to February 6 at Casino Barriere. In addition to title and cash prize, the EPT Deauville champion will receive a bracelet from Shamballa Jewels worth more than €10,000, plus Gamble hoodie, shirt and sweater from JAQK, the first clothing brand inspired by poker players. All the other seven finalists will also receive JAQK apparel.

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The Poker Heaven Bad Beat Jackpot has once again built to an astonishing €780,000. Earlier this year Poker Heaven player OmgoMgomGo had Quad Kings beaten by Quad Aces whilst playing at a €0.50/€1 NLHE table. The world record jackpot was hit at €1,265,583.34, with OmgoMgomGo landing a jackpot prize of €442,954. In addition to the main prize, the winner of the hand – 7Adelaida7 scooped an additional €221,477, with a further 7 players all receiving €31,639.57 each for participating in the hand.Players are able to qualify for a huge payout at tables as low as €0.50/€1.

To qualify for the Bad Beat Jackpot players need to register and play at selected real money tables at PokerHeaven.com. If a player loses with Four of Kind Tens or better, and are using both their hole cards, then they will win the bad beat jackpot. The only other requirement is that 4 or more players are dealt into the hand.

You do not even have to have the losing hand to claim a share of the prizepool, you just need to be dealt into the qualifying hand. Full details of the distribution of the prizepool can be found at
www.pokerheaven.com/badbeat

The €5,300 EPT Deauville Main Event is taking place January 31 to February 6 at at Casino Barriere. In addition to title and cash prize, the EPT Deauville champion will receive a bracelet from Shamballa Jewels worth more than €10,000, plus gorgeous Gamble hoodie, shirt and sweater from JAQK, the first clothing brand inspired by poker players. All the other seven finalists will also receive JAQK apparel.

Seat One – Chris Kadji – 315,100
Seat Two – Allan Doyle – 308,900
Seat Three – Kev Steele – 252,500
Seat Four – John Hanley – 93,700
Seat Five – Gary Holden – 316,100
Seat Six – Gonzalez Garcia – 492,400
Seat Seven – Lewis Hunter – 409,800
Seat Eight – Sam Grafton – 1,092,500
Seat Nine – Danny Blair – 196,800

Along with Allan Doyle, both John Hanley and Chris Kadji were live qualifiers, competing both for the big prize money and the GUKPT Shoal Survivor prize of £1,000 in tournament entries for outlasting all other live qualifiers in the event. An amazing fourth qualifier had made the final table – Kev Steele – although he’d already won his own Shoal Survivor category (for online qualifiers). Hanley and Kadji both ended up exiting the tournament on the very same hand, however, eliminated by Gary Holden in 9th and 8th spots.
This double bust-out reinvigorated the somewhat cagey players and next out was Gonzalez Garcia after a six-bet shove with A-J, called by Sam Grafton with pocket queens. He took home £6,410 for 7th place while Grafton took his stack. Little did he know that it was the beginning of the end – in the following level Grafton doubled up Allan Doyle and then made a huge preflop all-in move for over half a million chips against Lewis Hunter with Q-J. Hunter was not to be dissuaded from calling with his A-9 and the man who’d once held a third of the chips in play had to content himself with 5th place and £10,260.
Shortly before that huge reversal of fortune, Gary Holden had finished in 6th place (£8,120) after doubling up Danny Blair and finding a blind-on-blind moment to shove his now short stack (without success). Blair too was to have his roller-coaster rise only to fall suddenly – his stack taken in two chunks by Kev Steele – first losing a huge preflop race and then finding a dominated ace. His 4th place prize was £13,250, his best live result so far despite his having made a handful of final tables in the past year.
Half an hour of three-handed play went by, Allan Doyle the short stack. The previous level had seen Kev Steele rise into the chip lead, and it was the internet phenomenon who picked up Aces when Doyle had three-bet all in over Hunter’s initial raise with fours. This excellent slice of timing busted Doyle to cheers of congratulations and commiserations from his supporters on the rail.
“I’m a regular here,” said Doyle in an interview with Phil ‘The Tower’ Heald on the live stream shortly afterwards. “It’s the first Main Event I’ve played, qualified for £75 – it was a bit nerve-wracking but I thoroughly enjoyed it.” Concerning the £21,800 he picked up for his 3rd place finish he said he was, “Ecstatic – absolutely ecstatic!”
It’s no surprise that Kevin Steele had made his way to the live felt from the virtual, or that he’d played with aplomb in Manchester; he’d been an online tournament sensation in 2011, taking down the massive Sunday Million twice in four months. Going into heads up play he looked confident with a 2:1 chip lead, but he was not to repeat his online trophy-gathering this time round.
Steele and Hunter had tangled as far back as the start of Day 2 when they were sat at the same table and Hunter nearly busted Steele with a flopped set of 8s vs. Steele’s KK. Having made a comeback from just 25,000, Steele then survived Hunter outdrawing his Aces with Tens and increased his stack to the point where he had his long-time adversary all in and drawing to just a few outs for his tournament life.

It was a tournament-changing river card that gave Hunter (caught with a huge two-overcard all-in with K-J on a T-9-4 flop by Steele with K-T) a straight and chip leader status. A thunderstruck Steele rallied and came back to draw level, but Hunter turned the pressure back on after about an hour of heads up play, finally getting it all in in his favour with an Ace just one pip higher. The last hand saw a checked Ace-high flop turn into a decider as a K on the turn brought both stacks into the middle, with Hunter’s A- T holding vs. Steele’s A-9. There was no help on the river and the young Scottish player took the £49,600 top prize and the trophy.
Interviewed on the way to collect his 2nd place prize of £34,360, Steele thought of what might have been: “I was one card away from it… never mind. It was good fun – not a bad start to 2012. I’ll play a few more of these, I think – why not?”
Meanwhile a happy Lewis Hunter collected his trophy and his prize money – his own largest live score to date – saying that he felt, “Very good! I lost a lot bluffing too much,” he admitted, “then won a flip and made a huge call vs. Sam [Grafton]. Heads up the double Sunday Million winner seemed to be chipping away at me but I managed to get the best of him at the end now. The trophy is going back to Scotland.”

The second leg of the GUKPT takes place at Grosvenor Casino, Walsall from the 11th-19th March

Trickett bested a group of players who were all vying for the coveted title and any one of them would have been worthy of becoming the European Player of the Year. When the nominations were announced a couple of months ago a large section of the poker community thought Andrey Pateychuk had the award sewn up after his 15th place finish in the World Series of Poker Main Event, winning the San Remo leg of the European Poker Tour and the Prague stop of the World Poker Tour but the judges thought, and rightly so this humble scribbler thinks, that Trickett’s achievements in 2011 outshone those of his fellow nominees.

The former professional footballer kicked off the year in great style by winning the $100,000 Challenge at the Aussie Millions for a cool A$1,525,000. The following week he entered the $250,000 Super High Roller, again at the Aussie Millions and almost took it down before falling just short in second place to Erik Seidel. This result added a further A$1,400,000 to his already bulging bankroll.

From there Trickett made the final table of the €5,000 EFOP Diamond Championship, had deep runs in two $1,500 events at the WSOP, another deep finish in the inaugural Epic Poker League Main Event, final table appearances in the £20,000 EPT London High Roller and €5,000 Pot Limit Omaha event at the WSOPE before ending the year by taking down the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event for €1,000,000, his third seven-figure score of the year!

This award is going to be one of many that he picks up in his career and it is surely only a matter of time before Trickett adds an EPT, WPT or even a WSOP bracelet to his name, something we would bet on happening during 2012.

According to Hachem, his next venture had to be something that would keep him closer to Australia and would provide more opportunities. “I will be working with the Group in several areas, initially as a new ambassador for the Asian Poker Tour to further the growth of poker and to assist them with several strategic opportunities in Australia and the Asia Pacific Region,” said the 2005 WSOP champion.

“The Asian Poker Tour is already widely recognised as Asia’s only independent tour and we feel Joe will be able to help us expand this business,” added Tom Hall, Non Executive Chairman of AsianLogic, pictured above left, with Hachem.

In conclusion, Hachem gave the following statement: “The Group are already very successful gaming operators and have a carefully thought out strategy for poker and my role within this will be announced publicly later this quarter. There are separate elements here in light of potential regulatory change in Australia, which requires a different focus from that adopted for the general international poker market. I considered offers from several other brands, but this Partnership was the best fit for me as it gave me an active role and the ability to participate as the businesses evolve”.

“The Asia Pacific poker market is still in its infancy and as has in my opinion huge potential for growth compared to the European more mature markets. The United States are also going through an important phase and it will take a little time before things come into place and operators emerge. Working with a partner in the same time zone makes life a lot easier and whilst I am still going to be travelling to major poker tournaments, being able to spend more time at home is fantastic.”

The next major Asian Poker Tour event on the 2012 schedule will be the APT Asian Series Cebu at the Waterfront Hotel & Casino in Cebu, Philippines, on February 1-7, 2012.

Although the tournament attracted 16 fewer players than the corresponding event last year it was still packed with some of the biggest names in the game. The likes of Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel, Jason Mercier, Dan “Jungleman” Cates and Phil Ivey all paid the $100,000 entry fee but failed to progress through to the second day’s play.

In total eight players made it through Day 1 but with only four spots being paid half of those left the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia extremely disappointed indeed. None more so that “The Great Dane” Gus Hansen who busted out in fifth place, the exact bubble, missing out on a $242,000 payday! An angry Hansen was sent to the rail when a preflop raising war with Mikhail Smirnov resulted in him being all in and at risk of elimination holding AsJc to Smirnov’s ThTd and when the board ran out 9s-8c-7s-2d-5c the bubble had burst and Hansen left the tournament area muttering a whole host of expletives to himself. Not to worry though because Hansen has reportedly been killing the ultra-high stakes cash games in Macau over the past couple of weeks where he won more than $4,000,000.

He was not left on the sidelines alone for long though because the infamous Tony G’s ace-six could not suck out on the ace-queen of Smirnov and the Lithuanian-born Australian became the fourth place finisher. Tony G now has almost $4,700,000 in live tournament cashes but not a single seven-figure score amongst them.

Third place went to local player and former World Series of Poker Main Event winner Joe Hachem. He headed to the cashier’s cage to pick up $330,000 when he shoved Ac9c into the dominating As10s of Smith, but that is only half of the story. Hachem spiked a nine on the 9h-Js-7d flop and another when the 9s landed on the turn but the river was the 3s which gifted Smith a runner-runner flush to send Hachem home for an early bath.

Going into heads up Smirnov held an almost three-to-one chip advantage over Smith but when the latter’s jacks held against the tens of the Russian he was right back in contention. The chip lead then exchanged hands at least half a dozen times over the next three hours before two hands in quick succession ended the tournament as a contest. First Smith’s red sixes held against AcQd of Smirnov when the board ran out ten-high then almost immediately afterwards Smirno pushed his remaining 180,000 chips (six big blinds) into the middle with queen-six of hearts and Smith made the call with deuces. The fie community cards ran out Kd-5h-Ac-Jc-8c to give the American the title and the $1,012,000 first place prize.

Aussie Millions $100,000 Challenge Results (AUD)

1st: Dan Smith: $1,012,000
2nd: Mikhail Smirnov: $616,000
3rd: Joe Hachem: $330,000
4th: Tony G: $242,000