The Weekend Report

By Philip Tuck

Sporadic action at the higher stakes with Dwan at the centre of it all

The Full Tilt cash games.

It was a pretty slow week in the big cash games, and although we did have some sporadic play at the highest limits, mostly the highest games running were $25/$50 pot limit Omaha games. These games seem to have become much more popular due to the introduction of ante and deep stacked tables, and in reality they often play much more like $50/$100 games, with numerous pots of $10k or more.

We also had a very short session in the 'durrr challenge', where Tom Dwan lost around $33,000. This puts Dwan down around $424,000 so far in this challenge, having played around 14,000 of the 50,000 required hands. Patrick Antonius has made it quite clear that he has no desire to play any more hands of this during the WSOP, so it may well be that this drags on for many months to come.

Here are some of the biggest hands of the week:

Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan play a short session, with Ivey's straight good here: http://www.pokerhand.org/?4266650

Dwan soon gets his revenge with flopped quads: http://www.pokerhand.org/?4266656

A truly savage runner runner beat here for Brian Townsend, but thats Omaha for you: http://www.pokerhand.org/?4266820

'Boosted J' makes a great pressure river call: http://www.pokerhand.org/?4267244

Another big hand involving Boosted J, this time his opponent holds though: http://www.pokerhand.org/?4267351

The games have been very slow recently, with even action junkie Illari 'Ziigmund' Sahamies complaining about how dead the high stakes games in his blog here (he does it in typical Ziigmund style as well and is well worth a read). In the run up to the WSOP, it is quite possible that many of the pros are taking a break and clearing their head, and as a result the action on the online felt has dropped considerably. Where is Guy Laliberte when you need him?

The Tournaments.

These are the top three finishers from the Sunday majors:

PartyPoker $300k Guaranteed $200+15
1,452 entrants

sirWenger - $52,000
Uninc157 - $47,000
Jennifer2113 - $21,750

Full Tilt - $750k Guaranteed $200+16
3,646 entrants

tophy4life - $132,788
badboypony - $80,250
Chad Eveslage - $52,500

PokerStars "Sunday Million" - $1.5 million Guaranteed $200+15

6,947 entrants

KipsterDK - $225,000
philipoo - $165,555
praetoriancz - $120,000

PokerStars "Sunday Warm-Up" - $750k Guaranteed $200+15
3,447 entrants

HustlerGrune - $118,692
erot1 - $88,452
BAnAnIEBAnAn - $62,370

PokerStars "Sunday Second Chance" - $250k Guaranteed $200+15
1,385 entrants

SetofKs - $47,850
BluNTzz549 - $34,508
PAW717 - $26,900