Champion of Poker Victoria Coren Mitchell Wins Favorite EPT Moment

@Victoria Coren Mitchell is a true champion of poker - both as a winning player and as an ambassador for the game. She is one of the best-liked and respected members of the community with her excellent performance and intelligent, charming, and courteous presence at the poker table; with the fantastic mainstream coverage she is securing for the game as a popular journalist and TV presenter; last but not least, with her inspiring role-modeling for sponsored players and for  #womenINpoker.

Monday, 21 April 2014 - I am too shocked, amazed, excited, delighted, baffled, overwhelmed and frankly hungover to write anything much about my experience of the last six days at EPT San Remo right now, but I want to say an enormous thank you to everyone who offered the incredible online support I received during the tournament.

 Fans just voted her historic second EPT Main Event victory their favorite EPT moment:

And it is hard to imagine anyone else winning the Most Inspiring Player title in this year's edition of the PokerListings Spirit of Poker Awards. 

Voting open until August 31! After public voting narrows the nominee list down to three our PokerListings panel of experts will vote to determine the winner. Awards ceremony will be at the 2014 Battle of Malta in November.

Victoria Coren in the Run for a Second EPT Title at Sanremo

The Women Who Have Made EPT History

http://www.victoriacoren.com: Victoria Coren Mitchell is a writer, broadcaster and poker player, presenter of Only Connect on BBC4 and a member of PokerStars Team Pro.

Poker Overcome with Joy of Giving. Latest Project: Matt Stout and Charity Series of Poker

Philanthropy has been high on the agenda of poker players this summer. The past months have been marked by active involvement in various charity projects created and/or supported by poker celebrities - Raising for Effective Giving-REG and the #alsicebucket challenge being some of the most notable examples.

But even more importantly, the community has been engaged in a debate about its own moral foundations triggered by  Daniel Colman's much discussed reaction after winning $15 million in The Big One for #OneDrop.

Big influencers such as @Daniel Negreanu and REG co-founders @Philipp Gruissem and @Igor Kurganov  have helped shape a general consensus within the coomunity as to the best available answer to the identified 'moral dilemma', and namely - 'giving back': '..use the money your talents allow you to earn to make a difference in the world' (Negreanu); 'the only way to be 100% happy if you are living in this poker world is to give back' (Gruissem).

REG official US launch dinner: http://reg-charity.org/

The latest 'give back' project was born across the Atlantic.  Charity Series of Poker (CSOP) was founded in 2014 by poker pro @Matt Stout with the aim to "make it easy for poker players and celebrities to give back to their communities and the world in a very tangible way while playing the game we all love".

Here are just some of the notables who have pledged their support for CSOP so far:

Matt Stout is a veteran in the online and live poker field, with $2,862,974 in live earnings since 2006.

Matt Stout was born on December 12th 1984 in Bayonne, New Jersey. He studied business administration management at the college of New Jersey. Matt started playing poker when he was four years old with his brothers and sisters, the game of choice was five-card draw. His plays no limit hold-em tournaments for the money and omaha for the complexities of the game. (http://stoutpoker.com/bio)

The first CSOP event took place at @Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino for the benefit of Three Square, Las Vegas’s only food bank.

The second event took place yesterday at @Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino - Hollywood in support of Habitat for Humanity and @Nicolas Yunis was crowned the winner:

CSOP already has a third event planned for September, at the @Borgata and you can visit their site for details and updates: http://www.charityseriesofpoker.org/charity-series-poker-event-3 Or follow Matt Stout and CSOP on Twitter: @TheCSOP / @MattStoutPoker

RKH: Dan Colman Speaks Out on the 'Ugly World' of Poker, Daniel Negreanu Looks on the Brighter Side

RKH: Philipp Gruissem: 'Giving makes you happy and everybody should try it'

FCP: DANIEL - POKER JOURNAL Making A Difference

#PokerCharity 

Which Is Your Favorite EPT Moment?

Last chance to vote for your poker heroes:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Pokerstars/new

Poland is out, Germany dominates EPT Barcelona Main Event Final Table

The three Polish players went down on Day 5 in 11th (@Dominik Panka), 12th (@Pawel Brzeski), and 15th place (@Piotr Sowinski), taking home €209,000 between them. Team Germany meanwhile rose to domination, with three of the biggest stacks at the final table. The misfortunate bubble boy was Bram Haenraets. He was in fact a very fortunate PokerStars qualifier who turned his €82 buy-in into a €92,800 ninth place prize!

Here are the official eight finalists, down from a field of 1,496 players in the Main Event:

@European Poker Tour live coverage of the #EPT100 Main Event starts at 14:00 CET today! 

Team Poland Running Strong in EPT Barcelona Main Event

With the field down to 20, as many as three Polish contenders are still running strong in #EPT100. Check out their profiles on RankingHero and watch the livestream on PokerStarsTV!

@Piotr Sowinski 

@Pawel Brzeski 

@Dominik Panka 

Photos: Danny Maxwell, PokerNews 

PCA 2014 Champion Dominik Panka just doubled through @Mikkel Nielsen in an amazing streak of luck that gave him a flush vs. Nielsen's pocket aces!

A Must Have for Your Poker Hand Collection from EPT Barcelona

Poker writers are forever trying to highlight the skill but we all know that it is ultimately the luck that draws fans and TV audiences and accounts for much of the fascination and excitement associated with the game of poker. While this amazing hand from the €50,000 buy-in #SuperHighRoller provides plenty of ammunition for the luck vs. skill argument, it is also a perfect example of poker magic at work and is sure to get thousands of fish dreaming shark dreams :)

@Sven Reichardt opened for 160,000 with K♦ K♠ and @Olivier Busquet 3-bet shoved his 1.5 million stack with A♠ 2♠:

Cards were down and Olivier went from 0.4% probability on the flop, through 5% on the turn, and all the way to winning the 3,290,000 pot! 

Busquet: "No matter how good you are that's what has to happen to win a tournament, especially with this tough a field, so I'm just super grateful"

There was no stopping him after this incredible #PokerHand and Busquet actually went on to win the 50K SHR tournament for €896,434 after a chop deal with his friend and protege @Daniel Colman.

PokerStarsBlog: EPT11 Barcelona: Olivier Busquet hands out one last lesson to young protege

Karin Bruteig - Last Woman Standing in EPT Barcelona

With only 60 players surviving on Day 4, the 25-year-old Norwegian player @Karin Bruteig has already improved her own best 77th place finish in Estrellas 2013 Main Event in Barcelona. She is sure to gain a lot of fans today as she is the last woman standing in the #EPT100 Main Event and is on the EPTLive featured table, along with PCA 2014 champion @Dominik Panka and WPT Venice champion @Andrea Dato :

Karin Bruteig is regarded as an up and coming player in Norway where she is an ambassador for both PokerStars and Vimennpoker.no. She made the news a few months ago during the Norwegian Poker Championships when she lost a prop bet and had to finish the tournament day in her bikini :) 

GOGOGO #womenINpoker !

Bulgarian Poker Community Cheering for Its Heroes in Barcelona

Bulgarians arrived in Barcelona by the dozens and in high spirits. With numerous ITM finishes so far, one victory, one runner-up, and two survivors on Day 4 of the #EPT100 it looks like #BGPoker is thriving and that must be good news for the numerous fans of the game, as well as for the recently launched first legal poker website in the country - PokerStars.bg

PokerNews Photo Gallery

The two most notable Bulgarian poker achievements so far in Barcelona:

@Plamen Stavrev won the inaugural EPT Seniors Event for $28,189, defeating Portugal's @Fernando Brito. You can read on about a decisive lucky river hand for Stavrev on the PokerStarsBlog.

The 27-year old Bulgarian from Kyustendil, @Vladislav Donchev finished second in the largest live freezeout tournament in PokerStars history, with a record field of 2,560 players: the Estrellas Poker Tour Main Event. However, a chop deal made with the eventual winner @Matias Ruzzi  gave Vladislav the far larger cash of $377,428, which took him right to the top of the 2014 Bulgarian ranking by live earnings: 

Day 4 of EPT Main Event starts today with two Bulgarians among the 102 survivors (of 1,496). @Rumen Nanev was one of the TWO Bulgarian finalists in EPT Vienna Main Event earlier this year. He starts Day 4 24th in chips and as one of the bigger stacks at Table 7:

7 1 Andrey Andreev 174,000
7 2 Przemyslaw Misztela 457,000
7 3 Samuel Phillips 667,000
7 4 Rumen Nanev 663,000 
7 5 Gerald Karlic 628,000
7 6 Mikkel Nielsen 232,000
7 7 Mikalai Pobal 163,000
7 8 Mauro Mancin 256,000

@Slaven Popov will be seated at Table 13 where he will have the biggest starting stack. Some of his notable opponents at the table are French WSOP 2014 bracelet winner @Hugo Pingray and PCA 2014 champion @Dominik Panka:

13 1 Benjamin Lamprecht 544,000
13 2 Meir Lang 204,000
13 3 Mathieu Clavet 489,000
13 4 Hugo Pingray 338,000
13 5 Tobias Rohe 316,000
13 6 Dominik Panka 223,000
13 7 Slaven Popov 585,000
13 8 Grzegorz Derkowski 522,000

You can now watch the EPT livestream without ever leaving RankingHero, from the EPT Barcelona results page!

Weekly RankingHero Highlights

Three super poker hands and a wedding this week: 

The Poker Hand that Started an Era

Scott Seiver and One of the Most Memorable Hands in WSOP 2014

The 15 Million Dollar Ten of Spades

Poker Pro Turned Entrepreneur and Politician Tony G Gets Married

Make sure you get up-to-date with how the Poker Community Responds to Manipulative Newsweek Cover Article

We had some #sharkweek fun with Humberto Brenes and Fredy Torres; cheered for @Bruno Fitoussi to Poker Hall of Fame, and travelled Around the Poker World in a Week.

We are happy that one of the French heroes of WSOP 2014 and winner of the second bracelet for France - @Hugo Pingray has joined the RankingHero community! Special welcome to @Gabriel Dragomir @Guy Pariente @Ramon Miquel @Gene O'Leary and all of our new members! 

Thank you, @Richardt555  @harmansmith @ Buffledoux @SuitedAce @janluk1554 and everyone else liking, posting and sharing on RankingHero :)

See you on Facebook as well, and GL to everyone lucky enough to play in @Estrellas Poker Tour and @European Poker Tour in Barcelona :)

Yours truly,

@Annie RKH

#RKHweekly  

The 15 Million Dollar Ten of Spades

The mind-blowing prize at stake, the media hype, the star-studded rail, and the superstar heads-up finalists @Daniel Colman and @Daniel Negreanu would have been enough to ensure top poker entertainment. Yet the poker gods decided to make the spectacle even more spectacular. The final hand in the Big One for One Drop was an amazing roller coaster that seemed to be taken right out of a poker television producer's dream scenario.

Watch the hand unfold:

One can only imagine what goes through their minds as the fateful Ten of Spades fell on the turn. The river didn't bring a miracle four or ace for Negreanu who had to content himself with $8,288,001 and the Number One position in the all-time worlwide earnings ranking :)

#PokerHand  #OneDrop 

Dan Colman Speaks Out on the 'Ugly World' of Poker, Daniel Negreanu Looks on the Brighter Side

Daniel Negreanu on Top of the World

Colman Continues Fantastic 2014 Run with Six-Figure Score at the Aria