One of poker’s most popular players, James Akenhead, has gone to bed with an extra $213,750 in his poker account after he took down the PokerStars Sunday Million in the early hours of this morning. Akenhead, playing under the alias “Asprin1” outlasted a field of 7,125 on his way to glory.

Akenhead was already a very well respected poker player when he was propelled into the spotlight in 2009 when he reached the final tables of both the World Series of Poker Main Event and the World Series of Poker Europe Main Events. He eventually finished ninth in the both for a combined score of $1,373,289 but since then he has been on the most horrendous of runs and anyone close to the 28-year old will tell you his luck has been quite unbelievable, but hopefully this victory marks the beginning of a fresh start and Akenhead can get back to dominating poker once again.

The former train driver entered the nine-handed final table third in chips but must have feared the worst when he made a misclick of epic proportions. The final table had already lost two players when Akenhead decided to raise to 800,885 with his KdTc but he actually typed in and bet 8,000,885 by mistake, leaving himself with just 1,530,000 behind. He must have been sat there praying to the poker gods that his ridiculously large bet would get through uncalled his prayers were not answered because “pnp23” made the call with what turned out to be a pair of queens. However, it appears the fictional gods did hear him because the flop came down Kc-10h-7s gifting him two pair. The rest of his stack went in, pnp23 snap-called and when the turn and river were both black nines Akenhead was catapulted into the lead with over 20,000,000 chips!

One by one the players headed to the virtual rail until only two players remained, Akenhead and ironically pnp23. Akenhead held a huge 56,844,921 to 14,405,079 chip advantage over his opponent and although pnp23 doubled up when his AsKh stayed in front of Akenhead’s Ah9s the final result was never doubted by any of Akenhead’s many railbirds who were typing in words of encouragement to their hero throughout the final table.

The final hand was pnp23 min-raise to 1,600,000 then call when Akenhead set him all in. It was a typical coinflip scenario with Akenhead’s KcJh needing to catch up against the pocket eights of his opponent. The 7s-6c-5s flop was no help at all to Akenhead but the 10c on the turn added some outs to a flush draw. The river card was the Ks, not a club but it improved Akenhead to a pair of kings, which were more than enough to eliminate pnp23 and award the win to Akenhead.

PokerStars Sunday Million Final Table Results

1st: James “Asprin1″ Akenhead (UK) – $213,750.00
2nd: pnp23 (Romania) – $157,277.25
3rd: Ansgar2000 (Germany) – $114,000.00
4th: Gambler4444 (Germany) – $75,525.00
5th: sigopi (Brazil) – $58,425.00
6th: Milana Jones (Russia) – $44,175,00.00
7th: shibinha (Brazil) – $30,637.50
8th: tyxerakias (Greece) – $17,100.00
9th: philipoo (Denmark) – $11,043.75

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The PokerStrategy.com TV World Championships started with online qualifiers via partner site, PokerHeaven.com, back in August this year, with three months of online qualifying events leading to 42 players from around the world arriving in London in November to battle it in seven, six seater single table tournaments. The winner of each heat progressed through to today’s final, where they will be joined on the final table, by PokerStrategy.com CEO & Founder, Dominik Kofert.

The Poker Channel website will offer viewers the opportunity to watch the final live online with the streaming set to start at 1600 CET.

The eight players will be battling it out for a total prize pool of $42,000, with the winner walking away with $20,000 and the coveted prize of the first ever PokerStrategy.com TV World Champion.

Chris White, Commercial Director, Poker Channel said “We are delighted to offer live streaming of the first ever TV event that has involved the Poker Strategy online community, the biggest online poker community in the world, and we are excited to see how the event will unfold and if one of the qualifiers can outwit and outplay Dominik to be crowned a deserved winner.”

“I can hardly express how gratifying it is to win my first WCOOP bracelet. That’s a great source of pride for me to go along with FTOPS and UBOC titles,” said Leah. “Obviously, the result in the WCOOP Main Event was really special, not just in terms of the money but I was in so many tricky situations late in that tournament I am really proud of the way I played and maneuvered to give myself a chance to win.”

“We’re really happy for Mike, and obviously excited for him to be part of the TPE family,” commented TPE Co-Founder Casey Jarzabek. “We’ve been good friends for a while, and so I am thrilled for him on that level”

As for Leah, he is off to Cannes for WSOPE as he continues his passionate quest to be recognized as one of the best poker players in the world

The PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker, or WCOOP as it is better known as, came to an end a couple of days ago after the culmination of the $5,250 WCOOP Main Event. The Main Event was the 62nd tournament of the series and carried a $5,000,000 guarantee, but that was smashed when 1,627 players entered, creating a prize pool of $8,135,000. This year’s champion is Thomas “Kallllle” Pedersen and he walked away with $1,260,018.50, which would have been more but a deal was struck when the tournament was five-handed.

Usually poker players would be busy preparing themselves for the FTOPS hosted by Full Tilt Poker but with the former online giant in all sorts of trouble right now they have left a huge gap in the market, a gap that PartyPoker are attempting to fill.

Pokerfest will run between October 23 to November 6, will feature 47 events and guarantees $3,000,000 in prize money. On the majority of days there will be three versions of the same tournament running, one being for just a few PartyPoints, one with a buy-in ranging between $6-$33 and the other costing between $55-$1,060 to enter, meaning there will be a tournament for players of all bankroll levels.

Along with being able to win plenty of cash prizes at the table there will also be a number of leaderboards created for each level of play, with prize pools ranging between $5,000 and $65,000. The first player to cash ten times will win $5,000 whilst the first player to reach ten final tables will win $10,000.

Some of the highlights of Pokerfest include the $215 No Limit Hold’em event with $300,000 guaranteed (Event #1) and the $640 No Limit Hold’em Championship Event that has $1,000,000 guaranteed.

The decision came after the trial of Jean-Pierre Gleizes, the manager of St.Tropez and Les Coulisses, who was accused of organising private poker games in public events without holding the correct licences. The current French gambling laws are built around the premise that poker is a game of chance and as a result it is tightly regulated and heavily taxed.

Monsieur Gleizes brought several key witnesses to his trial including a national champion in chess and bridge, a professional poker player and a mathematics professor. After hearing the evidence these people presented, the court ruled in the favour of Gleizes and ruled that poker is indeed a game of skill.

This ground-breaking ruling would mean that poker rooms would benefit greatly as they would no longer be subjected to the taxation and licensing rules set out in the new Online Gaming Bill, which in turn would be better for the players as they would pay less rake and therefore potentially make more money. However, there is another side to the coin because players who make money from a skill game can be heavily taxed as money won from skill games can be considered part of their income.

According to reports, the French government has already launched an appeal on the ruling and it could make it as far as the Supreme Court. But for now the online poker community are applauding the ruling and see it as a small victory in the fight to have poker recognised as a skill game and for it to be licensed and regulated worldwide. At present French poker players can only compete against their fellow countrymen and all the games are ring-fenced. If the ruling is upheld by the Supreme Court it could allow online poker sites to start offering their services to French player once more.

On Wednesday 29 June The Alderney Gaming Control Commission (AGCC) suspended the licence of Full Tilt Poker, forcing them to close their doors to their remaining customers. They had already stopped offering their services to American customers after “Black Friday,” when the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the American Department of Justice (DoJ) indicted the three biggest American-facing online poker sites, PokerStars, Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker.

As part of the indictment all three sites had bank accounts seized and American customers were prevented from accessing their accounts. PokerStars acted quickly and brokered a deal with the DoJ which allowed them to promptly refund more than $120m to their American customers but neither Absolute of Full Tilt Poker have managed to follow suit. In fact rumours were rife that Full Tilt Poker simply do not have the funds available to refund their American customers, something that was almost confirmed by the AGCC suspending their licence.

PokerScout.com, a website that has live traffic figures for all online poker sites’ real money cash games, shows that Full Tilt Poker has lost 100% of is traffic. Indeed, anyone visiting Full Tilt Poker’s website will see a banner reading, “System Update: We apologise but the system is currently down. Please check back later. Please direct all enquiries to support@fulltiltpoker.com.” Full Tilt Poker had been hit hard by “Black Friday” but was still seeing up 20,000 real money cash game players at its tables during peak times and tens of thousands more on its tournament tables and it is these players that the online poker industry is fighting to attract to their own site.

PokerStars are currently offering 100% up to $100 reload bonus whilst and PartyPoker are offering 100% up to $200, many of the skins on the iPoker network are marketing a “MEGA reload” which will see potential customers receive a staggering 100% up to $5,000 reload bonus, quite possibly the largest reload bonus ever offered by any poker site or network. Although these reload bonuses are welcome additions to many player’s bankrolls it is PartyPoker who have really pushed the proverbial boat out and possibly changed the online poker world forever.

They released a statement on their site plus through a number of their established pros, such as Tony G, informing new and potential customers that PartyPoker will not be charging fees on any tournaments indefinitely! This means that anyone playing in multitable tournaments on PartyPoker will not pay any rake at all, which is unheard of in all my time in the poker world. Could this bold move, aimed at grabbing some of Full Tilt Poker’s non-American clientèle, be the start of all online poker sites lowering or even abolishing the rake they charge to customers. Here’s hoping.

Jens Kyllönen has made himself a name by winning big live and online tournaments. He has managed to make a successful transition from being a NL Texas Hold’em specialist to become one of the most feared High Stakes Pot Limit Omaha players out there.

“I predict that this is the year of Jens Kyllönen. WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas is just around the corner and Jens, now 21 years old, has confirmed that he will participate for the first time.” – Jaajo Linnonmaa, Ultimaattinen Gämblääjä.

You can see Jens in action in PokerHeaven.com European Cash Game 2. See here for schedule

The Poker Channel has teamed up with the largest and most successful poker school in the world- Pokerstrategy.com to bring you this amazing opportunity to learn how to become a winning player at the tables. With the very best poker teachers, thousands of videos and articles at your fingertips all for absolutely free, you will become an expert in no time. All you need to do is answer the quiz correctly and you’ll be given $50 to spend at an online table. Go to www.pokerfree50.com

It has been quite a worrying few days for American online poker players after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) decided to charge PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker with charges of money laundering and fraud before seizing the .com domain names and a number of bank accounts linked to the companies.

All three sites quickly ceased offering real money games for American poker players and prevented them from transferring money to fellow players and stopped withdrawals from the site. Some players were reported to have more than six figures tied up on the site and not knowing how or when they would get their hands on their money, if at all. But thankfully it looks like everyone will be paid out after both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker struck a deal with the Department of Justice to regain temporary control of their .com domains so they can facilitate the withdraws for those affected by the indictments on “Black Friday.”

Part of a press release from the Department of Justice read, “This office expects the companies to return the money that U.S. players entrusted to them, and we will work with the poker companies to facilitate the return of funds to players, as today’s agreements with PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker demonstrate.”

Although this is obviously great news for American online poker players it is not an open and hut case as one would want to believe. In a press release from Full Tilt Poker they revealed that, at present, there was no authorised U.S payment channel which they could use to make refunds to their customers, simply because they payment processors have attempted to distance themselves from American facing online poker sites due to the current investigation into alleged money laundering and fraud by the three companies in question.

You may have noticed that this deal only involves PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker because Absolute Poker have, for reasons only known to them, failed to strike any deal with the Department of Justice. Whilst PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have been extremely open to their customers, Absolute Poker and its associates seem to have put up an iron curtain and refuse to comment. Rumours are rife in the poker community due to the fact Absolute Poker were involved in a huge cheating scandal a few years ago but until any truth emerges from these rumours they will not appear on the pages of Poker Channel Europe.

Following the announcement last Friday that the owners of Poker Stars, Full Tilt Poker, Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker have been accused of alleged bank fraud, illegal gambling offences and money laundering in an indictment unsealed by United States federal prosecutors, Poker Heaven would like to confirm that we have always complied with all International laws, including the passing of the US UIGEA back in 2006, and we remain fully regulated and licensed within the European Union.

We have successfully been processing online payment transactions since 1998 and continue under our Maltese gaming license to offer a safe and secure platform to play online poker on.

Based on the restraining orders that have also been issued against 76 bank accounts in 14 countries used by the accused poker companies and their payment processors, we appreciate that members of these rooms will today be looking for a new place to play the game of poker that we all love, and we appreciate the importance of the decision every player has when choosing where to continue playing online.

With this in mind we have launched a variety of new promotions that cater for new and existing players of Poker Heaven, with €175,000 being given away in freeroll tournaments over the next 2 months.

For all new players, we are running €10,000 first time player freerolls for each of the next six Mondays, with the first tournament taking place on April 25th. All you have to do to qualify for one of these freerolls is to play one raked hand at anytime, and you will automatically be registered into the following week’s tournament.

Poker Heaven is also proud to announce the launching of a €100,000 freeroll series, where the final will take place on Sunday, June 12th, with a maximum 3,000 players. During the next 8 weeks 15 qualifying tournaments will take place, with €1000 up for grabs in each one and the top 200 players qualifying for the final in June.

And if that wasn’t enough, we will also be running WSOP Main Event satellites, where we will be guaranteeing one seat to the $10,000 main event, to be held at The Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, from July 7th. Satellite tournaments will be added to the Poker Heaven lobby over the coming days.

Finally, we will be adding new high value MTTs with low buy-ins, which will include a €10,000 guaranteed tournament with a €5+50c buy-in, taking place at 18:00 GMT every Monday, Wednesday, Friday & Sunday, as well as a €5,000 guaranteed tournament with a €1+10c buy-in, taking place at 18:00 GMT every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. For Omaha players we are also including a daily €2,000 Omaha guaranteed tournament, with a €10+€1 buy-in, starting at 19:30 GMT.

Colin McCreadie, Head of Poker at Poker Heaven, commented: “We can fully appreciate the frustration and distress that players who hold accounts with the rooms hit with legal action from US federal prosecutors must be feeling right now, which is why we have decided to add such a wide range of high value promotions to our offering, with several of these promotions now live in the room. Our sole aim is to offer our players a safe and secure environment to play online poker, while also giving them entertaining and engaging promotions to participate in, and that will continue to be our approach now and always.”

For more information click here.

Dublin Ireland (April 15, 2011)- Full Tilt Poker is saddened by today’s charges against its CEO Raymond Bitar and offers its full support to Mr. Bitar and Nelson Burtnick.

Online poker is a game of skill enjoyed by tens of millions of people in the United States and across the world. And, Full Tilt Poker remains as committed as ever to preserving the rights of those players to play the game they love online.

Mr. Bitar and Full Tilt Poker believe online poker is legal – a position also taken by some of the best legal minds in the United States. Full Tilt Poker is, and has always been committed to preserving the integrity of the game and abiding by the law.

“I am surprised and disappointed by the government’s decision to bring these charges. I look forward to Mr. Burtnick’s and my exoneration,” said Mr. Bitar.

Unfortunately, as a result of this action, Full Tilt Poker has decided that it must suspend “real money” play in the United States until this case is resolved. However, Full Tilt Poker will continue to provide peer-to-peer online poker services outside of the United States.