A foiled casino chip heist, the biggest pot in PokerStars history and a slip up from Annie Duke on Craig Ferguson headlines this week’s In and Out List.
Get ready for a brand new week of poker conversations with our ready-made opinion package. We tell you who gets fame and who gets shame this week in poker.
Poker’s In List: September 5-11, 2011
Ilari Sahamies: In
With his seemingly unquenchable thirst for high-stakes action, nose-bleed superman Ilari Sahamies has been all over this list for the last few weeks.
Today he’s number one in our good books thanks to taking down the biggest pot in the history of PokerStars.com last Wednesday. The pot in question was a $421,826 behemoth that developed in a six-handed $200/$400 Pot-Limit Omaha game.
It was a three-way pot between Ilari FIN (Sahamies), unknown player bernard-bb and Andreas “Skjervøy” Torbergsen. Sahamies opened from the cut-off and got calls from both opponents. The flop came down K♠ 3♠ 2♥ and after bernard-bb checked, Sahamies bet $4,595. Skjervøy raised to $18,380 and got two calls.
The turn was the 9♥ and both bernard-bb and Sahamies checked to Skjervøy who moved in for his last $10,428. bernard-bb raised to $91,019, called by Sahamies, and the 3♥ hit the turn. bernard-bb move in for $84,810 and got a call from the Finn.
Sahamies: A♥ K♥ 6♥ 4♣
bernard-bb: A♦ 2♦ A♠ 7♠
bernard-bb had turned his hand into a bluff but was called down by Sahamies despite the board pairing on the river.
Greg Mueller: In
Greg “FBT” Mueller is in this week thanks to the vigilante justice he doled out on a would-be craps thief last week in Las Vegas.
Mueller was throwing dice and had his $5k chips stored nonchalantly in one of the grooves on the craps table rail. After noticing one of the other players acting suspiciously and quickly exiting the table Mueller counted his chips and realized he was one flag short.
Mueller and his buddy proceeded to run the thief down, take him to the ground and extract the chip without injury to anyone involved.
At that point casino security took over, which was probably a bad thing for the thief.
Anders Berg: In
Team PokerStars Online’s Anders “Donald” Berg took down his third, count it, third World Championship of Online Poker bracelet. Berg joins Ryan “g0lfa” D’Angelo as the only player with a trio of WCOOP titles to his credit.
The Norwegian defeated 712 players to win the $215 Six-Max PLO event. That score takes his total earnings on PokerStars to just under $700,000.
Poker’s Out List: September 5-11, 2011
Michael Divita: Out
Earlier this week Epic Poker made the decision to disqualify Michael J. Divita from their Pro-Am qualifier. They refunded Divita’s $1,500 buy-in and passed the $20k main event seat he had won to the next finisher.
This was done after another player at the final table had googled Divita’s name and discovered that he is a registered sex offender in the state of California.
The details on Divita’s offences are a bit sketchy but they do seem to be more serious than the story circulating about Divita mooning a man in a public washroom.
Already this issue has been extremely divisive, with one side applauding the EPL for their decisive action, and the other deriding them for bringing past criminal behavior, for which Divita served his time, into a poker tournament.
In a particularly ironic photograph, Divita is seen playing a pot with Mike Matusow in the Pro-Am, whose felony conviction for selling drugs has not hindered his ability to play and cash in Epic Poker League events.
For their part, Epic Poker has simply swept it under the rug, failing to defend their position in any meaningful way so far.
Annie Duke: Out
Annie Duke is out this week for getting a key question wrong during her interview on the Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson.
Ferguson said, “I thought poker became illegal or something?”
Duke answered, ”Only online.”
As far as we know it’s never actually been illegal for Americans to play online poker Annie.
what does annie duke know? can she remember the last time she played poker? toc win maybe?