The Nightly Turbo: World Poker Tour Borgata Update, ESPN Inside Deal, and More
Another night, another day's worth of poker news stories to fill you in on. In this edition of The Nightly Turbo, we've got your World Poker Tour Borgata update for the day and there were plenty of tempers flaring on Day 2 between Allen Bari and Matt Stout, as well as another fight that almost broke out. We've also got the latest ESPN Inside Deal that one of our very own made an appearance on, and much more.
In Case You Missed It
For the past two weeks, we've compared and contrasted the World Series of Poker with the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker. It's about time we get to the meat of our findings and decide which one is better.
The Poker Players Alliance has recently released its 2010 Congressional Ratings guide. See how some of your congressmen stack up in Poker Players Alliance Rates Congress.
Jason Mercier battled through a tough field in the two-day $1,000 buy-in WCOOP event to take the win. Read the WCOOP recap to see how swingy his stack got and how he battled back.
The WSOP-E and the WCOOP have been on a lot of pros minds lately, and the nosebleeds on Full Tilt Poker aren't as active as we're used to.Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies has had an awesome two weeks online, though, and the Online Railbird Report will tell you all about it.
The Jersey Shore
Tempers were flaring at the World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open on Day 2. Allen Bari and Matt Stout got into a Twitter war that moved to the felt and resulted in Stout being penalized, and Steve Buckner and Larry Wolf traded words before a railbird got in the middle, and that's when things almost took a turn for the worse. We're going to chalk these incidents up to The Situation not doing as well as he could have on last night's Dancing with the Stars premiere.
Enough about that, let's get on to how Day 2 went and how Day 3 is progressing. Day 2 began with 641 players; by the end of the day only 165 had survived. John D'Agostino led the way into Day 3 with 681,200 in chips but didn't hold on to that lead for long into the third day. At the time of this writing, D'Agostino was sitting just below his starting stack, the money bubble had burst and there were 94 players left.
The man to beat at the moment is Giuseppe Pantaleo who has crossed the one million chip mark, but Olivier Busquet is hot on his heels, with 950,000, doing his best to defend his title. The field will be whittled to the final 27 before play is suspended for the day.
The World Poker Tour Live Reporting Blog has updates, videos, and photos direct from the floor at Borgata.
*Above photo courtesy of the WPT Blog.
On the Inside
ESPN's Inside Deal is back this week from Bristol with Laura Lane and Andrew Feldman at the helm, while Bernard Lee does his poker thing at WPT Borgata before heading across the Atlantic for the 2010 World Series of Poker Europe.
The Dealing duo discusses the WSOP-E, and PokerNews Editor-in-Chief Matthew Parvis (whom Feldman wishes he was) called in from London to give his take from the Empire. Lane and Feldman also discuss players to watch and much more.
Settling Up
British company Sportingbet recently reached a settlement with the U.S. government to keep from being prosecuted for accepting online bets by U.S. residents on sports events, casino, and poker between 1998 and 2006. The £33 million deal was finally reached after three years of negotiations. U.S. prosecutors also said that Sportingbet would cooperate with its online gambling probe and would maintain "a permanent restriction on providing internet gambling services to US customers."
The settlement will be paid over an 18 months and is in the "best interests of our shareholders," said chief executive Andrew McIver.
For more check out the article on Interactive Investor.
Lithuanian Basketball, Hellmuth, WSOPE, and More
The G is blogging again. His latest blog discusses the Lithuanian basketball team, which is the third best team in the world. Tony sponsored the team in the World Championship and flew to Istanbul for the game. He then discusses the World Series of Poker Europe, which he won't be attending. He feels that Phil Hellmuth should enter as the Pope, a World War II pilot, or "some hip hop s**t." And on reports that PartyPoker being named the softest online poker room, he says, "Tell me something I didn’t know. This huge crocodile with Lithuanian stripes frequently indulges in a fish eating frenzy on the site. You are soft and you are gone, gone, gone as poker players – take that from the Tony G. Bring me more seafood – yum!"
For more gems from the G, check out his blog over at PartyPoker.com.
Fully Extravagant
Full Tilt Poker held its media extravaganza recently at the Empire Casino and Gloria Balding was there to catch up with some of the pros.
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