Strip Poker
FIRST BLOOD TO BLOM IN POKERSTARS CLASH WITH NEGREANU
2011-03-21
Enigmatuic Swede walks away with $150 000
Swedish online high stakes poker ace Viktor 'Isildur1' Blom drew first blood - and $150 000 - over the weekend in the first of two heads up challenges against Daniel Negreanu on the Pokerstars site in the PokerStars SuperStar Showdown..
In just 1 440 hands the enigmatic young Swede crushed his high-profile opponent.
Negreanu's comment on Twitter summed up his disappointment: "This has been pretty disgusting so far. Can't imagine running any worse."
The Challenge between the two exciting players was originally planned to take place over two consecutive Sundays, March 20 and March 27, at 15:00 ET, with each player starting with $150 000 bankrolls, playing across four virtual tables at $50/$100 stakes, with a ceiling of 2 500 hands.
Earlier, there was speculation that a despondent Negreanu had been cleaned out and may not be able to make the second clash. However, he subsequently dispelled this, tweeting: “OK, officially shook off the loss. Back to the grind this week and a rematch with a fresh 150k next week.”
ZYNGA POKER IN ASIAN MOVES
2010-08-18
Expanding in the US, social games developer is building up a stake in Asia, too.
The San Francisco-based internet social gaming developer Zynga has made its Zynga Texas Poker offering available in China as well as on Facebook in Hong Kong and Taiwan this week, with a localised version playable in traditional Chinese or English - part of a continuing drive into the Asian market, reports Techcrunch.
The gaming giant recently bought Japanese gaming startup Unoh, took a $150 million investment from Japan’s SoftBank Capital, acquired Chinese game developer XPD Media and set up a Beijing office (see previous InfoPowa reports).
Zynga Poker, the company’s first ever social game, launched in July 2007 and is currently the third most popular game on Facebook, attracting 28 million players every month. On an average day 375 000 Zynga Poker players are simultaneously playing together live across the internet in 100 countries.
Techcrunch reports that the game itself simulates playing poker in a social gaming environment. Users enter a casino lobby and can play at any table or join friends for a game. Players choose from casual Hold ‘Em tables, tournament play or VIP tables. A leader board shows players how they compare in chip ranking to other players and allows players to send or receive gifts.
"As an incentive for users in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Zynga Texas Poker players will automatically receive a complimentary stack of 8,888 Vegas-style Poker chips to play games with. Additionally, this month, Zynga is offering a grand prize for the “ShootOut” tournament that allows local players to compete for a prize of $880,000 Taiwanese dollars. Zynga is also giving away a trip to Las Vegas to a user," Techcrunch informs.
The publication notes that recent moves in Congress to legalise online gambling in the United States could deliver a further boost to Zynga's popular poker offering, and in the Asian region a release to the Japanese localised market would seem to be a logical next step.
Zynga was founded in July 2007 by Mark Pincus, Michael Luxton, Eric Schiermeyer, Justin Waldron, Andrew Trader, and Steve Schoettler
JETBULL JOINS CAKE ONLINE POKER NETWORK
2010-07-01
Formula 1 racing star is the face of online poker site
The European multi-channel online gaming site Jetbull.com has joined the Cake Network, bringing its high profile spokesman, Formula 1 racing champion David Coulthard, into contact with online poker fans.
In addition to signing up Coulthard, Jetbull has undergone a redesign and recently upgraded its gaming offerings with an Oddsmatrix’ sportsbook and a NetEnt casino.
Sandra Barton, COO at Jetbull.com notes, “Thanks to our new partnerships Jetbull now has one of the best platforms in Europe. With the Cake Network and our other partners Jetbull will continue to expand across Europe.”
Jetbull joins a roster of recent additions to the Cake Network that includes Intertops.com, UnabomberPoker.com and AdamEvePoker.com. Cake recently entered into partnerships with complimentary gaming service providers EveryMatrix and CTXM to provide joint services to customer facing sites (see previous InfoPowa report).
Cake’s Marketing Director Andrew Turner said:, “Jetbull is a strong brand that is continually gaining exposure and traction in the European marketplace through aggressive marketing and sponsorships.”
MELBOURNE POKER TOURNEY WINDS DOWN
2010-06-02
590 entries for A$ 1 100 buy-in main event
The media noise level from the first days of the World Series of Poker championships unfolding in Las Vegas have almost obliterated coverage of another important tournament currently winding down in Melbourne, Australia.
The Crown Casino in Melbourne has been hosting the Melbourne Championship, which this week saw 590 players pony up the A$1 100 buy-in for a main event with a creditable prize pool of A$590 000.
Following three tough days, 20-year-old Brendon Rubie emerged as the victor, taking home the winner’s spoils of A$118 000 after a tense heads up with Minh Nguyen.
The final table results looked like this:
Brendon Rubie - A$118,000
Minh Nguyen - A$83,780
Mark Iskander - A$56,050
Michael Spilkin - A$41,300
Amanda De Cesare - A$35,400
Sam Vakili - A$29,500
Brian Boyle - A$23,600
Rob Salter - A$17,700
Andrew Scarf - A$11,800
Jarred Graham - A$8,850
HUNGARIAN PRO WINS L.A. POKER CLASSIC
2010-03-09
"I'm going to spend it all!" says winner of $1.78 million main prize
Andras Koroknai, a professional player from Hungary, is the latest WPT L.A. Poker Classic champion after besting a final table of six players at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles this week.
The final table crowned five days of hectic action as the original field of 745 was narrowed down to just six survivors: Andras Koroknai, Raymond Dolan, Tri Huynh, Gevork Kasabyan, Jean-Claude Moussa and Michael Kamran.
In the end, it was Koroknai vs. Dolan, with the Hungarian holding a 13 to 1 chip advantage which ensured that the heads up was brief and decisive.
The Hungarian walked off with the main prize of $1 788 040, vowing cheerfully "I'm going to spend all of it!", whilst the runner up collected a check for $ 1 002 710.
POKERSCOUTS CONSIDERS A YEAR OF ONLINE POKER
2009-12-28
Full Tilt Poker the growth king in 2009
Retrospective analyses of the twelve months just passed are common as a year draws to a close, and InfoPowa's pick of the many offerings so far published goes to Poker News Daily, which cannily chose to interview Dan Stewart, manager of the independent online poker information and stats site PokerScout.
In an interesting interview Stewart makes the point that the prophets of doom predicting that everything from a bad economic climate to market saturation would cause the industry to falter and regress have been resoundingly proved wrong in 2009...and he produced a few stats to back his opinion.
Stewart told Poker News Daily that the overall market has grown by an impressive 35 percent, with Full Tilt Poker enjoying a good year, doubling in size and increasing market share from 15 percent to 23 percent in its pursuit of the biggest site in the world, Pokerstars.com. Much of the growth occurred in the second half of the year, it appears.
Full Tilt closed the gap during the year and is now 65 percent the size of its gigantic rival, with both substantially ahead of Playtech's third placed iPoker network. The dominance and growth of these super-sites has resulted in smaller companies - especially those lower than the top 12 sites on the leader board - growing slower than the market itself.
A possibly serious contender, depending on the extent to which their respective player databases overlap, could be the much speculated upon possible merger of Bwin and Party Gaming.
Stewart confirms that the sites that have the most players tend to attract more players because they offer continuous poker action around the world, and he estimates that Pokerstars and Full Tilt between them enjoy a 60 percent share of the available market. But there is still enough to go round, he observes, commenting that there are at least 15 other networks with enough players to remain healthy and competitive, even in terms of non-US action.
Going by Pokerscout's usually accurate and up-to-date statistics, the year's biggest loser has been Sweden's state-owned Svenska Spel, which is down by 9 percent - probably as a result of owner-restraints on its marketing efforts.
Pokerscout looks to be even more informative in 2010; Stewart revealed that there some valuable additions planned for the site next year that include an expanded traffic report and more information on rakeback deals.
Readers can find the full interview here: http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/2009-online-poker-industry-trends-7153/