Grospellier stands atop a 57 player field after a two-day battle for the $301,992 grand prize in the $13,610 buy-in event. It happened at Berlin’s Grand Hyatt and say a total prize pool of $872,190.

When the eight-player final table dwindled down to the top two, Chris “Moorman1″ Moorman of the UK had a 2 to 1 chip lead over Grospelier. Moorman happens to be the highest winning online tournament poker player in history, claiming over $7.9 million in winnings. He also claims $2,657,951 in live winnings, which he started bringing home only as of 2008. 2011 was a big year for Moorman, placing in both the $10k Six-Handed event at the 2011 WSOP and the WSOP Europe Main Event. Alas it was another runner-up finish in this latest event, adding $189,824 to his winnings.

ElkY of France beat out Moorman on 3 out of 3 all-ins heads-up, Moorman reported to his Twitter followers. This win brings Elky’s live career winnings to $9,092,892. He’s been ranked #17 on the ‘All Time Money List’ of poker and is one of a select few to achieve a Triple Crown, winnings the EPT PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, 2008 WPT Al Lago Classic, and a 2011 WSOP bracelet.

Third place in the EPT Berlin High Roller event went to Marvin Rettenmaier of Germany while David Peters of the U.S. took fourth. The remaining final tablers, from 5th through 8th, were: Tobias Reinkemeier, Oleh Okhotskyi, Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom, and Martin Jacobson.

When the action was down to the final 69 players at the event, it was Morten Christensen who was holding the chip lead, but there were two incredibly well-known’s just behind him in the standings in Chris Moorman and Tristan Wade.  By the time the players had hit the money, only one player could make up enough ground to pass Christensen, and this was Goswin Siemsen.  Moorman found himself eliminated just outside of the money, while Wade was holding a top five stack though.

When players were getting set to push from 21 down to the final table, there were a few big names remaining who had a chance to make a star-studded final table, including Andrew Badecker, Eugene Katchalov, and Roberto Romanello as well.  None of those listed were able to make it though, and the final table kicked off with Christensen in second place behind just Ognjen Sekularac.

To go with Sekularaca and Christensen at the final table, we found Ben Wilinofsky, Norbert Szecsi, Konstantin Tolokno, and Siemsen all rounding it out.  It took just over an hour before our first player was sent home, and that was Szecsi, who was knocked out by Wilinofsky. Tolokno then pulled off back to back knockouts to send home Siemsen and Sekularac in fifth and fourth place, setting up three handed play between Tolokno, Wilinofsky, and Christensen.  This didn’t last incredibly long though, as Christensen sent home Wilinofsky setting up an interesting heads up match.

Tolokno and Christensen went at it for over three hours, but the aggressiveness of Christensen really kept Tolokno from being able to gain much ground from the four million chip disadvantage he started with.  Finally, Tolokno attempted to make a stand with a three-bet all-in with K-8, but was called by the A-8 of Christensen.  The board showed an Ace and Tolokno was sent home in second place with $251,166.  For his incredibly run, Christensen not only gained the crown as WPT Vienna Champion, but also won $410,519 for his efforts.

The event is capped at 48 players, and it’s looking more and more like it is going to hit that number every day.  If the tournament was to start TODAY, first place would take down an incredible first place pay day of $12.3 million, and even more incredibly is the fact that if the field hits 48 players then first place will get $18.3 million.  Either of these pay days would be the largest to go to a winner in the history of poker tournaments, surpassing the total that Jamie Gold took down back in 2006 for the WSOP Main Event.

The idea behind this tournament is that it won’t only give a great pay day to the eventual winner, but also helps a great cause in OneDrop.  OneDrop is a charity that is helping to bring clean water all around the world.  One ninth of each buy-in (right at $111,111) will go to the charity, and many are anticipating that multiple players who cash the event will be donating more most likely.

The winner of the event will also get a Platinum WSOP bracelet as well which is just another of the perks for taking it down.  The event kicks off on July 1st and while some of the names have been released, not all of them have leaked.  A few of the players who we will be seeing include players like Guy Laliberte (who is actually the creator of the event and founder of Cirque de Soleil), Gus Hansen, Daniel Negreanu, Patrik Antonius, Johnny Chan, Tom Dwan, Andy Beal, Jonathan Duhamel, Tony Guoga, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Erik Seidel, Dan Shak, and many others.

To the enjoyment of Vandersmissen there was a double elimination on the fifth hand of the day, meaning that he was locked in for at least seventh place.  His eyes remained on that top spot though, as he doubled up through one of the original chip leaders in David Dean and was holding 1.4 million chips at this point.  Vandersmissen didn’t make much noise, but then saw two more eliminations happen when Samuel Chartier and Jordan Lewis were sent home in seventh and sixth places respectively.

Once again, it was time for another nice double up which sent him to 2.4 million chips at this point.  Vandersmissen’s stack remained just about the same until we were down to three handed play, and he had 2.88 million chips.  First place though was Thomas Beer, who had looked like a force throughout the day with 6.23 million, while Dean was in third with 919k.  Fortunately though Vandersmissen was able to pick up a monster in pocket Aces and send Dean home in third place, which set up a heads up match which was much closer than anyone really anticipated.

To start the heads up match Vandersmissen was sitting with 4.5 million, while Beer had 5.53 million chips.  It was trouble from the word go for Beer though, as his A-J almost left him crippled when he saw that Vandersmissen was holding A-K.  At the end of this hand Vandersmissen was holding a 2-1 chip lead, and was poised to get the job done.

He did just that, and when he flopped top pair and got it all against Beer, this signaled the end of Beer’s deep run.  Vandersmissen was officially the 2012 Irish Poker Open Champion and took home the nice pay day of €420,000 as well.

There will be 14 total casinos that are going to run satellites starting as early as April 5th (today), and running all the way through June 10th.  All players who take down one of the satellites will win a $25,300 seat into The Big One for One Drop Mega Satellite, as well as any airfare and accommodations.  The Mega Satellite for the big event will take place on the 30th of June, and will be held at the Rio in Las Vegas.  Many of the players in these first satellites will have won their way in, but if you are just interested in buying in, it will cost you $500 for your seat at the satellite which will be running at the 14 casinos.

As far as the Mega Satellite goes, if you are able to make it into that and find yourself just one step from the big event, then the layout is one that definitely isn’t impossible to take down.  For every 40 total players who are in the Mega Satellite, there will be one seat awarded into the $1 million event.  With the different satellites that are running, this could mean that there may potentially be a few seats up for grabs into the big one.

If you haven’t heard about the One Drop tournament yet, it is for the charity “One Drop”.  This charity was created by the founder of Cirque du Soleil, Guy Laliberte, and the event will give one ninth of every players buy-in to the charity itself.  This total comes to $111,111, and the remainder of each buy-in will go directly into the prize pool and should make one of the biggest pay days in the history of poker.

So far for the event running this weekend we have names like Daniel Negreanu, Carlos Mortensen, Phil Hellmuth, Eoghan O’Dea, David “Devilfish” Ulliott, Maria Ho, Faraz Jaka, James “Flushy” Dempsey, and quite a few other players who are expected to be in this event.  Another interesting part of this event is that it will be part of the iSeriesLIVE, meaning that poker fans have the option to bet on the events and who they think can take it down.  Negreanu is currently the favorite along with Hellmuth and O’Dea as they are 80 to 1 to take it down.  Some other popular choices to win it are Jake Cody at 125 to 1, and Barny Boatman at 200 to 1.

The Irish Poker Tour started back in 1980, and was won by a player by the name of Colette Doherty.  Doherty went on to make a name for herself as being the first European player and first woman to play in the World Series of Poker’s Championship Event, and even more impressive is the fact that she came back to win the event once again in 1991.  She is one of four people to do this, as Mickey Finn, Noel Furlong, and Liam Flood have all won the event twice in their careers.  ”Mad” Marty Smyth is another well-known to win the event, and he is actually sitting with odds of 100 to 1 to win it all this year!

The event will be one to follow, especially if you are a sports bettor, so keep your eye out for the start of this event this weekend!

First to the LAPT Chile and winner, native son, Aliro Diaz. This event was the first main event of Season 5 of PokerStars.net’s Latin American Poker Tour and it attracted 651 players to Enjoy Casino and Resort in Vina del Mar. Diaz claimed $76,560 for his win. A fellow Chilean going by the singular name Leonardo took second and $66,000. Both players would have taken more had they not participated in a deal between the top 6 players at the final table to split up the prize pool based on the standings at the time. That gave 4th through 6th place larger prizes than they would otherwise have received. The next Latin American Poker Tour event is LAPT Uruguay, May 23 – 27.

Next we hop across the waters to Australia for the ANZPT Sydney, where Scotsman Gordon Huntly took the title and top prize of $226,812. The player field this time was 461. Liam O’Rourke took second place for $144,754. This is Season 4 of the Australia New Zealand Poker Tour, with the next event being ANZPT Perth, May 2 – 6.

PokerStars.net is the free, play money version of the Poker Stars online poker site. It offers the same games but for play money (except in the case of satellites) and with no real money gambling taking place. Therefore, players from the U.S. are allowed to play at PokerStars.net, where satellites for the next events on these and other regional PokerStars.net poker tours are now taking place.

McDonald was the unfortunately bubble boy of the final table, and was sent home in 9th place receiving a prize of €35,000 for his efforts.  It’s unfortunate still though, as his loss came when he had pocket tens, the flop came out with 10-J-Q.  Unfortunately though, the player that he was up against was holding the A-K of hearts, putting McDonald way behind.  Andrei Stoenesu had flopped the nut straight, and McDonald needed the board to pair in order to remain alive in the event.  Unfortunately nothing hit, and McDonald’s run ended there.

Now to look towards the final table, you’ll see that there are many unknown players remaining, but the most well-known is Nicolas Levi who has a total of $1.6 million in live tournament winnings in his career.  Levi actually has yet to win a major live tournament in his career though, and he’ll have a tough task here as he is the short stack to start the day.  Levi has a few more than 20 big blinds remaining in his stack, so he’ll absolutely have his work cut out for him.  The current leader is Ricardo Ibanez, who is holding 3,216,000 chips, but it is still very close for many of the remaining players.  Below is the list of the remaining players in order of their chip stacks.

When Day 1b came to an end, there were 197 of the original 352 players left in the field, which set up an interesting field of 264 total players who would be back on Day 2 (which occurred today).  There were quite a few big named players who were left at the end of Day 1b, which was quite the opposite of how Day 1a ended.  Some of the players who found themselves at the top of the standings were David Benyamine, Nicholas Levi, Angel Guillen, and Taylor Paur.  As far as other players that you may know who made it through to Day 2, it included Mike McDonald, Faraz Jaka, Olivier Busquet, Kevin MacPhee, Melanie Weisner, Todd Terry, Johnny Lodden, Jake Cody, and many other players.

Day 2′s chip leader was Juan-Navarette Azon, who is a player from Spain, and he started Day 2 with 173,200 chips, which was only 2,200 more than Ilan Boujenah.  A large number of his chips came in a massive hand against another well-known poker pro in Steve O’Dwyer.  O’Dwyer was holding pocket Queens, but was up against the Kings of Azon.  Azon’s Kings held and he picked up the massive pot to build his stack.

With the final numbers locked up, the top 72 players will be bringing home some cash.  The final table will be played Saturday, and first place is scheduled to take home €545,000 for their efforts when all is said and done.  Anyone who makes it into the top five will take home more than €100,000, as second place will receive €365,000, third place will receive €205,000, fourth place gets €140,000, and fifth place gets €115,000.

The event will once again be held at the Casino Barriere de Cannes Croisette and the Hotel Majestic Barriere.  While it is over a half of a year away, the WSOP Europe wanted to make sure that the players could prepare, so that they could get some huge prize pools and crowds for the event.  The official dates of the series will be from September 21st to October 4th.  As previously mentioned, this is the second year that the series has been in Cannes, as the first four years were held in London.

As far as the layout of the series will go, it is going to look very similar to last year, because there will be the same seven bracelet events offered.  On top of that though, you’ll find that there are a large number of different non-bracelet tournaments offered, as well as a ton of satellites into the big time events that will be running.  Last but not least, is the fact that there will be different levels of cash games offered consistently throughout the days as well.

Below is the schedule for the bracelet events at the World Series of Poker Europe, and listed afterwards is the player who took down that event last year:

In 2011, the 6th running of the Montreal Open occured just weeks prior to the D.O.J.’s shutting down of FullTilt and fellow poker sites serving U.S. players. Since then, it’s been up in the air whether that year’s winners would ever see their prize money.

Players have remained mostly quiet and, if not patient then at least subdued on the subject, mostly because they don’t want the Mirian Foundation to have to suffer any in order for them to receive their poker payouts.

The Miriam Foundation provides “rehabilitative, vocational and residential services” to promote greater socializing and increased community for kdis and adults with intellectual disabilities or Autism Spectrum Disorders.

But the questions about the future of the event, at least, have been laid to rest as, thanks to Party Poker’s stepping in, the Montreal Open has been restaged The Montreal Party Poker Classic. This year, the event will support the Jodi Lazarus Fund for Hereditary Breast Cancer Research also in Montreal.

Pretty early in the day we had two of the Shooting Stars going heads up against each other as Jonathan Duhamel sent Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier home to pick up his own $5k prize.  Grospellier shoved over the top of Duhamel’s pre-flop raised for 12k, and Duhamel made the call.  Duhamel held pocket treys, while ElkY had A-Q, but the pocket threes held and sent ElkY home early on.  Another interesting match-up that we had was when Jonathan Little sent Mike Matusow home, and Mike McClain knocked off Scott Seiver.

When the action was down to the final 37 players it took about an hour for the money bubble to burst.  When it happened, it was actually two Shooting Stars who went head to head in Men Nguyen and Kathy Liebert.  Liebert shoved over top of Nguyen, who said that if it was for less than 100k, that he would call.  It was 92k and Nguyen called and turned over the A-10 of clubs.  Liebert had A-K, but the flop came down with 10-9-8 with two clubs as well.  The turn hit another club sending Liebert home on the bubble, and sent a $5k bounty to Nguyen.

A few other players who were knocked out before the end of the day included Allen Cunningham, Men Nguyen, Jason Mercier (by Jason Duhamel), Linda Johnson, and Fabrice Soulier.

Duhamel found himself sitting in 6th place at the end of the day with 751k, only about 600k behind the overall leader.  He is also playing this event for free now, after knocking out two of the Shooting Stars and taking home $10k in bounties.  There is only one other Shooting Star remaining in the event outside of Duhamel, and that is J.C. Tran.

Typically, the event offers 100 guaranteed spots for players who get to play in the National Championship for free.  These 100 spots are made up of the 34 automatic qualifiers which are made up of 17 players who won a Circuit Main Event, and 17 casino champs, who are players that earned the most points at each of the stops on the Circuit.  After that the final 66 spots that are awarded will go to that players who earned the most points across all of the Circuit events throughout the year.

As mentioned, those players get to play for free, but the new addition will offer 100 additional spots for players to take.  These spots are awarded to the top 100 overall earners in terms of points from 2010 and 2011 between the World Series of Poker, and World Series of Poker Europe as well.  These players will NOT be given a free entry into the event though, as they will have to pay a $10k entry fee into the event, but that $10k entry will be added on top of the $1 million guaranteed prize pool.

This means that we could potentially be seeing players like Phil Hellmuth, Jonathan Duhamel, Michael Mizrachi, Ben Lamb, John Juanda, Shawn Buchanan, Chris Moorman, John Racener, Frank Kassela, David Baker, Jason Mercier, Bertrand Grospellier, Tom Dwan, Men Nguyen, Sammy Farha, and many other players in this event on July 6th.

Last year, Sam Barnhart brought in his first ever WSOP cash, and it was in the form of a win and a $300k pay day at the WSOP National Championship.  After that, Barnhart went on to finish in 17th in the Main Event for another nice score at the 2011 World Series of Poker.

The bounties will be spread out between Day 1A and Day 1B, and will feature big names on both days.  Another nice bonus for this event that other events don’t offer, is the fact that they pay out a bonus of $10,000 to the chip leader on both of the opening days.  So what this means is that if you are able to finish at the top of the leader board at the end of either of the days, you’ll be playing the event for free, since the buy-in is only $10k!

Day 1A will feature Shooting Stars like Joe Hachem, Jonathan Duhamel, Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow, Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel, Vanessa Selbst, Liv Boeree, Maria Ho, Kathy Liebert, and Christian Harder.  Obviously as you can see by these names, none of them will be easy outs by any means, and any of these players could seriously contend for the championship on any day of the week as well!

Day 1B will include a strong list of players as well, starting with Men “The Master” Nguyen, Scotty Nguyen, Barry Greenstein, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Allen Cunningham, and Alan Sternberg as well.  Mike Sexton, who is a current member of the Poker Hall of FAme and is also a commentator for the Tour will have a bounty on him as well.  Sexton was actually a final tablist at this event last year as well, so he’s definitely had some success.

One last difference from this event that is worth pointing out is the fact that they will switch the action from nine handed play to six handed play with 36 players remaining instead of just at the final table like standard World Poker Tour events are.

Both of them were not able to last though, as Somerville was sent home on the second hand, and Burt was sent home on the 12th hand.  Jazayeri sent home Somerville, was the knockout of Burt came at the hands of Dan Kelly.  This left four players to duke it out for the championship, and they played for quite a bit before anything else really happened.  Jazayeri then made a raise under the gun, and was called by Kelly.  Schwartz then pushed all in, which led to another all-in from Jazayeri, which couldn’t leave Schwartz feeling too great about his spot.  Indeed he was way behind, as Jazayeri turned over Kings, which held up against the A-J of Schwartz.

So the three final players remaining were Jazayeri with the chip lead of 9.8 million to 4.6 for Kelly, and 2 million for Sands.  Sand started working his way up though and eventually overtook Kelly.  It wasn’t long after that though that he sent Kelly home in 3rd place, and set up a heads up match that actually had Sands as the chip leader to start the action.  He even built his lead even larger (about 2 to 1) pretty quickly as well, but Jazayeri was able to turn it around in one big hand, when he was all-in with A-K against the Queens of Sands.  Jazayeri hit his Ace, and held a nice lead at this point.  Jazayeri got Sands all in, and was holding A-5 against the K-Q of Sands.  Sands hit a King, but Jazayeri also paired his 5.  The turn gave Sands a straight draw, but the river was another dreaded five to give Jazayeri the championship and the first place prize of over $1.3 million.  Sands took home over $860k for his efforts as well.

A few players that are definitely worth noting that are still in the event are Noah Schwartz (1.77 million chips, first place), Dan Kelly (1.749 million chips, second place), and A.J. Jejelowo (1.57 million chips, third place).  To round out the players who are holding over 1 million chips heading into Day 5, we have Stephen Chidwick in 4th place with 1.42 million, Jason Dewitt in 5th place with 1.18 million, Sean Jazayeri in 6th place with 1.126 million, and well-known poker pro Jason Somerville in 7th place with 1.025 million.  Quite a bit of the hype has surrounded Somerville, as this past week he came out as the first ever openly gay male professional poker player, and it seems that his announcement hasn’t slowed him down at all from playing incredible poker and putting himself in a great spot to make a run.

A few other well-known players still remaining in the action are former World Poker Tour Champions Joe Hachem and Allen Carter, as well as Sorel Mizzi, David Pham, David Sands, and Nick Binger.  All in all, there are quite a few big names remaining, and this final table has the potential to be one of the most talked about out of many recent events as well.  After Somerville who is in 7th place, the above-mentioned Pham, Sands, and Hachem are all sitting in 8th, 9th, and 10th places in that order.  Binger and Mizzi both have a bit of work to do though, as they currently hold 565k chips, and 600k chips respectively.

The action today starts with the blinds at 10k/20k, with an ante of 3k.  The action goes until there are only six players remaining, and then this will set the televised final table.

It was found by a street sweeper named Denis Theriault, who cleaning up the Ville-Marie tunnel, when he found the bracelet while emptying the sweeper out.  It was completely beaten up, and looked as though someone had just taken a hammer to it.  It was worse than that though, as it had actually been run over by a car unfortunately.  The bracelet has (had) a diamond mix in it as well, and no one is positive about how it ended up in this tunnel, but there are a few assumptions.  One of the most popular ones is that whoever had  the bracelet at the time decided that there was no way they could sell the bracelet without being caught, so they simply threw it into the tunnel.

The bracelet essentially has lost everything except for it’s main plate, but fortunately Seth Palansky, who is the Media Director of the World Series of Poker, told tournament director Mitch Garber to let Duhamel know that they would work with him to replace the bracelet.  The current bracelet has Duhamel’s last name scratched off, but his first name, the date of the event, and the name of the tournament are all engraved, so there was no way that someone would not be able to realize that this bracelet belonged to Duhamel.

The charity event is going to be done for the pediatric unit at the Halifax Health Medical Center, called Speediatrics.  It is an invitation only tournament which will feature more than 200 total players, with a buy-in of $500.  As far as current names who will be participating, Duke will be the honorary tournament director, Betty Jane France, who is the NASCAR Foundation Chairwoman, and Rusty Wallace, who is the NASCAR Foundation Board Member will all be a part of hosting the event.

In total there are 22 different tables set up, and the plan for the celebrities involved is that there will be one at every single table.  A few people who are already locked in for the event are Brad Daugherty, who is a former NBA player, and Dale Jarrett, who is a former NASCAR champion.  As far as the award that will be given to the winner of the charity event, they will automatically win a spot into the $1,500 Epic Poker League Pro/Am event.  Players can also win their way into the event by registering online at eventsatmgonthehalifax.com.

Speediatrics is a great charity, and this event should raise over $100k just from buy-ins, but there will also be different auctions and ways for people to be a part of the cause.  This company was founded back in 1999 and works with more than $2,000 children per year!  Don’t forget to go online and register for the chance to be a part of this tournament for a great cause!

A few of the newer events that are featured include a $3k Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em/Pot Limit Omaha mixed event, a $5k No Limit Hold’em Mixed Max event, a $1,500 Ante only NLH event, and of course the $1 million tournament called the “Big One for BIG DROP”, which features 11.1 percent of the buy-ins to go towards the charity for ONE DROP.  Each of these events should be fun to watch, and should draw quite a bit of interest as well.  Other additions to the tournament will include the “exhibition events”, which won’t give out any gold bracelets to the winners, but will feature smaller buy-ins.  These tournaments will be $560 events and the first one will be on June 30th.  It is a Doubles No Limit Hold’em event which features two players to a team, and the players will play through each level attempting to build their stack.  The other one is on July 6th and is a bounty event which will place bounties on every player in the tournament who has won a gold bracelet before.

One last interesting thing to note about the WSOP is that the final nine players are no longer the “November Nine”, as they have decided to move the final nine players of the Main Event to the end of October, since the US Presidential Election will be going on in November. The Main Event will be have three starting days instead of four this year as well, but has added about 92 tables to the poker room in order to accommodate all of the players.

The action started with Hansen and Hachem leading the field with over 535k chips a piece, and after that the closest was Dan Smith was 346,500 chips.  After that everyone fell under 270k with Smirnov holding 265k, Mizzi holding 228,500, Tony G with 102k, and Nam Le and Sam Trickett rounding out the field with 79,500 chips and 73k chips respectively.

When we finally made it down to the cash it was Hachem, Tony G, Smith, and Smirnov who were the final four.  Dan Smith simply went to work, and eliminated both Tony G (4th place), and Hachem (3rd place) to set up the heads up match between him and Smirnov.  Smith’s hot run continued on as he seemed to hit all of the cards he needed and make all the right plays at the right times as well.  Smith went on to knock out Smirnov in 2nd place, and take home the win and the $1,012,000 first place prize.  Smirnov received a nice consolation prize of $616k as well though.

This was definitely the biggest win of Smith’s live tournament career, but he has had some nice finishes outside of this big score as well. Winning $1 million over a two day span will typically be the highlight of most players’ careers, but before this Smith had won over $600k on the live poker tournament circuit as well.