The Estonian Tournament Poker Federation (ETPF) hosted their annual award ceremony on 24th January 2015 honouring the best Estonian poker players of 2014.

Awards were given out in 7 categories:

The man of the evening was Madis Müür, whose best achievement last year was fourth place in PokerStars Caribbean Aadventure main event in Bahamas, which rocketed him to the top grossing Estonian live poker player of all time.

Madis won awards in the following categories – Best Live-Player, the Poker Persona of the Year, People’s Choice and the Poker Event of the Year.

Best female was Mirjam Jalak, who got second place in Marrakesh Poker Open deep-stack tournament in Morocco.

Best online player was Rudi Reinkort, who among other achievents got second place in PokerStars Sunday Million tournament.

Best new player was Ranno Sootla.

 

Photos of the event are available at:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eesti-Turniiripokkeri-F%C3%B6deratsioon/238649189558532?sk=photos_stream

We are extremely pleased to welcome Belgium to the IFP Family as our 52nd member nation!

Federation Belge de Poker is a non-profit organisation and was established in 2014.

The federation’s mission and purpose is:

– To promote and defend the game of poker in all its variants.

– Develop tools for all players to play poker on their means.

– Ensure the safety of players in addiction by developing, using and maintaining tools.

– Be the reference and the intermediary in poker between the authorities, players, poker event organizers and media.

– Ensure compliance with regulations and legislation specific to poker.

– To promote poker as a cerebral sport.

– Promoting the quality and the transmission of data between its members and other parties, among other supporting administratively and legally the event organizers,

– Study, encourage and achieve everything that can contribute to the legal development of the activities of the organizers of poker-related activities.

We would like to officially welcome the Belgian Poker Federation to the IFP Family and we are excited to grow this great mind sport even more in Belgium!

More info here – https://matchpokerfed.org/member-nation/belgium/

The second stage of the Belarus Poker Tour – the first and only poker series in the country – is now a thing of the past. Organized by the Belarus Sport Poker Federation (IFP member from 2009) the event is becoming one of the hottest poker tournaments for the former USSR countries. It has grown by 30% from the first stage which was held a few months ago and now has a rather wide reach including players from Belarus, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Israel, Moldova etc. Due to close relations with Pokerstars.net the Belarus Poker Tour tournament team hopes to make the series better and better until they can get the flagship status in the region. The next steps are not just holding the next stage but also organizing full live video streaming, online satellites for the wide net of the neighbour states, reaching a new record by increasing the players quantity up to the next 30%.

Here are some numbers, facts and link about the 2nd stage of the Belarus Poker Tour:

  1. More than 1500 entries for 8 events and a few live satellites.
  2. Total prize pool is about 2 300 000 000 BYR J (150 000 USD)
  3. Video coverage for Main and Highrollers event’s final tables
  4. The sportiest poker series in the region being held outside the casinos and consisting only from freeze-outs with no re-buys, re-entries etc.
  5. The organizer’s official website: pokerfederation.by (only Russian language yet)
  6. The links to video content of the series:http://youtu.be/dmPAfMLQSWMhttp://www.pokerfederation.by/node/582

    http://www.pokerfederation.by/node/580 (in Russian)

 

IFP is extremely proud of our Austrian member nation, the Austrian Poker Sport Association, and would like to congratulate them on their new partnership with Winamax.fr!

An official release from the Austrian Federation:

The Austrian Poker Sport Association is proud to announce Winamax.fr as our new online gaming partner for all future training and ranking tournaments.

Two poker institutions joining forces – the APSA has, since its inception 2006, promoted poker as a mind game and organized national championships, maintained the Austrian poker ranking, dispatched the Austrian national poker team as well as taught poker courses to beginners and advanced players.

Winamax.fr is the premier French poker site and belongs to the largest and most popular sites worldwide. In 2013 it was awarded the title of ‘World´s Best Online Operator of the Year’.

Over two million satisfied customers enjoy the premier software, great tournaments and award-winning customer service.

Through a series of online freeroll torunements the APSA and Winamax.fr will determine this year’s most valuable player who will be awarded a ticket the the Winamax Poker Open.

“The collaboration with Winamax.fr allows us to further improve our extensive poker package and provide our players with great freeroll tournaments. We are very much looking forward to this collaboration and are sure that a bright future awaits the APSA with Winamax at its side.” says Martin Sturc, President of the APSA.

 

 

 

The German national federation (Deutscher Poker Sportbund) was in London at the APAT World Championship of Amateur Poker (WCOAP) where four DPSB members took part in the Team Event.

Thomas Doering and Jeurgen Bachmann from SV Burgweinting, Matthias Liese and Philip Henze from Poker Piranhas tus Berne. All four of them are players in the DPSB HeadsUp League.

The team event was part of a ten day festival featuring 20 bracelet events for amateur poker players. There were ten teams competing for two days. After a horrible day 1 they managed to fight back and win the bronze medal for third place overall.

In addition Philip Henze made also the Final Table (6th) in the Pot-Limit Omaha 8 – Side Event as did Juergen Bachmann in the H.O.R.S.E – Side Event (also 6th). And last but not least Philip won the last event #20 and can call himself now APAT WCOAP Heads Up Champion 2015.

Congratulations to the German National Federation and its participating players on their superb individual and team performances!