They then drew traffic from all around the world, and turned their site into an online poker room for players all across the world.  Most importantly at this point though, is that they are looking at a potential return to the United States market.  BWin and Party Poker recently merged earlier this year, have apparently been searching for potential partners or investors in the United States to work with.  It has been the CEO of Party Poker, Jim Ryan, who has been in the US looking for those investors.

Of course, this move would be made if and when online poker was legalized in the United States.  It is highly doubtful that Party Poker would attempt to make this type of move unless online poker was legal.  The idea of a massive online poker site like Party Poker moving back to the US is huge news for poker players.  One could assume that much of the online poker community in the US would choose Party Poker over many other sites to play on as well.

As final table play kicked off, Elio Fox led the way in chips.  It didn’t take long for the first elimination to come, as Max Silver was knocked out pretty early on.  After that, the wait for a player to be eliminated lasted quite a while, but they then started coming with Jake Cody going out in 7th, Shawn Buchanan in 6th, Dermot Blain in 5th, Brian Roberts in 4th, and Moritz Kranich in 3rd.  This all set up a nice heads up match between Fox and Chris Moorman.

Heads up play started with Fox having nearly a 2 to 1 chip lead over his opponent, and just continued to build it from there.  Heads up play went on for a good while, before Moorman pushed his remaining chips in with A-7.  Unfortunately he was out kicked by Fox, who was holding A-10, and dodged any kind of bad beat to eliminate Moorman in 2nd place, and win his gold bracelet.

This sent Fox home with the €1,400,000 grand prize, and Moorman took home a nice second place prize of €800,000 for outlasting 591 other players.

While Day 1a of the Main Event drew in 310 players, and Day 1b featured 283 players, the 593 total players were far more than enough to knock off the overall attendance record.  But what’s even more impressive than the impressive total number of players, is the fact that the winner of the entire event will now take home a very nice payday of €1.4 million.

Overall, 64 players will make it into the cash at this event, and it seems that there are quite a few players who are well on their way to making a push for the title.  There were quite a few players who ended both days with over 100k in chips, with Day 1a featuring players like Ben Lamb, Johnny Chan, Carlos Mortensen, Will Failla, Darren Elias, Chris Moorman, Leo Boxell, Emil Patel, and Chad Brown all passing the impressive mark.  Day 1b featured the likes of Robert Mizrachi, Victor Ramdin, Tony G, McLean Karr, Tommy Vedes, and Alexander Kostritsyn all going over 100k in chips as well.

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.