Updates from levels 21 and 22 of LAPT Playa Conchal, brought to you by Brad Willis and Change100. Selected approximate chip counts, updated throughout the day, are available on the chip counts page. The LAPT tournament structure can be found on the LAPT tournament structure page. The full payout structure...more

Updates from levels 17 and 18 of LAPT Playa Conchal, brought to you by Brad Willis and Change100. Selected approximate chip counts, updated throughout the day, are available on the chip counts page. The LAPT tournament structure can be found on the LAPT tournament structure page. The full payout structure...more

Day four of the inaugural EPT event in Vilamoura was not for the faint-hearted. This year's tournament structure is one of the best in the world, but remarkably even a stack of more than a million chips going into the penultimate day doesn't guarantee a thing. Just ask Antony Lellouche....more

Updates from levels 15 and 16 of LAPT Playa Conchal, brought to you by Brad Willis and Change100. Selected approximate chip counts, updated throughout the day, are available on the chip counts page. The LAPT tournament structure can be found on the LAPT tournament structure page. The full payout structure...more

Updates from levels 9 and 10 of LAPT Playa Conchal, brought to you by Brad Willis and Change100. Selected approximate chip counts, updated throughout the day, are available on the chip counts page. The LAPT tournament structure can be found on the LAPT tournament structure page. The full payout structure...more

Updates from levels 9 and 10 of LAPT Playa Conchal, brought to you by Brad Willis and Change100. Selected approximate chip counts, updated throughout the day, are available on the chip counts page. The LAPT tournament structure can be found on the LAPT tournament structure page. The full payout structure...more

Yesterday we reported how Antony Lellouche and Jeff Sarwer were once again setting the benchmark for a successful day on an EPT, just as they had a few weeks earlier in Warsaw. Well, not a lot has changed since then. Tonight those two are still the leaders - all...more

Rob Woodcock has history here in Costa Rica. It was just last year that the British PokerStars Supernova came to San Jose and ended Day 1 as the chip leader. He went on to finish in 9th place for $17,098. While a good finish, he certainly hoped for more. Now,...more

Earlier today, we were remarking on how nice it would be to be Icelander Daniel Mar Palsson. That guy came down here from Iceland and spent the first few levels quintupling his stack. Since then, the ice has melted a bit and he's back down below 100,000. And so we...more

The LAPT fields are still what we like to call "manageable." With 259 players in the field, it's easy to see a lot of familiar faces. What makes them all the more familiar is the fact we have seen a number of today's players on the final table of other...more

At this moment in Iceland, the temperature is coming in at a balmy 6° Celsius (42.8º F). Meanwhile, here on Costa Rica's Gold Coast, we're shivering through a 30° day. For those of you who read a thermometer like me, that's 86º. We literally broke a sweat on our five-minute...more

Victor Ramdin looks different. When he's sitting behind a table, it's sort of difficult to tell what's making the difference. And if I hadn't ridden in from the airport with him, I might still be wondering what's making him so happy. Fortunately, we had 45 minutes to chat during the...more

Hank Sitton waved his hand around the well-appointed resort. "This is my old stomping grounds," he said, the memory obviously still clear in his mind. "I used to be a surfer. Sitton, known as "Hardway Hank" on PokerStars, is a serial qualifier for PokerStars events. We've seen him just about...more

They called "Shuffle up and deal" at the stroke of noon, with many Team Pros, qualifiers, and local players still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes and shaking off the effects of last night's welcome party. The registration line winds out the door of the convention center of...more

When the sky above Playa Conchal exploded, we knew the LAPT's third season was underway. We stood above the water of a small lagoon and underneath a blanket of red light and the steady buzz of Costa Rican Imperial. Men with the name Brenes surrounded us. It was like a...more

by Joe Hachem The courage of a sportsman takes him through some of the most difficult moments a person can face, and he needs to face them again and again. The courage to get back out on the field or the floor after you've taken a hard knock. The courage...more

Thousands of feet above the dark green canopy that makes up most of Costa Rica, it's impossible to get a sense for the place. It looks fake, like something Universal Studios might create for an American tourist or a film producer might doctor to make his movie look like paradise....more

Yesterday things were much easier as the close of play loomed. A couple of guys had mighty stacks, easily distinguished from the rest, with Ljubomir Josipovic on top with close to 200,000. Today has been a different story. Put it down to the larger field, bigger names, fatigue or...more

Six months after most of you turned 21 years old, you were still trying to figure out how to kick the birthday night hangover. You're different than Joe Cada, because just a few months removed from his step into adulthood, he's a millionaire WSOP champion and the envy of just...more

by Chris Moneymaker As part of Team Pokerstars Pro I get the opportunity to travel the world and play poker. I have been to many countries as an ambassador to PokerStars, but never to Romania. I was first asked to go to Romania instead of going to my original destination...more

Updates from levels one and two of EPT Vilamoura, brought to you by Stephen Bartley, Marc Convey, Howard Swains and Simon Young. Selected approximate chip counts, updated throughout the day, are available on the chip counts page. The EPT tournament structure can be found on the EPT tournament structure page....more

Arriving anywhere late, and in total darkness, and it's not easy to get the lay of the local land, to get your bearings. Touching down last night in Portugal and all you could see from the windows of 90-mph taxis, for the moments you don't have your eyes closed,...more

PokerStars likes to break records. It's just one of those things that makes the people behind the scenes happy. Sometimes it happens when no one is really expecting it. This weekend, PokerStars added a million bucks to the regular $1.5 million guarantee and, oh boy, did people show up. As...more

by John Duthie I've had a fairly hectic couple of weeks traveling around the globe; part pleasure, part business. I arrived back on Wednesday last week from a family holiday to India having flown London-Delhi, Delhi-Calcutta, Calcutta-Bagdogra, Bagdogra-Delhi then Delhi-London. It was an amazing trip and if you've never been...more

At close to 1.45am Tuesday, in the Penn and Teller Theater at the Rio Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Joe Cada, from Shelby Township, MI, was crowned the youngest World Series of Poker champion in the event's 40-year history. Once the bracelet was wrapped around his wrist and the whooping...more

There are people who cannot succeed without adversity. They need pressure. They require potential disaster to force them beyond even their own expectations. The poker world is just getting to know Joe Cada, but it's clear the new World Series of Poker champion thrives on the edge. In a heads-up...more

This hour began shortly after a 20-minute break, and Darvin Moon seemed by far the more refreshed. He was the aggressor in all of the early pots and took most of them down, regularly making reraises of about five million, which was consistently too rich for Cada. The Team...more

The last hour of heads-up play did not contain any huge, huge pots. That said, at the end of the second hour of play, Darvin Moon held the chip lead. They started play with blinds of 600,000/1.2 million and a 200,000 ante. Here is a hand-by-hand account of the past...more

The opening hour of final table play was certainly tense but it was anything but tight. There was a huge pot on the very first hand, won by Moon, and the Maryland man ended up taking the chip lead after winning the first few. But Cada won two decisive big...more

After losing almost everything he had in front of him in the biggest game he'd ever played, PokerStars player Joe Cada figured he was destined to finish in seventh place and become just another asterisk in the World Series of Poker history book. Tonight, Cada has to beat one more...more

While the WSOP Main Event final table was the center of attention for the poker community on Saturday, PokerStars ensured that rugby fans across the Atlantic were getting their own little taste of poker. Twickenham, the home of English rugby, generates raw passion whenever the home nation play - and...more

One would think with America's longstanding relationship with France that this sort of thing wouldn't happen. After all, the French gave America--and, specifically, Eric Buchman's home state of New York--the Statue of Liberty. It's a gift-giving relationship, for the love of Pete. But in the last couple of hours, Buchman...more

We're not going to lie to you, but as the clock ticks towards 4.30 a.m. Vegas time, and with four players still remaining, we're thinking less about bed and not even breakfast. Where do you fancy meeting for lunch? At this witching hour, things get a little deranged in the...more

Jeff Shulman is known as a lot of things, among them "Happy." Today, he was on a mission to win a WSOP bracelet, something his father Barry did at the WSOPE just last month. If the younger Shulman had succeeded, the father-son team would've been only the second to score...more

At around the mid-point of the past hour, there was a discussion between us PokerStars Blog folk about the angle we should adopt for our next post -- this post, that is. After some um-ing and ah-ing (we go to all those lengths) we realised that the story is is...more

Poker is a game of skill. We all understand that, yeah? We all preach it from the pulpit, shout it from the rooftops, and write it in as big of font as we can. Poker is a game of skill. With that said, we have three hands to report. Steven...more

Las Vegas is widely acknowledged to be the home of poker, and in the past 50 years it has also grown into the de facto home of boxing. The biggest fights are usually here, with the biggest purses. But last night, the eyes of the boxing world turned to Germany,...more

In the past hour, we have not only witnessed vast and irresponsible consumption of Jack's Links beef jerky and several people looking at their watches and checking to see if they had time for a nap, but we have also seen the the richest action of the tournament so far....more

Right now, the WSOP final table is getting in about 25 hands per hour. In an effort to stave off the post-dinner sleepies, we decided to pay as close attention as we possibly could and record every detail in one hour of play. This proved to be a story about...more

The high-brow credentials of PokerStars Blog have long been established. This is, after all, the place you've seen action from the PCA reimagined as a Samuel Beckett tragi-comedy, and it's home, of course, to the PokerStars Blog One Time Chip™, which has rapidly become the poker accessory for the ages....more

First you want to vomit. That's the honest initial physical response--that slight push in the belly, a rising gorge that, if you weren't a man, you'd just puke all over the felt, a final expulsion of all the pure disgust left among the bile. At least, that's how we imagined...more

Kevin Schaffel had pocket aces twice at the 2009 World Series Main Event final table, and both times his opponent had pocket kings. While this is ordinarily the stuff of poker players' dreams, Schaffel will have this down as a nightmare. The big news from the past hour is that...more

It took a few hours, but the 2009 WSOP final table has lost it's first player. That dubious honor goes to the UK's James Akenhead. It was two big hands against PokerStars qualifier Kevin Schaffel that sent Akenhead to the rail. In the first, Schaffel came in for a raise...more

Let's go back to the end of the last post, and remember what Daniel Negreanu said during the break: "Expect this level to be really nuts," said the Team PokerStars Pro. He knows a thing or two about the game does Kid Poker. The Penn and Teller Theater did indeed...more

There were two ways these opening exchanges were going to go: cautious or very cautious. "Have we seen a turn yet?" asked a colleague in the press box, approaching an hour into play. "No," was the answer to that, hinting at the trepidation among these nine, none of which could...more

"Welcome to the final table of the 2009 WSOP Main Event!" Those words from WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack ushered us into what will surely be the next 12 hours of World Series final table play. Tonight we will play down to two players. First, we have nine sitting around...more

For 10 months of the year, servers in the various restaurants of the Rio Hotel and Casino overhear the same kind of conversations as any other in Las Vegas. "Damn, she was smokin'", "I was up, like, four hundred and then the dealer hit, like, 12 blackjacks" and "I've changed...more

We're not even sure people look at wall calendars anymore. Back in the day, you could walk into auto repair shop, look at the wall calendar, and not only see a photo of a scantily clad woman, but also what day it was. It was very handy. These days, the...more

A week from this very morning, the poker world will be celebrating its newest champion. 2008 WSOP champ Peter Eastgate will have given up his year-long reign in favor of the 2009 victor and it very well could be that Eastgate will be awarding the bracelet to a fellow PokerStars...more

It was only a matter of time before the PokerStars European Poker Tour released the second half of its Season 6 schedule, and now that we've seen it, we don't mind having waited. As of this time yesterday, you knew the EPT had been to Kyiv, Barcelona, London and Warsaw,...more