Latest EuroMillions Results for 14 February 2012

Although no one won the top prize last night there were three ticket holders that managed to match all five numbers and one Lucky Star drawn to win the second tier prize that came out at £260,001/€368,058. In addition to that there were 1,405 that matched four numbers to each win £80.90/€115.00 and then over 960,000 ticket holders won the smallest EuroMillions prize which came out at £3/€4 by matching just two of the main numbers drawn.

Quite a few of the numbers that were in the EuroMillions results last night are amongst the least often drawn numbers. Both the numbers 46 and 27 were selected and both made just their 38th appearance ever in the results. To add to that the Lucky Star number 11 was picked and last night it made its 16th appearance since it was introduced to the EuroMillions on the 10th May 2011.

If you fancy winning the jackpot in this pan-European lottery come Friday night, make sure you have your tickets ready and you might just match the EuroMillions results to scoop the desired top prize.

If this actually happens it will be just one more step towards American players playing poker at online websites licensed by an American regulatory authority without fears of being ripped off by unscrupulous operators or of the Department of Justice impounding the poker site’s bank accounts. Therefore celebrations at this stage are premature. There is no guarantee that the Payroll Tax Extension bill will pass over the next few weeks. Though, experts say that the chance of this happening right now appears to be better than 50%. If online poker is no longer covered by the UIGEA, it will be a big relief because the Department of Justice has already opined that the Wire Act will no longer be applied to online poker.

Online poker players will never forget that Kyl (in picture) was the co-author of the UIGEA. The UIGEA specifically exempts horse racing and state lotteries. Kyl had stated in an interview that there was a need to look at each online gambling vertical individually with respect to the UIGEA and that is what he would be doing. He also said that Reid had supporters in Nevada who wanted to deal with online poker and that is why the two of them were talking. If this effort succeeds then possibly the online poker community may forget the hardships that Kyl has wrought on them since 2006.

What do you call it when 16 of the best poker players in the world (and a few gambling businessmen) get together to play a $250k buy-in tournament? 

One hell of a photo opportunity.

Of course Phil Ivey, who just busted from the $10k Main Event in 12^th place, went on to win the historic event for a cool $2 million.

We were allowed a surprising amount of time on the floor to snap photos as players competed for $4 million in prize money.

We didn’t have time to post the photos during the Aussie Millions (we were pretty busy with the whole “Main Event” thing) but we compiled a collection of the best photos below.

Hope you enjoy.

Phil Ivey was a man possessed after busting out of the 2012 Aussie Millions Main Event in 12th. The $250k Challenge went until 6 a.m. but Ivey didn’t miss a beat.   John Juanda was partially responsible for getting four Chinese businessmen in on the game.   Patrik Antonius came in second place and cashed for $1.2 million. Despite his notable cash game winnings, it was his biggest ever live score.   Daniel Negreanu busted in fourth and experienced one of poker’s worst bubbles. Instead of making $823k, Negreanu lost $250k. Gus Hansen snagged the min-cash for $823k.   The $250k Challenge took place entirely in Crown Casino’s TV friendly studio 3. The event began at 4:30 p.m. and ended just after 6 a.m. the next day.   After the last hand was dealt, Patrik Antonius and Phil Ivey agreed to go get breakfast together. Ivey just asked that Antonius wait while he sorted out how he was going to get paid.  

Football season has officially arrived, and with it comes a slew of fantasy leagues of which millions of men and women just can’t get enough. Are you a fantasy football fanatic? Here are few tips to ensure your passion for football doesn’t jeopardize your job.

Don’t Check Your Picks at Work

First and foremost, don’t check your picks at work. This may seem obvious, but many fantasy football fans can’t resist logging on and checking the status of their teams. This is a bad idea as it may violate corporate computer policies, not to mention affect personal productivity. Don’t give your employer any reason to question your integrity or dedication to your job.

Watch What You Say

Though smack talk and crude banter is the stuff of fantasy football leagues, you may want to watch your mouth if you’re competing with folks from the office.

“It looks bad,” Vanessa Hodgerson, a Jacksonville attorney who specializes in workplace issues, told Jacksonville’s News 4. “You just want to use a little common sense, use a G-rated name if your co-workers or supervisor are going to be part of it, in the league.”

Consider the Benefits, Downfalls of Office Leagues

The benefits of office leagues are that they’re fun, they boost morale, and they help foster friendships around the office. However, the leagues can also be distracting, not to mention that some coworkers are poor sports and that you’ll have to watch what you say (see above). If you think your office league could turn into a stressful hassle consider opting out and participating in a personal league where you’re free to do and say whatever you want.

Good luck!

An XML feed is nothing more than a few lines of code that tells your computer how to pull information from your favorite websites and places it on your homepage or desktop. If youre still not sure what it is, think of a stock ticker that pulls very specific information from Wall Street brokerage firmsits basically the same thing.

Almost any website can offer an XML feed but it is most common at sports and news sites. When searching cyberspace to see who carries this technology, keep an eye out for the orange logo.

Websites can transmit just about anything; from live weather updates to breaking news stories. Sports betting websites usually broadcast their latest odds and betting lines.

To access XML feeds, youll have to either download a program that can use this technology (search for feed readers) or subscribe to a website that has it built-in. Yahoo, Google, AOL, and all the major homepage websites can access XML feeds already. Once thats out of the way, you simply have to copy the feed information from your favorite website and enter it into the reader.

Sportsbooks use XML feeds because they are a quick, easy way for you to stay up to date on the various line changes and odds. The great thing about XML feeds is that you can access them from any computer, laptop, or smartphone straight through your homepage.

Yes and no. While all XML feeds are updated in real time, it can sometimes take as long as five to ten minutes for the information to refresh. Some sports betting websites have eliminated some or all of this delay by making it a true live feed, which means you see the odds change every few seconds.

Our personal favorite is probably the XML feed offered by Sports Interaction, it updates in real time and it is fully customizable so you can track specific games or sports teams. Since thats where the majority of the internet bets on various sports anyway, thats probably the one that you want. BetEd.com and 5dimes.com also have very good XML feeds as well.

Since all three XML feeds we recommended come from very reputable sportsbooks, we honestly think that most gamblers would be better off installing all three of them to their homepage. Even though they contain the same information, sometimes one will have slightly better odds than the others so it allows you to do a quick comparison check before placing your wagers.

Fairy tales are full of quaint and colorful characters, some of them human and some of them non-human. There is a magical touch to the stories that attracts children and adults alike. The leading software provider Realtime Gaming (RTG) offers online slot games based on fairy tales that recreate the freshness and innocence on the reels.

Wooden Boy is based on Pinocchio. The reels are set in Geppetto’s workshop, where Pinocchio was fashioned out of wood. The other symbols on the reels are taken from the Pinocchio story and include the blue fairy who gives him life, Honest John the fox who tricks him and the whale that swallows Geppetto. The high value card symbols are made from wood. The background music as the reels spin is fast and peppy. Pinocchio is the wild symbol. When it appears there is a pile of wood shavings and the Pinocchio appears expanded across all reels dancing a jig. The blue fairy is the scatter symbol and it triggers the free spins. But before that it delivers one of the more famous lines from the story – “Now, remember, Pinocchio be a good boy.” Three, four or five fairy symbols appearing anywhere on the reels award 5, 10 or 15 free spins respectively. During the free spins Pinocchio multiplies payouts three times if it substitutes in a winning combination.

Roberta’s Castle is another fairy tale themed slot game from RTG. It is based on the popular Rapunzel story by the Brothers Grimm, only the name has been changed to Roberta. In the background to the reels Roberta can be seen imprisoned in the tower of her castle with her long golden tresses hanging down. The symbols on the reels include brush, mirror, scissors and cat and royally fashioned high value card symbols. The handsome prince with the sparkling teeth is the wild symbol. He gives a knowing wink when he substitutes in winning combinations and also doubles all payouts. The castle window is the scatter symbol. When it awards the free spins the windows open, Roberta lets her long hair down and blows kisses to the prince. 15 free spins are awarded at tripled payouts.

Aladdin’s Wishes is based on Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, an Oriental fairy tale from the Arabian Nights. The highest fixed payout of 5,000 coins is provided by Jasmine. The other high paying symbols are the genie and Aladdin’s monkey. Instead of high value card symbols RTG has used Arabian Nights icons like magic carpet, palace, scimitar, gold bag and ewer. Aladdin is the wild symbol that appears only on reels 2, 3 and 4, but doubles payouts when in winning combinations. In the animation Aladdin can be seen flying on the carpet holding the magic lamp. The magic lamp triggers the Aladdin’s Wishes feature when three or more symbols appear scattered from left to right or right to left. The player gets to pick from five lamps. The number of picks is the number of lamps that triggered the bonus round. If the magic lamp is picked then the player gets 25 free spins at doubled payouts. Otherwise he wins up to 100 times the triggering bet. Like Wooden Boy and Roberta’s Castle, Aladdin’s Wishes also offers a randomly triggered progressive jackpot.

All these Real Series fairy tale themed slot games can be played at RTG online casinos like Club World, Slots Jungle, Cherry Red and Win Palace.

$100k Challenge

In the $100k Challenge there were 22 players ready to battle for a seven-figure payday, and with only four players making the money there were a number of disappointed players. The Aussies had an excellent showing in the tournament with Joe Hachem and Tony G (the Lithuanian turned Aussie) cashing in the tournament. The big winner was poker pro Dan Smith, who pocketed his biggest payday to date.

Here is a look at the payouts from the $100k Challenge:

• 1^st place: Dan Smith $1,012,000
• 2^nd place: Mikhail Smirnov $616,000
• 3^rd place: Joe Hachem $330,000
• 4^th place: Tony G $242,000

Aussie Millions Main Event

The story for the first five days of the 2012 Aussie Millions Main Event was Phil Ivey. Ivey returned to tournament poker just weeks before at the APPT Macau Main Event, but it was the Aussie Millions Main Event where Ivey showed why he still should be considered among the best players in the world.

After dominating the tournament for four days, Ivey was set home on Day 5 in 12^th place earning himself a $100k payday -from there Ivey went straight to the $250k Challenge registration desk and proceeded to win the tournament (as you will see below).

In the end it was Melbourne resident Oliver Speidel who would win the Aussie Millions trophy, the fourth straight Australian to win the tournament. 2006 Aussie Millions Champion Lee Nelson finished the tournament in 9^th place.

Here is a look at the final table payouts from the 2012 Aussie Millions Main Event:

1.       Oliver Speidel – $1,600,000

2.       Ken Wong – $1,000,000

3.       Mile Krstanoski – $610,000

4.       Mohamad Kowssarie – $405,000

5.       Patrick Healy – $300,000

6.       Bjorn Li – $230,000

7.       Yann Dion – $170,000

8.       Daniel Idema $125,000

9.       Lee Nelson $125,000

$250k Challenge

16 of the poker worlds top players and biggest high-rollers ponied-up the ridiculous $250k buy-in for the tournament and in the end it came down to three of the biggest stars in the poker world battling for the $2 million first-place prize: Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, and Patrik Antonius.

Here is a look at the payouts for the top 3 players in the $250k Challenge:

• 1^st Place: Phil Ivey $2,000,000
• 2^nd Place: Patrik Antonius $1,200,000
• 3^rd Place: Gus Hansen $800,000

Outright: 11/4 France; 11/2 UK; 7/1 Estonia; 8/1 Azerbaijan; 9/1 Hungary; 12/1 Bosnia Herzegovina; 12/1 Sweden; 16/1 Russia; 16/1 Germany; 20/1 Ireland; 20/1 Norway; 25/1 Turkey; 25/1 Denmark; 33/1 Finland; 40/1 Italy; 50/1 BAR.

Ace investigative reporter, Wendeen H. Eolis, has once again returned from the quagmire that is online poker with another breaking story.  This time shes the first to tell the world that PokerStars CEO Gabriel Campos Woslovsky would be leaving the troubled online poker company after a two year hitch.

Read all the details of this latest turn of events in Eolis article, Poker stars Too Big to Hide Internal News, now appearing on Poker Player Newspaper.  Use this handy direct link listed above to go to the latest must read chapter of whats happening in the online poker, yet another clue in the online poker players dilemma, “Wheres my money and will I ever get it back?”

If you missed the first installment of the Gabi Campos Departure, Poker stars CEO Gabi Campos is off the Grid: A Parade of Unsung Departures, click the link.  

So if these players want to make more money then they should do so by playing less hands and not more hands. You can only do this by playing full ring where you are correctly folding a far greater percentage of your hands and in many cases then 90% is close to being correct. When you play full ring then multi-tabling is far easier. You can play ten tables pretty easily in full ring and still have time for doing other stuff. This is especially the case if you have a style of play that reduces the number of flops that you see. This is what multi-tabling is all about because if you can successfully multi-table then you will dramatically add to your bottom line. Let us look at a hand where you could be playing ten tables all at once and it is folded around to the cut-off who raises to $1.75 in NL50.

You have Jc-10c on the button and now you have to decide what to do with the hand. If you were playing a single table then calling the raise is more of an option than if you are playing ten tables and I will explain why. If you call then unless one of the blinds re-raises then you are forced into playing post flop poker. This may be optimal if you have good reads on your opponent but you will often have to face marginal decisions on the post flop rounds. Let’s say that the flop comes Q-10-5 and your opponent c-bets. You call and the turn card is the 4c and they barrel again. You only have second pair with a mediocre kicker and now you don’t really know what to do. You are going to be spending time here trying to collate data but playing so many tables means that other tricky decisions may be happening elsewhere.

The more tables that you play then the more of these situations that you will face! So getting back to the previous hand then if I were playing 10-12 tables then I would be more apt to either fold or three bet this rather than just call. I think that this style of play is more conducive to playing more tables when your decision making processes are simpler. When you three bet to say $6 then you are simplifying the hand even though your risk-reward ratio isn’t great. With only $2.50 in the pot and you raising to $6 then you are doing several things with the hand. Firstly you are looking to win an immediate $2.50 and that is a very good result. But secondly you are speculating as well that you can win the hand by using the combined power of your hand strength and your position to perhaps win a huge pot.

When most people think about their first live tournament cash, they have fond memories of a low buy-in tournament, probably at their local casino, when they were able to just eek out a profit.  Its an exciting time, even if the cash is so tiny that the cost of food and drink that night makes the player a net loser.  Now imagine how Edoardo Alescio must feel.  He scored his first ever live tournament cash this weekend, not in some $60 shove fest, but in the €3,000 World Poker Tour (WPT) Venice Main Event.  By World Poker Tour standards, it was rather small with just 213 players registering, but its still the World Poker Tour and Alescio is now €175,000 richer.

Edoardo Alescio entered the six-handed final table in second place with 1,714,000 chips.  There was a clear divide between the haves and have nots at the table, with three players over a million chips (Michele Caroli led the way with over 2 million) and three players at half a million or under.  Here were the chip counts to start the day:

Michele Caroli 2,097,000 Edoardo Alescio 1,714,000 Andrea Benelli 1,143,000 Steve ODwyer 501,000 Alex Dovzhenko 480,000 Andrea Dato 461,000

Alescio started quickly, winning the first pot and taking a one million chip lead in less than an hour.  It was American Steve ODwyer who took the first pelt, though, eliminating Alex Dovzhenko in a race: ODwyers A-K outflopped Dovzhenkos 9-9.  Dovzhenko was out in 6th place, while ODwyer was right back in the match with a million chips.

That cushion lasted less than an hour, as in what would be a preview of a face-off wed see a lot of later, Alescio knocked him back down to near his final table starting stack.  Alescio continued to soar, growing his chip stack to over 3 million in the first two hours of play.  It looked like it would be a short day for all involved.

There was no quit in ODwyer, though.  Despite sinking lower, he kept up the fight, doubling up once through Andrea Benelli and then making a big move in a three-way hand.  Benelli moved all-in for his last 76,000 chips with K-T, ODwyer called with a dominated Q-T, and Michele Caroli called from the big blind with K-3.  The flop of 9-8-2 kept Benelli in the lead, but the turn was not so happy, as a Queen shifted the power to ODwyer.  Another Queen on the river sealed Benellis fate and he was gone in 5th place, while ODwyer climbed up to 1,743,000.

Just a few hands later, Andrea Dato moved all-in pre-flop for 249,000 with K-9 and ODwyer called with A-4.  Neither player improved through the river, which meant that Dato, the chip leader after Day 1A, was eliminated in 4th place and ODwyer moved into the chip lead.

From there, ODwyer looked like he was going to run away with the tournament, just like it appeared that Alescio would earlier.  His two Italian opponents couldnt make any good moves, both attempting big bluffs at exactly the wrong time.  They kept sinking while ODwyer kept rising.  Eventually, Alescio need to just start shoving, something he did in an astounding eight of ten hands at one point, and in none of those instances was he called.

Finally, about six hours after the start of the final table, Alescio was looked up on an all-in.  He committed all his chips pre-flop with A-Q and Caroli made the call with A-J (considering the hand and Alescios shoving frequency, it was a good play, just bad timing).  The community cards were all blanks and Caroli hit the rail in 3rd place.

It was down to the decorated ODwyer versus the devoid-of-live-cashes Alescio, with ODwyer holding about a 3-to-1 chip lead.  Put your money on ODwyer, right?  Not so fast.

ODwyer got it up to around a 5 million to 1 million chip lead, but then Alescio went on a tear.  He picked up about 600,000 in two hands combined by – what else – moving all-in pre-flop.  He then picked up another quarter million before taking down what was probably the most important pot of the tournament.  With the board reading Q-9-4-7 with two diamonds, ODwyer bet and Alescio went all-in, holding 6-7 of diamonds.  ODwyer made the call with Q-T, giving him top pair versus Alescios third pair and flush draw.  The river made Alescios flush, allowing him to double up to just over 4 million and regain the chip lead for the first time in hours.

He extended his lead over the next few hands before finally putting the nail in ODwyers poker coffin.  ODwyer was all-in pre-flop with A-7 and Alescio called him with pocket 5s.  The dealer laid out one of those yeeeaaahhh….nooooooo! flops, as he gave ODwyer a 7, but at the same time put down a 5 to give Alescio a set.  ODwyer couldnt get lucky after that and Edoardo Alescio had made his first live cash, just a little thing called the WPT Venice championship.

WPT Venice – Final Table Results

1.    Edoardo Alescio €175,000 2.    Steve ODwyer €95,530 3.    Michele Caroli €66,090 4.    Andrea Dato – €43,170 5.    Andrea Benelli €34,245 6.    Alex Dovzhenko €27,035

It’s like we’ve said time and time again, we don’t like to make flat-out statements about how good poker players are. Poker’s a complicated game, and even after years and years of winning, millions of hands played, the farthest we’ll go is to say someone be good at poker.

This week we’re bestowing that dubious honor on Isaac Haxton.

Interestingly it was the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure that first brought Haxton to our attention, and it’s the PCA that put him on our radar today.

The first entry on Haxton’s tournament record is an $861,789 runner-up finish in the 2007 PCA main event.

Since then he’s earned roughly $2.7 million playing live poker tournaments and he’s looking to build on that big-time today in the Bahamas as he leads the final 16 in the $100,000 buy-in Super High Roller event.

The Backstory

When you find players excelling in poker at a young age more often than not they excelled at other mental athletics as well. Such was the case for young Isaac Haxton.

Born in New York and raised in Syracuse, Haxton was the son of an English professor and started playing chess at four years of age.

Haxton was too cool for school, or at least the fifth grade.  

Like some sort of Tenenbaum replicant Haxton skipped the fifth grade and was absorbed by Magic: The Gathering by age ten. Swept up in the wave of MTG players making the switch to poker, Haxton was making trips to the Turning Stone Casino in New York as a high-school senior. It wasn’t long after that he found online poker.

Haxton started winning and, using the knack for gaming excellence he had acquired early on, applied himself to poker in a big way.

The Evidence

Isaax Haxton has been providing evidence that he might be good at poker for years, starting chiefly with the aforementioned $861k PCA score five years ago.

As  we reported all those years ago, Haxton ran extremely bad to have transferred his winnings from his PokerStars account to Neteller. That’s because the day after the funds hit his Neteller account, the online payment processor’s funds were seized by the Department of Justice and its owners arrested.

It took many months for Haxton to recoup the money, but luckily for him he went on to earn another $214,000 before the end of 2007. That mini-heater included a final table at the WSOP, and extended straight into 2008 with four more World Series cashes and a six-figure payday at the EPT London High Roller event.

Haxton’s biggest score to date came at the 2009 WSOP when he finished second to Vitaly Lunkin in the $40,000 40^th Anniversary event. Haxton earned $1,168,568.

In 2010 Haxton fared well with two more six-figure finishes, winning a $2,500 Venetian Deep Stack event and finishing ninth in the $25k WSOP Six-Max Championship.

His most recent windfall before today’s PCA Super High Roller came in the way of a third-place finish in the $100,000 buy-in event at the Bellagio’s Five Diamond series in Las Vegas. That result earned him $581,806.

And now we treat you to the photo reel of Isaax Haxton we’ve compiled over the years.

Haxton used to have long hair, like really long.   Looking very Jim Morrison at the 2007 WSOP.   2008 and the hair remains.   2009 was the first time we saw Haxton 2.0   After a while it just started to look normal.   One year ago in the Bahamas.  

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) is the first big event on the poker calendar for 2012. As usual it is being held at the luxurious Atlantis Resort & Casino on Paradise Island in The Bahamas. The $100,000 Super High Roller has just been completed and it was a fitting beginning to the New Year.

The final table of eight players was the most star studded one seen in a long time. The poker fans have been dreaming of such a table at the WSOP Main Event for years. At the top of the table was Galen Hall, the winner of the 2011 PCA Main Event, hoping to create history at the Atlantis with back to back wins. Jonathan Duhamel, having put aside the home robbery by his ex-girl friend, was in the second spot. The veteran Daniel Negreanu, the leader in the all time live tournament earnings, was in third spot. Viktor Blom was next. As Isildur 1, Blom has ruled online poker rooms, but has yet to make a mark in live tournaments, where he has only one cash to his name. He finished 16th at the 2011 WSOP Europe Main Event. Dan Shak was the last player with the million plus chips. The last three were Scott Seiver, Mike “Timex” MacDonald and Humberto Brenes.

Brenes was the first to get eliminated, followed by McDonald and Seiver. All this while, Blom was grinding away making small but steady gains. Of the biggest names Negreanu was the first to go. His live tournament earnings will go up by a minuscule $250k. Soon after Duhamel was eliminated, Blom seized the top spot and things were tight from then on. Hall went next and Shak lost to Blom in the heads up.

It was a different Blom at the PCA Super High Roller. The aggressive raises were replaced by a patient waiting game. There is a list somewhere of top class poker players who have not won a major event. That list will now have one name less. Blom is a member of Team PokerStars, the sponsors of the event and this is what the PokerStars blog says. Famous among fans and infamous among the media for his reticence, Blom nearly escaped after his victory without saying a word. Instead, he gave a rare on-camera interview during which he said, in part, “It feels good to succeed.”