Registration: Friday 22nd of October from 5pm

Game day 1: Saturday 23rd of October from 10am

Final Game day: Sunday 24th of October from 10am

Click the link below for details and a registration form.

For any information contact Ray Siale on 0274947990 or email him on ray.siale@gmail.com

There are only 200 tickets and it’s bound to sell out so be quick!

So we enlisted the help of Scottish Poker pro Neil Stewart ( Puggy82 ) and entrusted him with the job of compiling a list of his top 10 online players. Neil moved to the Mount in Sept 2008 and has countless large scores to his name including a 3 way chop in the Party Million for $109k, an outright win in the Ongame Champion Chip for $117k and a 5th place finish in the ipoker $2.5m for $125k. Neil also runs www.poker-allies.com with former New Zealand resident “the visionary”. Poker-Allies.com provides backing services to winning online players and has a community for these players and friends of Poker-Allies. Who better to compile a who’s who list of New Zealand’s best online grinders…

#1 Rjmgrace

Richard Grace deservedly sits at the top of the Pocketfives NZ rankings. A stalwart of both online and live play over the last few years, Gracey is a player no one wants to see to their left.

In the last year he has a plethora of 5 figure cashes including a $99k score for 4th in an FTOPs event last November. More recently he took down the Ultimate Bet $500 Sunday “mini major” for $36.6k. In total, Richard has cashed for well over $1m online, and going by his form this year, he’ll be sure to hit $2m in no time.

He had a disappointing World Series this year, but has the credentials to win live. He possesses tremendous patience and his 6′ 7′ frame is an intimidating sight. His largest live cash came on NZ soil in Christchurch where he finished 2nd in the NZ Champs in 2007 for $60k NZD.

Richard now lives in Central London with his wife and can often be spotted playing events on the UK tour.

#2 Mathclub

Those familiar with online poker over the last few years cannot fail to have noticed Shaun’s rise to the top. Only two years ago the former Volleyball Coach was grinding out a steady living play low stakes across predominantly American sites, and now he’s posting score that the best in the world would be proud of.

Not much more can be said without mentioning Mathclub’s win in the $200 two day SCOOP event on Stars in May of this year for a whopping $270k. Tremendous patience and nerve were required to outlast the huge field and defeat a tough opponent in Ryan Welch heads up.

Don’t be fooled into thinking Shaun is a one tournament wonder; in the last year alone he has muliple 5 figure scores including a 3rd place cash in Ongame’s GSOP for $61k in Feb of this year, and in the last month wins in the Ongame $100r for $18.9k and Party Hi Roller for $20.6k.

Last year he took down the ipoker $100r in back to back weeks for $12k each time, and also won the UB major for $40k.

Shaun has made a 5 part video of his PokerStars SCOOP win, which is available to see on Pokerxfactor.com.

# 3 Hammyhole (Poker-Allies.com Sponsored player)

Hammyhole is a complete newcomer to the online MTT scene, graduating from Heads Up Sit and Goes he began his MTT career in January this year. Since then he’s racked up an impressive amount of wins and posts a resume for 2010 that any established pro would be proud of.

He’s had wins in the Stars $50r for $10.25k, the ipoker $50r for $7.7k, the Party super for $6.5k and a whole host of other top 5s. But its’ on Ongame that he’s really made his mark. Hammyhole currently sits in 10th place on Officialpokerrankings.com for the year 2010, with 8 outright first place finishes to his name.

Highlights include wins in the $50r for $8.3k, the Shorthanded Turbo for $7.2k, a third place finish in the weekly major for $19.4k and a recent win in their secondary Sunday major a $100 rebuy for $15.5k.

The quick transition that Hammyhole has made to MTTs suggests that more improvement is bound to come in the rest of 2010 and beyond.

# 4 Horus7

Horus has been putting up impressive results on Pokerstars and in the last year has multiple 5 figure cashes.

In February this year he achieved a fantastic feat in not only navigating through the minefield that is the $10r to secure the win and a $14.4k payout, but also on the same day taking down a $50 freezout for $10.9k. He followed that up with a second place showing in the $100 $80k guaranteed for $18.8k in March.

More recently he has a 2nd place finish in the $50r for $9.7k to his name (July) and an outright win in the $50 $40k guaranteed good for $8.2k the week later.

Horus lives in Dunedin and is an active poster on the GP forums.

# 5 EeeTee2008

Another name familiar to any Kiwi following online poker, Elliot has played more online tournaments than any other New Zealander having played in 30000 (thirty thousand) tournaments on Stars alone. He has cashed for over $1m on Pokerstars over this period.

His largest cash came in September of last year for $36.3k when he took down a $100 rebuy with 759 entrants. He has six other 5 figure cashes on stars, two near misses in the $100r with a second and a third place and outright wins in a $100 freezeout and a $10 rebuy.

In October last year he was involved in a Tournament Leaderboard bet on Stars against MI_turtle. He pledged to donate $10k of any winnings from the bet to a charity of his choice. Unfortunately he had to withdraw part way through the challenge sighting poor health and equipment/internet, but was quick to point out that MI_turtle won the contest fair and square.

# 6 The beej (Poker-Allies.com Sponsored player)

Mike moved from the UK to NZ in September 2009. Since then he has recorded some impressive results across many different sites. His largest cash came in the FTP $750k guaranteed in March where he placed 4th for $43.8k, and in October last year he won the Cake Sunday Major for $26.9k.

Captainmurda on Ongame, he’s taken down the Shorthanded Turbo twice in the last year for $7k each time, and the European Daily twice, both times for $6.4k.

He came 2nd in the Microgaming €50r earlier this year for €15k, came 7th in the Party major for $8k and has multiple wins on the Entraction network for €4k.

Mike is a qualified Maths Teacher, but has put that career on hold for a couple of years.

# 7  Nomaddman

In September last year Damon became the envy of all Kiwi poker players when he took down the Pokerstars Sunday Million for $225k.

Since then he has continued to put up results including a win in the Poker Stars Nightly Seventy Grand for $14k and a near miss in the Titan Poker Sunday major, coming 4th for $15k.

# 8 Faecal Matter

Jordan’s largest cash also came on Pokerstars, when he took 2nd place in a $100 rebuy turbo for $30k in April of this year. He has multiple other 5 figure cashes including a win in the $100 $40k for $14.2k and a 2nd place finish in the same tournament for $11k.

# 9 poker_lord76

Jason Brown is a stalwart of the online scene, with over half a million dollars in cashes on Pokerstars. He also dabbles in sit and goes and cash.

His resume is littered with impressive finishes in tough fields, his two largest cashes coming in the weekly $1k and $200 rebuy tournaments – two of the toughest tournaments online. He won the latter for $56.5k in July 2008 and the former for $71k in April this year.

He has multiple near misses in the same tournaments, all for $20k+, clearly excelling in well structured smaller fields.

Outside of poker, Jason spends most of his time with his family.

# 10  Acesdreams

Joel also has some incredible results on Pokerstars in the last few years, most notably his runner up performance in the Sunday Million for $97.3k.

In total he has cashed for over half a million dollars on Stars, higlights include a win in a $300 freezeout for $49.4k and more recently a 3rd place finish in the $50r for $20.1k in May.

Plotting a course to the APPT Auckland Main Event
Eliot ‘Pezzzzzz’ James – aka ‘Carnite’

On Sunday the 5th of September, 338 players gathered together at the crack of Noon to take their shot at winning a free entry into the PokerStars.net 2010 APPT Auckland Main Event, courtesy of PokerNZ.com.

Having drearily started my session with a tournament starting at 9am I was actually out of bed and into my second cup of coffee before the first hand of the PokerNZ tournament began. Granted, I may have still been wrapped in a duvet and sitting on the couch, but at least I was in the flow, had a half a dozen tables open, and the blood was pumping.

Starting out with over 300 players and just a single place worth mentioning, even the most confident players know that they are simply going to have to get lucky to make it through a tournament like this. With players like Simon Watt, Sean ‘mathclub’ Goldsbury, and Dan Sing in the mix, this wasn’t entirely your typical donk-fest freeroll field either.

Rather than getting right into a spell of rungood I came out of the gates bleeding and just 17 minutes into the tournament I was down to less than half of my chips after getting tangled up in a Big Blind (not-so) special. One player had limped in MP and I got to see a flop for free with K4o. After a check-check on the flop I fired out a pot sized but on a turn of 5 T K K and was smooth called. An Ace peeled the river and after leading out again I got taken to value town by QJs, finding myself with 885 out of my 2000 chips left in front of me.

Half an hour later, and my stack down to less than 5 BBs, I finally made a start on getting hold of an upswing. First I managed to crack pocket fives with pocket twos and then several hands later had 9T in the BB when I found a generous player who decided to open-limp preflop, check the flop, and then finally raise on the turn with AK on a board of 7 K 9 T. For the first time in the tournament I was above the starting stack.

A lot of time in a tournament you will find yourself in a position where you just can’t make anything happen. For the next 100 hands, over the next 90 minutes, that’s where I was at. I never got above 20 BBs, occasionally getting as low as 8 or 9 BBs and having to shove hands like 86s to keep above water – I just sat back and waited for something to happen. Eventually that came in the form of a couple of coolers in quick succession, first up QQ over JJ before finding AK with my AA.

Down to the final 2 tables, and now in the top 5 players, I ran into the most significant hand of the game. One of the few players that had me covered, ‘slamamouse’, open limped for 2k in early position, bringing in the cutoff, button and the small blind – leaving me to take a free look at a flop with KJo. Seeing a flop of 5 J K the question now became how best to get all of my remaining 49k into the middle. The course decided upon was check-raising ‘slamamouse’ for 1/3 of my chips before shoving the rest in when a 5 fell on the turn. After tanking for a while, ‘slamamouse’ just couldn’t get away from KQo and I found myself taking the chiplead with a hand that I would’ve happily thrown in the muck preflop against an early position raise.

From here I went on a rampage, taking way more than my fair share of pots, knocking out several players, and reaching the final table with almost double the stack of second placed ‘Dave_the_doc’. Despite a couple of setbacks, like doubling up second place and actually losing the chiplead for a few hands (gasp!), I continued to beat up on my opponents. In the course of the Final Table, six of my eight opponents fell victim to my own hands – a rare pleasure that was helped by being lucky enough to win a few 40-60′s against the short stacks at the table.

Once we got down to 3 handed play I managed to wrestle the chip lead back from ‘Dave_the_doc’ with AQ on a Q high flop after getting him to commit too many chips to fold the turn with a dangerous combo draw. Shortly after, the last of his chips went into the middle with A2o, only to find both myself and ‘howgoodisit’ holding AQ and dividing his tiny remaining stack between us.

Having bubbled a $16 rebuy satellite to the APPT on PokerStars earlier in the week, the one place that I wasn’t able to stomach finishing was second. With ‘howgoodisit’ almost immediately bringing up the prospect of some sort of deal, I was quick to jump on the idea. Sitting out and letting the blinds pass back and forth, with what seemed like most of the 300 players still on the rail watching the negotiations, we struck a deal which saw me buying out the seat from ‘howgoodisit’. With a little over a 3-1 chip lead, I ended up giving my opponent $750 to let me take the seat, a deal which was pretty close to the actual value of his chips. Perhaps I could’ve put the screws in and bargained down my opponent a little lower, but partly because I had been planning on spending that amount on satellites at Sky City over the next week, and partly because I was so eager to avoid the possibility of second place, I was happy to lock up a deal.

With a Main Event seat secure, and coming off a nice hot streak, I’m heading up to Auckland later this week with a mindset that is already fantastically positive. Rather than heading up into uncertainty about whether I will be playing the Main Event, I find myself with the comfort of having a seat in my pocket, as well as extra time and money left to play other side events while I’m there. Hopefully this time I can pick up where I left off at the end of the satellite, rather than managing to burn half of my stack in the first 17 minutes.

For those of you who haven’t got your seat yet, make your way into the Sky City poker room and try your luck at one of the many satellites that will be played out there over the next week – starting from just $90 – and come join the field next week for what will hopefully be the biggest Auckland APPT to date and outdo the $209k first place of last year. Who knows, I might even be nice enough to chop it with you if we get heads-up.

You’ll need to register specifically for the forum. Your PokerNZ general login won’t work. This is for a number of reasons, most of which involve long discussions in web-coding-nerd talk. I do not understand.

Now get on there. Start the dialog. Make it snappy and sharp.

http://www.pokernz.com/forum/

BHS

The passage doesn’t mean that legalized online poker is imminent, but it shows how far the fight has come. Just four years ago, Congress voted 6-1 against Internet gambling in supporting the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Today the committee voted nearly 2-1 in favor of the cause.

“The fact is, online poker is not going away. Congress has a choice ? it can license and regulate it to provide government oversight and consumer protections, or our lawmakers can stick their heads in the sand, ignore it, and leave consumers to play on non-U.S. regulated websites in all 50 states,” said former Senator Alfonse DíAmato, chairman of the Poker Players Alliance. “I’m glad the Financial Services Committee today overwhelmingly chose to act and protect Americans as well as preserve the fundamental freedoms of adults and the Internet.”

Fourteen amendments were made to the legislation, most of which were supported by the PPA.

For poker players, the most controversial additions to the bill were two amendments that would prohibit websites deemed to have intentionally violated federal or state gaming law from receiving a license. This brings into question the likelihood of existing sites, such as player favorites PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, to obtain a license. Federal law is a gray area for online poker. There is a state, Washington, that has a law explicitly outlawing the play of poker online. That law is being challenged in the courts.

Pappas said the PPA would support the legislation as long as these current operators are given the opportunity to apply for a license, and that he believes they would have the chance to make their case before regulators under current wording. He also believes PokerStars and Full Tilt will continue to support the legislation and the PPA’s efforts.

“It’s not our job to guarantee a license,” Pappas said. “It’s our job to guarantee an open market where everyone can apply for one.”

Other amendments added to the bill included wording that would:

Prohibit the use of credit cards to deposit.

Explicitly prohibit sports betting, except for parimutuel racing.

Give the Secretary of the Treasury power to prohibit advertising practices aimed at minors or problem gamblers.

Increase length of time for states to opt out of the legislation from 90 days to one full legislative session.

Require all facilities of licensed sites are located in the U.S.

Require that the managers of licensed companies, in addition to the sites themselves, fit licensing requirements.

Ask the Treasury to identify specific legal and illegal gambling sites to submit to financial institutions to help in enforcing the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

Mandate the implementation of technologies to verify players are at least 21 years of age and verify the location of players.

Require that technology be in place for players to set their own loss limits.

Require that random number generators are used.

Have the government order a study on people gambling while impaired.

Require that sites are given notice of and refuse service to people who are delinquent on child-support payments.

Clarify that intrastate online activities are not impacted by the legislation.

Ensure that, to get a license, a company must have a majority of its employees in the U.S.

Require the Treasury to frequently monitor and evaluate the software and technology for preventing minors from playing online, revoking the license of any site deemed insufficient in preventing minors from gambling.

Mandate that a database of gambling statistics that does not identify individual players be made available.

A key amendment opposed by the PPA that would have made it so states had to opt in rather than opt out of the legislation was rejected. The full text of the amendments can be viewed here. Under HR 2267, click on the highlighted numbers of amendments marked as “agreed to.”

The Judiciary Committee now has the opportunity to address Frank’s bill. Pappas expects the committee eventually will pass on doing so.

The next step in the long road to license and regulate Internet gambling is to move the related Internet gambling tax bill proposed by Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) through the House Ways and Means Committee. The House is breaking at the end of this week and taking August off, so the next time that sister bill could be addressed in the committee is in September.

“The momentum of today’s vote and growing bi-partisan support for online gambling regulation demonstrates to congressional leaders in the House and Senate that this issue is a priority and should be addressed,” said Michael Waxman, spokesman for the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative. “Leaving in place a failed prohibition should no longer be the government’s misguided policy approach, leaving millions of Americans vulnerable as they continue to find a way to gamble online in a thriving underground marketplace.”

A breakdown of how m embers of the committee voted on the bill can be viewed here. The top half is Democratic members of the House Financial Services Committee, and below the double line are Republican members.

By Adam Morris

In a recent article in the UK based Inside Poker Business magazine, quoting from the Inside Poker Business Global Poker Report, some very interesting facts were revealed about online poker players in relation to their online playing habits.

The study was conducted in relation to the recent regulation of the French online poker market and revealed that of all players surveyed, 19% had stopped playing online poker because they had simply ‘lost interest’.

10% of respondents had started playing more live poker, which was an encouraging sign, but a whopping 14% of players stopped playing because they didn’t believe the games were fair.

Now we all know the games are run on super high tech software platforms with the most expensive random number generators on the planet, but still, 14% of players still believed that the games were not on the level.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to run a series of articles and interviews with online poker rooms and players, to see both sides of the story and how this is affecting the game as we know it today.

Interestingly enough only 5% stopped playing online because they were sick of losing, leading us to think that while players might think the software is dodgy, they still continued to play!

As France has now been added to the (fairly small) list of countries that have regulated online poker, many of the larger online poker rooms are now heavily scrutinised by heavily funded government regulation bodies that ensure everything is on the up and up.

Have you ever thought the room you were playing is was dodgy? Please comment using your Facebook account below, I’d be interested to hear what you think.