The Women Who Have Made EPT History

Since 2004, when the European Poker Tour was founded, only three women have made their way into EPT history as Main Event winners and one of the three actually made EPT history by becoming the first woman champion and the first player - man or woman - with a second title. They are @Victoria Coren Mitchell @Sandra Naujoks and @Liv Boeree :

2006 EPT3 London 

Victoria Coren became the first woman to win an EPT Main Event for $942,892!

2009 EPT5 Dortmund

Germany's Sandra Naujoks topped a field of 667 at the EPT Dortmund and became the second-ever female champion on the European Poker Tour earning $1,196,668.

2010 EPT6 Sanremo

The very next year it was Liv Boeree's turn to make women proud and inspire them with her $1,675,713 prize.

2014 EPT10 Sanremo

Four seasons later, #EPTSanremo  proved lucky for women again as Vicky Coren did it a sensational second time. The feat is unprecedented for all 98 EPT Main Events since 2004 - Coren Mitchell is the first two-time EPT champion in history! She earned the second biggest cash in her career - $645,219.

More on RankingHero:

The Cover Girls of Poker - Liv Boeree

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

#womenINpoker 

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

She is classy, witty, smart, and we love her - @Victoria Coren  was the first woman to win a  @European Poker Tour event in Season 3, 2006 and as we write, she is one of only three players left at #EPTSanremo with a chance for a second EPT title, along with @Dimitar Danchev and @Michael Tureniec .

Victoria has said that she regularly stays up until 6 am, "..smoking and drinking and gambling. But I like cooking and gardening too, which makes me sound like a very strange mix of an old lady and teenage boy." You can enjoy her keen sense of humor in her weekly columns for The Observer and The Guardian newspapers. 

Her poker memoir For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair with Poker was published in September 2009 and is still selling well, and her other book, Once More, with Feeling, tells the story of "the year that Victoria Coren and Charlie Skelton spent trying to make the greatest erotic movie of all time".

Victoria at Sanremo today as she tweets the photo below where she is enjoying a massage by EPTLive commentator @Joe Stapleton:

Victoria's last cash was from a 20th place in a high roller event at 2013 EPT London and she has made the bubble at Sanremo so is adding another ITM to her earnings. GL!

Weekly RankingHero Highlights

Those who cannot play poker on Everest.fr have been watching with envy as the fantastic contest #vegashero took off this week on RankingHero with the first mission. Entrants are asked to put together the perfect Vegas experience package from a list of options (from burgers and limos to hot-air balloon rides or a night at the Rhino strip club). Take a look and get ideas and inspiration in the hope that RankingHero will soon offer an equally fun promotion for which we will all be eligible :)

http://www.rankinghero.com/fr/pros/45/vegashero/activity/736409.html#activity

We have been following the #EPTSanremo and you will be happy to see the newly added hashtag to the festival results page - now you will be able to check the latest winners and EPT Sanremo posts and comments  in a single stop :)

Don't forget our great tools that allow you to compare player stats and to get data about earnings in a specific circuit only:

Bulgarians have been performing great ever since Eureka Poker Tour and #EPTVienna - as many as 4 made it to Day 3 at #EPTSanremo , including the #PCA2013 champion @Dimitar Danchev 

Our birthday boys this week - Sorel Mizzi and Jason Somerville! 

Featured poker ambassadors - Xuan Liu and Sofia Lovgren have signed with 888poker; Vanessa Selbst met Rafael Nadal in a charity heads-up match.

Other stories you may have missed - the Phil Ivey lawsuits and cheating accusations from two casinos.

Warm welcome to @Gaetan Balleur @Stephane Allard @Alain Le Pen @Danny Covyn @Mustapha Cheikh @Vincent Hinterlang  @Gwendoline Janot and @Claudine Couppe to mention only some of our latest members.

Special thanks to @Gillian Epp for sharing her interview with Colin Burton and to @Christophe Ducos for the gif-illustrated hand history :)

Keep posting, liking and sharing and bringing the RankingHero community to life! Like us and help us grow on Facebook, as well :)

Yours truly,

@Annie RKH 

PS

Important addition to this week's update: @Olivier Demabre has been driving us crazy with his #2048game scores and I hope someone will soon challenge his unofficial title as RankingHero 2048 Champion :)

Will Bulgarian Poker Come into the Spotlight Again at EPT Sanremo

How many Bulgarians will make it to the bubble tomorrow at #EPTSanremo? Could we possibly see another Bulgarian EPT champion after the feat of @Dimitar Danchev at 2013 Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure? Or a second title for Danchev himself?

A dozen Bulgarians attracted a great deal of attention at #EPTVienna last month with cashes at many side events, including the fourth place in the Ladies Event for @Zornitsa Maleshkova, and with two seats at the Main Event final table for @Rumen Nanev and WSOP bracelet winner @Simeon Naydenov .

Bulgaria's Number 1 by live earnings and PCA champion Dimitar Danchev in the run for a second EPT title.  

Yesterday it looked like #BGPoker might become a sensation again with 8 out of 11 Bulgarian players making it to Day 2, among them #PCA2013 champ Dimitar Danchev. A total of 316 started out and at the close of Day 2, there were 115 left with the following BG players still in the game:

@Yordan Georgiev 

@Valeri Savov 

@Dimitar Danchev 

@Nikolay Tsanev 

All of the Bulgarian players except Valeri Savov are seated at Table 1 for the start of Day 3 and it will be extremely interesting to observe their strategy knowing that they are a close-knit community and on friendly terms.

How many will be among the 79 ITM and will one or more end up at the final table remains to be seen. And RankingHero will be watching, of course :)

Sorel Mizzi Makes it to Day 2 at EPT San Remo on His Birthday

He has been around longer than most - @Sorel Mizzi 's earliest recorded live win on RankingHero dates back to 2006 and he has since amassed the impressive $9,362,290 from live tournaments! His latest - and incidentally, his biggest - cash was in February 2014 when he finished runner-up in the Aussie Millions Main Event for $895,341.

The Canadian pro was born in Toronto on this day of April 16th in 1986. Right now he is playing #EPTSanremo and was one of the 316 players who survived into Day 2 which happily coincides with his birthday.

Here is Sorel enjoying a massage at EPT Sanremo and he will be playing on the featured table after the first break for the day so you can watch him live on http://www.europeanpokertour.com/tv/

HB, GL and celebrate with moderation tonight! :)

Happy Birthday Jason Somerville!

HB and congratulations to @Jason Somerville on cohosting the PokerNews podcast during the 2014 WSOP! 

27 years young and getting younger every day :)

PokerNews have just announced that Jason will cohost their live program during the #2014WSOP  three times a week. It's difficult to imagine a better choice in view of Jason's great performance at WSOP - the 2011 bracelet winner has made 4 WSOP final tables and more than $2 million of his live career winnings of $2,527,227 are from WSOP tournaments.

Furthermore, the Ultimate Poker ambassador has long been entertaining fans with his livestreams and video blogs which are a great and fun source of strategic and tactical poker knowledge so the coverage is bound to be insightful and amusing.

Xuan Liu - the First Woman to Make a PCA Final Table - Signs with 888poker

@Xuan Liu  (she pronounces her name 'shu-on') is a Chinese-born Canadian poker player who made poker history in 2012 as the first woman to make the final table at one of the most prestigious and toughest EPT stops - Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure. Her family immigrated to Toronto, Canada when she was five and had already learned to play all sorts of games of skill and chance. Poker was not among them though and Xuan developed a taste for it as a student at Waterloo University (social development studies and political science) when she realized her studies were not likely to give her the kind of fulfillment and lifestyle she admired and wanted for herself. 

"I was uninterested in the traditional pathway to adulthood for many reasons. I wanted to pursue adventures and environments that would nurture self-discovery, not frivolous diplomas that no longer guaranteed interesting work placements in a rapidly changing economy. My priorities shifted and focused on how I can sustain a lifestyle of freedom and inspiration rather than submissing to the standard pathway to subjective success."

"I improved rapidly after diving myself into whatever poker literature I could get my hands on, and realized there was a plethora of opportunities to make money not just while playing but also in poker as a business." In fact, Xuan's first 'business venture' was a $1/2 home game she hosted (and raked) on campus. 

"In 2010 I was doing well playing small stakes online and incorporated a trip to Macau while visiting family in China. I final tabled two tournaments on my 4-day trip and was given the blessing to focus on poker by my parents. The clincher? If I didn’t achieve an outstanding break-through result in one year I must give up my Bohemian lifestyle and pursue more traditional career paths.

In late 2010 I took my first trip to Europe, chopped an Italian Poker Tour side event, and had two more half a million dollar tournament cashes within months of each other at European Poker Tour San Remo Season 7 and PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Season 8. My family has just about accepted me as a poker player."

Well, Xuan has certainly earned the right to stick with her 'Bohemian lifestyle' and the poker world has gained a bright young talent thanks to this deal with her family, as evidenced by the breakdown below of her $1,391,872 in live tournament earnings since 2007 :)

"All this publicity is nice, but it’s also making me anxious to win something soon. Yes, my lifetime ROI is still pretty sweet and the actual main focus when doing these interviews for me is to draw awareness to the game, but I’d rather take a confidence boost in the form of a final table any day."

So that's exactly what we wish for her and hope she'll share the news of the 'boost' on RankingHero :)

Sofia Lovgren Announces New Sponsorship Deal

After her departure from PKR last month, @Sofia Lovgren left her fans in suspense for a few weeks as to her 'next big adventure'. All we knew was that she had had an offer she couldn't refuse and that she was hardly going to leave the world of poker where she has been doing so great ever since her late teens.

Well, it's official now - Sofia has signed with 888poker and is on her way to #EPTSanremo with her new ambassador patch!

"This is only the beginning and I will be a member of a fantastic team of Ambassadors working hard to help develop this site even more the next years. You will see me regularly playing online as well as representing 888poker on the biggest live tours like EPT and WSOP. After a fun weekend in Venice at 888live, I’m now heading to Sanremo for EPT!"

Sofia is a member of the RankingHero community so don't forget to follow her profile and give her distinctions at http://www.rankinghero.com/sofia.lovgren !

The other new member of this 'fantastic team of ambassadors' is Canadian pro @Xuan Liu and because we love women in poker, RankingHero will soon bring you a special article about her career highlights!

Did Phil Ivey Cheat or Outsmart the Casinos?

With the latest announcement of a Borgata lawsuit against @Phil Ivey, it looks like poker media might well have to start regular court watch columns about one of poker's greatest stars of all-time. RankingHero reviews Ivey’s court history:

Divorce 
What started out as an ordinary divorce settlement in 2009, developed into a lengthy legal battle and ended up In Nevada Supreme Court, which in April 2013 ruled in Phil Ivey’s favor (dismissing objections related to alleged connections between Ivey and the judge who heard his divorce case).

Ivey married his high-school sweetheart, Luciaetta, in 2002.

Full Tilt
In May 2011 Phil Ivey publicly shared his outrage and openly sided with the wronged players whose Full Tilt funds were frozen:
“I am deeply disappointed and embarrassed that Full Tilt players have not been paid money they are owed. I am equally embarrassed that as a result many players cannot compete in tournaments and have suffered economic harm.
I wholeheartedly refuse to accept non-action as to repayment of players’ funds and I am angered that people who have supported me throughout my career have been treated so poorly.”

Ivey filed a lawsuit against Tiltware LLC, seeking more than $150 million in damages. Tiltware immediately responded calling the lawsuit ‘frivolous and self-serving’ and accused Ivey of "putting his own narrow financial interests ahead of the players he professes to help". The exchange speeded up negotiations between the parties and the lawsuit was “voluntarily dismissed without prejudice by the plaintiff” on June 30, 2011.

Crockfords (August 2012):

In August 2012 Ivey played a lucrative three-day Baccarat session at one of London’s oldest casinos - Crockfords - accompanied by an unidentified Asian woman. He ended up winning about $12 million and while the casino immediately transferred his £1 million deposit to his bank account, they withheld payment of his winnings.

A year later, in May 2013, Ivey filed a claim against the Genting Group (a Malaysian gaming corporation and owner of Crockfords) in London's High Court. The casino promptly responded by accusing Ivey in court of cheating and claimed that his winnings were invalid since they were ‘based on illegal acts’.

"The fact that I have issued a lawsuit in the face of what they are alleging says everything about how comfortable I am with my conduct and the validity of my win. Any allegations of wrongdoing by Crockfords are denied by me in the very strongest of terms."

This is an Associated Press report on the case of May 15, 2013: 

"The court papers say that Ivey and his accomplice, after some trial and error, found a "shoe" that contained decks of cards with an asymmetrical design. They were then able to convince the dealer, after cards were revealed, to turn the card either sideways or end over end. The staff was not suspicious because the accomplice, who spoke Cantonese with the dealers, acted like she was superstitious and just changing the way the cards lay for good luck, court papers say.

The effect was that the dealer inadvertently sorted the cards so that 7, 8 and 9 cards were distinguishable from others. Ivey sustained his success, the court papers claimed, by asking that the cards be shuffled automatically by a machine, which meant the way the cards were arranged was not altered as the game progressed. The court papers also claim that Ivey specifically asked for an Asian dealer so his accomplice could communicate with that dealer in a language not known by the rest of the casino staff."

Full bleed Gemaco plastic cards: "Gemaco has produced a classic full bleed design with a traditional look and feel. The Weave design is intended to deliver the quality which serious card players expect at an affordable price. Gemaco Weave plastic playing cards are nicely packaged in a clear acrylic storage case. Give them a try!"

Borgata (April-October 2012)

According to the federal suit filed by Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa last week, Ivey contacted the Borgata requesting special arrangements for a baccarat game in 2012 and eventually won $9.6 million in four sessions. He asked for a private pit, dealer who spoke Mandarin Chinese, and an automatic card shuffler. And he was accompanied by a woman, Cheng Yin Sun, who spoke to the dealer and asked for specific flipping of cards. The Borgata claims that "Ivey and an associate exploited a defect in cards that enabled them to sort and arrange good cards and gave him an unfair advantage in baccarat on four occasions between April and October 2012":

Ivey reportedly won:
$2.4 million on April 11, 2012
$1.6 million on May 3, 2012
$4.8 million on July 26, 2012
$824,000 on Oct. 7, 2012

The fourth and last session coincided with reports about the withheld payment of his winnings in Crockfords.

While it is as yet unclear whether the accomplice is the same ‘superstitious’ lady who was with Ivey in London, there are striking similarities between the allegations. Ivey has already admitted to reading the cards but claims the casino should have been  aware of flawed cards and the risk of edge sorting and taken measures to prevent it. “I read the cards but I’m no cheat", Phil Ivey has been reported as saying by the Daily Mail.

So far the poker community seems inclined to side with its own star but we will have to wait for the court rulings on whether or not he actually operated an 'illegal scam'.

Glossary of terms

Punto Banco:

Punto Banco Baccarat is played with six or eight decks of cards placed in what is called a dealing "shoe." The goal in each hand, which consists of two or three cards, is to get closest to nine — the best first cards are a 7, 8 or 9 since a 10 or a picture card counts as zero. Players can bet that they will win, that the bank will win, or that the hand will be a tie.

#EdgeSorting:

Essentially, taking advantage of flawed full bleed markings to distinguish specific cards. Read on: http://apheat.net/2012/06/28/what-is-edge-sorting/

#FullBleed: 

Full bleed is printing from one edge of the paper to the other without the standard borders by which most personal printers are limited. See photo above.

Bleed is a printing term that refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet before trimming. In other words, the bleed is the area to be trimmed off. The bleed is the part on the side of a document that gives the printer a small amount of space to account for movement of the paper, and design inconsistencies. Artwork and background colors can extend into the bleed area. After trimming, the bleed ensures that no unprinted edges occur in the final trimmed document. (Wikipedia)

Gemaco:

The manufacturer of the flawed cards named in the Borgata lawsuit against Phil Ivey.