March 4, 2008
The schedule for the 2008 Arizona State Poker Championship was announced a few weeks ago by its official host, Casino Arizona (at Talking Stick). The tournament will have a $650,000 Guaranteed prize pool, with an additional $50,000 already added. Mind you, that prize pool is based on the assumption that all 600 seats will sell out. This will probably not be an issue considering the event has sold out weeks in advance in the past.
The $1,000+$50 buy-in tournament will no doubt attract Arizona’s top players, as well as many traveling poker pros looking to claim the title of Arizona’s Official Poker Champion. 1st place alone will nab a little over $190,000! Below is the official starting days of the event, as well as information on satellites that will be played a few month prior to the opening deal.
300 players 9:00.am. August 16th play down to 30
300 players 9:00.am. August 17th play down to 30
60 Players 11:00a.m. August 18th for Championship
For more detailed information on the event, as well as chip allocations and blind levels, please visit Casino Arizona Poker.
Posted in Arizona Poker Tournaments 
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March 3, 2008
In a post written by user ‘that_pope’ on Casino Arizona Forums, it looks as though Casino Arizona will be building special player boxes for its higher limit players. The boxes, similar to those used at many popular casinos like the Bellagio in Las Vegas, will allow players to store their chips and extra cash after each session at C.A., as well as be able to pick them up or cash them out whenever they please. The boxes should be available within the next few months, and you can start putting your name onto the waiting list now.
“This is a very welcome change, since walking to your car, driving home usually at dark, and going to your house regularly with $5000+ is not all that safe. Now there will be boxes we can store chips and cash and not have to stop at the cashier every night, just store purple chips and maybe a rack or two of browns in there to be ready.
This is very positive, and should improve the safety of high limit players,” says ‘that_pope,’ who is a frequent high-limit cash player at Casino Arizona.
Posted in Arizona Casino News No Comments »
March 2, 2008
One of my other sites that I’ve been neglecting over the months is finally ready to be open to the public for a little test run. My high stakes poker blog site is now officially public and ready for Google to crawl, and I’m pretty excited about its potential. I just wanted to make a quick little post on it so everyone visiting AZGambler can check out reports on high stakes games or to jut get their daily Gambling News fix. Thanks for taking the time to read this…hope you enjoy the new site - it will be under construction over the next few weeks, but for now it’ll at least provide some decent content for those taking the time to read it.
Posted in AZGambler Site News No Comments »
February 29, 2008
Phil Ivey finally got World Poker Tour redemption - FINALLY!
The player that most people in the gambling arena regard as the greatest living poker player in the world won his first-ever WPT event, taking down the 2008 L.A. Poker Classic Thursday evening.
It only took 8 final tables before Ivey way able to secure the one thing that was missing in his impressive resume - a World Poker Tour title. He battled his way through the final 5 opponents, eventually taking out 3 consecutive players in the last 4 hands to win the tournament and a cool $1.6 million.
Phil Ivey battled Quinn Do for a whopping 2 hands, before Phil mowed over Quinn’s two pair with a made full house on the turn - making it one of the quickest heads-up showdowns in major poker tournament history.
Other notable players at the televised final table were Phil Hellmuth and Nam Le, both of which have had great success in both the WSOP and WPT. It is not yet known when this event will be aired on television.
Posted in General Poker News No Comments »
February 22, 2008
NBC has released the list of names of players who will be competing on the 2008 season of the National Heads Up Poker Championships. The list is compiled of players who have confirmed that they will be participating in the event.
All of the former champions of NBC’s Heads-Up will be returning including Phil Hellmuth and Paul Wasicka. A few young new faces will be showing up for this season to try their luck. Scott Clements, Tom Dwan, Brian Townsend and Daniel Schreiber will be taking a break from their online games to compete in live play. This has become a new trend as successful online players are moving toward live play. More and more young players are coming out of the woodwork and winning or placing high in live events. They seem to be making more of a name for themselves when they move to live play because you get more recognition.
Many celebrities will also be in attendance. I must admit I really like watching the celebrities play. As normal people we tend to view them as their “characters” and when we see them in real surroundings it can be very entertaining. A few celebrities set to attend this year are: Jason Alexander, Jennifer Tilly, Don Cheadle, Shannon Elizabeth and Gabe Kaplan.
Jerry Yang, 2007 WSOP Main Event Winner, will also be playing in this year’s event. He has not been active in playing much since his win so it will be interesting to see how he does. The 2008 NHPC will start on February 28th and will continue for three days. This year Shana Hiatt, who normally does the sideline reporting for NBC, will be replaced by Leeann Tweeden. Hiatt is pregnant and will unable to perform her duty.
Complete List of Participants:
Alexander, Jason
Antonius, Patrik
Bellande, Jean-Robert
Benyamine, David
Brown, Chad
Brunson, Doyle
Brunson, Todd
Chan, Johnny
Cheadle, Don
Clements, Scott
Cloutier, T.J.
Cunningham, Allen
Deeb, Freddy
Duke, Annie
Dwan, Tom
Edler, Bill
Elezra, Eli
Elizabeth, Shannon
Esfandiari, Antonio
Farha, Sam
Ferguson, Chris
Fischman, Scott
Forrest, Ted
Gold, Jamie
Gowen, Clonie
Greenstein, Barry
Grizzle, Sam
Hachem, Joe
Hansen, Gus
Harman, Jennifer
Hellmuth, Phil
Hershiser, Orel
Ivey, Phil
Juanda, John
Kaplan, Gabe
Laak, Phil
Lederer, Howard
Lindgren, Erick
Little, Jonathan
Matusow, Mike
Moneymaker, Chris
Mizrachi, Michael
Negreanu, Daniel
Nguyen, Scotty
Pham, David
Raymer, Greg
Rousso, Vanessa
Schneider, Tom
Schreiber, Daniel
Seed, Huck
Seidel, Erik
Singer, David
Smith, Gavin
Tilly, Jennifer
Townsend, Brian
Tran, J.C.
Tran, Kenny
Wasicka, Paul
Williams, David
Yang, Jerry
Thomas Kelly (Caesars Palace Qualifier 1)
Hooman Nikzad (Caesars Palace Qualifier 2)
TBD (Online Qualifier)
TBD (additional player)
Posted in General Poker News No Comments »
January 21, 2008
Bertrand Gospellier - also known as ‘ElkY’ online - took down the 2008 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure earlier in the week. It couldn’t have been any more perfect for the man who was PokerStars’ first-ever SuperNova status’d player, and obviously one of the most feared tournament players in the world…
Was it any more fitting that a member of Team PokerStars take down the very tournament that bears its namesake? Yes…yes…a thousand times, yes. Here’s the post written on the PokerStars Blog after ElkY’s big win:
“Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier wins the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, and $2 million.
Hafiz Khan eliminated in second place, winning $1,094,976
End of the road – That’s it. The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is done. At the end, it was a bluff gone awry for Hafiz Khan in a brief heads-up joust. ElkY, with the chip lead, raised 500,000 pre-flop; Hafiz pushed all in from the big blind. ElkY dwelt for a moment, but not quite as long as you might think for a $2 million decision. Obviously he had some read of Hafiz and called, flipping 8-8. Khan was caught and meekly tabled 9-3. The board bricked and ElkY’s eights were good. The Team PokerStars Pro member from France is the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure champion. Bien, bien ElkY!”
Posted in General Poker News No Comments »
January 10, 2008
Image courtesy of PokerStarsBlog.com
After 4 grueling days of play, the final table of the 2008 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure has finally been set. The final group consists of some very solid online and live poker talents, most notably Team PokerStars player ‘ElkY’ and 2007 Cardplayer Player of the Year David “The Dragon” Pham. The event is currently being played as this post is being made and you can follow all the updates of the event at PokerStarsBlog.com. You can also find a live feed by downloading PokerStars today.
Here is the final table list and their chip stacks heading into today’s play:
David Pham 7,390,000
Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier 3,060,000
Joe Elpayaa 2,755,000
Haffiz Khan 2,560,000
Kris Kuykendall 2,150,000
Richard Fohrenbach 1,855,000
Craig Hopkins 1,770,000
Christian Harder 905,000
Posted in General Poker News No Comments »
January 9, 2008
Whew, it’s a New Year (2008, finally!) and I’ve been busy as hell it seems like. On top of attempting to finish AZGambler fully and actually market it more offline, I’ve been trying to work on my other sites and complete a lot of other freelance work. I’m also in the process of buying back my first site, www.PokerOwnage.com. It’s been a long process, but I’m hoping I can get better organized to finish all this shit and move on with getting everyone more updates and whatnot. I’m determined to fully complete a mini-network of sites here soon, and hire some writers to help me out with updates….cuz damn this is getting tiring sometimes, lol. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Hopefully more gambling news will be back on here starting this week! Take care!
Posted in AZGambler Site News 2 Comments »
January 3, 2008
Online poker ace Isaac Baron - better known as ‘westmenloAA’ - took home top honors in the race for the CardPlayer Online Player of the Year Award. In a suspenseful final week that saw his nearest competitor, Matt ‘ch0ppy’ Kay, close the gap to just 26 points, it was Baron that would emerge the winner. It was a tight race all the way to the very end, but it was Menlo’s big $200 rebuy win in the closing days that sealed the door shut on ‘ch0ppy.’
The OPOY Award recognizes the top online poker players in the world, and only counts certain large buy-in tournaments from each of the biggest online sites in the world (Stars, Full Tilt, Ultimate Bet, etc) in their points race. Baron started 2007 by winning the $500 Sunday Million for $255,000 - and since then he has really never looked back.
Here are the final standings for the 2007 Cardplayer OPOY Award:
Isaac “westmenloAA” Baron - 8,304 - $1,036,452
Matt “ch0ppy” Kay - 8,278 - $823,067
Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi - 6,676 - $615,419
James “P0KERPR0” Campbell - 5,938 - $616,616
Greg “DuckU” Hobson - 5,922 - $623,004
Luke “Bdbeatslayer” Vrabel - 5,880 - $541,447
“Andy McLEOD” - 5,840 - $537,512
Chad “lilholdem954” Batista - 5,814 - $767,559
Scott “SCTrojans” Freeman - 5,770 - $561,886
Posted in General Poker News No Comments »
]
] and won (1450) with four of a kind Queens
]
] and lost with a full house Aces full of Queens 
