Online Poker Press

Just as it appeared the final touches were being put on a deal to sell the World Poker Tour to a subsidiary of PartyGaming, a third offer to buy the company has been made.

At the beginning of August, Gamynia Limited agreed to pay $9,075,000 plus a percentage of future revenues for almost all of WPT Enterprises assets, including its television, sponsorship, distribution and licensing units.

The deal was put on hold pending stockholder approval and in the interim another offer was made.

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Europeans have a new direct flight to Las Vegas from Paris.Poker players can now go from sipping wine in Paris to flopping sets at Bellagio in less than 13 hours time thanks to a new direct flight sponsored by ChiliPoker.

The XL Airways flight will fly out of Paris Charles de Gualle airport on Thursdays and Sundays every week.

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EPT Warsaw, $9,000 No Limit Hold’em, Warsaw, October 20th-25th 2009

Entrants: 203
Buyin: $9,000 US
Prize pool: $1,717,000 US

1.

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A slow grind.

That is perhaps the best way to describe the play during day 3 of the WPT Bellagio Festa Al Lago Main Event.

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‘It sucks not to have made it when you keep getting so close, but really, that’s poker.’The World Poker Tour returns to familiar surroundings Wednesday as the annual Festa al Lago main event begins inside the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

A win in the $15k event last year began Team PokerStars Pro Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier on the path towards WPT Player of the Year honors, but the Warsaw leg of the European Poker Tour will keep the French pro from returning to defend his title this time around.

Grospellier came into the final table last year with a rather sizeable chip lead and completely dominated a final six that included Nam Le, Osmin Dardon, Nenad Medic, Adam Levy and William Mietz to win the $1.4 million first place prize.

However, it was a hand on the event’s penultimate day, one that would become one of the most talked about hands of the WPT’s seventh season, that Grospellier later claimed propelled him to victory.

Joe Sebok, no stranger to WPT final table bubbles having finished seventh at both the Legends of Poker and Bay 101 Shooting Star in 2007, had the chip lead nine-handed and appeared to be a lock to finally make a televised final table on the tour.

Sebok fell back to the pack doubling up short stack Olav Prinz Von Sachsen losing a race with ace-king against sevens and a few minutes later, Grospellier raised his big blind from the small blind, just has he had been doing all day long.

This time Sebok decided to a take a stand, pushing all in with K 9 and without much hesitation, Grospellier made the call with the dominating A 9.

The board bricked out, Grospellier had the chip stack and table image needed to take a stranglehold on the Festa al Lago title and an utterly shocked Sebok was suddenly on the outside looking in.

For weeks after, Sebok’s play was both criticized and lauded on Internet poker forums and his own PokerRoad radio show ad nauseam.

Now, a year later, as he headed back to Las Vegas looking for redemption and another shot at the WPT glory he was so close to attaining he could practically taste it, Sebok told PokerListings he’s come to terms with it all.

The WPT Season 7 Festa al Lago champion.

“It makes me kind of sad that some of the most discussed hands in WPT history are ones that I’ve lost,” Sebok said.

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On Thursday, the oral arguments for one of the most prominent poker-related cases will take place in Kentucky. And you can watch it live.

The hearing, which is open to the public and available on http://courts.ky.gov/, could be the conclusion of what has been a lengthy battle between the Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association (IMEGA) and Kentucky Governor Steven Beshear.

The court case is a result of Gov’s Beshear’s controversial move to seize the domain names of several online sites, including many poker sites, such as PokerStars, Full Tilt, DoylesRoom, Bodog, UltimateBet, Absolute Poker, and Cake Poker.

In all, 141 domain names were seized.

IMEGA, an organization that has fought for poker players’ rights in the past in both federal court and in state courts, immediately took up the fight. Th

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Simon Watts wins the 2009 edition of APPT Auckland.For the second straight year a local has triumphed at PokerStars APPT Auckland.

Simon Watt outlasted 263 players to win the biggest chunk of a $789,000 NZD prizepool in just the second APPT event ever held in New Zealand.

The event drew several recognizable players to the Skycity Casino, including Team PokerStars Pros Grant Levy, Emad Tahtouh, Tony Hachem, Celina Lin and Lee “Final Table” Nelson.

Nelson was eliminated in just the second hand of the tournament when he made a full house, but his opponent rivered quads.

The nine-player final table played out on Saturday with Assadour Assadourian the sole PokerStars sponsored player remaining.

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The news is good for poker players and poker companies in France. Recent developments has an approved bill proposed for making online poker legal in the country. In the wake of the approval some 1200 online poker companies are expected to apply for licenses to operate online poker rooms in the country. A few amendments have been added to the bill that will require poker players to close their accounts for six months before reopening in the new legal online poker system, and the revenues and profits will of course be subject to tax by the French government.

High Stakes Poker has lost one of their hosts. A. J. Benza, who along with Gabe Caplan provided commentary for the cash poker tournament that ran during each episode of High Stakes Poker, has been let go. Benza responded with a heartfelt plea on his blog to get his job back and showed anger at the poker show executives who fired him. No word on who the replacement poker host will be, although rumor is that it will be a female. Poker pro Vanessa Rousso’s name has come up in more than one poker forum.

Three WSOP final tables and two second-place finishes in a single year, more than $1 million in 2009 winnings, a nationally syndicated TV show with him as the star, and a photo in ESPN The Magazine with him wearing just his briefs.

On paper, it looks like 2009 has been quite a year for Daniel Negreanu. And while it’s hard to argue with his successes, those who follow “Kid Poker” know that it’s been a trying time for the superstar. Wit

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