Congratulations from the Carbon Team to FoxyUK and CookoeDFP, who have both given outstanding performances to reach the money in the No Limit Holdem WSOP event #54.

Both Cookie and FoxyUK won their prospective seats to the WSOP via a recent CarbonPoker heads up sit’n'go promotion – All-in or Fold your way to Vegas!

A total of 3,844 players registered for this event, with 2,340 hitting the table on Day 1A and 1,504 Day 1B.  Event #54 was a $1,000 buy-in and boasted a total prizepool of $3,459,600, with first place walking away with over $570,000.  While neither player managed to win quite that much, both Cookie and FoxyUK have done CarbonPoker proud with their respective results.  After both players ground their way through the larger field of Day 1A, Cookie finished the day with 12,650 and FoxyUK with 48,900.  With only 586 players of the original 3,844 surviving till Day 3 and many of them shortstacked, the field was cut by a further 200 entrants only a matter of 2 hours into the action on Day 3.

Unfortunately Cookie and FoxyUk were among the early departures on Day 3, but both can hold their heads high and know that everyone at CarbonPoker was just happy to see 2 of our regular players make the money.

Stuart Fox – FoxyUK

• Total WSOP & Circuit Earnings: $700,948
• WSOP Bracelets: 0
• WSOP Cashes: 8
• WSOP Earnings: $700,948

Noreen Klein – CookoeDFP

• Total WSOP & Circuit Earnings: $4,359
• WSOP Bracelets: 0
• WSOP Cashes: 1
• WSOP Earnings: $4,359

But it wasn’t easy for Farha since he had to go against James Dempsey, who was looking for his second gold bracelet of the 2010 WSOP.  And Dempsey wasn’t willing to go down without a fight as him and Sammy played heads-up poker for over four hours.  But Farha was finally able to overcome Dempsey ($301,789) in the end and earn the bracelet along with the top prize of $488,241.

This is by far the biggest tournament accomplishment for Farha since he won a $5,000 Omaha Hi-Lo bracelet back in 2006.  He’s only experienced some small cashes in between 2006 and now so this is a huge win for the man who first gained international poker fame after having his pocket jacks cracked by Chris Moneymaker for the 2003 WSOP Main Event title.

In the aftermath of his win, Farha said, “This is very special, of course.  Anytime you can beat a tough field it’s special.  There are a lot of great players.  The whole field is amazing.  Every year, I think this is the toughest field (Omaha Hi-Lo Championship) in the entire WSOP.  It is 212 players and they are all good players.”

Dwan came so close to winning the bracelet in Event #11 of the WSOP, but was denied by New Zealander Simon Watt.  Both Watt and Dwan stormed through a field of 2,563 No-Limit Hold’em players before meeting in heads-up play.  And while most would have given Dwan the advantage here, Watt is definitely no bum since he has won an Asia Pacific Poker Tour event in his hometown of Auckland.

The heads-up match between Simon Watt and Dwan drew the biggest cheering section of the WSOP since many of the pros who bet against Dwan were gathered.  Fortunately for people like Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu, Dwan’s Q-6 couldn’t outrun Watt’s pocket nines.  With the victory, Watt hauled in $614,248 while Dwan earned $381,885 for second place.

One-fourth of the WSOP is over now so Dwan will have to pick and choose the events he plays very carefully from now on if he hopes to win the $2 million in prop bets that are on the table.  He’ll definitely have a good shot in any No-Limit Hold’em or Pot-Limit Hold’em event since these are his specialties.

Men won his 7^th bracelet in the $10,000 World Championship of Seven Card Stud.  The finale came down to him and Brandon Adams as they squared off in heads-up play.  The heads-up portion of the championship was pretty even as both players battled back and forth for a while.  But in the end, Nguyen proved to be the superior player and was able to win his seventh bracelet along with $394,800.  Adams didn’t do too bad either after hauling in $243,958 for taking second place.

As mentioned before, the win ties Nguyen with Ivey and Baxter for sixth place on the all-time bracelet winner list.  In addition to this, Men also improved upon his second place standing in all-time WSOP cashes since he now has 67 – he trails Phil Hellmuth who has 75 cashes.

Another interesting story involved Michael Mizrachi going for his second bracelet of the 2010 WSOP (his first came in the Player’s Championship).  Unfortunately for Mizrachi, he fell short by finishing in sixth place while the runner-up in the Player’s Championship, Vladimir Schmelev, finished in seventh place.

Mizrachi banked the nearly $1.6 million after winning the prestigious Player’s Championship at the WSOP.  The Player’s Championship is so prestigious because it costs $50,000 to enter and usually only poker’s biggest names are involved in the event.

What was really interesting about this event was that Mizrachi ended up playing against his own brother, Robert, at the final table.  Unfortunately, there was no brother-vs.-brother heads-up match to finish the tournament since Robert finished fifth ($341,429) after being busted out by Michael.  However, the brothers made history by earning the highest finish by two family members in a WSOP event.

After winning the event, Michael Mizrachi earned his first WSOP gold bracelet, which means that he has won just about every major title in live poker.  And winning this event was a huge honor for Mizrachi as he said, “If I was going to win a gold bracelet, I definitely wanted to win this event.”  He also added, “To win Chip Reese’s Trophy is really special to me.  I hope to be able to honor him in the way he deserves.”

With this huge win, Mizrachi ends a bad run that’s lasted about a year or so, and he has shifted the media attention away from his financial troubles.  In fact, he shouldn’t have to worry about money for a while now!

And it doesn’t matter if your forte is live tournaments or online cash games because if you’re good, you’ll be on the list.  With this being the case, The Nuts isn’t some list of crusty, old players who’ve built a name for themselves over two decades of play.  Instead, it is a legitimate look at who the hottest poker players in the world currently are.

As you might’ve guessed, the top overall player in the world is currently Phil Ivey and he’s been in this spot since The Nuts started back in December.  But some of the people may surprise you such as Jason Mercier who has moved up to the number two overall spot in the world.  Tom Dwan made a leap from 8^th place to 3^rd place after recently crushing fellow rival Patrik Antonius in online cash games.  Likewise, Antonius fell from 2^nd place to 5^th place after having a number done on him by Dwan.

What’s cool about this list is that it’s not made by somebody who just started a poker website, knows nothing about the game, and is looking for something original to put on their site.  Rather, it’s a top 10 list compiled by the professionals at ESPN who actually follow the game and all of the news within the industry.  So you can get an honest look at who is playing well right now rather than just who’s got the best body of work over their career.

The Full List:

1. Phil Ivey
2. Jason Mercier
3. Tom Dwan
4. Daniel Negreanu
5. Patrick Antonius
6. Yevgeniy Timoshenko
7. Daniel Alaei
8. Eric Baldwin
9. Cole South
10. Scott Seiver

To get a piece of the $10,000 that’s awarded every month, all you have to do is place somewhere within the top 25 players on the SNG Leaderboard.  The amount of money you earn will of course depend on where you finish in the top 25, but as long as you’re in one of these spots you will be getting paid.

The great thing is that the $10,000 isn’t the only money given out through the SNG Leaderboard since another $2,000 will be given away based on your streak bonus.  If you’re able to string together several sit and go wins, your leaderboard prize money will be multiplied based on your best win streak of the month.

Obviously, not all SNG’s are going to be equal when deciding who lands in the top 25 so allow me to explain how the points system works.  Every time you finish in the money in a sit and go, you will earn points towards the leaderboard.  The higher your placing and the higher the buy-in of the tournament, the more points you’ll receive.  For instance, a $20 + $2 SNG is going to award a lot more points than a $5 + $0.50 SNG considering the places are the same.

So the basic formula for figuring your SNG points is: √buy-in X your final placing bonus.  To illustrate this formula at work, let’s say you finished first in a $10 + $1 sit and go (√100 X 12).  Using this formula, you would earn 120 points on the SNG Leaderboard and be that much closer to grabbing a share of the $10,000.  Simply put: you need to play in sit and go’s and place well to win major cash.

The $420 + $40 buy in tournament brought in 33 players, including some of Carbon’s best players. There were numerous seat winners in attendance, including a stacked final table.

In the final 11 players we had heavy hitters like:

LTUFlawless – 2nd (Aus Mills, WSOP)

bullitpete – 5th (WSOP – EPT – Aus Mills)

vader46 – 6th (Aus Mills – MTT LB winner)

foxyuk – 10th (Aus Mills – EPT – WSOP)

1GOLDENBEAR1 – 11th (Aus Mills)

DrextheTex – 12th – (Aus Mills – WSOP)

All of them had already won a live seat through Carbon Poker tournaments, and many of them have done it more than once.

LTUFlawless won $952 in second place.

Congrats to mesut5400. We’ll be sending more players to represent CarbonPoker at the WSOP, so don’t miss out on your chance to hit the tables and come out with a $12,500 prize.

Lunkin really stepped his game up this year after earning $2,743,441 and a second World Series of Poker bracelet.  The Russian player cashed a total of six times in the 2009 WSOP, and highlighted his incredible performance with a win in the $40,000 No-Limit Hold’em 40th Anniversary event.  Before 2009, Vitaly’s previous best year was in 08’ when he won his first WSOP bracelet and earned $629,714 in live winnings.  He wasn’t as involved before 2008 since he was primarily known as a backgammon and Renju player.

Other awards given out at the 2009 European Poker Awards included Internet Player of the Year (Patrik Antonius), Rookie of the Year (Antoine Saout), Europe’s Leading Lady (Sandra Naujoks), Poker Staff Person of the Year (Edgar Stuchly), and Outstanding Tournament Performance of the Year (Jeff Lisandro).

Lisandro figured to be Lunkin’s closest competition to see who would be named the European Poker Player of the Year after he captured 3 different WSOP bracelets and won the WSOP Player of the Year.  Lisandro also became the first person to win a WSOP bracelet in all 3 Stud variations at the same Series. However, Lunkin’s all-around finishes, which included a couple of high EPT cashes, helped him to earn the title in 2009.

AWESOME UPDATE: in the past 12 months, CarbonPoker has paid out $2,833,938.01 to our Bad Beat Jackpot winners and losers.

Just as the famous Carbon Poker Bad Beat Jackpot hit $300,000, five lucky winners brought it right back down.

On the flop, medman08 had 4 Aces and WizAlex0 had 3 9s. The Turn completed WizAlex0′s 4 of a kind (9s), and both players were obviously all-in. The pot was a paltry $277, but the payout was extreme. WizAlex0 took down $105,723 as the hand’s loser and medman08 won $52,862.

Let’s not forget about the three others at the table who won $17,621 for their troubles (folding).

For those of you that don’t know, the Carbon Poker Bad Bead Jackpot goes off when a hand of Quad 7s or higher gets beaten — keep in mind that this is the lowest qualifier online.

Payout:

• WizAlex0 Wins $105,723.46 (Bad Beat Loser)
• medman08 Wins $52,861.73 (Bad Beat Winner)
• RMaroni Wins $17,620.57 (Bad Beat Other)
• Market6226 Wins $17,620.57  (Bad Beat Other)
• OneFatDog Wins $17,620.57 (Bad Beat Other)

Full Hand History after the jump:

RMaroni is the Dealer

Shuffling Cards

Market6226 Posted Small Blind $2.00

WizAlex0 Posted Big Blind $4.00

Dealing Cards

OneFatDog Folds

medman08 Raised to $10.00

RMaroni Folds

Market6226 Folds

WizAlex0 Raised to $40.00

medman08 All In

WizAlex0 All In

Dealing Flop (Ac,Ah,9s)

Dealing Turn (9h)

Dealing River (Ks)

medman08 Shows (Ad,As)

WizAlex0 Shows (9d,9c)

$76.15 Returned to medman08 from Pot 2

medman08 Wins $201.10 from Pot 1 with : Four of a Kind, Aces

RMaroni Wins $17,620.57 from the Bad Beat Jackpot (Bad Beat Other)

Market6226 Wins $17,620.57 from the Bad Beat Jackpot (Bad Beat Other)

WizAlex0 Wins $105,723.46 from the Bad Beat Jackpot (Bad Beat Loser)

OneFatDog Wins $17,620.57 from the Bad Beat Jackpot (Bad Beat Other)

medman08 Wins $52,861.73 from the Bad Beat Jackpot (Bad Beat Winner)