November 2008 Archives

With the sounds of Joao Barbosa winning the EPT Warsaw echoing across the poker world last weekend several thousand PokerStars.net players had their own glory in mind in the Weekly Round 2 events. These free to enter tournaments pitch the best against each other in the most competitive event of...more

It’s been a busy time here at Blog Towers with few of the updates you’ve come to expect, as regular readers will have noticed. But at last normal service is now resumed. In the last week an Asia Pacific Poker Tour event has concluded and a European Poker Tour event...more

Yesterday Joao Barbosa was 25-years-old and one of the hottest rising stars on the European Poker Tour. Today Joao Barbosa is 26-years-old and €367,141 richer. On the day he celebrated his birthday, the kid from Porto, Portugal, also underlined his serious talent. Barbosa's EPT record now reads: one title...more

You can take your pick of the stories on day three at the EPT Warsaw. A Team PokerStars Pro makes the final table? A former champion on course to win an historic double? All that and more on a third day that is now washed, chopped and dished up;...more

We came to play down to the money. We got there, but the route was less predictable and featured a few more bumps than anyone had imagined. Attention is always on the chip leaders - the players most likely to shape days three and four - but today their...more

Sean Callander concludes his coverage from the APPT in Manila... You need luck to win a poker tournament, and the talking point among players as they fly to the four corners of the world after the PokerStars.net APPT Manila main event will undoubtedly the luck that carried Van sirens...more

Yesterday's opener to EPT Warsaw was a quiet affair, a tight-knit friendly game played among a dedicated bunch who seemed reluctant to knock one another out. It was fun to watch and probably fun to play, but there was something unusual about it, something not quite EPT. That was...more

The PokerStars.Net APPT Manila event has been a hive of activity in recent days, and today was no different with a dramatic finish to the day which saw the last seven players eliminated in just half an hour. At the start of the day, American PokerStars Qualifier Michael Shell...more

With 99 players starting day 1a here in Warsaw, we were wondering whether at the end of the day we would already be down to a single table. Such is the carnage usually associated with the EPT that even with 10,000 chip starting stacks and one-hour levels, it's not...more

The race for the money gets serious tomorrow when we return to the ballroom at the Hyatt Hotel and Casino in the Filipino capital for the penultimate day’s play in the PokerStars.net APPT Manila main event. Just 77 of the 285 players who took their seats on the two...more

Less than one-quarter of the 149 players who started day 1A of the PokerStars.net APPT Manila main event will return for day 2 on Saturday after a dramatic day of play at the Hyatt Hotel and Casino. Just 38 players had chips to bag at day’s end as the...more

They called them the Million Dollar Men, the November Nine and the PokerStars Six. But everyone knew that when the smoke cleared there could only be one of them left standing. And now we know his name. The 2008 World Series Main Event champion is 22-year-old Peter Eastgate, from...more

Every World Series final table has carried with it a sense of anticipation, but none quite like the one we watched today. It was an historic final table four months in the making. Nine men from around the world reconvened after an extended poker vacation. They walked into the...more

If not for Ryan's Fee obvious poker skill, a casual observer could mistake him for being the luckiest man in Costa Rica. He's fine with that. After all, he just won more than $200,000. The 20-year old from Philadelphia, Pennsyvania took less than four hours today to destroy the...more

There was anoptimism in the ballroom of the Ramada Herradura events center this morning of a type that seems to pervade the small, tranquil nation of Costa Rica. The thirty eight players who assembled for Day 2 of LAPT San Jose were all keenly aware of a critical fact:...more

There is a certain optimism in Costa Rica that belies the near-constant rain in the country. When the clouds roll over the valley and the mountains are covered by a gray haze, one wonders how the citizens of this beautiful place can live with their trademark Pura Vida spirit....more

A European Poker Tour event wrapped up in Budapest, another leg of the Latin America Poker Tour about to begin in Costa Rica. That means there’s time in between to catch up on the latest results in the Weekly Round two events held last weekend. This week the two big...more

It was a fitting way to end a magnificent event: two aggressive players playing for a first prize of €595,839. Both the Englishman William Fry and Ciprian Hrisca from Romania may have shared a friendly glass of wine before the heads-up began, but once the glasses were drained the...more