Romanello was in Event #2 of the tournament, and was sitting pretty heading into the final day of the event.  He was not able to keep up the pace though and started slowly; but still managed to grind it out for a fifth place finish.

He has already captured the first two wins, with a 2011 World Poker Tour Bratislava win, and a 2010 European Poker Tour Prague win.  The World Series of Poker offers over 60 events each year, and it seems like it may only be a matter of time before Romanello is able to capture the Triple Crown.  Romanello will have a few other chances this year if he decides to continue playing at the WSOPE as well.

In the end of the event, it was Andrew Hinrichsen who took down the event and the gold bracelet.  Hinrichsen also had a strong 23rd place finish at the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas this year.

This ranking is based off of many things, and not just tournaments.  It includes tournament play, cash games, and both live and online poker play as well.  The idea behind “The Nuts” is to rank the players who are playing best CURRENTLY, not all of all-time.  The voting panel is made of many big names in poker, and it’s more than just a list that was made up and posted on the internet.

One could assume that part of the reason why Ivey was dropped from the list, was the fact that he didn’t play in any World Series of Poker events at all.  He simply seems to have distanced himself from poker a bit lately, and while he has been playing some; it hasn’t been nearly as much as players like Daniel Negreanu, who is fresh off of 15 cashes at the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP).

The player who replaced Ivey in the top ten was Jake Cody, who recently earned the award for the “Best Tournament Player” from the British Poker Awards, and he also took down poker’s Triple Crown by winning a WSOP bracelet, a WPT title, and a EPT title as well.

This means that states such as Oklahoma and Connecticut, which each have over 50 Native American casinos will be a huge part of this tour; and other states such as Arizona, Wisconsin, and Washington each have around 20 as well.  Some of the most popular stops on the tour will most likely include the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods, which are one of the many located in Connecticut.

One of the main drawing points to these events will be the fact that a lot of the Native American casinos around the US have a legal gambling age of only 18, which would allow many more players to buy in to these events in comparison to the bigger tournaments like the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour.

The first event at the NACPT will be at the Choctaw Casino Resort in Oklahoma, which is one of the places that features that legal gambling age of 18.  There will be events that start at as little as $125 to buy-in to and also events that are $300 to buy-in to; with the Main Event being a $1,000 entry.  This event kicks off on December 1st, and will run through the 11th of the month.

Currently, the NACPT has scheduled the event at Choctaw as the first and only event to this point; with other events to be added along the way.

It was actually expected that this event could should break the record after the first day drew in 381 entrants.  The second day brought in 390 players, and as incredible as those numbers are for a WSOPE event; there were only 105 players still remaining in total from both days.  A few of the names that stood out among the players who were still remaining, are Eoghan O’Dea, Dan Shak, Matthew Waxman, Richard Toth, Toby Lewis, Randy Dorfman, McLean Karr, Freddy Bonyadi, Brian Roberts, Eric Cajelais, Dan Kelly, all from Day 1A.  Day 2B featured players like Vanessa Selbst, Mario Ho, Scotty Nguyen, Peter Jetten, Roberto Romanello, Kevin MacPhee, Aaron Jones, Lars Bonding, and Tyler Kenny all making the cut.

It’s interesting that so many players bought into this event, but with the smaller buy-in, mixed with the fact that this is the first year that the buy-ins are measured in Euros (which are worth less than the British Pound which was used before); it is understandable that they have featured so many players having interest in the events.

Spindler is an excellent all-around poker player, and has been big in both the online and live poker world.  In terms of live poker play, he is now close to $3 million in tournament earnings in total.  Back in 2009 at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, Spindler finished third and took home an impressive $1.1 million.  He also has a score of $469k at the €25k EPT High Roller event back in 2010.

The final table of the EPT London Main Event featured some excellent players, and the top six of the final eight players brought home a six figure payday.  After O’Dwyer in 2nd, Andre Klebanov finished in 3rd (£265,000), Juan Manuel Pastor in 4th (£200,000), Mattias Bergstrom in 5th (£155,000), Kevin Iacofano in 6th (£120,000), Martins Adeniya in 7th (£86,350), and Miroslav Benes in 8th (£64,000).

While the final table featured some excellent play, all eyes were on Spindler in the end, who said that his biggest focus was saving money for down the road; in hopes that he could “earn enough money playing poker that I’d never have to worry for the rest of my life.”

Martins Adeniya currently has 4,736,000 chips, and is over 1 million chips ahead of his closest competition, which is Mattias Bergstrom with 3,620,000.  Play was down to the final eight players after Adria Balaguer was knocked out in ninth place, but took home a solid £45,000.

Tomorrow’s final table will kick off in the middle of the day with a few players who have over $1 million in live tournament earnings like Benny Spindler, and Stephen O’Dwyer; and some players who have made a total of one final table in their careers, and have won less than $40k in live tournaments, such as Mattias Bergstrom and Miroslav Benes.

Another bit of interesting info about the final eight players, is that three of them were from PokerStars; with one being a Team PokerStars Pro (Juan Manuel Pastor), one qualifying for the event from an online qualifier (Benes), and one just a player on Stars (Spindler).  The other players who are remaining in the event are Andre Klebanov, and Kevin Iacofano.  The chip stacks range between 370k (Benes), all the way to the chip leader Adeniya.  Keep and eye out for the updated final table results, and to see who takes home the £750,000 first place prize.

Veronica Dabul and Leo Fernandez had won over $700,000 playing Craps during a one month stay in Las Vegas, until they were arrested and charged for “sliding” by the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

Sliding is basically when a player will manipulate one of the dice that they roll in their hand, which eliminates a good amount of the randomness in the rolls during the game of Craps.  So basically players aren’t randomly throwing the dice, they are “sliding” them across the table.  Sliding will not only affect the houses odds, but also will affect the other players at the tables who don’t know that sliding is occurring.

The exact edge of sliding is not known, but it has been said that someone who is an excellent slider can change the odds of rolling double sixes from 36 to 1, all the way to 6 to 1.

Dabul was released from custody after two days and Fernandez was released after a week, but their biggest issue could come from the large number of potential casinos who could ban them from playing there.  This could keep them from playing in some major poker events in the future.

To make a long story short, these two men are involved in an interesting spot; as Eli is being charged for convincing Campos’ bank, SunFirst Bank, to process and help them with their online poker transactions.  This bank worked with Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, and Absolute Poker.  The bank is located in St. George, Utah, and the fact that this bank did this; is completely illegal under UIGEA legislation.

Elie’s attorney was one of the first to write a statement about the game of poker, stating that, “The players compete against each other on a level playing field, using an array of talents and skill to prevail over their opponents.”  It is surprising that this actually hasn’t been the argument of more people involved, and it could potentially be a huge part of the argument for people involved in this side of the indictments after Black Friday.

Keep an eye on this situation as there are still the other nine people who were indicted by the DOJ.  On top of that, the ongoing situation with online poker itself will continue to draw a ton of attention in upcoming months as well.

One thing that the new investors will still have to deal with is the Department of Justice after Black Friday.  Only time will tell how it will play out with the DOJ.  Tapie stated that they plan on talking to the DOJ next week though.  Tapie seems to be hoping that a portion of the seized money would be used to pay out the players, and that the investors would only have to pay a smaller amount of the money that is owed.

Another statement that Tapie made which drew some attention was that the group has plans to keep the Full Tilt Poker brand, and they feel that they can turn it around and make Full Tilt a major player in the online poker game once again.  He said that there is still a good ways to go before the deal is fully completed, but he said that they were planning to have the online poker site back up and running by January of 2012.

Keep an eye on the news on Full Tilt Poker, especially if you have money that was still locked up online after Black Friday.

Party Poker will be giving away prizes such as five iPad 2′s, and ten regular iPod’s.  On top of that, the satellites that players can win their way into will be offered to only Party Poker Challenge players also.  The last event game out an impressive 600 total prizes, and the prizes aren’t incredibly hard to win either!

Badges will be given out for many different things, ranging between both skill and luck.  You could win a badge for something like playing 300 hands per day over 5 days, or one for limping with pocket Ace’s and winning the hand, or even one for winning a pot when there are more than 4 players involved in a showdown.

You’ll be able to earn the badges anytime between the 29th of September to the 29th of October, and players can only win badges and prizes from PartyPoker.com.  Party Poker is currently in the top three in terms of online poker traffic, and they offer some of the best cash game play, and also best guaranteed online poker tournaments as well.  Regardless of what type of poker player that you are, Party Poker will have you covered.