The 2007 GoldStrike World Poker Open WPT Championship event attracted 294 players for a total prize pool of $2,856,200. After four days of play, the six remaining players were evenly split between well-known poker pros and relative unknowns. Daniel Negreanu, JC Tran, and Thang 'Kido' Pham joined Young Cho, Gary Kainer, and Brian Sumner on the WPT set to vie for the $913,986 first prize.

The 2008 Main Event begins on Sunday the 20th at noon CST and runs for 5 days. This year, there will be two starting flights, so Sunday will be day 1A and Monday will be day 1B, with the survivors returning for day 2 on Tuesday, January 22nd. The final table and filming for the WPT Season 6 which will air on the Game Show Network (GSN) will take place on Thursday, January 24th.

Live Coverage of this Event can be found by clicking here.

by Justin West



Currently in the top ten most searched for players on Poker Pages, Beth Shak is not your average poker player. Beth has come to be defined by her class, style, and grace at the table, just as she has for being a ruthlessly good player.

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The 2007 Winter Borgata Poker Classic drew 571 players willing to pony up $10,000 for a shot at glory. Five days later, John Hennigan found himself $1.6 million richer. The final hand of the tournament shocked everyone as his opponent, Charles Kelley, turned his cards up after betting was completed on the turn, believing action was over. After seeing the river card, John moved in and Charles still made the call, suspecting a bluff, but John held the goods and the tournament was over. Charles still walked away with a tidy sum -- $849,082 -- for his second place finish.

This year, the Borgata Poker Classic’s Main Event is a $9,700 + $300 NLHE event and it begins on Sunday, January, 27th at 11am and runs for five days. The final table will be filmed by the WPT on Thursday, January 21st beginning at 5pm.

Find out all the action-packed details by clicking here for live coverage.

TJ Cloutier, Hall of Famer, 6 WSOP bracelet holder and one of the world's greatest tournament players will be there to spend the week with the 10 lucky finalists and their guests.

TJ Cloutier will be conducting a seminar, playing some poker and giving one on one advice to the players before the main final $500,000 Sit n Go event on June 4th, 2008. US Players Welcome! Ways to Qualify

Find Out More by Clicking Here.

PokerPages.com, jointly with Hold'em Indicator (tm), brings you the state-of-the-art online Poker Odds Calculator, with instant poker odds, real-time opponent statistics and betting patterns. The easy-to-understand displays help you make intelligent and profitable decisions, instantly improving your poker game.

by fingaz

According to my stats, I have a very good win rate over almost 50,000 hands at the site I usually play at. I recently moved sites and all of a sudden my win rate dropped significantly. I can't seem to hit sets nearly as much and I am getting ‘coolered’ to death. My morale is now very low and I do not trust my game very much. I don’t really believe that online poker is rigged, but this is making me wonder. How do you deal with these downswings? -Gino in Alberta

Find out fingaz answer by clicking here.

by T.J. Cloutier

The first time I went to Dallas to play poker back in the '80s, I played at the AmVets. A notorious guy named Troy Inman was running the game. I was playing with the great players in those days, guys like Bob Hooks, Kenny Smith, Dicky Carson, Bill Bonds, and Bill Smith. It was a helluva game. I happened to win $8,000 the first time I played in that no-limit hold'em game, but when it came time for me to leave, I had to walk down three flights of stairs to get out of the place. And it was in a pretty bad area down in the lower Greenville section of Dallas near Highway 30.

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Win your way down under to the famous Aussie Millions taking place the 13th-21st January 2008 which boasts an impressive $1,000,000 First Prize or to VC Poker's very own week long festival; The inside Prague Poker Palooza the Spearmint Casino, Prague.

Despite release of his company's strong Q1 results this week, Paradise Poker's boss, Sportinget CEO Andrew McIver, suggested that online poker may be losing some of its momentum.


"There had been a lot of hype in internet poker and that has now come off a bit," McIver was quoted as saying in the UK newspaper The Evening Standard this week.


Sportingbet and ParadisePoker were forced out of the US upon passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) last October. That withdrawal lead to a GBP 240 million write off (USD $491.4m or EUR 334.4m) in the value of the business and sent share value down 90%.


Sportingbet reported that in the three months to end-October, its poker rake nearly halved to GBP 4.6 million (USD $9.4m or EUR 6.4m).


"That is as a result of significantly reduced liquidity following the loss of US resident players," expanded the statement accompanying the results.


For cost savings, Sportingbet had already transferred players off the Paradise Poker Platform onto Sportingbet's poker platform managed by Boss Media earlier this year (click here for related article).


Poker and other online casino games now account for only 40% of Sportingbet's business, with up to another 40% being spent punting on European football.


OVERALL LOSSSES SLIMMED DOWN & PROSPECTS LOOKING GOOD

Sportingbet reported that losses slimmed down to GBP 1.4m from GBP 11.5m a year ago, and said it plans to concentrate on getting Europeans to bet on sports.


European sports betting and underlying operating profits in the quarter were both up by about 15%, to GBP 170m and GBP 15m respectively.


Sportingbet's focus on European punters, many of them based in Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey, makes it different from many traditional UK bookies, whose home banker is horseracing.


McIver said that the second quarter had started well and that in the year ahead the company would focus on improved customer recruitment and retention, strengthening its retail offering and improving its website.


"We will carry on focusing
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