Varun Goenka

Estonian Tournament Poker Federation’s Annual Award Ceremony

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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

Varun Goenka

The Belarus Poker Tour

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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)

 

Varun Goenka

EVOLUTION OF BRAZILIAN POKER

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Below is an update from the Confederacao Brasileira de Texas Hold’em (CBTH), IFP’s Brazilian member nation:

The latest year for Brazilian Poker was of great advances, government assistance and support from well-known brands such as SKY TV and DUCATI, hitting new records.

The Brazilian Poker Championship – (Brazilian Series of Poker – BSOP), recognized as the largest and most important series of poker tournaments in Brazil and Latin America, in its 8th season had another year of growth and record players and awards , mirroring the success of the sport in our country.

In Brazil today it is estimated that there are about 4 million people that have some contact with Poker and this volume can be noticedin the final step of the Championship that took place in December 2013.

BSOP Millions (Final Step) had 2400 registered participants for its main event, with a total of 6889 entries in the entire event. With these numbers we had a new Brazilian and Latin American record, also giving BSOP the status of second largest national series of poker tournaments in the world.

In this event we had numerous celebrities participating as Ronaldo “Fenomeno”, and we also had the Minister of Sports in Brazil, the most important member of the government related to the sport in the country, attend the official opening ceremony, supporting, congratulating growth and all the good deeds that sport has generated for the country.

www.cbth.org.br