When the event was finished Ivey casually asked “what did first place pay?” When told “about three fiddy” Ivey smiled and reached for the events gold bracelet clearly showing that’s what mattered most. While history is one aspect , another aspect more important on a personal level to Phil Ivey is the six and seven figure prop bets he has on the line, including a rumored $5 million dollar prop bet with Howard Lederer on if he can win two bracelets between the 2010 and 2011 WSOP. Whatever the motivation for his recent success, which has seen him win three bracelets over the past two WSOPs, might have been; Phil Ivey is now the youngest player to capture eight WSOP bracelets and trails only Phil Hellmuth (11), Doyle Brunson (10), Johnny Chan (10) and Johnny Moss (9) on his quest to take over the all time WSOP victory lead.

Ivey himself believes taking over as the leader in the all time bracelet chase is an eventual forgone conclusion. In his post match interview Ivey says he believes he can win 30 gold bracelets and he meant it. While this is quite a claim, if he keeps being fed motivation in the form of massive sized bracelet prop bets, we’re not so sure we’d want to take action against it and as fans are pulling for him to do just that.

2010 WSOP Event #37 Final Table

Phil Ivey went through a tough field of 487 on his road to this victory, including a star studded final table comprised of poker pro and commentator Chad Brown, David Baker who cashed for the 7th time this WSOP, two time WSOP bracelet winner Bill Chen, 2009 WSOP bracelet winner Ken Aldridge, 2008/2009 back-to-back Stud Hi/Lo bracelet winner Ryan Hughes, the tables single unknown player Albert Hahn and two poker icons that need no introduction in Jeff Lisandro and John Juanda.

When final table play started Ivey was second in chips trailing only Bill Chen. While leads shifted throughout the night when heads up play started it was once again Bill Chen in the lead with Ivey trailing. It didn’t take too long for momentum to shift and after about 90 minutes of heads up play Ivey captured Chen’s final chips sending Chen to the rail to collect $203,802 for his runner up finish.

Phil Ivey is widely believed to be the best poker player active, and perhaps the best ever period. Ivey has $13 million in career tournament winnings (most all time) and is well known as one of the biggest winners in the highest stakes cash games played both live and online. Poker-Prop.net congratulates Phil Ivey on his eight career WSOP bracelet and wishes him the best of luck picking up a couple two three more this series.

2010 WSOP Event #37 Final Table Results

Phil Ivey – $329,840
Bill Chen – $203,802
John Juanda – $129,553
Ken Aldridge – $93,418
Jeffrey Lisandro – $68,417
Dave Baker – $50,871
Albert Hahn – $38,391
Chad Brown – $29,406

Do you want a chance at WSOP glory? There is still time to qualify for the 2010 WSOP main event via the world’s largest online poker site PokerStars.com.

This $50K Buy-in WSOP Event 2: “The Player’s Championship” attracted 116 entrants that combined for a field consisting of the “who is who” of high-stakes poker. It took four days for a final table to be determined and this occurred when Nick Shulman’s starting hand of 2-5-6 improved to only a pair of deuces with no low and fell to John Juanda’s four-to-eight straight.

The final table of eight was no set which looked as follows:

Seat 1: David Baker – 3,095,000
Seat 2: Mikael Thuritz – 2,300,000
Seat 3: Vladimir Schmelev – 1,925,000
Seat 4: John Juanda – 2,620,000
Seat 5: Daniel Alaei – 1,705,000
Seat 6: Michael Mizrachi – 2,620,000
Seat 7: David Oppenheim – 460,000
Seat 8: Robert Mizrachi – 3,125,000

Mizrachi Brothers Make WSOP Final Table

Each are accomplished poker pros with 31-year old Robert Mizrachi having $3 million in career tournament winnings and a WSOP bracelet from a 2007 PLO event under his belt, and 29-year old Michael Mizrachi having $7 million in career winnings a multiple WPT titles and a player of the year (POTY) title under his. Despite their strong accomplishments coming into the event it is quite a remarkable for two brothers to make the final table together in one of the most prestigious poker tournaments that will be played this year.

Michael Mizachi Final Table Run

Michael played well over the course of the final table and with five players to go faced what had to be an emotional situation when his brother Robert moved all-in with A-T for 456K. Priced in Michael made the call tabling QJ. A turned pair of jacks and no help on the river gave Michael Mizrachi the winning hand sending his brother to the rail in 5th place.

“Inside, to me, I didn’t know if I wanted to win or if I wanted him to win,” Michael Mizrachi said. “It was a feeling I never felt before because I’ve never knocked him out of a tournament.”

To get to heads up play the Grinder also stopped David Oppenheim, a 37-year-old cash game professional from Calabasas, Calif from completing a Cinderella like run. Oppenheim came into the final table as a short stack with less than 2.5% of the chips in play, yet managed to battle his way back and was one card away from taking the chip lead with three players to go. However when a river queen fell, he was eliminated by Mizrachi who now had the chip lead going into heads up play.

After six hands of play it looked like it would be 37-year banker Vladimir Schmelev of St. Petersburg, Russia taking this one down, as he quickly overcame the chip deficit to draw to a 3-to-1 chip lead. However with some encouragement and motivation from Mike Mattusow and other pros on the rail, the grinder battled back and finally sealed the deal capturing his first career WSOP bracelet and the $1,559,046 first place prize money.

Michael Mizrachi also becomes the third winner of the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy which was introduced to the WSOP in 2008.

2010 WSOP Event 2 Final Table Result

1st: Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi – $1,559,046
2nd: Vladimir Schmelev – $963,375
3rd: David Oppenheim – $603,348
4th: John Juanda – $436,865
5th: Robert Mizrachi – $341,429
6th: David Baker – $272,275
7th: Daniel Alaei – $221,105
8th: Mikael Thuritz – $182,463

Poker-Prop.net congratulates Michael Mizarchi on his victory and his first career WSOP bracelet.

Jones will also join the tour as it travels across the country and hopefully draws more people to events, with the goal being more women. The last couple years the amount of girls entering the events have declined. Kelly Kellner, a great guy and president of the CPT, believes that Jones will attract more women to the events and help grow their player base.

There will certainly be an influx of men that will enter the CPT events that hit cities of Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Grand Prairie, Regina, Winnipeg, etc to sit at Lacey Jones table. This partnership that has formed over a tournament in Costa Rica this past November seems a bit strange to me. It makes me think that Jones is in over her head. Does this Texan have any idea how big Canada really is and how much traveling that she will be doing for these small tournaments?

I’ve personally entered a few Canadian Poker Tour events, they are great and they are fairly popular in the big cities of Alberta. However, there seems to be too many events, which takes away from its prestige. In January, I counted 20 CPT related tournaments taking place in Alberta.

With that being said there is no reason for the partnership between Jones and the CPT not to work, especially since she is moving to Vancouver. Her first time representing the CPT will take place at the Cash Casino in Calgary through February 24-28th.

If you have not heard of Lacey Jones, she is a professional poker player born in Texas, who has also had success modeling, acting and as a television host. You can learn all about this poker babe by visiting her website at laceypoker.com.

Dwan and Antonius played two sessions in the wee hours of the night and then later in the day, for a combined total of 2,112 hands.

Antonius ended up losing $209k, which puts him down $1,077,932 for the overall total.

I’ll be the first to admit that the durrr Challenge with Antonius is a pretty big let down. The two of them are nearing the one year anniversary. They have only played 31,912 of the required 50,000 hands. That averages out to 2,659 hands per month and a combined total of 101 hours played.

When Dwan first announced his challenge to the world and reading that Ivey, Antonius, Benyamine and supposedly fullflush accepted, I assumed that he would have at least finished up two or three of these. Who knows though, maybe these guys actually are busy? It all leaves me wondering if there will be anyone else stepping up if Antonius and durrrr actually finish, knowing how long it has taken.

The speed of the game is extremely fast and a perfect fit for the Texas Hold’em action junkies. What makes the game so fast is the ‘quick fold’ button. If a player is dealt 7-2 under the gun they can click ‘quick fold’ and they will be taken directly to a new random table immediately, without having to sit through and watch the hand play out.

So far, the results and feed back from Rush Poker has been fantastic. There are hundreds of players playing in the NL10, NL50 and NL100 sections. There have been peaks of over 2,000 players online playing Rush Poker, which are incredible results for this new game.

Rush Poker has generated a ton of strategy decisions all over the internet. Players are saying that being tight aggressive is the best approach and many other poker enthusiasts are supporting the loose aggressive style.

To play Rush Poker please visit Full Tilt Poker.

Overall, from the couple hours I’ve spent playing, I noticed that the average player is playing far more nitty than normal. I assume this is due to the ‘quick fold’ option where they don’t feel the need to spew, knowing that they can get dealt a new hand in one mouse click. Players who aggressively attack the blinds and play the top ten hands in early positions should show a lot of success in the early months of Rush Poker.

A very positive aspect to the quick action is that no HUD or other statistics are provided to the savvy online poker player. Meaning that players will not have reads and player tendencies, giving the fish an equal playing field.

It will be interesting to see if this game will continue to receive attention or just fade out. Full Tilt Poker has applied for a patent for the variation, meaning that it will be very unlikely for their rival, PokerStars to release a similar product.

The 20 Store Items that will be offered for sale are:

• Men’s Long sleeve two-tone T-shirt (Green)
• Scarf & Beanie
• Spade Design Hooded Sweatshirt
• Daniel Negreanu ‘More Hold’em Wisdom for all Players’ book
• iPod Touch 32GB
(available for players in EU, US, CA & AU)
• iPod Nano 8GB
(available for players in EU, US, CA & AU)
• Spade Stress Toy
• WorldEventTickets worth $200
• Limited Edition PokerStars watch
• Sundog Polarised Sunglasses
• Mini Chip Set
• Sunday Hundred Grand ticket worth $11
• Step 1 Ticket worth $7.50
• Step 2 Ticket worth $27
• PokerStars Sunday Million Ticket worth $215
• PokerStars Sunday Ticket worth $530
• $50 VIP Reward Bonus (Not Cash)
• $285 VIP Reward Bonus (Not Cash)
• $650 VIP Reward Bonus (Not Cash)
• $1500 VIP Reward Bonus (Not Cash)

For those not familiar with PokerStars VIP program, it is their equivalent of Rakeback. A complete break down of this program on our page PokerStars rakeback shows the best value on the list is the $215.00 tournament tickets at the full FPP pricing. This will most certainly be the product to look at when it goes on sale.

The normal cost of a $215 tournament ticket is 13,500. As we know from their announcement it will be discounted at least 15%. At a minimum price of 11,475 FPP, when using this each FPP is worth at least 1.87 cents ($215/11,475). Using our calculations from our PokerStars rakeback page we’ll see under this calculation Platinum Stars earn 31.8% to 34.7% rakeback and SuperNovas earn 44.9% to 49% rakeback.

Of course other items might be discounted more, but how many Spade Stress Toys does a person need. Our strong suggestion would be to unload all your FPP during this promo on the tournament tickets. If you don’t already have a PokerStars account you can still benefit as PokerStars will offer you a 100% up to $600 sign up bonus, full details from the PokerStars.com website.

Amir Vahedi was well known on the poker circuits where he won an impressive 22 tournaments, including one WSOP bracelet, had $3,126,479 in career winnings. He was the 2001 Texas Holdem Player of the Year and is perhaps best remembered by poker enthusiast for his sixth place finish in the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event that was eventually won by Chris Moneymaker. A key hand from this tournament, as well as other hands involving Amir Vahedi, was covered by Dan Harrington in his book series Harington on Holdem where he gave Vahedi a lot of respect.

Vahedi was generally well liked by the poker community. His larger than average build, outgoing personality and aggressive style of play assured he would not go unnoticed at any poker table. One poker pro once described Vahedi as a player who played small ball, LAG poker, before it was known by many this style could be played profitably. He was well ahead of his time in poker, but of course this is a good thing which led to additional winnings.

One of Amir Vahedi’s most famous quotes: “In order to live, you have to be willing to die.” He was of course referring to poker tournament life, but after his death the quote gives new meaning. After serving his country (Iran) in the Iran Iraq conflict he fled to Germany as a refugee in 1981 before landing in Southern California where in 1997 he began his pursuit in poker. Vahedi had a serious health condition, but did not let this effect his life any. He lived a 48 year life while spending the final quarter of it doing what he loved, playing poker. He did not let his ailment hold him back; he added to his long list of poker accomplishments as recent as 2008, winning the $25,000 buy-in World Poker Tour Championship in Bellagio.

Amir Vahedi will be missed, and poker-prop.net extends our condolences to his friends and family. RIP Amir Vahedi 1961-2010.

Known as being a game of wild swings and massive pots being played out between big made hands and oftentimes even bigger draws, PLO has become the game of choice at the mid and high limits online because it’s the only game where a nearly $200,000 pot can break out over hands like this:

Opening the button as usual, Dwan responded to an Antonius 3-bet the only way he knows how — by 4-betting. Opting to flat call, Antonius looked down at a flop of 5d Kd 8h and called a pot-sized bet that was roughly half the size of his stack. The 7d fell on the turn and Dwan again lead out for the size of the pot, forcing Antonius to call all in for over $40,000. The hands?

Dwan: KsKhJhQc
Antonius: Ac9c8c7s

Dwan’s top set rendered Antonius’ two pair absolutely useless and left him drawing nearly dead to a gutshot 6 on the river. A harmless 4 on the river shipped Dwan the $194,000 pot.
At the end of the session, Dwan booked a win of $418,000, extending his lead to just under $700,000. Despite being head, the nature of PLO combined with the unthinkable stakes the two are playing for makes it very likely that we’ll see that figure start to swing over the next 25,000 hands.

His first major move is establishing the Brunson 10, a hand-picked group of elite poker players who will represent DoylesRoom. The three initial charter members of the Brunson 10 include Amit “amak316″ Makhija, the runner-up in the 2008 WPT Legends of Poker Event. Makhija also capped off 2008 by making the final table of the World Series of Poker Pot Limit Holdem event.

Fellow 2008 WPT Legends of Poker final tablist Zachary “CrazyZachary” Clark also joins Makhija in the Brunson 10 along with Alec “traheho” Torelli who finished 6th in this year’s WSOP $40,000 No Limit Holdem Commemorative tournament.

As the 2009 World Series of Poker Europe main event kicked off, Brunson scored a coup by signing Chris “Moorman1″ Moorman as the 4th member of the Brunson 10. Moorman is known as one of the United Kingdom’s top online poker players with incredible accomplishments like winning three tournaments across three sites with at least $10,000 prize pools in one week. Not content with being known as one
of the most feared European online players, the 24-year old Moorman is also starting to adapt to major live tournaments, catching the eye of the legendary Brunson.

“Moorman reminds me a lot of me, except for the British accent,” Brunson explains. “He’s a poker natural, a legend in the making, and that’s why I’ve handpicked him to be the next member of The Brunson 10, my new team of elite poker players who truly are young legends of the game.”

Such praise doesn’t come often from a player of Brunson’s caliber, but only time will tell if Moorman can live up to the lofty expectations much of the online community has of him. In the meantime, Moorman will be playing regularly on DoylesRoom allowing anyone who’s curious about whether he’s the real deal or not to find out for themselves.

To ensure the integrity of their games, online poker sites, such as Full Tilt Poker, actively scan for bots using undisclosed criteria and ban any accounts caught botting. Any funds in the account are also confiscated since using a bot violates most sites’ terms of service. Since there is usually no recourse when bots are discovered, most of the time this is where the story ends. This week, however, two alleged bot users fired back in the form of a lawsuit.

Lary Kennedy and Greg Omotoy filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of California against Full Tilt Poker, the members of Team Full Tilt, and TiltWare CEO Ray Bitar for false advertising, libel, slander, unjust enrichment, fraud, and, most chillingly, racketeering. The pair filed suit after Full Tilt Poker accused them of using bots and banned their accounts, confiscating more than $80,000 USD in the process.
Kennedy, who has admitted to playing under both accounts, proclaims her innocence and claims it was a false positive result.

Whether there is truth to the allegations or not, the racketeering claim made by Kennedy and Omotoy has serious implications for Full Tilt Poker. The pair alleges that members of Team Full Tilt, spearheaded by Chris Ferguson and Andy Bloch (both players with computer science backgrounds) created their own bots to act as prop players on the site and increase the amount of rake taken at each table. Kennedy and Omotoy also allege that Team Full Tilt members who play on the site use company revenue, or house money, which draws parallels between Full Tilt Poker and a traditional casino. Full Tilt Poker has long claimed to not be a gambling site.

The two are seeking compensatory and punitive damages based on Full Tilt’s revenues, a process that will require a court audit of the company’s books. The case is expected to be heard early next year.