Phil Hellmuth making a run for his Tenth WSOP Bracelet

The notorious poker player Phil Hellmuth is making a significant run to capture his tenth bracelet at this years World Series of Poker. He has come so close and he is now sitting at the final table in the $1,000 No Limit Hold'em rebuy event. He is one bracelet behind the living legend Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan for the all-time bracelet winners. Phil is a tremendous poker player but his reputation as a poker player has been hurt a little bit in the past by his antics on and off the poker tables. Phil Hellmuth seems to have simmered down a little bit and that will be a good thing. He will still lose it when he takes a bad beat, and he will always think that he is above and beyond the best poker player in the world. To me that's not a bad thing as confidence is a major factor in demonstrating your poker ability. The brash confidence that Hellmuth shows can at often times be very frustrating for the other poker players at his table but at times that will work in Hellmuth's favor.

Play will resume at 2pm Vegas Time today and as it stands right now Phil Hellmuth is the chip leader going to the final table. It would definitely be nice to see Hellmuth put his name ontop of the all time bracelet winners list.

This years World Series of Poker has seen a lot of first time winners and the excitement level continues to get bigger with each passing day as the Main Event approaches. We'll have to wait and see how it all shakes down.

PokerStars joins forces with Aston Martin Racing Team

If there wasn't enough advertising in poker already, well now PokerStars has branched out even further to enhance their product by joining forces with the Aston Martin Racing Team. This is definitely a solid move for this company and it is only going to further enhance their spot as the leader in the poker industry. With the new laws being brought down pretty hard in North America to ban online wagering, PokerStars knows that they had better hit up the other markets and what better market to hit up than car racing. Racing is such a huge force in Europe and the PokerStars brand is going to be seen all over the racing world. Smart move by PokeStars. One thing is for sure, there will be a major PokerParty if one of these cars happens to cross the finish line first. PokerStars continues to get one step ahead of everybody else and it is no surprise to anyone that they have crossed the finish line first by hitting up this type of industry.

Gavin Smith runs the tables at the Mansion

Gavin Smith continues to make tremendous strides in his professional poker career as he just recently won the Mansionpoker.net Pro-Am challenge. This poker tourney drew some of the biggest names in the game. At first Gavin had to make it through the qualifying table which was a daunting task in its own right since he had to go up against the likes of Tony G, Scott Fischman, Mike Gracz, Marcel Luske to name a few. This was all to get to the final table which featured three professional poker players and three amateur poker players. The other pro's at the final table were Todd Brunson and John Gale. Gavin Smith's victory earned him a nice little prize of $500 grand. Not bad for a few days work. By the way this event was just aired on Fox Sports Net as part of a four hour show. Mansion Poker is quickly making a name for itself in the poker industry. They just recently went live and they are making a major impact with all the tremendous shows and opportunities they are providing poker players with. Look for MansionPoker.net to continue to rise through the ranks!

Don't forget to check out the latest PokerParty action at the WSOP.

An Italian PokerParty

The Italians had a big Sunday yesterday and I'm not just talking about the Italian soccer team that won the World Cup I'm also talking about Max Pescatori as he won his first World Series of Poker bracelet. He took home the first prize in the $2,500 No Limit Event. You can surely see that the Italians would have had a World Cup after party and in Vegas there was surely to be the same, and you can throw in a serious PokerParty to go along with it. This years World Series has been one of excitement thus far and there has been a tremendous mix of rookies and veterans taking home the bracelets. This is only going to continue to be exciting to watch and let's see if the veterans can take down the rookie poker players.

In other news, Todd Brunson has introduced "Team Brunson" at this years World Series of Poker. Team Brunson will compete in every televised World Series of Poker Event. Todd Brunson hand picked each poker player to be a part of this team. Members of Team Brunson are: Cyndi Violette, Max Pescatori (just one his first WSOP bracelet), Hoyt Corkins, David Levi, Sam Grizzle, Dewey Tomko, Jennifer Leigh, Marco Traniello, Jeffrey Freedman, and Thomas Franklin. These teams are becoming ever more popular and I'm sure you will start to see more and more of these as the years progress. You could probably start to see tournaments starting up to have a team versus team event. This would be a great idea and a lot of fun to watch as you would have two star studded teams battling it out. Stay tuned for further poker stories and rumors.

Will Dutch Boyd pay back the money he owes now that he won an event!

Russ "Dutch" Boyd has won his first ever World Series of Poker bracelet, but more importantly he won $425,000 and what is he to do with those winnings. If you remember all the madness that was going on in the poker world a few years back when Dutch Boyd and Pokerspot.com hit rock bottom, its time for that to reappear. It will be interesting to see if he does in fact pay back those players that lost money on his site due to his inability to run an efficient business. I guess time will tell but it is definitely a story to keep posted on.

For those that don't remember what happened, here is a little reminder from this great article written by Eric Rosenberg:

Russ "Dutch" Boyd to Open a New Online Card Room

The former owner of the now defunct PokerSpot.com has announced plans to open another online card room, a move that is getting strange looks from much of the poker playing community.

This story begins on August 17, 2000, when a post from "WJR" appeared on the poker newsgroup, rec.gambling.poker (RGP), stating that he was having trouble receiving his cashout from PokerSpot.com, a new online poker room. Shortly after, the post was replied to by Russ Boyd, CEO of PokerSpot. Boyd wrote, "...we did not receive your cashout request. I am not sure why, and we are still investigating, but we have no intention of keeping your money. This is a very isolated incident, and I think you'll find very few complaints regarding our customer service."

Ahh, but as time would tell, this was not an "isolated incident" and there were not "very few complaints", there were many.

The posts on RGP started to build up. One after another complaining (and warning others) that their cashouts were not getting processed. And just as quickly as the complaints rolled out, so did the excuses from PokerSpot support, excuses like, "We are reworking our entire cash out system, and this has delayed all cash outs by a week or two."

One PokerSpot member, John Buchanan, who played under the username "MS Sunshine", claimed that Russ Boyd and PokerSpot owed him and his wife "over $56,000".

What was going on at PokerSpot? Did Russ Boyd and company run off with the money? The players wanted to know.

In February of 2001, Russ Boyd finally came forward with another address to RGP:

"As many of you are aware, we've been faced with some recent problems at Pokerspot. ... Due to a situation with Net Pro Ltd., the company that until recently processed our credit card deposits, a large amount of our funds, which includes player funds, has been stalled." Boyd went on to say, "As far as money owed to players, Pokerspot will make good on all pending cashouts."

But PokerSpot never did "make good" on all pending cashouts as Boyd promised. Some that did receive checks were out of luck when they reported that their checks failed to clear the bank.

In a recent email interview, Boyd said, “Net Pro told us that they hadn’t gotten the funds that they processed for us from their bank.” He says that after six weeks, Net Pro eventually avoided his calls and PokerSpot never saw any of the money that players had deposited. Boyd went on to tell us that many of the 1000 or so players were able to charge back their credit cards, but there was no way for them to claim any winnings that may have occurred.

This was not a new story. In fact, it was similar to the post that he had made in February 2001 on RGP. Boyd says that he is aware that much of the poker community doubts his story, “A lot of people naturally assume that I took all of that money and partied, buying a big house in the Caribbean and breast implants for a blonde girlfriend. But that isn’t true. When Pokerspot failed, it ruined me. I didn’t have a way to pay my rent, I didn’t have a job anymore, and I had no idea how I was going to turn it all around.”

Boyd says that he had filed a law suit against Net Pro to try and recover the funds, but claims that the company was judgment proof, “They didn’t have any money to collect.”

In our interview, Boyd never did discuss why he wasn’t up front with the players in the first place. He did not mention the excuses about not receiving cashout requests or his customer support team saying that the system was being reworked. Now, nearly three and a half years after we heard the first complaint about PokerSpot, Boyd is trying to get back into the online poker spotlight with the launch of a new card room called RakeFree.com.

While working as a consultant to a sportsbook who wanted to implement poker tables, Boyd says that he came up the new idea of a rake free card room, “I tried to get the sportsbook behind it, but they didn’t see the business sense in giving up a potential $50 million a year in rakes. But I thought it had a lot of potential, so I came back to the states to work on it in May.”

While the idea may have potential, Boyd realizes that he has an uphill battle to retake his place in the online poker world. Boyd said, “I can’t promise that Rakefree.com is going to be successful. I have a lot of critics who have made it clear that they would never play [at] a site I was involved in.”

Having graduated from law school when he was barely old enough to legally play poker, some believe that Russ Boyd is boy genius. He never did tell us whether he thought he was a that was true or not, but he did say, “I sometimes get real moments of clarity that even surprise myself.”

Perhaps it was one of those moments of clarity when Boyd tried to put himself in the shoes of his critics and said, “If I was on the outside looking in, I’d be skeptical too. And I wouldn’t be rushing to deposit money at Rakefree.com.

Article by Eric Rosenberg



Here are some commments on the subject over at 2+2.

Has anything been done on this situation to rectify it or has it slipped through the cracks. With all of this new found money that Dutch Boyd has earned thanks to his performance at the 2006 World Series of Poker thus far, it looks to me as though he has a little bankroll now to pay back all those that are still owed some money from the days of pokerspot.com. Dutch Boyd said in his own blog that he would do what he could to pay those back. Let's see if he does what he said he would do. Or is this just another broken promise. We'll have to wait and see how it all shakes down.

Phil Hellmuth All-Time WSOP Cashes Leader

Phil Hellmuth is known for a lot of things, some good and some bad. This past weekend he became the WSOP's all-time cashes leader by cashing in for the 50th time. Phil Hellmuth is a tremendous poker player and it is probably a shame that he is more known for his outbursts than he is for his ability to play poker.

Hellmuth finished in 67th place (out of 2,776 poker players) in the $1500 No Limit Hold'em event. I'm sure he had something to say as he made his way away from the tables and into the parking lot. One thing is for certain, he is a tremendous poker player and he is fun to watch whether or not you like him.

In other news, Dutch Boyd has made a major impact on the poker world at this years WSOP as he collected his first World Series of Poker Bracelet and restoring his name and the Crew back into the poker spotlight. Dutch Boyd won the $2,500 Short Handed No-Limit event to capture his bracelet. Keep your eye on him for the remainder of the World Series of Poker as he has been playing real well of late, and the other poker pro's have him on their radar screens.