Via a six-way chop, Karl Creazzo took down the first event of the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open — $400 Deep Stack No-Limit Hold’em for $146,829 — and he isn’t even old enough to play in most US card rooms. The 19-year-old primarily cash game player not only won all that money, but he did so playing in his first ever live poker tournament. And he beat out a field that included many grizzled poker veterans.

It’s official. After its return in 2023 following a 12-year hiatus, PokerStars has confirmed that The Big Game on Tour is back again this year, with more episodes to be filmed at the NAPT Las Vegas festival. Ten episodes of the show were filmed last year, with the likes of Phil Hellmuth, Maria Ho, Lex Veldhuis and Sam Grafton all taking part. The show features a lucky Loose Cannon who receives $50,000 and has to survive 150 hands playing $50/$100 with a table of poker pros, ambassadors, and celebrities.

The Destination RunGood Season Finale began with an over-the-top kickoff of its third-annual $1,000,000 guaranteed RGPS Main Event, a $2,500 buy-in tournament that attracted 455 entrants and offered up a $1,015,105. It concluded with another celebration atmosphere as Terrance Reid stood atop the heap after a three-way ICM chop, with him taking the lion’s share of $192,755! On his road to victory, Reid navigated through a field filled with some of the toughest players and then capped it off with a dominating final table performance that included World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker champions.

The latest instalment of the 888poker World Series of Poker docuseries was released over the weekend, and the 888poker team gear up to take on the WSOP Main Event. Eastwood Gets a Piece of Barone The episode kicks off with StreamTeam members Aaron Barone and Nick Eastwood flipping cards for swap percentages on their buy-ins. Should Eastwood turn over the highest card, the duo must swap 2% of each other. If it’s the middle card, they’ll exchange 1% and should the lowest card be flipped over, then the camera crew get a piece of Eastwood and Barone instead.

The cards were back in the air Monday night on PokerGO for Episode 2 of the newest High Stakes Poker season. Jennifer Tilly spent much of the session in some tough spots facing difficult decisions. When the episode began, picking up where the show left off last week, nosebleed cash game legend Andrew Robl had added on $150,000 in chips to match his initial starting stack. The previously mentioned players were joined in the game by Sameh Elamawy, Sean Dempsey, Justin Gavri, Bo Brownstein, and Japanese poker vlogger Masato Yokosawa.

Days after acquiring the World Series of Poker (WSOP) from Caesars Entertainment, GGPoker has announced the schedule of an online bracelet series that will take place later this month. The series begins Aug. 17 and runs until Sept. 30, with 33 bracelets to be awarded. Players in the United States are not eligible to compete unless they travel to Canada, Mexico, or another country where the poker site is available.

The Global Poker GOAT VI Main Event had a familiar champion in the Sweeps Coins (SC) tournament. A name Global Poker players are certainly becoming familiar with — Ryan “MrGoldenPair” Smoot. You might be thinking to yourself, didn’t this same player just win a major event on the social poker site just weeks ago? And your instinct would be correct. Smoot took down the Global Poker x PokerNews Cup last month for SC 30,000, and he’s done it again as the GOAT VI series, which began July 15, has come to an end.

Out of the 215 entrants recorded in the 2024 Marrakech Poker Open Main Event, nine players returned on Day 3 to compete at the final table. Four of the finalists were Spanish, dominating the top positions. Orey Canarinho emerged victorious, defeating his friend Aitor Cruz to claim the first-place prize of 348,500 MAD and the trophy. Germany’s Eduard Rau secured the third spot on the podium, earning 195,000 MAD. 2024 Marrakech Poker Open Main Event Results Place Player Country Prize (MAD) Prize (EUR) 1 Orey Canarinho Spain 348,500 MAD* €32,759 2 Aitor Cruz Spain 285,500 MAD* €26,837 3 Eduard Rau Germany 195,000 MAD €18,330 4 Juan Antonio Spain 150,000 MAD €14,100 5 Jesus Spain 115,000 MAD €10,810 6 Sonny Franco France 90,500 MAD €8,507 7 Abilio Silva Portugal 71,000 MAD €6,674 8 Kamal Jbirane France 55,000 MAD €5,170 9 Fabian Rolli Switzerland 43,000 MAD €4,042 *denotes a deal

Action has concluded in the $600 Kickoff Event here at the Maryland State Poker Championship hosted by Live! Casino & Hotel Maryland and sponsored by PokerStars. Nick Kocman has emerged victorious, earning his biggest score to date with a massive payout of $77,869. The six Day 1 starting flights saw a total 892 entries, 115 of which returned for Day 2. Kocman navigated through the sizable field on his path to capture a majority of the $456,704 prize pool, along with the two trophies to place on his mantle.

While the buy-in for the Grosvenor Poker Goliath may be a humble £200, it’s arguably the centrepiece of the United Kingdom’s poker scene. Each year, players from all over the UK and the world travel to Coventry, England, for one of the best-value tournaments around. Despite a £50 increase on the buy-in, a record-breaking field of 11,749 entries created a £1,879,840 prize pool, making this year’s instalment the biggest Goliath ever.

Federico Fellini’s classic 1960 film La Dolce Vita is a commentary on the “good life” of Italian cafe society and the flamboyant excess of Italy’s postwar elite. Today at the final table of the Merit Poker Dolce Vita Series $2,200 La Notte Degli Assi Main Event, it seemed like an Italian party in that same mould as four made it to the final five players. Then came an Israeli known only as “Dashinka” who spoiled all the fun and walked away with the trophy and $355,000 top prize.

Last week, PokerNews told you that Dave Krosky would be a star in this instalment of The Big Game on Tour, and from the latest episode, you’ll surely see why. The Las Vegas Entrepreneur brought the heat and made some out-of-the-box plays that will surely raise a few eyebrows. But despite his inexperience under the bright lights of the PokerStars feature table, Krosky showed no fear against the shiver of sharks looking to take a chunk out of his stack.

The Royal Card Club in Austin, Texas has a unique poker room concept that just might help bring more women into the game of poker. Lisa Pickell, VP of Operations and Business Development for the poker club, which opened in April, explained some of the challenges her business faces, and shared an optimistic view of the good it could do for the poker community. Bringing More Women into Poker Pickell, originally from New Jersey, is a longtime poker player.

Ongoing renovations to the famous Grosvenor Victoria Casino in London forced 888poker LIVE to switch to a new venue for the latest stop of the popular tour, with London’s loss being Manchester’s gain. The Grosvenor Casino Bury New Road is putting final preparations for 888poker LIVE Manchester, a 12-day festival running between August 14-25. Although 888poker has visited Manchester before, taking its new UK Poker League (UKPL) to the same venue, this marks the first time the 888poker LIVE proper stops in Manchester.

With the PokerStars2024 Maryland State Poker Championship underway, excitement is already building for the first-ever Pennsylvania State Poker Championship taking place Aug. 21-Sept. 8. The series, taking place at Live! Casino & Hotel Philadelphia, will feature over $1.1 million in guarantees and will culminate with a $2,200 buy-in Main Event with a $500,000 guarantee. PokerNews will be on-site covering the Main Event and will also be providing updates from other events including a $550 buy-in event with six starting flights and a $200,000 guarantee attached and a $1,100 guaranteed four-flight event with a $300,000 guarantee.

One of the top poker rooms in Las Vegas is gone, but only because it moved to another, more convenient location at Venetian. Poker pros, recreational players, casino executives, and even rapper Nelly were in attendance Thursday afternoon for the card room’s grand opening. Matt Berkey, Jamie Kerstetter, Maria Konnikova, and 2017 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champion Scott Blumstein stopped by to catch a glimpse of the new location.

The partnership between the Irish Poker Tour (IPO) and PaddyPower Poker continues on, and the tour’s next stop at The Green Isle Hotel, Dublin, is fast approaching. From August 23-25, €150,000 is guaranteed across the nine-event festival and is headlined by the €250 Main Event, which promises to pay out no less than €100,000 to those who make the money. There’s also plenty of extra value over the weekend poker fiesta as PaddyPower has added ten IPO Killarney packages as well as €5,000!

The PokerStars World Championship Of Online Poker (WCOOP) is online poker’s premier tournament series. Every player, from those just cutting their teeth in the poker world to elite-level professionals, dreams of becoming a WCOOP champion, thanks to the prestige of the series and, of course, the massive top prizes offered. The 2024 PokerStars WCOOP is scheduled to run from September 8 through October 2, and although the schedule is not yet finalized, PokerNews can provide details of something exciting to warm you up and prepare you for it.

Caesars Entertainment has today announced that they will be selling the iconic World Series of Poker Brand will be sold to NSUS Group Inc, a leading investment group and operators of leading online poker room GGPoker. According to a press release, the deal is set to be worth $500 million — $250 million in cash and a $250 million promissory note “due five years after the transaction’s closing date. The release also states that Caesars have secured the rights to continue hosting the WSOP’s flagship live tournament series at its Las Vegas properties for the next twenty years.

Poker content creator Frank “Frankie” Cucchiara had an eventful summer in Las Vegas that saw him running deep in World Series of Poker (WSOP) events and batting in big pots worth thousands of dollars in cash games across the Strip. The highs of the summer for Cucchiara, a PokerStarsambassador and member of the NextGen Poker crew, included a $7,000 cash game win and a run at a WSOP bracelet, while the lows included runner-runner bad beats and a $13,000 downswing.

In 2015, Felix Stephenson won the first legal Norwegian Poker Championships Main Event. The event in Norway, which kicks off Sept. 28, has become a huge deal and for more reasons than you might realize. The entire series runs through Oct. 2, and eight of the 29 events are open to international players. Last year’s festival had over 3,300 unique players, with 2,046 registered for the Main Event, a freezeout tournament.

The 2024 World Series of Poker (WSOP) may be done and dusted but that doesn’t mean the Las Vegas poker action has to stop. That’s because 888poker sent a team of pros and ambassadors to “Sin City” to play in the $10,000 Main Event, and a camera crew to follow their progress in poker’s most prestigious event. The 888poker docuseries is divided into five parts, with new episodes published on YouTube every Saturday for the next few weeks.

Over the last two weeks, King’s Resort continued to play host as the home of European poker and welcomed the 2024 Euro Poker Millions (EPM) to its site. The tour, which boasted a €2 million guarantee for its €590 Main Event, journeyed to Rozvadov, Czechia, and thousands followed in search of big wins and unforgettable moments. For the operator and the players, the festival was a huge success, with the Main Event drawing 6,237 entries.

The summer of sport is here, and the excitement is palpable at WPT Global. In the spirit of competition, the platform has launched the all-new WPT Global Games. From July 26 to August 11, players can earn points by participating in five diverse online gaming activities. The Grand Prize? A $12,400 Passport to the 2024 WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas this December. The Ultimate Online Pentathlon Forget about swimming, running, or fencing; this online pentathlon brings the action to your screen.

It won’t be soon, and it might not even be all that likely, but actor Matt Damon says he’s interested in a Rounders sequel. The co-star of the iconic 1998 poker film appeared on the Rich Eisen Show, and the host, sportscaster Rich Eisen, asked him if anyone comes to him “with sequel ideas.” And the answer should excite some poker fans. “The one that we’ve been talking about for years, and I just saw Edward Norton a few weeks ago, all of us want to do it is a second Rounders movie, because so much has happened in that poker world in the last 25 years.

Wednesday’s No Gamble No Future, a cash game show on PokerGO, featured one of the most memorable Phil Hellmuth blowups ever. The “Poker Brat” was not on his best behavior during the $200/$400 no-limit hold’em game, and he lost a bunch of money. He was joined by an entertaining table that included Hustler Casino Live co-owner Ryan Feldman, Nik Airball, Alan Keating, Jean-Robert Bellande, Matt Hanks, and Humboldt Mike. And the game was every bit as juicy as you might have expected from that lineup.

Joey Ingram is a well-known poker player and personality who has been a significant figure in the poker community for years. Known for his expertise in Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO), Ingram has recently turned his attention to No-Limit Hold’em, discovering new dimensions of the game and sharing his insights on how poker training and resources have evolved. Speaking with PokerNews, Ingram shared his thoughts on the current state of poker, his journey into Hold’em, and his new and exciting collaboration with GTO Wizard.

The dust has settled for good on the 2024 World Series of Poker as the results are in from the last few online bracelet events. Some players managed to use the dying moments of the summer to salvage an otherwise inconspicuous set of results over the past two months while others built on earlier successes to finish at a high point. Mizrachi Makes it Six Bracelets to Move Back Past Brother It has been five years since Michael Mizrachi won his fifth bracelet in a $1,500 Seven Card Stud event at the 2019 WSOP.

The first stop of the new World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) season wrapped up this week with WSOP Choctaw, a series in Oklahoma consisting of 20 ring events that generated over $3.2 million in prize money. The series, which ran July 17-28, culminated with two-time bracelet winner Justin Lapka taking home $252,282 and his third Circuit ring after denying runner-up Gregg Merkow a third ring of his own. You can read all about Lapka’s WSOPC Choctaw victory here.

The upcoming month of the World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) schedule begins on one end of the country and concludes on the other. Circuit action for the 2024-2025 season kicked off in Durant, Oklahoma at Choctaw Casino & Resort earlier this month, just after the World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet series in Las Vegas wrapped. Justin Lapka won the $1,700 buy-in Main Event for $252,282, beating out 1,017 players.

What should Allen Kessler do with the $1.2 million slot machine jackpot he hit Monday night? Celebrate and spend it, of course. But the real answer isn’t as simple as it may seem, at least to those who aren’t regular slot players. In our most recent edition of The Muck, we discussed the poker community’s reaction to the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event solver controversy. We’re shifting gears a bit to see what the poker world has to say about a financial issue.

Allen Kessler pulled off a jaw-dropping $1.2 million win on the Buffalo Aristocrat slot machine in at Thunder Valley Resort & Casino in Northern California late Monday night, and you can bet it’s a “Chainsaw Approved” triumph! Kessler, who detailed his win in a video, revealed that he had been playing the Aristocrat slot machine for an intense 12-hour stretch. Throughout this marathon session, he was betting $125 per spin buying bonuses and had a remaining balance of $2,458 when the jackpot struck.

Claudio Elizalde had more than just the 2024 World Series of Poker on his mind when he made it to the sunny and sweltering Las Vegas in late May. He had prototypes for a deck named ‘Hold’em For Dear Life’ that he designed to take poker up a notch. The Global Poker Streamer and PokerNews Live Reporter hoped his design stayed true to the spirit of No-Limit Texas Hold’em while making it a more social and interactive experience.

Pat Donohue is on Cloud Nine today after padding his bankroll with £75,100, the largest cash of his poker career. Donohue collected that colossal sum after coming out on top of a 200-strong field in the £1,500 High Roller event at the Grosvenor Poker Goliath series in Coventry. The 200 entrants created a £259,200 prize pool that the top 20 finishers shared. The 2023 PokerNews Cup champion Johnny Kelly was among the in-the-money finishers, as were Rob Boon, Ben Margedze, and final table bubble boy Ravi Sheth.

Few players are more associated with the first online poker boom than Tom “Durrrr” Dwan. Through his domination of the online heads up scene and his iconic appearances on the original High Stakes Poker, Dwan became one of the most successful players at the poker table and one of the most recognizable away from it. Last week, Dwan joined David Tuchman in 888poker’s Chevy Tahoe for another episode of the 888Ride interview series on Youtube.

One down, (at least) 17 more to go! The first stop on the highly-anticipated 2024/25 WSOP Circuit season has crowned its Main Event champion, with Justin Lapka winning his third WSOP Circuit Ring in Choctaw. Lapka topped a 1,017-player field and defeated Gregg Merkow heads-up to win $252,282 and a seat for the 2025 WSOP Tournament of Champions. Lapka came into the final day fifth in chips but worked his way back into the mix to clinch his first live piece of WSOP hardware after two online bracelets and two online WSOPC rings.

Though his recorded live tournament results date all the way back to 2008, Lebanon’s Walid Bou Habib doesn’t consider himself a professional poker player. He prefers to play select events at familiar venues, and his time at Merit Poker continues to be fruitful after adding another victory in the Merit Poker Dolce Vita Series. Habib came into the added Day 3 second in chips, navigating his way through a field of 193 entries to reach the final table of the $3,300 OPE Classic Cup.

Sticking true to tradition, the $600 Hendon Mob Mid-Major Championship at Thunder Valley Casino and Resort has come to its conclusion after the final eight players have agreed to a true ICM chop for the second year in a row. 12 months after Jagdeep Bal took down the inaugural event, NorCal local Elias Travis is taking home the lion’s share. He was awarded $79,024 for his efforts, along with the coveted Hendon Mob trophy, RGPS ring, and entry into the Dream Seat Invitational.

The $100,000 Mystery Bounty Main Event final table has a different dynamic this week thanks to the $10,000 jackpot bounty still being in play with only eight players remaining. The $10,000 bounty is usually won before the eight-handed final table is set, but not this time. Some 975 players flocked to 888poker for this week’s event, leaving a slight overlay on the $100,000 guarantee. Two players bagged $3,000 bounties before crashing out: “4KLOVER4ME” and “BYLIA,” who fell in 130th and 108th yet still won more money than some of the finalists!

The GOAT VI series is in full swing on Global Poker, and some notable winners have already been crowned in the latest social poker festival. The GOAT VI series kicked off on July 15 and will run through August 4 as Global Poker dishes out guarantees of Gold Coins (GC) 965,000,000 and Sweeps Coins (SC) 2,230,000. The series includes both GC and SC leaderboards and will see the top players in both gameplay types respectively winning entry into the Gold Coin GPC Season Final ‘24–’25 and the live Las Vegas Sweeps Coin GPC Season Final ‘24–’25.