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The start of the calendar year is normally very jammed for the top tournament poker professionals in the game. With the ending of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (R.I.P., old friend), however, there’s some room that opened up on the calendar. Just as quickly as it opened, that door has been slammed as Poker Central has created a new tournament poker series capped by another version of the Super High Roller Bowl.

Australian Poker Open to Run in January

The inaugural running of the Australian Poker Open will commence on January 25 at the Star Gold Coast in Queensland. The roster of events for the tournament will hold with their past national events, a group of tournaments with buy ins of at least $10,000 and a variety of No Limit Texas Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha Hold’em options. There will three $10K events, two $25K tournaments, a $50K warmup for the Main Event and the $100K Main Event.

It will all be capped off by the Super High Roller Bowl Australia. This will be a monstrous $250,000 buy in No Limit Texas Hold’em event. The Australian Poker Open and the Super High Roller Bowl Australia will be exclusively live streamed over the streaming outlet for Poker Central, PokerGO, with the Super High Roller Bowl Australia beginning on February 2.

In a change from their other High Roller series, the Australian version will be a partnership with the World Poker Tour. “Coming off the heels of the highly successful WPT Australia, the World Poker Tour is thrilled to partner with The Star Gold Coast once again as part of Super High Roller Bowl Australia and the Australian Poker Open as we expand our global partnership with Poker Central,” Angelica Hael, the Vice President of Global Tour Management for the World Poker Tour, said during the announcement of the new series.

“Creating the Australian Poker Open and Super High Roller Bowl Australia represents a key milestone for Poker Central and an important moment for our business as we further our international reach,” Sampson Simmons, the president of Poker Central, stated. “As we bring our premier high roller event brands to new players and new destinations around the globe, PokerGO subscribers continue reaping the rewards of captivating poker content featuring the world’s best players.”

But Will the Players Come?

As with any new event, there are challenges that the new Australian Poker Open and the Super High Roller Bowl Australia will face. The 2020 Aussie Millions, the largest poker tournament in the country, takes place from January 4 through January 24. To start the event in Queensland the day after the conclusion of the Aussie Millions is putting a lot on poker players to make the trek; it is a 1200-plus mile journey from the Crown Casino in Melbourne to The Star in Queensland.

The other events that Poker Central puts on with its High Roller series also have built in conveniences. The PokerGO studios serve quite well for doing the Super High Roller Bowl and the U. S. Poker Open in Las Vegas. It’s a little more difficult in jolly old England, but the Super High Roller Bowl U. K. and the British Poker Open ran last year with few difficulties.

The bottom line is will the players turn up. The Las Vegas events usually have a sizeable number of players stepping up to take part, especially since they have normally been held before the start of the World Series of Poker. The British Poker Open, in its first run in 2019, saw entry numbers ranging from 18 to 46 through its events. The £250,000 Main Event was even worse, only drawing in 12 entries for the tournament. If it turns out that this will be another series with a handful of people shifting money around, people may not bother tuning in.

The post Poker Central Announces New Super High Roller Bowl for Australia appeared first on Poker News Daily.

Two massive days of poker at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, FL, have created what looks to be an outstanding tournament for the World Poker Tour. Although it is only in its second year of existence, the WPT Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open smashed its inaugural year record, bringing in over 900 entries. After the smoke cleared from two Day Ones, it is Lithuania’s Audrius Stakelis sitting with the overall lead.

Day 1A Sets Stage for Massive Tournament

Friday saw the tournament arena at the Seminole Hard Rock flooded with poker players who were ready for action. At the start of Level 2, there were already 172 entries on the tournament board and the numbers only ratcheted up from that point. Along the way, some of the more notable names from poker took their shots at winning this title.

Julien Martini would take more than one shot at building a stack on Friday, losing his first 40K in chips when his 8♠ 6♠ failed to catch up with his opponent’s pocket treys. He would fire a second bullet, however, and run that up to 205,000 by the end of the night. Several of the WPT Champions’ Club members, including hometown favorite James Calderaro, Jonathan Jaffe, Aaron Van Blarcum, James Mackey, Faraz Jaka and Anthony Zinno would join Martini in building up enough of a stack to come back for Day 2 on Sunday.

By the end of the action on Friday night, 447 entries had been received and 176 players remained from that carnage. Leading the way was Jason Wandling, who seems to enjoy playing on the Hollywood grounds; earlier this year, he cashed in two tournaments at the Seminole Hard Rock and is looking to add a third WPT cash to his resume.

1. Jason Wandling, 405,500
2. James Calderaro, 321,500
3. Nathan Watson, 288,000
4. Rafael Bertani, 245,500
5. Fabian Gumz, 241,000
6. Florian Ribouchon, 237,500
7. Marcus El-Huaick, 236,000
8. Jackob Datashvili, 233,000
9. Hiroaki Harada, 224,000
10. Jonathan Jaffe, 220,500

Day 1B Completes the Deal

If Day 1A was outstanding in the response from the players, Day 1B was phenomenal. By the start of Level 2, Day 1B was keeping pace with its predecessor by racking up 169 entries. Instead of matching the pace of Day 1A, however, it ramped up massively during Day 1B, ensuring that not only the guarantee would be met (roughly 625 players needed to be hit for the $2 million guarantee to be covered) but also putting possibilities of hitting the $3 million level for the prize pool into action.

Many in the tournament arena were watching the actions of the ambassador for Zynga Poker, Hugh Grant, and how he would fare in the tournament. Grant would give up some chips on a 3-7-6-8-8, three-spade board when he was raised on the river by Scott Eskenazi. Down to just over 16K in chips at the time, Grant would bide his time until he actually had something for the battle. Unfortunately, the fates would have their say.

After Landon Tice opened the action, Grant three-bet him and Tice called. A J-7-10 flop hit the felt and, after a check from Tice, Grant fired a continuation bet. This time around, Tice came over him with a check-raise and Grant moved all in. He couldn’t have been happy with the immediate call from Tice, who turned up pocket Jacks for the flopped set against Grant’s pocket Aces. His tournament life on the line, Grant saw a four and a five finish off the board as he was eliminated from the event.

As the final level of the Day 1B action began, it looked like Wandling’s stack from Day 1A would reign supreme for the overall lead. Making an under the radar run was Stakelis, however, who was able to amass a 408,000-chip stack to eke out the lead over Wandling as the play enters Day 2 on Sunday.

1. Audrius Stakelis, 408,000
2. Howard Mash, 331,500
3. Wagner Wysotchanski, 329,000
4. Carlos Guerrero, 279,500
5. Nitis Udornpim, 273,500
6. Nicholas Tanner, 269,000
7. Greg Levine, 264,500
8. Pavlin Karakikov, 253,000
9. Ronit Chamani, 252,000
10. Kwynn Richards, 242,000

Day 2 Ready for Action with 387 Players

Overall, 988 entries were gathered for the 2019 version of this tournament, besting its inaugural year by 90. 124 players will earn a piece of the $3,161,600 prize pool, with a min-cash earning $5985. All eyes are up top for the $545,070 first place prize, however, with these players in the overall Top Ten having an inside track to the money.

1. Audrius Stakelis, 408,000
2. Jason Wandling, 405,500
3. Howard Mash, 331,500
4. Wagner Wysotchanski, 329,000
5. James Calderaro, 321,500
6. Nathan Watson, 288,000
7. Carlos Guerrero, 279,500
8. Nitis Udornpim, 273,500
9. Nicholas Tanner, 269,000
10. Greg Levine, 264,500

Cards will hit the air at noon for Day 2, with another ten levels of action set. It is possible that the field will hit the money on Sunday, but it will take a lot of work – or a lot of gamble from the players – for that goal to be reached. Wednesday is Championship Day for the WPT Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open, when the next victor on the WPT Season XVIII will be crowned.

The post WPT Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open Main Event: Total Field Tops Last Year’s Record, Audrius Stakelis Overall Leader appeared first on Poker News Daily.

In an interesting and unfortunate case, former World Poker Tour L. A. Poker Classic champion Dennis Blieden has pled guilty to several charges of embezzlement of millions of dollars. While he hasn’t been sentenced yet, it is highly likely the poker champion will not see the outside world for some time.

Charges Include Identity Theft, Wire Fraud

The U. S. Attorney for the Central District of California, which covers the area of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Bernardino counties (among others), has confirmed for several outlets that Blieden changed his plea in his case earlier this week. The plea deal accepted by Blieden covers all the charges that were presented against him, including one charge of identity theft, two charges of unlawful forfeiture and 11 counts of wire fraud. Those 14 charges cover more than $22 million that Blieden unlawfully took from an employer.

In 2015, Blieden went to work for a company called StyleHaul, Inc, and Blieden would pillage the company’s accounts for the entirety of his four years of employment with the company. Over that time, Blieden would use the money to fund his poker play around the world, his travel and even his debts to other players. Perhaps the biggest crime in the eyes of the authorities, however, was Blieden’s investment in cryptocurrency, in which Blieden took over $8.4 million.

With the guilty plea, Blieden is looking to avoid a massive amount of time in prison. If he had been convicted in court of the charges, Blieden was looking at over 200 years as a sentence. By accepting the plea bargain, Blieden is potentially looking at a sentence of 22 years, of which he’ll probably only serve three-quarters depending on his conduct in prison. Blieden is due to be sentenced in March 2020 and he will be staying in prison until that sentencing as the courts have determined him to be a flight risk.

The Fall is Worse than the Climb

It is truly a monumental fall for a poker player who seemingly once had it all.

While employed by StyleHaul (it is entirely possible, but unproven, that Blieden used some of the funds from his embezzlement operation to enter this tournament), Blieden entered the 2018 World Poker Tour L. A. Poker Classic Main Event, one of the few $10,000 events left on the WPT and also one of its most prestigious events. Battling through the 493-entry field, Blieden was able to defeat such players as Garrett Greer, Anthony Zinno, and Toby Lewis on his way to claiming the title and the $1 million payday that went along with it.

A taste of the “big time” proved to be too much for Blieden to handle, however. Blieden would not cash again in 2018, despite being a fixture on the tournament circuit. He wouldn’t make another cash until the 2019 World Series of Poker, where he min-cashed the $1500 Bounty event, and made a deep run in the partypoker MILLIONS Las Vegas, finishing 17th in that tournament for a $35,000 payday. It was after that finish in the MILLIONS that Blieden was arrested and taken into custody.

It is somewhat surprising that Blieden wasn’t caught before he was arrested. Many of the checks he wrote were directly to others in the poker community. He also leased property in Mexico in the company’s name without telling the company about it. Companies of this size usually have auditors that would catch such acts, but Blieden apparently covered his tracks well – well enough to get away with the crimes for almost four years.

The post Former LAPC Champion Dennis Blieden Pleads Guilty to Embezzlement appeared first on Poker News Daily.

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The World Poker Tour has packed up the trucks for their first foray into Florida for their Season XVIII schedule. The place to be this Thanksgiving weekend may not be the malls but very well could be the grounds of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, FL, as the WPT Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open riffs the decks for action. This is the first of three stops by the WPT in their 2019-2020 tournament poker season.

$2 Million Guaranteed Prize Pool

The Seminole Hard Rock is pulling no punches in trying to build a nice field for this tournament. There is a $2 million guaranteed prize pool on the line for the players. With a buy in of $3500 (of which $3200 goes to the prize pool), it would take roughly a 625-player field to crack that guarantee. The Seminole Hard Rock is making sure that there’s plenty of opportunities for that magic number to be reached.

There will be two Day Ones, starting on Friday and Saturday, with unlimited reentry into the tournament until the start of Level 9 on each day. If a player is unable to build a stack on Day 1A, they are allowed to come back on Day 1B and take some more shots at running up some chips. Late registration for the tournament will also be open until the start of Level 9 on each Day One.

The Big Blind Ante will be employed once the antes are reached on Level 3 and, once the tournament reaches one table before the money bubble, the action clock will go into operation for the duration of the tournament. The tournament will play through the weekend, determining the final table on December 3 (Tuesday). The final table on December 4 will be live streamed beginning at 2:30 and run until a champion is crowned. That victor will walk away with a good six-figure score, a seat at the 2020 WPT Tournament of Champions and their name on the WPT Champions’ Cup.

History Building for the Tournament

This is only the second year of the tournament but, if it holds true to its inaugural running, it should be a highly entertaining event.

In the 2018 version of this tournament, 898 entries came out to completely obliterate the guarantee. In creating over a $2.8 million prize pool, 113 players took home some cash from their sojourn to South Florida, with a min cash walking off with $5845. The final table was also entertaining in crowning a first-time champion who had a tremendous 2018 tournament poker season.

The six-man final table was headlined by former WPT champion Ravi Raghavan, but he would be the first one busted from the tournament and on only the second hand of the final table. He would try to double up through Marius Gierse, but his A-J didn’t have any answers for Gierse’s A-K and left in sixth place. After this, the eventual champion would take command of the table and the tournament.

Pavel Plesuv was already having a good 2018 and he made it great in storming to the title. He would be responsible for the elimination of every other player from the event, eventually running up against James Gilbert for the crown. With a 6:1 lead, it was thought that it would be a quick run before Plesuv would take down Gilbert. Instead, it would take 68 hands before Plesuv finally vanquished Gilbert, with his A-J scoring against Gilbert’s pocket nines on a A-Q-3-J-Q board, to pick up the $504,820 payday.

After scoring more than $3 million in winnings in 2018, it has been a tough year for Plesuv. He has only earned $114,666 in 2019 (courtesy of the Hendon Mob database), but all could be rectified with a strong defense of his 2018 title. The cards will hit the air at 11AM on Friday as the WPT, and the players themselves, looks to enjoy their first trip to South Florida for the Season XVIII schedule.

The post WPT Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open Begins Today appeared first on Poker News Daily.

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We all need to wear clothes, so the massive reductions on fashion at the Black Friday sales are certainly tempting. But how much will end up in the charity shop bag come January?

Arguably no consumer goods industry benefits from our throwaway culture more than fast fashion. That’s why buying carefully, and only what we need, can be a powerful act of environmentalism.

Here are nine compelling reasons to buy better and less – and make do and mend more.

1. Fashion is the world’s second-largest polluter after the oil industry

Production of fabric is a huge carbon emitter, releasing the equivalent of 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere – more than international flights and shipping combined. (I know right?!)

2. People buy 80 billion garments around the world every year

Fast fashion is getting faster: US shoppers buy five times more clothing than they did in 1980, around 80 billion pieces according to Dana Thomas’s new book Fashionopolis. That’s on average 68 items per person per year. In the UK, we buy more clothes than any other country in Europe.

3. A rubbish truck of clothes is burned or landfilled every. single. second.

Every single second, 2,625 kilograms of clothing becomes waste that needs dealing with in some way. This is enough to fill the Empire State building one and a half times every day, and Sydney harbour every year.

4. Nearly 70 million barrels of oil are used each year to make the world’s polyester

Polyester is essentially fabric that’s made from plastic fibres. It is now the most commonly used fibre in our clothing. As plastic is made from petroleum, it requires seriously enormous quantities of oil.

5. Polyester takes more than 200 years to decompose

Fast fashion is produced and consumed quickly – but hangs around in our environment for two centuries. So polyester is the source of serious plastic pollution especially considering the enormous amounts of fashion dumped or burned. 

6. Polyester microfibres are released every time polyester clothes are washed 

Tiny bits of polyester that shed from our clothes account for 85% of all human-made debris found on shorelines around the world. In 2017, Greenpeace even found microplastics in the waters of the Antarctic.

7. It takes around 10–20,000 litres of water to produce a kilo of cotton

While cotton is biodegradable and not polluting to wash, it is one thirsty plant – using 10–20,000 litres of water, depending on where it’s grown. Producing a kilo of cotton, enough to create a t-shirt and jeans, sucks up as much water as one person drinks in 13 years, according to Oxfam.

8. Fabric production is responsible for 20% of all industrial water pollution annually 

Textile production generally requires chemicals which need to be diluted through washing, and eventually disposed of – making water pollution another huge issue. Look out for standards like “Oeko-Tex” that provide reassurance that health- and environment-harming compounds haven’t been used in the production of certified fabrics.

9. Growing cotton uses 18% of pesticide 25% of total insecticide worldwide 

According to the seminal fast fashion documentary from 2015, The True Cost, over 90% of cotton is genetically modified (GM) – and because of this, can be sprayed with chemicals that kill insects and other pests. This means huge amounts of insects – a vital part of many ecosystems, including those that enable food production – are destroyed to feed our fashion frenzy. Appallingly, 250,000 farmers in India have killed themselves due to the stress of debt from continually needing to buy GM seeds.

 

View this post on Instagram

Are so-called ‘sustainable influencers’ really saving the planet? Or, by promoting more consumerism, are they part of the problem? Writer @ajabarber joins us on Sat, 5pm, for a debate about the ethics of being a sustainable influencer. Full details at the link in our bio. #sustainableinfluencers #ethicalconsumerism #influencer #ethics #greenfriday #takebackblackfriday #blackfriday

A post shared by Green Friday (@greenfridayfestival) on Nov 27, 2019 at 6:45am PST

There’s no doubt that navigating the – increasingly plastic-filled – waters of fast fashion to buy sustainably and ethically is tricky. But this Black Friday, as the world wakes up to the climate emergency, smarter choices are ripe for the making.

Buying far less, spending a bit more on better quality garments, and supporting ethical brands are just a few ways to become a sustainability trendsetter.

Fast fashion will be a tough habit for our society to kick – not least because of low prices on days like Black Friday. But smart buying can not only save money in the long run – it can also help save the planet.

The post 9 reasons to quit fast fashion this Black Friday appeared first on Greenpeace UK.

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