Jason Mercier beat back a tough field of 85 poker players to take down the PokerStars EPT London £1 Million Showdown. If you think I’m exaggerating about how tough it was, think Phil Ivey, Scotty Nguyen, David Negreanu, David Benyamine and Gus Hansen. Let’s make it even tougher. Mercier had to go heads up against WSOP Europe Main Event winner John Juanda. Yes, he really earned this one.

John Juanda started building his stack of chips when he busted our Isaac Haxton who bet the farm with 8-8. Unfortunately for Haxton, Juanda was holding pocket rockets and even hit a set on the turn. Haxton finished in sixth place for £103,000. Scotty Nguyen was the next victim of Juanda’s poker rush. Nguyen moved all-in after Juanda raised with Kh-9h. Nguyen called with A-10 but found himself in trouble when the flop came Jc-7h-6h, giving Juanda really great outs. Although the A on the turn helped Nguyen’s cause, the river was a J of hearts, giving Juanda a flush. Nguyen finished in fifth with £137,000.

Mercier sent Peter Jetten home in fourth place (£189,000) when his pocket twos won a coin flip against Jetten’s A-J. Juanda, however, continued his fierce poker game by taking out Michael Watson who ended up in third place with £241,000. This left Mercier and Juanda in heads up.

Juanda had a strong lead against Mercier as he had 1,185,000 in chips over Mercier’s 536,000. But on the very first hand, Mercier evened the scored by doubling up with his Qs-Js and hitting a J on the river card after calling Juanda’s pre-flop all in re-raise with Ah-2c.

In the final hand, Mercier moved all-in with K-Q. Juanda called and was ahead with his A-J but this ended soon enough with Mercier flopping the nut straight right on the flop. Juanda had to be content with second place and £327,000. Jason Mercier, on the other hand, took home £516,000 and the title of EPT London Champ.

It’s not as though online poker doesn’t have its hand full thanks to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Now, thanks to fears of global economic instability that are emerging due to fears of a prolonged U.S. recession, some poker sites are left with no other choice but to close down. Duplicate Poker is the latest online site to buck under the pressure and halt operations altogether.

Players who play at Duplicate Poker will find an apologetic and sad farewell on the company’s homepage. The US-facing site explains that the economic crunch has rendered them unable to continue operations. Although Duplicate Poker formally closed down on October 5, 2008, the message was optimistic that the site could once again be up and running once the financial crisis is over. Hey, this could happen. Remember, Lazarus resurrected from the dead.

Duplicate Poker gained some popularity because of the site’s unique and unusual format. The site implemented a format that sought to remove luck from the equation and therefore, get around the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. What? Remove luck from a poker game? Is this really possible?

To do this, a game must be played on multiple tables where players are dealt the same hole cards and community cards. Player chips are refilled for each hand. To win, you must win more chips than the players dealt the same hands. Confusing? Maybe this is also a factor in the site’s demise.

Those who have money left in their accounts should not worry. Duplicate Poker isn’t planning to steal your poker money. Players can still check the amount of money left in their bankrolls and withdraw their balance through the homepage. For more information, visit http://www.duplicatepoker.com.

When an agency calls itself Poker Royalty, it will be hard-pressed to live up to its title. It’s a good thing that the high-profile agency for professional poker players is meeting expectations and working double-time to beef up its roster of clients. Poker Royalty’s newest client is David Chiu, considered by most as the most successful poker player that was born in China.

Players who sign up with Poker Royalty agree that they be represented for all their marketing and promotional needs. Ideally, this enables the players to ignore the gobbledygook that goes on around them and just focus on what is important—winning at the felt. Poker Royalty handles everything from mainstream media to commercial endorsements. We can assume they also get a pretty hefty cut for all their troubles.

It really shouldn’t be a surprise that Chiu was the next in line to join Poker Royalty. Poker is starting to attract a lot of attention in Asia and someone like Chiu can only strengthen the interest further. Chiu’s has won over $6 million dollars in tournaments. To add to an already glowing poker resume, Chiu has won four WSOP bracelets and a WPT championship. Just how good a poker player is he? He has cashed 44 times at the World Series of Poker. That should be proof enough.

Other poker pros signed up by Poker Royalty include Johnny Chan, Antonio Esfandiari, Gus Hansen, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Erick Lindgren, Evelyn Ng and Scotty Nguyen. The line-up is growing and if Poker Royalty keeps at it, anyone who wants to have anything to do with a major poker star might very well have to get through them.

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The possibility of Curlin facing Big Brown in the horse betting Breeders’ Cup Classic is not dead just yet. Curlin will be racing this Saturday in the Jockey Club Gold Cup as he attempts to top the $10 million dollar mark in career earnings, topping the all-time record of Cigar. After Saturday’s race, the connections of Curlin will decide where the horse will run next. Still a possibility is the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita on October 25th. Owner Jess Jackson is not ruling anything out at the moment. “I hate to repeat the mantra, but right now it’s one race at a time,” Jackson said, “After he tells us if he’s fit and ready, we’ll consider all options, including the Breeders’ Cup.”

The horse betting Breeders’ Cup Classic will be run on the Pro-Ride synthetic surface at Santa Anita Park. The question will be how well the surface does as the Santa Anita meet opens. Jackson lives in Northern California and has visited Santa Anita to look at the track. “It looks resilient and the times of the horses just working out are faster,” he said. “I think we’re going to see some records broken on this Pro-Ride. It may prove to be a great surface.”

It is possible that Curlin will ship to Santa Anita just to see if he likes the surface. “I really want to see Curlin race here (California) and the horse will tell us if he can take it,” Jackson said. “As a fan of racing, I’d love to run against the competition.”

Two other possibilities for Curlin are the Clark Handicap at Churchill Downs on Nov. 28 and the Japan Cup on Dec. 7th. “We may be in two of them,” Jackson said. “We’d invite Big Brown to join us in any race we show up in. I’m not trying to avoid Big Brown.” The question will be whether or not the two horses meet in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Jackson has said he will make the decision on the Breeders’ Cup within 10 days after Saturday’s Jockey Club Gold Cup. “Anybody that is overconfident about winning the Breeders’ Cup on an untested surface this year has to be concerned about their own horse,” he said.

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The Breeders’ Cup Classic is probably the last chance for Big Brown and Curlin to meet. Rumors have it that both horses will be retired at the end of the year although Jackson has said that if Big Brown continues to run he would consider letting Curlin continue. “If Big Brown would continue to run as a 4-year-old, I would be very tempted to run Curlin as a 5-year-old,” said Jackson.

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The 2008 Breeders’ Cup will be run at Santa Anita on October 24th and 25th over a new synthetic surface. The surface is a Pro-Ride surface that was installed over the summer and replaces the mess of a surface that Santa Anita had last year that wouldn’t drain and cost the track millions of dollars.

Training on the new surface has been going on for weeks and the reviews have been positive but the true tests begin when the meet begins on Wednesday. If the track continues to get positive reviews it could be huge because the owners of Curlin might be persuaded to race in the Breeders’ Cup Classic against Big Brown. If that race occurs it would be the biggest horse betting race in a long, long time.

Curlin is set to run this weekend in the Jockey Club Gold Cup as he attempts to pass Cigar and become the all-time money winner in horse racing betting history. The key for getting Curlin to race at Santa Anita will be a positive review of the new surface. “I hate to go out on a limb, because we haven’t raced on it yet - no one’s lost a race on it yet - but I’m very happy with it right now,” Ron Charles, Santa Anita’s president, said, “I’m excited about having a track that will perform well.”

The surface at Del Mar is Polytrack which has not received great reviews. The difference with Pro-Ride is that most of the surface is natural dirt. “Everything so far I like,” trainer Eoin Harty said. “It’s a very kind, forgiving surface, with a lot of bounce to it. When a horse puts his foot down, you wait 10 to 15 seconds, and the surface comes back.”

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Horsemen definitely seem to like the Pro-Ride surface better than Polytrack.

“It takes a little getting used to, but I haven’t had any problems with it,” trainer Jim Cassidy said. “I lost a ton of shoes at Del Mar. This has been very consistent. One thing I’ve noticed is early in the morning, with the dew, it’s tight. The sun makes it a little kinder, a little softer.”

There is definitely a lot riding on the new surface. The 2008 Breeders’ Cup is the highlight of the horse betting season. The most exciting two days of horse racing betting occurs in late October and if the new synthetic at Santa Anita is as good as advertised, the racing could be great.

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Thanks to the thousands of dollars that can be stored in online poker accounts, it is no wonder that the poker community is now the target of high-technology crime. Still, despite the stories you’ve heard about stolen passwords and account hackings, you never really think it could happen to you. Well, this story about notable pro Peter “Zupp” Jepsen may instill caution in your mind.

Danish pro Jepsen was sent an e-mail by a fraudster who pretended to be employed by OTW Media, a Swedish production company that filmed the highly-popular poker show, “The Game.” Jepsen’s interest was naturally aroused by the show’s interest in him (after all, the best way to get someone’s attention is to appeal to his vanity) and this resulted in an exchange of e-mails. In one e-mail, Jepsen was asked to visit www.otwmedia.com and open a file that was supposed to be in pdf format. Well, Jepson’s momma didn’t raise no fool because open seeing that it was an .exe file, Jepsen scanned the program and found out it was a Trojan virus that could very well steal his passwords.

A series of investigations determined that the otwmedia.com domain is not owned by the production company. Furthermore, OTW (who hosts its actual website at www.otw.se) has denied that it has contacted Jepsen at all. The plot thickens because a second domain was found which is believed to be an attempt to duplicate the Unibet site.

Why Jepsen? It looks like these wanna-be Ocean’s Eleven thieves actually bother to do their research. Jepsen, who by the way is most popular for winning the EPT3 Polish Open, won a highly-publicized, $500,000 pot at Full Tilt’s Poker $500/$1,000 game last September 2. Jepsen scooped up the second biggest pot ever won in an online poker site against Tom “durrrr” Dwan.

So let this serve as a warning to all poker players who wish their hard-earned winnings to be left untouched. The next time you receive suspicious e-mails or phone calls, it is always best to verify the source. Otherwise, you might find yourself suddenly without a bankroll and out of the game.

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While other poker sites are forced to shell out cash from their tills to meet tournament guarantees, PokerStars isn’t sharing in their woes entirely. In its second week, PokerStars’ 2008 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) is still drawing in players like bees attracted to honey—particularly the No-Limit Hold’em tournaments.

WCOOP Event # 23 had a $500,000 Guarantee. Although the NLHE tournament had a somewhat pricey $500 + $30 buy-in with one rebuy and one add-on, a total of 1,159 avid poker players entered the event. Over 800 rebuys and almost 1000 add-ons pumped up the pot even further, ensuring a prize pool that reached $1,460,000. You can be sure the both the players and PokerStars were happy when the final pot was almost a million dollars over the tournament guarantee.

With such a monster pot on the line, a lot of the poker pros we stalk decided to venture out into the online tournament world to grab a piece of the prize pie. And what do you know? A lot of them did well. Bertrand Grospellier took home $10,950 for 15th place. Greg Raymer joined the fun and finished in 89th place for $2,482. Humberto Brenes also joined the online poker frenzy and came in at a respectable 140th place ($2,190).

Two separate deals were made in the final table. When the dust settled and only four players remained standing, a four-way deal was organized. When ILAN17 and soon after, imeasy2read busted out for $169,804 each, ddrufnek and luckyuli found themselves heads-up. The two players negotiated another deal to revise the previous agreement. In the end, it was ddrufnek who triumphed with $194,902 in his PokerStars’ account. No tears for Luckyuli since his second place finish just made him $184,902 richer.

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Hoyt Corkins was away on vacation for a month when his Las Vegas home located in an upscale, gated Spanish Trails community was broken into by thieves who took their sweet time searching through his belongings and stealing his valuables. Poker fans would be interested to know that some of the things stolen from Hoyt include his World Poker Tour bracelet and two World Series of Poker bracelets. Hoyt won the WSOP bracelets at the 1992 WSOP at the $5K buy-in Pot Limit Omaha tournament and the 2007 WSOP at the $2.5K No-Limit Hold’em tournament.

Not satisfied by their poker haul, the robber then made off with Corkins’ customized 2005 Jeep, Yukon Denali (with Doyle’s Room branding), a white Harley Davidson motorcycle and a bunch of poker chips from popular casinos such as the Bellagio. The thieves were also able to get a credit card in his name by using Corkins’ office phone. In a statement to Las Vegas Channel 8 News, Corkins revealed that his losses were over $100,000 and still climbing.

In an interview, Corkins revealed that he was devastated with the robbery. He also asked the assistance of the poker community to assist in the recovery of the items lost. Since most of the personal items taken are one of a kind, the police are optimistic that the items once sold can be easily traced.

Concerned poker players who have information about the items or the crime itself should contact the Las Vegas Metro Police Department at (702) 828-3111. This should also serve as a lesson to everyone that no one is immune from this sort of crime—even if you’re considered one of the best poker players in the world.

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Ruthenberg started the final table just shy of chip lead (1,204,000) coming in second after Martin Nielsen (1,229,000). But anything can happen in poker and true enough, it was Nielsen who ended up being eliminated first when Jason Mercier flipped open a better two pair. Samuel Chartier followed Nielsen to the exits just moments later in seventh place after he was eliminated by Fintan Gavin.

EPT San Remo champion Jason Mercier ran out of luck when he pushed with a pair of sevens against Fintan Gavin’s pocket queens. The board didn’t help and Mercier was eliminated in sixth place. Gavin continued his winning streak by taking out Dren Ukella who failed to make his nut flush draw. Urkella had to be content with a fifth place finish.

Daniele Mazzia’s two pair was no match to Sebastian Ruthenberg’s straight after Ruthenberg and Davidi Kitai both called his all-in and checked down the board. Mazzia’s fourth place finish earned him €351,000. Ruthenberg then took Davidi Kitai out when his pocket fours held up against A,Q of diamonds. Kitai won €455,000 for third place.

When the dust cleared, it was Ruthenberg against Gavin in heads up. Unfortunately for Gavin, his time in the spotlight was short as Ruthenberg used a nearly 5:1 chip advantage to win his first EPT title in just three hands. Gavin settled for a second place finish and €792,000.

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U.S. poker player Yevgeniy Timoshenko bested 257 entrants to the APT Macau Main Event to win first prize and $500,000 in prize money. The 20-year old Timoshenko, known as ?Jovial Gent? in online play, was in full control of the last stages of the game as he eliminated all but one of the eight who made it to the final table.

The Asian Poker Tour Macau event was held at the Galaxy StarWorld Casino. The event was starved of players and the number of players was not sufficient to create the guaranteed $1.5 million prize pool. No worries because APT kept its promise and honored the guarantee.

At the start of the final table, Michael Pedley moved his chips all-in. No surprise there because he had the shortest chip stack. Quang Nguyen booted him out by drawing a nut flush taking chip lead. Unfortunately for Nguyen, this would be short-lived because it was Timoshenko?s show from that moment on.

Timoshenko then proceeded to pick off the players one by one, starting with Chong Wing Cheong and then followed by Quang Nguyen himself. In the next hand, Timoshenko then sent Julio Diaz to the rail. Then followed the departure of Day 2 chip leader Casey Kastle, courtesy of Timoshenko again who dealt another back-to-back elimination by taking out Rober Karian in the next hand. With Karian finishing in third place with $126,000, there was only Joon Hee Yeah standing between Timoshenka and a victory.

Timoshenko had an almost 10:1 chip advantage over Yeah and although the latter put up a fight, Timoshenko was just too strong. Timoshenko clinched the win with pocket Queens leaving Yeah with $250,000 for second place.

Popular poker pros present at the tournament included Doyle Brunson, Todd Brunson, Johnny Chan, J.C. Tran, Huck Seed, John Juanda and Mel Judah. The next APT event will be held in Seoul, South Korea.