The Nightly Turbo: Partouche Honors €5M Guarantee, Hellmuth Helps Eva Longoria, & More
September 07 2012, Brett Collson
Liv Boeree
Phil Hellmuth
The drama at the Partouche Poker Tour came to a satisfying conclusion for players on Friday. We'll bring you that story and more in this edition of the Nightly Turbo.
In Case You Missed It
How was the high-stakes action at the PokerStars tables this week? Read the Online Railbird Report to find out the week's biggest winners and losers.
PokerStars unveiled its new TV ad featuring Rafael Nadal on Friday. Check it out in The Muck.
What would Randy "nanonoko" Lew be doing if he wasn't playing poker? Find out that and more in the PokerStars WCOOP Host Q&A.
The NFL regular season kicked off this week. Rich Ryan offers his week-1 picks and fantasy football plays in the latest Pigskin Diaries.
Have you tried the new player-versus-player version of blackjack at vsJack.com? Try it out and get a free €20!
Partouche Restores Guarantee
The €8,500 buy-in Partouche Poker Tour Main Event resumed Friday with 47 players returning for Day 5. Each of the survivors had already reached the money and shifted their focus to the final table, and 14 were able to advance to Day 6 on Saturday.
Among the notables still alive is poker pro Dan O'Brien, who will enter Day 6 second in chips. Also advancing Friday was Dan Smith, the current leader of the Global Poker Index Player of the Year race. David Williams and Antoine Saout were among the 33 players eliminated on Day 5.
The biggest story on Friday, though, was an announcement made by Patrick Partouche, the CEO of Groupe Partouche. Two days after after reneging on the Main Event's supposed €5,000,000 guaranteed prize pool, Partouche changed his mind and honored the guaranteed money, adding €735,420 to the prize pool.
After the controversy over the guarantee of the Main Event, Partouche spoke yesterday to players and the media saying the €5 million prize pool had never been confirmed by Groupe Partouche. The announcement was captured on video by numerous players. In addition, Partouche announced the end of the Partouche Poker Tour after five years of existence.
In a follow-up statement on Friday, Partouche maintained that the $5 million pledge was never set in stone, but said he will meet the guarantee after players were wrongly convinced through several ads for the tournament. He added that Jean-Jacques Ichai, the director of marketing for the tour, will not have his resignation letter accepted by the group.
With the €5 million guarantee restored, the final payouts were adjusted for the 57 players who cashed, and the top prize was boosted to €1,172,850. Each of the remaining 14 players are guaranteed €49,999.
Here's a look at the new final table payouts for the Main Event:
| Place | Prize |
|---|---|
| 1 | €1,172,850 |
| 2 | €693,494 |
| 3 | €417,499 |
| 4 | €341,991 |
| 5 | €267,492 |
| 6 | €223,498 |
| 7 | €178,496 |
| 8 | €139,499 |
| 9 | €105,404 |
Check back for results from the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event right here in the Nightly Turbo.
Eva Longoria Celebrity Casino Night
Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria is returning to the felt for her 5th annual Celebrity Casino Night on Saturday, Oct. 6. The event will take place at the JW Marriot San Antonio Hill Country Resort and Spa, and proceeds will to go toward Eva’s Heroes.
Among the stars in attendance will be poker pro Phil Hellmuth and Saved By The Bell star Mario Lopez. Hellmuth will emcee the festivities while guests take part in blackjack, roulette, craps, live and silent auctions, casino prizes, and a Texas hold'em tournament.
Individual tickets for the event cost $200, which includes cuisine by celebrity chefs and chips to use at the casino. The charity poker tournament has an additional entry fee of $200.
Check out the Eva’s Heroes website for more information.
More Progress in Nevada
On Thursday, the Nevada Gaming Control Board gave two more companies preliminary approval for an interactive gaming license in Nevada.
Slot machine maker WMS Industries Inc. and casino operator American Casino & Entertainment Properties LLC were each given the green light by the three-member NGCB panel. Both companies will seek final license approval from the Nevada Gaming Commission on Sept. 20.
ACEP, which owns the Stratosphere and two other casinos in Las Vegas, was recommended as an interactive gaming operator. The company will need to link up with a licensed business-to-business service provider to provide an online poker platform.
WMS was recommended as an interactive gaming system manufacturer and as a service provider. In July, WMS inked a partnership with online gaming operator 888 for the launch of a real-money online poker offering once the licensing and regulation process is completed in Nevada and other U.S. states.
Under the agreement, WMS will market and distribute 888’s online poker platform to land-based casino customers in venues in the U.S., initially with a play-for-free offering. The joint offering will be ready to go as soon as a real-money platform is given the go-ahead by gaming authorities. 888 has also applied for a gaming license in the state.
UKIPT Newcastle Update
The PokerStars UK & Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT) Newcastle Main Event kicked off Friday with the second of two Day 1 flights at the Aspers Newcastle Casino. Day 1b saw 364 players hit the felts, and after seven levels, former UKIPT Nottingham runner-up Brett Angell was the leader with 103,900.
Among the notables in in attendance Friday were Team PokerStars Pros Vicki Coren and Liv Boeree, both of whom were eliminated before play ended. On Coren's final hand, she saw a 
flop with 
and got all of her chips in against another player's . The turn and river were no help to Coren and she made a quick exit out of the first UKIPT event of the season.
Jude Ainsworth was the only member of Team PokerStars Pro to advance to Day 2. Other players who survived Day 1b were Emmett Mullin, David Trigg, and recent ANZPT champ Sam Razavi.
Here's a look at the some of the top stacks from Day 1b:
| Place | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brett Angell | 103,900 |
| 2 | Kevin Monroe | 84,200 |
| 3 | Andreas Hansson | 80,000 |
| 4 | Lee Atherton | 70,500 |
| 5 | Jude Ainsworth | 47,100 |
Day 2 will kick off at 1300 BST (0500 PDT) Saturday with the combined fields from Day 1a and 1b. For more on the UKIPT Newcastle over the next four days, be sure to check out the PokerStars Blog.
Boeree's WCOOP Goals
Team PokerStars Pro Liv Boeree had a very profitable World Championship of Online Poker in 2011. Can she go one step higher in 2012? She talked about her WCOOP goals in a video for PokerStars.tv.
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Comments
Being right does give poker players the right to keep kicking. Patrick Partouche has honoured the prize fund, taking a loss in the process I am sure. How much will his cancelling the Partouche Poker Tour cost poker players going forward? A lot. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt. It costs poker players nothing to make the effort, it demonstrates maturity, and frankly Patrick Partouche deserves it. He has mobilized his casino resources in France to be pro-poker and I would argue successfully that he has walked the talk. It is not unlikely that the prize fund difference was strictly a loss absorbed.
It will take time because Patrick Partouche is a busy businessman and profoundly insulted to have quoted (translated from French) that he does not need to be spat upon and then be told it is raining. It loses something in the translation but the bottom line is that poker has lost a valuable resource ... unnecessarily.
All I am saying is that the poker community with very little effort can work to get Patrick Partouche back onside and that it is worth it.
Patrick Partouche runs the entire Partouche Casino Group. He does not do the advertising for the slots tournaments, the poker tourneys, or the name tags for the cocktail waitresses. He was clearly blindsided by the poker tournament guarantee and after reflection elected to honour it, feeling clearly in passing that he was personally insulted. Patrick Partouche has staff that runs everything, in fact 5,000+ employs in 50 casinos. For him the world does not revolve around poker so yes, I think that if the poker community wants 50 casinos in France actively pro-poker, you make the effort to address the reality that Patrick Partouche feels he has been personally insulted.
flintsword — You make a very good point here. Yes, Partouche was in the wrong by wrongly advertising the guarantee and then not honoring it, but they seem to have realized they made a mistake and did what they could to fix it. Honoring the guarantee was the right move.
bazababa — I agree that the poker community shouldn't be apologizing to Partouche, but thanking them for correcting the mistake could easily be done. People and businesses make mistakes all the time, it happens. At least they fixed things. I'm not saying what they did was right, but it was the right thing to do to fix the situation and honor the guarantee.
Honestly that's completely absurd to me that the poker community should be apologizing or thanking Patrouche for honoring an agreement that was expressly advertised and disseminated. Patrouche did not honor the guarantee out of generosity, but because he realized the consequences if he did not act, and that he would get buttfucked in court for false advertising, amongst other legal issues. All poker players should be extremely wary of the ISPT to be held in Wembley and its own respective guarantee.
On a positive note, I think this goes to show the power that 2p2, Twitter, FB, and other forms of communication amongst poker players can have when we work together. I would like to think that these various social networks had some impact when Patrouche realized we were making a big deal out of this and we weren't going to back down. In light of various negative things that have been cold-decking the poker community, like the whole ADZ/Samer Rahman scandal (whether true or not), various scamming threads, the neglect of FTP management/top FTP pros, Absolute Poker scandal, and a generally weak online poker economy, its moments like these that show that when poker players work together as opposed to having our usual cutthroat/deconstructive attitude, we can do so much.
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