Dunst is the host of the WPT’s Raw Deal segment, where he discusses some aspect of the poker world (be it a poker hand or a rule or whatever) in a frank and candid manner.

Originally known for his online results, and his penchant to overdress at the poker tables, preferring to a don a tailored suit instead of the usual poker garb of hat and hoodie, Dunst first came to the attention of the poker world during his deep run in the 2010 WSOP Main Event.

Dunst would take his 15 minutes of exposure and use it to help him land his gig with the WPT as well as a starring role in the poker documentary Bet Raise Fold, where his life was documented pre- and post-Black Friday.

The WPT Caribbean Poker Tour

The victory in St. Maarten was Dunst’s first since he won the $3,000 No Limit Holdem tournament at the 2008 Bellagio Cup, and is the third largest cash of his career, and the first “major” tournament title on his resume.

Dunst entered the final table as the chip-leader, but his path to victory would be no easy task considering not one but two former WPT champions stood in his way, Giacomo Fundaro, and one of the game’s top tournament players, Germany’s Marvin Rettenmaier.

1. Tony Dunst — $145,000
2. Giacomo Fundaro — $100,000
3. Severin Schleser — $63,500
4. Marvin Rettenmaier — $46,800
5. Zoltan Purak — $35,900
6. Robert Bakker — $28,700

You can find more details on the tournament by visiting the www.worldpokertour.com website.

The Professional Poker Tour failed, the Epic Poker League failed, and the LIPS tour is still struggling to gain traction in the poker world, so you wouldn’t think another niche poker tour would pique much interest, but that hasn’t been the case at all with the recently announced Senior Poker Tour.

Here are the details: Senior Poker Tour Press Release

Jared Jaffee Triumphs in Jacksonville

The 2013 WPT bestbet Jacksonville Fall Poker Scramble (is anyone else getting annoyed with the names for these tournaments? I thought the Doyle Brunson Five Diamond Poker Classic was pretty bad, but this is starting to get a bit ridiculous) saw Jared Jaffee win his first live tournament title (a recurring theme this week) pocketing over $250k to boot.

1. Jared Jaffee – $252,749
2. Blake Purvis – $166,139
3. Michael Horchoff – $106,904
4. Margo Costa – $79,114
5. Corrie Wunstel – $59,335
6. Johnny Price – $47,468

Nutsinho Adds HPT Title to his Resume

Held at the Stratosphere in Las Vegas, the latest stop on the Heartland Poker Tour (HPT) had a few more big names in the field that the typical event, and in the end it was online poker pro Richard “nutsinho” Lyndacker who took the top spot, outlasting the 353 player field, and capturing his first live tournament title in the process.

1. Richard Lyndaker – $122,548
2. Steven Patch – $74,346
3. Cory Waaland – $49,785
4. Shaun Suller – $34,722
5. Tim West – $20,041
6. Tony Cuppone – $20,425
7. Ed Liu – $17,259
8. Dan Alspach – $14,297
9. Dylan Hortin – $12,255

Himmelbrand Wins Event #1 at the Borgata Fall Poker Open

A $500 buy-in and a $1 million guarantee will always attract a big field, and that’s exactly what happened in Event #1 of the Borgata Fall Poker Open, with 2,899 entrants creating a near $1.5 million prize-pool.

1. Greg Himmelbrand – $243,630
2. Luis Diaz – $157,983
3. Simon Lam – $103,457
4. Edward Jacobs – $87,952
5. Frank Nelson – $72,966
6. Brian Rosengarten – $58,120
7. George Alberto – $43,413
8. Patrick Chan – $29,406
9. Chad Jackson – $21,009

Noah Boeken Wins the 2013 Masters Classic in Amsterdam

One of the bigger and older independent tournaments in the world is the Masters Classic in Amsterdam, and frankly this event doesn’t get the publicity it deserves. This year 298 players entered the €4,400 buy-in Main Event and it was Dutchman Noah Boeken who came away with the trophy and over $400k.

1. Noah Boeken – $412,012
2. Simon Persson – $245,623
3. Clyde Terlaan – $141,034
4. Luuk Gieles – $112,511
5. Andrew Chen – $96,664
6. Charlie Combes – $72,933
7. Johan Verhagen – $63,386
8. Rob Hollink – $47,541
9. Dmitry Nemirovsky – $31,694

The Tournament

The Party Poker Premier League VII will run from November 20-26 with the players participating in four matches each (more on that below), with the top four point getters moving on to the final table. The top four point getters will be joined by two more players, determined by heads-up matches between the next four top point getters.

The buy-in for the tournament is set at $125,000.

Kara Scott and Jesse May will handle the hosting and commentary duties, although the matches will not be available on a live stream, so you’ll have to wait for the broadcast to see the action –live reporting will be available however.

The Heats

Unlike in previous years where 16 players were divided into two groups of eight, this year the Premier League will feature 12 players, who will take part in six, eight-player heats. The point accumulation remains the same, but now the players will compete against the entire field in the round-robin style heats.

You can check out the Heat schedule at the Party Poker blog.

The Players

The tournament entry list has been in a constant state of flux, with Tony G just one of the players who committed but later dropped out and had to be replaced. This continued on right up until the last minute as a couple of last minute scratches –Greg Mueller and Greg Merson—saw Daniel Colman and Brian Rast added to the star-studded lineup.

Here is a look at the now-official lineup for the tournament:

1. Antonio  “The Magician” Esfandiari
2. Dan Shak
3. Phil Laak
4. Vanessa Selbst
5. Scott Seiver
6. Daniel “Jungleman” Cates
7. Jason Koon
8. Jeff Gross
9. Sorel Mizzi
10. Daniel Colman
11. Jonathan Duhamel
12. Brain Rast

Past Winners

Here is a list of the previous six Party Poker Premier League winners:

• Premier League I: Juha Helppi
• Premier League II: Andy Black
• Premier League III: JC Tran
• Premier League IV: David Benyamine
• Premier League V: Scott Seiver
• Premier League VI: Dan Shak

International Traffic

PokerStars still has a virtual stranglehold on the worldwide market, with nearly 10x the traffic of its closest competitors, and the battle for #2 is still between four other sites: Full Tilt Poker, the iPoker Network, the 888 Poker Network, and Party Poker.

All four sites have average traffic between 2,200 and 2,700 players according to PokerScout.com’s data, and as we’ve seen in recent months, traffic tends to bounce back and forth between these sites. Nobody has been able to separate themselves from the chase pack.

US Traffic Unregulated Sites

Like PokerStars in the International market, the unregulated market in the United States is essentially Bodog/Bovada, and then everyone else.

Bodog is the only room that has managed to keep their withdrawal times to a minimum and do so consistently, and this one aspect is enough to put them light years ahead of their competitors in the US market.

Just a year ago, you would have been laughed off the forums as a complete crackpot if you said that two of the US industry’s top providers would be the Winning Poker Network and the Chico Poker Network, but that is indeed the case in the topsy-turvy world of unregulated poker in the US.

Here is a look at how the Top US-facing sites stack-up in terms of their seven-day rolling average of cash game players according to PokerScout.com:

US Traffic Regulated Sites

In Nevada Caesars Entertainment’s and 888’s WSOP.com poker room has now surpassed Ultimate Poker in terms of overall traffic, despite spotting its competitor a six-month head-start in the market. The pokerscout.com traffic numbers are still really close (WSOP.com’s seven-day average is 129 players while Ultimate Poker’s is 115), but the trend has WSOP.com gaining and Ultimate Poker slowly leaking players.

So, while Lock Poker is busy trying to migrate their players to the new client and setup their new software, they are also still dealing with what is turning out to be a very messy divorce.

The biggest issue is the allegations of player poaching, where Revolution Gaming redirected Lock Players logging into the old client (perhaps unaware of the split) to a new site called Pure Poker, where players were told Lock Poker was booted from the Revolution Network and their balances could now be accessed at Pure Poker. Which turns out to not be the case, as you can read here on PokerFraudAlert.com: Who is Pure Poker: Exactly who you think it is.

In response to this Lock Poker issued the following statement:

We’ve been hearing concerns from players regarding their balances and we would like to clear up some of the confusion.

– Lock has NO relationship whatsoever with Pure Poker

– Pure Poker has NO Lock player data or account details

– The software update installation of Pure Poker software is an attempt to mislead Lock customers

– Lock Poker’s new software must be downloaded at lockpoker.eu

Lock terminated its contract with the Revolution Network on October 29th, it has since to our attention that some players who attempt open the Lock software are having a competitor’s software installed on their computer via the Revolution Network software updater.

Lock has NO relationship whatsoever with Pure Poker. Pure Poker has NO Lock player data or account details. Your account information and balances are held with Lock. We have built a one set process to migrate your existing account to our new software, visit https://migrate.lockpoker.eu and you will be guided through the steps.

This is clearly an attempt by the network to take Lock players and damage Lock’s business via a deceptive and misleading practice.

Initially the page where Lock players were redirected contained a patently false statement – that Lock’s poker services were “terminated”. Our legal counsel wrote to the operator of the Revolution network and demanded that this statement be taken down and, we confirmed that the page had been corrected to remove the false statement in less than an hour. However, the network has failed to resolve the more pressing issue – being that it is attempting to take Lock players and damage their business via a deceptive and misleading practice. This is conduct that is obviously meant to damage Lock and to cause confusion in the minds of consumers.

Finally, the regulatory and licensing authority for the Revolution Network have been put on notice that the network operator appears to be allowing an unlicensed poker site to operate as part of their network, in addition to the damages they are intentionally causing to Lock. There is no indication on the purepoker.eu site that their business operations are licesned in Curaco or elsewhere. This site appears to be a sham and players deal with it at their own risk.

Now Revolution is firing a return volley, which then received more return fire from Lock Poker’s Shane Bridges, as Revolution sent a statement to PokerFuse.com that reads in part:

“The Network tried very hard to help Lock work through its problems with slow withdrawals to players… Due to lack of payment to the Network and a large growing debt, the Network had no choice but to eventually segregate Lock players almost entirely from Network cash games.”

Where this is going, and how it will end, is unclear at this time, but the entire situation seems to be negatively affecting the Revolution Gaming Network and Lock Poker.

Online tournament series have grown in popularity in recent years, following the success of Full Tilt poker’s FTOPS tournament series and PokerStars wildly popular WCOOP and SCOOP series. Now virtually every online poker site and network offers an online tournament series, and the iPOPS has quickly become one of the most popular among players.

The series is broken down into two weeks; the first week will feature low-buy-in iPOPS tournaments, with buy-ins ranging from $1 up to $100 for the High-Roller tournament, while Week 2 will feature high-buy-in tournaments ranging from $30 up to $330 for the high-roller tournament. The iPOPS V Main Event will be a $200 buy-in No Limit Holdem tournament with a $400k guarantee –double the amount of iPoker’s usual $200k guarantee Sunday Special tournament.

iPOPS V Week 1

iPOPS V Week 2

The iPoker Network is the second largest online poker provider in the world, trailing only PokerStars according to www.pokerscout.com’s traffic numbers. The Network contains a number of well-known and well-respected online poker rooms including William Hill, Bet365, Betfair, and Titan Poker. All of the iPoker skins will be offering entry into iPOPS tournaments.

Since Black Friday virtually every network has spent time as the most-trafficked US online poker site: Merge Gaming Network, Revolution Gaming Network, and Bodog. We’ve also seen networks rebranded, upgraded, and shutdown, with poker rooms jumping from network to network for a variety of reasons.

The latest shakeup is one of the biggest since Black Friday, as Lock Poker has announced they are leaving the Revolution Gaming Network, formerly known as the Cake Poker Network (which they joined in 2012 after a fallout with the Merge Gaming Network led them to Cake Poker) and will now go it alone, operating as an independent online poker room.

Needless to say the split has not been pretty. Lock Poker fired first, issuing a press release this morning detailing their decision, including a parting shot at Revolution:

Lock has elected to exercise its right to terminate the contract as a result of the numerous and ongoing breaches of contract by the network operator.

However, the story didn’t end there. As PokerFuse.com is reporting, players logging in to the old Lock Poker software on the Revolution Gaming are being redirected to a new poker site, PurePoker.com, which is claiming to be a longstanding online poker room:

Due to Lock’s ongoing financial issues, the poker service to Lock was terminated. We apologize for the inconvenience. Pure Poker is offering you a chance to redeem your Lock player balance immediately.

Lock Poker has denied these claims, issuing a statement to PokerFuse.com and other outlets, as well as detailing the transgressions they are accusing the revolution Gaming Network of which allows them to terminate their agreement with the network. Lock Poker is also extremely unhappy with revolution’s attempt to steer Lock players to a new skin according to the statement they gave to pokerfuse.com:

“This is clearly an attempt by the network to take Lock players and damage Lock’s business via a deceptive and misleading practice. The network operator has been given an opportunity to correct this and have refused to do so,” 

Obviously this story is far from over, and regardless of how it turns out the US online poker industry (the unregulated rooms that is) is likely going to be thrown into yet another period of tumult.

20 Million Hands

As the site approaches the historic milestone of 20 million hands dealt Ultimate Poker has announced their 20 Million Hand promotion –which seems to be modeled on PokerStars Road to 100 Billion Hands promotion.

Every 100,000 hands, beginning with the dealing of their 19 millionth-hand, Ultimate poker will award the winner of the hand $250, with all other players at the table dealt into the hand receiving $25 –the prizes double at cash tables of $1/$2 or higher and Sit & Go tournaments above $20.

New Sunday Tournament Schedule

Ultimate Poker has also increased their Sunday tournament schedule adding new events and raising some guaranteed prize-pools in other events. You can see the new tournament lineup at www.ultimatepoker.com.

Ultimate Poker Championship II

After the success of their inaugural Ultimate Poker Championship the site is wasting little time in getting UPC II underway. According to Ultimate Poker the UPC II will begin on November 2^nd, and once again will culminate with a $100,000 guaranteed Main Event.

Here is a look at the complete UPC II schedule:

Ultimate Poker and Poker Night in America

According to a press release on the Poker Night in America website, the fledgling poker tour/TV show will be teaming up with Ultimate Poker at their next stop at the Peppermill Resort-Spa Casino in Reno Nevada.

According to the press release Ultimate Poker will be running a number of satellite tournaments into the Poker Night in America Main Event:

“Ultimate Poker is giving players in Nevada at least three mega-satellites to win a freeroll into the biggest tournament – the $1,100 buy-in Main event. These mega-satellites will be be open to all online players at their site. Players will need to head to Ultimate Poker and log in or sign up for an account to get started. More information is available directly at the poker website (www.ulitmatepoker.com).”

Spindler will be looking to add a third seven-figure score to his poker resume, and would love to add a WSOPE bracelet to his 2011 EPT London Main Event victory. Regardless of where he finishes in the WSOPE Main Event, Spindler’s lifetime tournament earnings will exceed $4 million.

Nitsche is WSOP bracelet winner (Nitsche won a $1k NLHE tournament in 2012) as well as having won an LAPT and WPT tournament. His lifetime live tournament earnings are already over $2.4 million.

Soulier is another WSOP bracelet winner, having won the prestigious $10k HORSE tournament at the 2011 WSOP. With over $4 million in career tournament earnings, ranking Soulier 4^th on the Hendon Mob’s all-time money list for French players.

The WSOPE Main Event final table participants will have a well-deserved day-off on Thursday –so all eyes can be on the WSOPE High-Roller final table, which will have a major role in the WSOP Player of the Year race—before returning to the casino on Friday to determine the next WSOPE Main Event Champion.

Here is a look at the final table seating assignments and chip counts from the WSOP.com website:

• Seat 1: Benny Spindler -Germany- 1,748,000 chips
• Seat 2: Fabrice Soulier –France- 1,871,000 chips
• Seat 3: Dominik Nitsche -Germany- 2,354,000 chips
• Seat 4: Adrian Mateos –Spain- 3,781,000 chips
• Seat 5: Ravi Raghavan -USA- 898,000 chips
• Seat 6: Jerome Huge –France- 637,000 chips

And here is a look at the list of past WSOPE Champions one of these players will join (which is quite a list of names in its own right):

• 2007 WSOPE Champion: Annette Obrestad
• 2008 WSOPE Champion: John Juanda
• 2009 WSOPE Champion: Barry Shulman
• 2010 WSOPE Champion: James Bord
• 2011WSOPE Champion: Elio Fox
• 2012 WSOPE Champion: Phil Hellmuth

So what are the final six players for? Here is a look at the remaining payouts from the prize-pool:

• 1^st — €1,000,000
• 2^nd — €610,000
• 3^rd — €400,000
• 4^th — €251,000
• 5^th — €176,000
• 6^th — €126,000

*Resources: www.thehendonmob.com, www.wikipedia.org, www.wsop.com

In taiwan for the 1st time ever… Not leaving the airport tho. Maybe next trip. Had my biggest loss ever yesterday

After the tweet hit the Internet speculation was rampant as to what the actual number was, considering Dwan rarely tweets out results. Well, it turns out we may now have a ballpark figure for that loss, as Cardplayer Magazine, citing an unnamed source who was in the room, has said that Dwan lost $4 million during a 24-hour session at the StarWorld Casino in Macau.

Macau Poker

The biggest poker games in the world used to take place in Las Vegas, but for the past few years the real high-stakes action is happening in Macau, which has transformed into the Vegas of the East, and has in many ways supplanted Las Vegas as the gambling capital of the world.

The StarWorld Casino plays host to most of the high-stakes poker action, with exclusive games for the richest businessman in Asia, and select poker pros that are allowed to participate (generally speaking, the policy is don’t talk about the game and NO NITS!) such as Dwan, Johnny Chan, John Juanda, Andrew Robl, and others.

Dwan vs. Cates

Dwan is also wrapped-up in an ugly dispute with Daniel “jungleman” Cates, as the two have some unfinished business from 2010, when they started a high-stakes challenge match.

Per the terms, should Cates be up at the end of 50,000 hands (the pair is about halfway through that number) Dwan would pay him an additional $1.5 million: If Dwan is ahead Cates owes him $500k.

Cates is currently up about $1.5 million in the match, and is upset that Dwan is not placing the same level of priority on finishing the match as he is.

Is Dwan still among the top players?

Another recent story that involved Tom Dwan was a couple of digs thrown his way by Daniel Negreanu, who questioned if Dwan was still at the top of his game, and whether he was putting in the work to be an elite player:

‘I don’t think Tom is one of the best [in the world] – I don’t know if he ever was. He got elevated after his appearances on High Stakes Poker because he ran well and played well, but realistically he doesn’t put in the time or practise playing now [to be one of the best in the world].’ Furthermore, Negreanu thinks the other top players ‘all lick their lips when they think about playing Dwan heads-up’.

In the interview above, Negreanu also questioned Dwan’s professionalism, stemming from the PokerStars vs. Full Tilt Poker Grudge Match at the EPT London back in March, where Dwan showed up late for his match and didn’t seem all that interested in the event.