PokerStars Blog’s 2020 Quiz of the Year

No, it was that man Schemion, who beat a final table also including Francisco “Tomatee” Benitez, Ognjan “cocojamb0” Dimov, Jens “Graftekkel” Arends and Bruno “botteonpoker” Botteon.

It was The Times, which added a poker column, written by Byron Jacobs, to its popular puzzle pages. Read all about it!

Actress Portia de Rossi of Arrested Development fame, bought the gift for her wife, Ellen DeGeneres. We covered the story in January.

The ghastly Emma was a warning against all kinds of posture crimes, but there was no advice about how far to position your snacks and drinks. You won’t regret learning these lessons, however.

Professor Avi Rubin, of Johns Hopkins University, said it was “something I had always wanted to do.” Go back to school with Prof. Rubin.

It was the Australian Robert Campbell, who only found out he was WSOP Player of the Year for 2019 after tournament officials uncovered an admin error that had previously awarded the accolade to Daniel Negreanu. It was a good year for poker podcasts.

It was Dare to Stream (or, more precisely, #DareToStream) and was won by “RichyRob” and “Ghilley”. We met RichyRob at Lex Live London.

Leading neuroscientist Dr Jeffrey Cummings says that playing poker twice a week could reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s by as much as 50 percent. All of that and more in our Definitive Guide to Poker and your Health.

Brito won a Spin & Go costing $0.25 and invested his winnings in a $4 Sunday Million feeder satellite, which got him into an $11 satellite, where he won his seat. We talked to this ROI phenom.

It was EPT Retro and it was great. We also delved into our archives to look at our ancient coverage from Season 1, Season 2, Season 3 and Season 4.

Poker players will deny they are any such thing, but Rogers sang about The Gambler. Martin Harris looked back at his career.

Despite nine final tables and more than 100 in-the-money finishes, Ferreira didn’t actually win a single tournament outright. However, as he told us in a great in-depth interview, it “went quite well”.

Veldhuis shared his tagging system as we examined the importance of tagging opponents on PokerStars. Fear not if you’re in white. It just means you’re a friend of the stream.

Things broke bad for Bryan Cranston, who bubbled the event, leaving his fellow Breaking Bad actor David Costabile to beat footballer Douglas Costa heads up. Shahade was third, Affleck fourth and Moneymaker fifth.

Konnikova’s previous works include Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes. We surveyed her entire canon.

It was the man known as The Squid, Sam Grafton, who had a superlative 2020 both on the felt and away from it.

Just one of the many delicious facts in our survey of the world’s best poker commentators was the nugget that Jesse May once played a heat of Late Night Poker as Mickey Dane, also the name of the protagonist in his novel Shut Up And Deal.

Bullet Chess is the ultimate in speed chess, with players getting only 60 seconds to make all of their moves. (Come on, all the other options were nonsense.) The Mind Sports Olympiad was a fascinating event.

It was the biggest online tournament buy-in ever at the time, and it was the then Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier, alongside Jason Somerville, who decided to reveal all.

At its peak, Thien’s stream attracted three viewers, quite possibly the fewest ever to watch an outright victory on a WCOOP Twitch stream. But Thien didn’t seem to mind, and gave one of the best interviews from the series.

It was the Russian Twitch streamer Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin, who went shoulder to shoulder with Martins throughout, before securing the accolade on the final weekend. Martins was OK with it, though, and was happy to talk through his brilliant WCOOP.

It was Mike “MunchenHB” Telker, who was previously part of the five-way chop in 2012 when Marat “maratik” Sharafutdinov won his million. Telker won $1,000.584.34 in 2012 and another $196,792 this time.

This one went to Pedro “PaDiLhA SP” Padilha, although the others also enjoyed stellar years at the PokerStars tournament tables.

That man with the trophy is Ruslan Bogdanov, who won RUB 15,984,500 (€175,743) after a heads-up deal. Denisov was eighth, Ershov was third and Kuznetsov was seventh.

It’s been to Barcelona, London, Dublin, Copenhagen, Deauville, Vienna, Monte Carlo, Baden, Dortmund, Warsaw, Prague, Nassau, Sanremo, Budapest, Kyiv, Vilamoura, Hinterglemm, Tallinn, Berlin, Madrid, Loutraki, Campione, Portomaso and Sochi. Count them. That’s 24 — and there’s tons more EPT trivia here.

It’s the Grand Tour, and here’s how to play, plus some exclusive tips from the much-decorated Nick Walsh of OP-Poker.

It was the 1972 WSOP Main Event champion Amarillo Slim, or Thomas Austin Preston Jr., to give him his full name. Walsh was a dedicated gambler and funnelled many of his experiences into California Split — and even more into the memoir.

Dicks dropped by to teach us all how to tell a compelling bad beat story, and singled out Titanic as one of the best in cinematic history.

If you sign up for Warren Buffet‘s company NetJets, you get a seat in one of the world’s most exclusive poker tournaments. We looked at a few of them in June.

That is “WhatIfGod”, who broke cover in 2014 when he won two WCOOP titles. This year WhatIfGod won the EPT Online Main Event and picked up $1,019,081.

It was 889,201, including 166,772 re-entries. That created prize pools of $4,636,329.05 — not bad for a series where the highest buy-in was $11.

According to the introduction to Cain’s Jawbone, an accident during printing meant “The pages have been printed in an entirely haphazard and incorrect order.” Readers are thus challenged to put the story back into its correct order. Learn more about this fascinating book.

Adapted from the 1983 Walter Tevis novel, The Queen’s Gambit has brought a whole new influx of players to the game.

It was quite the get. Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network, Moneyball, Molly’s Game) dropped in to celebrate the landmark. Listen and watch!

It’s Dan Smith, who now partners with Ash Mason and Stephen Chidwick, among others, to match charitable donations. We suggested making a donation in our Christmas gift guide.

Welcome back Neymar Jr. An exciting new collaboration awaits with the PSG and Brazil striker.