One man who is almost guaranteed to at least make it into the money is the overnight chip leader Marcel Bjerkmann. You are forgiven for not knowing the Norwegian youngster’s name but take it from us he is a big, big talent. In the live arena he has just short of $950,000 in tournament cashes, with most of those coming from two great results towards the back of 2010. Bjerkmann won a €1,500 tournament in Belgium for €200,030 in October then the following month won the €6,000 Amsterdam Masters for €403,380 but it is online poker he is best known for.

Known as p3rc4 in online poker circles Bjerkmann terrorises the best in the game on a daily basis. His hyper-aggressive style always keeps his opponents on their toes and it also means he either acquires a huge stack or busts out before the first break and it is that crazy style that won him the PokerStars Sunday Million and has seen him end the third day of play at the WPT Venice Grand Prix Main Event as the chip leader with 436,300 and is definitely the hot favourite to win yet another major title.

If Bjerkmann is to take down this Main Event then he is going to have to beat some very tough and talented players indeed, none more so than American pro Jason Wheeler who will start the day armed with 348,200 chips, enough to put him in third place when play resumes. Wheeler is ranked as the 15th best online poker tournament player and has just shy of $3,000,000 in winnings and is most certainly a threat.

Also in with a shout is James Akenhead who is is full of confidence after his recent online exploits where he took down the Sunday Million on PokerStars. The man who reached both the World Series of Poker final table and the World Series of Poker Europe final table in 2009 will sit down and un-bag 336,000 chips and if I were a betting man I would be lumping it on Akenhead because he really seems in the zone right now.

Play resumes at 1300CET and will continue until just nine players remain. Once the money bubble bursts whoever has chips in front of them will lock up at least €7,225 for their efforts this week. Good luck to everyone still in with a chance of becoming a WPT Champion.

The World Poker Tour is currently in the beautiful and historical floating city of Venice for the Grand Prix Main Event where only 27 players from the original 155 entrants remain. The money bubble bursts when the 19th place finisher is determined so eight of the players who return to the Casino Di Venezia at 1300 CET will be going home empty handed.

One man who is almost guaranteed to at least make it into the money is the overnight chip leader Marcel Bjerkmann. You are forgiven for not knowing the Norwegian youngster’s name but take it from us he is a big, big talent. In the live arena he has just short of $950,000 in tournament cashes, with most of those coming from two great results towards the back of 2010. Bjerkmann won a €1,500 tournament in Belgium for €200,030 in October then the following month won the €6,000 Amsterdam Masters for €403,380 but it is online poker he is best known for.

Known as p3rc4 in online poker circles Bjerkmann terrorises the best in the game on a daily basis. His hyper-aggressive style always keeps his opponents on their toes and it also means he either acquires a huge stack or busts out before the first break and it is that crazy style that won him the PokerStars Sunday Million and has seen him end the third day of play at the WPT Venice Grand Prix Main Event as the chip leader with 436,300 and is definitely the hot favourite to win yet another major title.

If Bjerkmann is to take down this Main Event then he is going to have to beat some very tough and talented players indeed, none more so than American pro Jason Wheeler who will start the day armed with 348,200 chips, enough to put him in third place when play resumes. Wheeler is ranked as the 15th best online poker tournament player and has just shy of $3,000,000 in winnings and is most certainly a threat.

Also in with a shout is James Akenhead who is is full of confidence after his recent online exploits where he took down the Sunday Million on PokerStars. The man who reached both the World Series of Poker Main Event and the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event in 2009 will sit down and un-bag 336,000 chips and if I were a betting man I would be lumping it on Akenhead because he really seems in the zone right now.

Play resumes at 1300CET and will continue until just nine players remain. Once the money bubble bursts whoever has chips in front of them will lock up at least €7,225 for their efforts this week. Good luck to everyone still in with a chance of becoming a WPT Champion.

He beat 230 opponents and took down €52,277 after striking a deal heads up for €42,227 based on chip counts then winning the additional €10,000 left in the pot. His opponent Pim van Wieringen won €41,963 for finishing second in the €1,000 + €100 buy in tournament.

Van Wieringen started heads up as chip leader with just over 3 million chips to Jarefjäll’s 1.5 million but after 90 minutes play the Swede had ground the Austrian down and the final hand saw van Wieringen raise with As Qh and Jarefjäll go all in with 3d 3h and get called. The board ran out 6c 5h 5c 2d 7s and EMOP found its first champion of season four from Sweden.

The final table payouts were:

1: Nils Jarefjäll (Sweden) – €52,277
2: Pim van Wieringen (Austria) — €41,963
3: Martin Safarik (Czech Republic) — €23,560
4: Kevin Spillane (Ireland) — €14,320
5: Pavel Býma (Czech Republic) — €11,080
6: Roman Ondrusek (Czech Republic) — €9,000
7: Sven Bahnsen (Germany) — €7,850
8: Connie O’Sullivan (Ireland) — €6,690
9: Martin Dragún (Slovakia) — €5,540

The European Masters of Poker now gears up for stop two in Lisbon, Portugal from March 29 to April 1.

About European Masters of Poker
EMOP is a live poker tournament series running in Europe. EMOP gives the recreational player opportunity to play big international poker tournaments with affordable buy-in. EMOP chooses to cooperate with the best casinos in Europe to give the participants an unforgettable experience.

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

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

iGame launches their own poker tour for 2012 and it contains some interesting new tournament formats. The main event is a 3 day long €900 NL Texas Hold’em tournament with two separate starting days and a re-entry possibility for those who fell out on day 1A. Side Events include a € 60 PL Omaha rebuy tournament, a €220 NL Texas Hold’em freezeout as well as two new tournament formats.

The first is a €440 Two Player / Team Tournament mixed Texas and Omaha where each individual player plays for the team in the game of his choice and the other new and interesting tournament format is a €220 Chinese Poker Tournament.

”It feels fantastic to kick off our own tournament series, This the very first event we see as a test run to ensure that all the different functions for running a larger scale tournament are working correctly and to ensure that we can guarantee a high quality weekend for the participating players.”- Says Sami Pulliainen, COO of iGame.

Shallow is better-known in online poker circles by two monikers, “Dubai” and “CrabMaki,” that last nickname being his alias on PokerStars where he won Event #2 of the 2010 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) for more than $600,000. Whilst this latest victory may not be worth as much in monetary terms it certainly makes up in for that in prestige as he joins the likes of Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu and Gus Hansen as a World Poker Tour champion.

WPT final tables are usually six-handed affair but this one started with just five players thanks to Shallow being responsible for a double elimination when on the final table bubble in the early hours of Sunday morning. He found himself all in and in real bad shape with pocket jacks against the queens of Shaun Conning and the aces of Steven Moreau but he turned an unlikely set to send his two opponents to the rail and see his stack swell to 6,115,000 with only 10,140,000 chips in play!

The WPT Ireland final table kicked off promptly at 1500 and just two and a half hours later everything was done and dusted. It took just 30 minutes for the first player to be eliminated, Steve Watts losing a flip with pocket tens against the last Irishman standing Ronan Gilligan’s Big Slick. He was followed to the cashier’s cage shortly afterwards by Patrik Vestlin who was also sent packing by Mr Gilligan.

That last elimination saw Gilligan take the chip lead and the home fans were hopeful of an Irish winner but those hopes were soon dashed after he committed his stack with 4h3d on a 10x-5x-2x flop and found he was up against Shallow’s Td9d for top pair. There was little doubt that Shallow, who had run extremely well throughout the tournament, was going to fade the open-ended straight draw and when the turn and river were the Kd and 8s respectively he had done just that.

Gilligan’s demise took the tournament to the heads up stages and saw Shallow take a 7,280,000 to 2,860,000 chip lead into the one-on-one battle with the talented Charles Chattha. Although Shallow won the first couple of pots Chattha did not give up and he was fortunate enough to see Shallow four-bet all in with just Ks3s whilst he was holding black queens, he called and they held, to nudge himself into a brief lead. But the ladies that pulled him back into contention soon turned on Chattha and busted him in second place.

With blinds at 30,000/60,000/10,000a Shallow opened to 140,000 with QsQc and when Chattha three-bet to 360,000 Shallow four-bet to 600,000. Chattha then moved all in, holding pocket nines, and Shallow beat him into the pot with a call. By the river the board read Ad-4c-3h-2d-2c eliminating Chattha and leaving Shallow to be announced as the latest WPT winner!

The World Poker Tour’s next European stop is in Venice between February 6-11.

WPT Ireland Final Table Results

1st: David Shallow: €222,280
2nd: Charles Chattha: €111,130
3rd: Ronan Gilligan: €74,090
4th: Patrik Vestlin: €52,600
5th: Steve Watts: €39,270

Callaghan is primarily a Pot Limit Omaha player who only plays a handful of No Limit Hold’em events each year and only entered this event because he had no other plans! Checking out Callaghan’s Hendon Mob page reveals that the Dublin-based pro has 18 cashes in major live tournaments with 13 of those being in Pot Limit Omaha and his last cash in a non-Omaha event was back in June 2008 but he seems to have made the necessary adjustments in this particular event.

The Irishman’s rise to the top at the end of Day 1 was done without any major pots going his way instead he accumulated his stack by good old fashioned grinding and that is the sign of a poker player in the zone. Callaghan’s nearest rival is Johannes Meyer on 179,400. The German has a good record in Ireland with all of his three career cashes coming in Killarney, Dublin and Galway.

Amongst the 195 surviving players who will make their way back to their seats this afternoon for Day 2 include Jon Kalmar who you may remember reached the final table of the 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event, Andy Black, Jack Ellwood, Marty Smyth, EPT Snowfest champion Vladimir Geshkenbein, Triple Crown winner Jake Cody, Toby “810ofclubs” Lewis, November Nine member Sam Holden, and recent WPT Five Diamond Classic champion James “Flushy” Dempsey.

There is still a long way to the money places as only 36 players will receive a cash prize in this event but they should get somewhere near today as they play for around 12 hours. Anyone scraping into the cash will receive €5,550 and the eventual winner scooping the €202,680 first place prize and a seat to the WPT World Championship to be held at the Bellagio, Las Vegas later this year worth a further $25,000.