Bid on the Rail

Jonathan Little had just begun to drink from the Holy Grail of online poker sponsorship, getting signed as a Full Tilt Pro last after several strong performances on the World Poker Tour. He wore his logos, got to ride on the jet down to the Aussie Millions, and took full advantage of his hourly rate + 100% rakeback deal (standard for red pros) by playing quite a lot on the site... too much, it seemed. After an investigation, it was determined that Little had allowed other players to play on his account, violating Full Tilt’s terms and conditions. Little was fi red, and his account was closed.

“When a player on Full Tilt Poker plays against and chats with a red pro on the site, it is imperative that he be able to trust that it is really the advertised pro playing the account. Given that Little violated that trust, decided to sever his ties to the site and close his account,” said a Full Tilt spokesperson regarding the incident.

Eyebrows were fi rst raised about Little’s play on Full Tilt when a poster called “rusypolano” on the poker forum Pocket Fives mentioned that Little had played over 1,200 sit-n-goes in only a week’s time. There is no confi rmation, however whether or not this fact played into Full Tilt’s investigation of Little.

Shane “Shaniac” Schleger was quite surprised when he sat down on Day 2 of the WPT Celebrity Invitational to discover that Phil Laak, who hadn’t played on Day 1 of the tournament, was sitting at his table with a stack of chips in front of him. Schleger, as well as his tablemate David Singer, quickly surmised that due to his participation in the NBC National Heads-Up Championship the day before, Laak hadn’t been able to play the Invitational. However, since he had busted out, well… there he was. As Schleger described on his blog You Can’t Miss What You Can’t Measure, both he and Singer were infuriated that Laak had been allowed such an absurdly late entry. Though it was a freeroll tournament largely for charity, there was a $100,000 prize pool at stake, not to mention a much weaker fi eld to contend with than at a typical WPT event. Singer approached the tournament staff for an explanation and was given the runaround, but didnt back down, continuing to prod official with questions all afternoon, not to mention needling Laak at every opportunity. Things finally cooled down when Laak explained to Singer that 100% of his winnings would go to charity and that if Singer wanted him to leave the tournament at any time from then on, he would. Ultimately Laak, Singer, and Schleger all fi nished out of the money. Still, Schleger was disturbed by the whole incident. "It's obviously unsettling that the Commerce and/or WPT was willing to let a player unfairly compete for the value just because he is famous and well liked, and it represents the opposite of the egalitarian spirit that a poker tournament is supposed to embody," he wrote.

At 19, Scandinavian poker phenom Annette “Annette_15” Obrestad has already scaled a number of heights in the poker world. She’s won the WSOP-Europe Main Event, topped countless online tournament leaderboards, taken down a 180-player online tournament without looking at her cards, came thisclose to an EPT title in Dublin, and crushed an online Sunday major, taking fi rst place in Full Tilt Poker’s 500k Guaranteed last summer. And now, Annette can claim another incredible victory after winning the Poker Stars Sunday Hundred Grand. Though the tournament’s buy-in ($11) and prize pool are very modest for a player of her caliber, what makes her feat so mind-boggling is that she managed to outlast 19,999 other players. No, that’s not a typo. The Sunday Hundred Grand consistently sells out its 20,000 seats each weekend and has by far the largest fi eld of any regular online poker tournament. Obrestad also took home two awards at the recent Scandinavian Poker Awards – for “Best Female Player” and “Best Performance.”

Full Tilt Poker has added the team behind the online poker training site CardRunners to their stable of site pros. Joining up to fl y the FTP fl ag are Taylor Caby, Eric Liu, Brian Hastings, Cole South, Brian Townsend, Mike Schneider, and Andrew Wiggins. All seven are CardRunners instructors, not to mention some of today’s most wildly successful online players. And just when you thought his fi fteen minutes of fame were up, onetime Survivor contestant Jean-Robert Bellande has landed himself a deal with Bodog. Bellande unveiled his logos at NBC’s National Heads- Up Championships at Caesar’s Palace where he unfortunately was KO’ed in the fi rst round.

Everyone knows that Phil Ivey has enjoyed a boffo year, banking over $1.7 million for his win at the LA Poker Classic, not to mention what he’s raked in playing high-stakes cash games. What they may not know is that Ivey recently made a $50,000 donation to Empowered 2 Excel (E2E), a Christian Academy in the Las Vegas area. He’s also recently established The Budding Ivey Foundation, named for his grandfather Leonard “Bud” Simmons, also a philanthropist. The foundation will bene- fi t a number of charities that focus on providing educational opportunities to atrisk youth. Kudos to Phil for following in Barry Greenstein’s footsteps and setting a positive example for the poker community!

Over the course of several weeks, Daniel Negreanu wrote a series of contemplative, soul-searching posts on his blog about wandering the unfamiliar streets of Sydney, Australia alone while working on some hush-hush top-secret project that he couldn’t talk about yet. After much speculation about what he could be working on, it’s come to light that Negreanu was shooting a role in the latest installment of the X-Men franchise, called X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The fi lm, starring Hugh Jackman, Liev Schrieber, Ryan Reynolds, and Dominic Monaghan is currently completing principal photography in Sydney, Jackman’s hometown, and will hit the silver screen in summer 2009. Supposedly, Daniel gets to play poker with Wolverine!

In a bizarre incident that was a fi rst of its kind on the WSOP Circuit, Lesley Thornburg of Virginia was disqualifi ed from the $300 buy-in NLHE event on the tour’s Atlantic City stop when the tournament was down to its last five players. Thornburg had been admonished twice by the tournament directors on the previous day of play for “unsportsmanlike behavior” and, in the words of WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla, “pushed everyone’s patience to the limit with a ceaseless display of loud comments and baiting tactics lasting several hours.” After winning two pre-fl op all-ins where he was a huge underdog (A-7 vs. A-Q and 4-vs. 7-7), Thornburg seized the chip lead and decided to really test everyone’s patience. He proceeded to completely lose his mind, deliberately splashing the pot every time he was in a hand. He pointedly knocked over towers of chips as he jammed them into the pot, and refused to stack up the growing chip-lake in front of him, despite repeated urgings from the tournament staff. The last straw for Thornburg came when he shoved half of his chips into the pot, only to announce “all in” afterwards. Tournament offi cials had fi nally had enough of his antics and he was immediately disquali- fi ed. His chips were removed from play and he received fi fth-place money of just over $19,000 while the remaining four players were left to more peaceably duke it out for the top prize of $76,000. No word whether Thornburg’s removal from the premises necessitated the use of chloroform and/or burly security guards.