This Week in Poker: July 8 – 14

This Week in Poker
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  • PG News July 14, 2015
  • 5 Minutes Read

In the PokerGuru feature ‘This Week in Poker’ we bring to you the weekly round up of the biggest online scores by Indian MTT players along with the top stories from both the live and online poker circuit.

Here are this week`s top stories

It’s that time of the week again, for our regular weekly roundup. Like a hurricane the 2015 WSOP swept all the world of poker into its enticing vortex and finally the much-anticipated $10,000 Main Event is on its last leg, with just one day left before it temporarily shuts down with the November Niners, only to reconvene three months later bringing us a new world champion.

The Indian brigade put in their best efforts at the Main Event and leading them was Team PokerStars Pro Aditya Agarwal, who scored a personal milestone on Day 5 of the Main Event. Aditya made $96,445, his career’s best live score for 71st place, breaking his previous record of 2008, where he had made a 96th place finish for $51,466.

Readers will find the details of all the Main Event days to date below, along with the Indian performance.

WSOP may be coming to a close, but another exciting tournament is looming on the horizon – the IPC Aug edition, which will run from Aug 11 to 16 and promises to be as exciting as the past editions this year. Players can win seats to IPC – India’s biggest tournament series through online satellites on SpartanPoker.com.

In our other news coverage, we have reports from California about the two important online poker bills and the indictment of Christian Lusardi.

There is also the result of the partyPoker Presents: WPT500 tournament in Las Vegas. Besides that, you can also catch the updates about Amaya’s bid for a large gambling company.

Moving on to our Online Railbird Report, with most of our top pros in Las Vegas for WSOP, the virtual felts have been rather quiet and these past few weeks have seen only a consistent few making good scores. The dull scene at the virtual felts continue this week as well, with only a few scores and the one that takes the precedence above others, is Young Gun Karan Radia’s two scores that gets him a total of $5,558. He takes this weeks ‘PokerGuru Star of the Week’ title.

Online enthusiasts will also have the MicroMillions 11 series to look forward to. The mega series begins on Thursday and satellites are already on for those wanting to participate.

 

Online Railbird Report

WSOP has overshadowed all other poker happenings and this was true for the online felts, as well. The past few weeks have seen scant action, except for a couple of consistent grinders and this week too, these names continue to feature in the cashes list.

Young Gun Karan Radia made $2,645.51 for 24th place in the PokerStars ‘$215 Sunday Million, $1M GTD’, $2,913.84 for 1st place in the PokerStars ‘$3.30+R NL Hold’em, $12K GTD’ and won $1,744 for 3rd place in the PokerStars $22 NL Hold’em [1R1A], $15K GTD.’

For these scores, Karan takes this weeks ‘PokerGuru Star of the Week’ title.

Karan Radia
Karan Radia

Others giving him company in the winners circle this week were Akash ‘Buddhaluv’ Sanghvi who won $3,266.00 for 1st place in the PokerStars ‘$109 NL Hold’em [Turbo], $10K GTD.’

Last two week’s star Abhishek ‘abhi147’ Rathod also made three notable scores this week for a cumulative $4,209. He won $1,939.65 for 4th place in the Winamax AFTER WORK, $1,207.45 for 3rd place in the PokerStars ‘$22 NL Hold’em [6-Max, Progressive Super-Knockout], $20K GTD’ and won $1,063.00 for 6th place in the 888 Poker ‘$25,000 Saturday Challenge’.

shakuni8492‘ won $1,430.47 for 1st place in the PokerStars ‘$5.40 NL Hold’em [Turbo, Knockout], $10K GTD.’

Young Gun Kanishka ‘kanishka27’ Samant made $1,088.22 for 7th place in the PokerStars ‘The Bigger $27.50, $35K GTD.’

Starting Thursday is the MicroMillions 11th Edition with a whopping $5 Million guaranteed across 100 events. The series has some of the most affordable buy-ins and features the most attractive prizes. Slated to run from July 16 to 26, action has already begun with Phase 1 of the opening event.

 

2015 WSOP

$10,000 Main Event

Almost the entire Indian contingent participated in the $10,000 Main Event and this included Aditya Agarwal, Akash Malik, Raghav Bansal, Adda52 Team Spades pros Amit Jain and Muskan Sethi, Shashank Jain, Jasven Saigal, Sahil Agarwal, Rajesh Goyal, Aditya Sushant, Phani Ramineni, Muthukumar Ramamirutha and Rahul Byrraju.

This Main Event also saw a large number of Indian origin players in the fray, and featured prominent names like Mukul Pahuja and Vivek Rajkumar, among others.

In all, 6,420 runners signed up for the Main Event, leading to a prize pool of $60,348,000 and the lion’s share of $7,680,021 will be taken by the eventual winner in November.

Day 1A

741 entries dotted the room on Day 1A and at the end of play, William Kakon was the chip lead with 152K in chips. Among the several notables who survived were Indian-origin players Vivek Rajkumar and Amit Makhija.

Day 1B

1,154 players survived Day 1B and Team India`s Apoorva Goel made it through the day, albeit with a short stack. Indian-origin players to make it were Pratyush Buddiga and Numit Agrawal.

Day 1C

Historically, Day 1C always draws the the largest numbers of players, but this year was special as a record 3,963 players signed up for the Main Event – making this the largest single entry flight in the history of WSOP. Only 2,765 players made it through to Day 2.

Team PokerStars pro Aditya Agarwal, Adda52 Team Spades pros Amit Jain and Muskan Sethi, Raghav Bansal, Shashank Jain, Jasven Saigal, Sahil Agarwal, Rajesh Goyal, Aditya Sushant, Rahul Byrraju and Akash Malik all played on Day 1C.

At the end of the day, Akash led the Indian brigade with the largest stack of 78K chips. Most of the Indian players made it to Day 2, barring Sushant and Byrraju who were both eliminated on this day.

 

Day 2AB

Survivors from Day 1A and 1B played on Day 2AB. Only 646 players survived and the chip leader was a Silicon Valley techie, Indian-origin player Amar Anand, who accumulated 603K in chips.

Apoorva Goel, who had come in from Day 1B did not make it through the day.

Day 2C

Akash Malik continued his good run on Day 2C as well, ending with the highest stack among the Indian players of 250K.

Aditya Agarwal, Rajesh Goyal, Jasven Saigal, Raghav Bansal, Phani Ramineni and Shashank Jain all survived Day 2C, while Sahil Agarwal, Amit Jain and Muskan Sethi, hit the rails before the end of play.

David Jackson emerged chip leader among the 1,150 survivors.

Day 3

The top survivors from all the starting flights got down to serious play on Day 3, with 1,796 players taking to the felt.

Amar Anand kept up the pace and remained chip leader at the end of the day and the only above 1 million in chips. Brian Hastings began an offensive towards the bracelet, which lasted the next few days.

Among the Indian challengers, Aditya Agarwal charged ahead and ended the day with 457K in chips, with Akash Malik also making it to Day 4 with 391K.

Jasven Saigal, Shashank Jain and Rajesh Goyal all busted before the money, while both Raghav Bansal and Muthukumar Ramamirutha min-cashed for $15,000 each.

Day 4

It was a day that saw Aditya continue the momentum, taking up his stack to above the 1 million mark, until he ended the day a little lower with 958K in chips.

The other Indian to make it to Day 5 was Phani Ramineni who bagged 734K chips at the end of play.

For Akash Malik however, it was a fatal day, where he finally succumbed, hitting the rails at 357th place for a payday of $24,622.

Akash Malik
Akash Malik

Day 4 also saw several notables, such as Phil Hellmuth, Mukul Pahuja among others hitting the rails.

Day 5

This was a momentous day for Indian poker fans, who had been rooting for Aditya Agarwal.

Aditya Agarwal
Aditya Agarwal

Aditya put up a commendable performance, losing a large pot initially, only to take two double-ups later. However, he finally lost his tournament life to Brian Hastings just a few hands before the end of play.

Hastings raised and Aditya moved all in. Hastings called with against Aditya’s . Aditya was once again flipping for his tournament life but Hastings found kings up on the board and Aditya was eliminated.

Nevertheless, Aditya bested his previous record of 96th place in the 2008 Main Event by finishing 71st for a payday of $96,445.

Phani Ramineni also did not make it through and was busted at 185th place for $40,433.

Noted poker pro Vivek Rajkumar busted at 197th place for $40,433, along with several other Indian-origin players, leaving only Amar Anand as a player with an Indian connection in the game. Of the 69 survivors, Pierre Neuville took the lead with over 7 million in chips.

Day 6

27 survivors remain at the end of Day 6 and PokerStars pro Daniel Negreanu is currently 9th in the chip counts with 8,495,000. The six time bracelet winner will pose the biggest challenge to all the remaining players, coming as he has this close to the final table after almost 14 years. He last made an 11th place finish in the 2001 Main Event.

The day marked the elimination of the last woman standing Kelly Minkin, who was busted at 29th place for $211,821.

Mark Kroon the man who promised to do naked cartwheels also lost his tournament life at 43rd place for $164,086, eliminated by Kelly.

After four days of a tough fight, Brian Hastings was finally busted at 49th place for $137,300 by John Hinds.

The only player with Indian roots, Amar Anand fell out in 55th place for $113,764.

Amar Anand
Amar Anand

Anand was felled by Jake Toole in a hand that saw the former with . The flop of and the turn supported the of Toole and Anand was eliminated.

The day began on a fast note with 13 eliminations before the first break among the 69 starters. By dinner time, only 36 remained and eliminations came extremely slow in the last level of the game.

While 72-year old Pierre Neauville began the day as chip leader, Thomas Kearney will now lead the final 27 at the start of Day 7 tomorrow with a stack of 14.4 million.

Tomorrow promises to be an exciting day as the final 27 contenders are whittled down to unveil the ‘November Nine’!

 

Online Poker Bills Seem Stuck in California

With constant fighting between the different stakeholders over the bad clause factor, the online poker issue and now, horse racing tracks, the fate of the two crucial bills in California seems to be stuck, with both the Assemblymen Mike Gatto and Reggie Jones Sawyer refusing to take the bills further.

Earlier the Veijas tribe and Adelson Sheldon had created a ruckus against PokerStars entering the state and now even the horse racing segment is up in arms over recent suggestions by the Chairman of the Pechanga tribe. Adding to the melee is another strong lobbyist’s voice against the tribes.

Read the complete story here.

 

Christian Lusardi Indicted for Counterfeit Chips at Borgata

Almost a year and a half after he was charged, Christian Lusardi was finally indicted by the Atlantic County grand jury for his crimes of introducing counterfeit chips in the Borgata Poker Open. Lusardi faces counts of theft and more and has already been found guilty of other crimes, such as DVD bootlegging.

Christian Lusardi
Christian Lusardi

Read the complete story here.

 

Craig Varnell Wins WPT500

Down the road from the Rio, the partyPoker Presents: WPT500 played out at the Aria. Craig Varnell emerged the winner, beating 5,113 entries to take home the trophy and the top prize of $330,000.

The event played out during the early stages of the WSOP Main Event and had a prize pool of $2,556,500.

Craig Varnell
Craig Varnell

Read the complete story here.

 

Amaya Looking to Acquire bwin.party for $1.4 Billion

Since Nov last, Amaya has been actively seeking to acquire the gambling conglomerate bwin.party. The Canadian giant is now looking at an alliance with GVC Holdings to strength its bid to takeover bwin.party. The gambling group owns the popular site PartyPoker, which can legitimize Amaya’s operations, giving it an easy entry into the highly lucrative US market. Amaya has also raised a large amount of $1.4 Billion to get the company.

Read the complete story here.

 

That ends this edition of our weekly recap, but we will be back again same time next week with all the top headlines from the world of Poker.

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