Tomorrow (March 27th) the Spanish poker circuit will visit Valencia for the first time, and PokerStars has prepared a bunch of activities for the players to enjoy not only in the tables but outside the Casino Monte Picayo, the venue choosed to host the event. You can chech the ESPT Valencia full calendar here.

If you are travelling to Valencia or you plan to assist to any future ESPT event, you may be interested to see what is going on on the PokerStars’ Spanish tour. These are the activities planned for this ESPT Valencia.

WELCOME DRINKS

The ESPT Valencia Welcome Drinks will be taking place on the 1st floor terrace, which is located in the Casino Valencia, between 22:00 and Midnight on Tuesday 27th March. At the event there will be free wine, beer and soft drinks as well as a selection of canapés.

LOCAL FOOD

Thanks to a partnership with Saborea Valencia, the Estrellas Poker Tour will offer the chance to the players attending to Valencia to buy a ticket worth around 20 euro to eat in one out of 70 restaurants in the city which offer local food, including the world famous paella.

Paella in Valencia

STADIUM MESTALLA GUIDED TOUR

Players will be picked up from the Sorolla Hotel at 11:45 and taken to the Mestalla Stadium for a 45 min guided tour. At 12:45 the same bus will take players back to the hotel, and arrive at time for the tournament, of course.

OFFICIAL ESPT PARTY

A bus will pick players up from the Casino Valencia at midnight and take them to the venue Posada de las Animas. One of the best clubs of the city where the players will enjoy a good night of party until late.

Gordon Huntly, ANZPT Sidney Champion

When we reached the final table, Liam O’Rourke had a wide chip lead. Despite he played aggressively during the final, eventually he fell on the heads-up position for an AUD$ 144,754 payout.

The final was fast paced until there were onluy four left. Then the play slowed down for a couple of hours until we saw Stewart Ballard go out in 4th place. O’Rourke eliminated Anthony Aston in 3rd place, to balance the stacks going to the final match, although nothing would change.

Huntly would only need around half an hour to finish O’Rourke, chipping him away slowly, hand by hand, to claim the title. Gordon Huntly, our newest ANZP champion, received na AUD$ 226,812 paycheck.

2012 ANZPT Sydney Results

Place Player Payout ($)
1st Gordon Huntly $226,812
2nd Liam O’Rourke $144,754
3rd Anthony Aston $80,214
4th Stewart Ballard $62,696
5th Jason O’Brien $48,405
6th Oliver Speidel $39,185
7th Craig Blight $29,965
8th Bradley Lancken $23,511
9th Martin Rowe $17,518

Instead of that, less than one month after that Grand Final hosted in Sao Paulo, the 5th season of LAPT kicked off in Vina del Mar, Chile, and crowned its first champion yesterday.

Aliro Diaz, LAPT Viña del Mar Champion

The trophy and the $76,560 first prize will stay in home soil after a deal cut between the last six players. Aliro Diaz claimed the title after five hours of hard-fought final table that featured some of the thoughest names of the Latin American poker scene these days.

On the last hand, Diaz and Leonardo Olivares went all-in with Jc7c for the first and AsQc for the latter on a Jh9s9h flop. A 5s on the turn changed nothing, and a Js on the river completed the full-house for Diaz, who bagged $76,560 for four days of work. Olivares, also from Chile, returned home with $66,000 under his arms.

¡Congratulations to all the winners!

LAPT Chile Final Table Results

1st Aliro Diaz Chile $76,560
2nd Leonardo Olivares Chile $66,000
3rd Joao Lopes Brazil $58,000
4th Felipe Velasquez Chile $74,000
5th Javier Venegas Argentina $50,000
6th Sergio Escobar Colombia $47,000
7th Halysson Sala Brazil $17,470
8th Nicholas Batt Colombia via United States $13,040

Ricardo Ibanez was the only Spaniard on the final, and despite arriving to the last table with the chiplead, failed to advance and fell on a 5th position worth 115,000 euro. None Spaniard has won a title of the European Poker Tour yet, although Ibanez never had the chance this time. Cards didn’t help him and his rivals were by far more experienced than the Spaniard.

EPT Madrid received 477 players and created a prize pool of 2,385,000 euro. Such a success for an event that received no more than 125 players on Day 1A.

Next stop of the European Poker Tour will take place in Campione, Italy, from March 26th to March 31th. You will find more info on the EPT Campione page.

EPT8 Madrid Results:

1st. Frederik Jensen, €495,000
2nd. Fraser MacIntyre, €290,000
3rd. Andrei Stoenescu, €330,000
4th. Bruno Lopes, €140,000
5th. Ricardo Ibañez, €115,000
6th. Ilan Boujenah, €92,000
7th. Nicolas Levi, €69,450
8th. Jason Duval, €48,000

McDonald was the only player on the field who could grab that second EPT title after his win on EPT Dortmund of the 4th season. This won’t happen this time as McDonald finished short of the final table. This leaves Nicolas Levi as the only player who reached an EPT final table before (this season). Levi, though, has just a few chips and will need an early double-up if he wants to fight for the title tomorrow.

Frederik Jensen, a well-known Danish Pro, is another of the names to take into the account. Jason Duval is playing on his first EPT event, but has demonstrated this week that he has the guts to achieve it.

This is how the final table is going to start tomorrow:

Seat 1 – Ricardo Ibañez, Spain, 3,216,000
Seat 2 – Frederik Jensen, Denmark, 2,144,000
Seat 3 – Fraser Macintyre, United Kingdom, 2,473,000
Seat 4 – Bruno Lopes, France, 1,452,000
Seat 5 – Andrei Stoenescu, Romania, 1,974,000
Seat 6 – Ilan Boujenah, Israel, 1,382,000
Seat 7 – Jason Duval, Canada, 963,000
Seat 8 – Nicolas Levi, France, 709,000

Some Sunday Majors, the whole Saturday Line-Up and the Daily Bigs are among these tournaments with better guarantees. Among the Sunday Majors, Kickoff, Rebuy, Storm, 500, Second Chance, 6-Max and Supersonic will seek their prices increased. The Sunday Storm will receive the biggest injection as keeps the 109 $ buy-in but multiplies its guaranteed prize-pool per 1.5. In other words, from $200k guaranteed moves to $300k.

We see another interesting increase in the Sunday Supersonic, that adds an extra of $85k to it’s initial guaranteed of $40k. The Supersonic is a extremely fast paced tournament that has been growing and growing since its launch.

The $215 Sunday Million and Saturday Warm-up guaranteed prize pools remain unchanged at $1 million, and half million respectively.

The Saturday Line-Up upgrades aren’t that attractive, nor the Daily Bigs ones. Although an increase on the guaranteeds usually means an increase of the action. We will keep a close look to these tournaments to see how they evolve.

Pokerstars Daily Bigs

The Team PokerStars Pro member Daniel Negreanu was the biggest name on the final table, although the Canadian could only achieve a 6th place position worth R$48,730, Carlos Ibarra, the third-place finisher, was the sole responsible of Negreanu’s bust-out.

Nestola and Nicolas arranged a deal after the elimination of Ibarra. Nestola had around 4,4 million in chips to Nicolas’ 2,78 million. Suprisingly they decided to take equal parts of R$250,000 and play for an extra of R$39,300, the title and the proud of being crowed king of the LAPT.

On the last hand, Nestola put his rival all-in on the turn with the nut straight. Nicolas called with top-pair and was drawing dead. Nestola saw it inmediately and started knew it and began celebrating with his friends. Nestola claimed this way the after-deal extra for a total prize of R$289,300. Congratulations!

Final Table Results

1st Daniele Nestola R$289,300
2nd Gasperino Nicolas R$250,000
3rd Carlos Ibarra R$148,840
4th Felipe Morbiducci R$89,570
5th Jonathan Markovits R$64,540
6th Daniel Negreanu R$48,730
7th Vitor Torres R$35,560
8th Juan Gonzalez R$26,340

The LAPT Grand Final has now ended, as well as the 4th season of the Latin American Poker Tour. Tomorrow the action will continue in Brazil with the final of the Brazil Poker Cup.

Congratulations, Daniele for your victory.

Daniele Nestola, LAPT Sao Paulo champion

One of the countries that was forgotten, where poker is very popular, was Spain. But Spaniards can’t complain anymore as PokerStars has announced a brand new poker tour that will be hosted this April and will be called Estrellas Poker Tour (Stars Poker Tour in English, or you would prefer to call it Spanish Poker Tour).

The first season of this brand new Estrellas Poker Tour is formed by 4 events that will be hosted in Malaga, Alicante, Madrid, celebrating the Grand Final in Barcelona during the the celebration of the EPT Barcelona of the 7th season of the European Poker Tour.

The poker events will have a buy-in of 1.000 EURO and you already have satellites going on in PokerStars for as low as $11 and you have freerolls as well.

One of the points of this brand new tour is that it will be broadcasted by one of the most popular televisions in Spain, Antena 3 TV. So, poker is prepared to experience another boom in the touristic country. Remember, the first event starts on the April 11th, so qualify now and enjoy a vacational-poker trip to the Mediterranean!

Rush Poker?, maybe you are wondering. Yes, this is the name that the Full Tilt Poker crew decided for the new poker game they invented. As we can read on their website, this sort of poker is designed to avoid the delays between hands and keep you in a frenetic action all the time.

Read what Full Tilt claims on their website:

Warning: Rush Poker* is extremely fast paced – prepare yourself for the most intense poker action in the world!

In this new poker format, you won’t join a pre made table and play all the time with the same players. Instead of that, you will face a different table of opponents every hand. When you fold, you’ll be moved (or rushed) to another table and a new hand will start within seconds.

And there’s more. You can play even faster. There is a Quick Fold that you can use before the action is on you. Clicking that button, you will be able move to next hand (and table) inmediately while the rest of players won’t see you have folded until it’s your turn.

We have already tried it and it’s really awesome. Another super great idea of Full Tilt Poker, that keeps innovating day after day. But is also for sure we will need to adapt our game to this new poker format if we don’t want to lose money in the try.

Anyway, we recommend you to give it a try. It’s fun, frenetic and you will play more hands than you have done before.

¿Are you ready for the action? Be prepared for Rush Poker.

If you want to try Rush Poker we recommend you to visit Full Tilt Poker from this link and you’ll receive a 100% up to 600$ for free.

Gimbel, 19 years old, is now the youngest champion of the PCA since it started seven years ago with that cruise-based tournament won by Gus Hansen.

“I feel like a young rock star,” Gimbel said.

And it’s not for less. The youngster claimed the Main Event of the biggest poker festival ever held outside Las Vegas and he is now 2,2 million dollar richer and owns one of the most coveted trophies in the poker world.

Harrison Gimbel, 2010 PCA Winner

After busting Barry Shulman (the owner of Card Player magazine) on third, Gimbel reached the heads-up against Ty Reiman, who owned the most part of the chips. But not for long. Gimbel would overcome his deficit and then bluff out Reiman in another spot where Reiman had flopped the nut straight (although the river completed a possible flush) to claim the lead. He never let it go.

Barry Shulman

On the final hand, both players ended all-in with a pocket pair. Tens for Gimbel, eights for Reiman. A ten on the flop left Ty with the only option of runner-runner quads. But, hey!, another eight fell on the turn, opening the miracle for the American. A jack on the river ended the whole thing.

Reiman will be content tomorrow with his 1.750.000 $ second place prize. Harrison Gimbel claimed the trophy, the 2.2 million, and his place in poker history books for being the youngest champion of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

2010 PCA Main Event Results:

1 — Harrison Gimbel, USA, $2,200,000
2 — Tyler Reiman — USA — $1,750,000
3 — Barry Shulman — USA — $1,350,000
4 — Benjamin Zamani — USA — $1,000,000
5 — Ryan D’Angelo — USA — $700,000
6 — Aage Ravn — Norway — $450,000
7 — Zachary Goldberg — USA — $300,000
8 — Thomas Koral — USA — $201,300

Foto del ganador cedida por PokerStars