Cake Poker regular Joe Curcio cashed for $72,591 at the Venetian DSE III Main Event last week. (Photo: PokerNews)

Earlier this month we told you a bit about Cake Poker high stakes regular Joe Curcio, who managed to cash twice at this year’s World Series of Poker, including an eighth-place finish in one of the last preliminary events before the Main Event kicked off. That was good for $78,705 - not a bad take for his first WSOP final table.

The WSOP Main Event didn’t go quite as well for Joe. Since he had planned on being in Las Vegas for a bit longer than his Main Event finish warranted, he decided to head over to the Strip and try his luck in the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza III Main Event. The DSE III, which ran concurrently with this year’s WSOP, sported small buy-ins for most of its tournaments. Many were at the $340 and $550 levels, but the Main Event cost $4,850. 

Unsurprisingly, that tournament drew a tough field of 282 players, continuing a trend of strong attendance that held up all summer. The DSE III Main Event field included plenty of skilled players who had for one reason or another busted from the WSOP Main Event earlier than they had planned. And once again Joe, the online high-stakes cash game player who says he hates live poker, tasted live tournament success in Las Vegas: he finished in fifth place at Venetian for a payday of $72,591.

“It was a really tough field and a grueling 4 days of deep-stacked poker,” Joe told us, “but I learned a lot and it was really interesting to say the least.”

So congratulations are in order once again for Joe Curcio. Two final table scores for $70K each is never a bad way to end a summer of poker in Las Vegas!

Joe Curcio took the road less traveled en route to an 8th-place finish in WSOP Event #56. (Photo: PokerNews)

While the rest of the poker world had its eyes on the WSOP Main Event, Cake Poker high stakes cash game regular Joe Curcio had a wild ride at his first WSOP final table. 

The first big hand he played looked to be a good situation for him, as his A-Q had Ali Alawadhi’s K-Q in terrible shape before the flop. But a king came as one of the first three cards and no ace appeared by the river, dropping Joe to 750,000 chips with blinds at 25,000/50,000 and antes at 5,000.

The next hand saw Joe move all-in over the top of a raise from former bracelet winner Mike Wattel holding 9-9, only to have Wattel call with A-A, which held up to leave Joe with just 115,000. That meant it was time to shove with any two decent cards, and shove he did. First he got in behind with K-T against Salvatore Bonavena’s A-K, surviving when two tens came on the flop and a king fell on the river. Then he moved in with A-T from the small blind and ran into Tomer Berda’s A-K, but a ten on the flop was enough to keep him in the game.

Thirty minutes later Joe got in as a big favorite with K-K against Bonavena’s 6-6, but the A-Q-6 flop appeared to be his ticket to the payout cage. With one of his kings a club and the flop’s ace and queen also clubs, Joe had a backdoor flush draw - and that draw got there when the turn and river both came the right suit. Suddenly Joe found himself right back where he began the day, with 1.275 million in chips.

But less than an hour later the wild ride would end. Vladimir Kochelaevskiy opened the hand, Joe moved in with J-J, and Kochelaevskiy snap-called with pocket aces. There were no miracles this time around, and Joe busted in eighth place. 

His take for the tournament was $78,705 - not bad for a $2,500 investment and his second WSOP cash. Congratulations, Joe!

Some things are just so beautiful that you just have to act like a jackass about them.

With all the great promotions, satellites, guaranteed tournaments and reward programs we’ve got running here at Cake Poker, we think we’ve really got something to shout about. In fact, we might be so bold as to say that we’re Giant Double Rainbow Excited!

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s currently making us laugh and cry ecstatically:

Cash Grab – Build your Stacks faster for monster rewards with an extra 50% added to the Gold Stack Super Turbo Bonus until the end of July. There’s no other way to describe Cash Grab other than Giant Double Rainbow Awesome!

Match & Win – This new Gold Card promotion pays out cash and prizes for redeeming matching Gold Cards to each month’s prizes. Check the complete Match & Win rules then check the game board in the Cake Poker software in the Gold Card tab under Rewards. Just try to keep your tears of joy off the keyboard.

Turbo Gold Cards – Conveniently running from now through August, Gold Cards are being handed out TWICE the normal speed. It would be enough to make a grown man cry before you even factor in that all these extra cards can be used in the Match & Win program! Oh my God, this is so intense!

$200K Guaranteed – Every Sunday at 5PM ET Cake Poker runs the $100,000 Guaranteed tournament. The last Sunday of every month see that guarantee doubled to $200,000 with satellites starting for as little as $3 or even 3 Gold Chips. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!

Satellites to Live Tournaments – Right now Cake’s got daily satellites for both the English Poker Open in London and the Canadian Open Poker Championships in Calgary.

Now, don’t be shy. Let the tears flow. It’s okay, we see how beautiful it is too.

Cake Poker high-stakes cash game regular Joe Curcio has a shot at a bracelet today. (Photo: PokerNews)

While the circus of the WSOP Main Event gets started today in the Rio’s Amazon Room, there will be one more bracelet tournament playing out in the Pavilion Room: Event #56, $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em. And one of the final nine players in the tournament is none other than Cake Poker player Joe Curcio.

Curcio, who grew up on Staten Island and now lives in Manhattan, New York, has been playing poker since 2007, when he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. “I had this absolute passion for poker,” he says, “so I had no intention of getting a real job.” Instead he poured himself into the game, depositing $180 online in May 2007 and grinding it up to more than $100,000 by that December playing small- to mid-stakes no-limit hold’em games. 

From there it was on to $5-$10 NLHE, and with the help of poker coach Greg Brooks, serious study of the game. Playing under the screen names PITCHTHEBTCH, DARKWINGDUCK, and COLORCODEPPL and, currently, CHRISOODLE here on Cake Poker, as well as on a few other poker sites online, Curcio took just 23 months to win his first million dollars in poker. He now plays anywhere from $5-$10 to $50-$100, both on Cake Poker and elsewhere. “Basically, if there is a high stakes game running online these days, chances are I am in it,” he says.

A 50,000-hand sample of Joe's results - the top of that graph is $125,000.

Because he hates live poker, Curcio says he tries to make vacations out of the dozen or so live events he plays each year. Here at the WSOP he has been living in a 9,500-square-foot, eight-bedroom house with six other online players and a personal chef. One of his roommates is Craig Marquis, one of the original November Nine, who actually finished in 16th place in Event #56.

In this tournament, Curcio managed to grind his stack from 7,500 to 27,000 on Day 1 without too much effort. Day 2 was a little tougher since he had a push-or-fold stack for much of the day, but he managed to chip up to 302,000 by the end of play thanks to a good read and a good situation with A-A against one player at his table. Day 3 started with a successful 9-9 vs. K-J coin flip and then moved on to a tough table with online poker stars Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, Brian “sn0wman” Hawkins, Mike “SirWatts” Watts and James “mig.com” Mackey. Turner would soon be redrawn to another table, commenting as he left, “Thank god, that was the best thing that happened to me all day.” A couple of sizable pots against Mackey helped Curcio chip up to 1.9 million, but three-bets galore from his opponents dropped him to 1.2 million by the end of the day.

Even though he sits fourth in chips as the final table begins, Joe Curcio only has 25 big blinds in his stack - so winning the bracelet will require as much luck as skill, if not more. But given his laid-back vacationer’s approach to live tournaments and his overall positive experience during this WSOP, any result today will be a good one. Regardless of his finish, there's a good chance you can catch a recap of the event on Joe's blog.

Good luck, Joe - we’ll be pulling for you!

Cake Poker VIP Steve Frasure earned his first WSOP cash of 2010 today.

The days are long and the competition is tough, but our Cake Poker players continue to make a good showing here at the 2010 World Series of Poker. 

The main man so far is Justin Gardenhire, whose 21st-place cash in the $2,500 Pot-Limit Omaha is the best result for any of our guys so far. Justin also has two other cashes in previous events to go along with that PLO score, giving him a total of $18,942 in earnings so far this WSOP. Only 14 players have more cashes than Justin does this year, and some of the players who have cashed the same number of times as he has - - are among the best-known in poker. Justin says he’s going to keep playing throughout the rest of the Series, and with the way he’s focused in right now it would be no surprise if he added a few more cashes and maybe even a final table before all is through.

Several other Cake players have done well here in Vegas. Joe Curcio cashed in a $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em event for $1,834 earlier in the Series, and Will Tonking took 56th place in another $1,000 event for $6,571 earlier this week. And just today, Steve Frasure finished in 115th place in Event #30, $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em, for a score of $3,878. Steve will also be playing in tomorrow’s Seniors Event, and possibly on Saturday in the next $1,000 tournament, so he has a few more opportunities to add to his take here at the Rio.

All told, these four Cake Poker players have earned $31,225 in six cashes at the Rio this summer - and we’re only halfway through the schedule. There’s still plenty of time to join them in Las Vegas. You can win yourself a $2,500 Cake Poker WSOP package for as little as $1.10, or a $12,500 package for as little as $3.30 - check out our 2010 WSOP page for more details.

An international group is chasing the latest PLO bracelet today.

Just 12 players of the original 596 players return on Day 3 of Event #28, the $2,500 Pot-Limit Omaha - and the group that remains looks very different than the group you might have picked if you’d drafted in a pool when this tournament hit the money. T.J. Cloutier, Michael Binger, Christian Harder, Sandra Naujoks, Chau Giang, and 2010 WSOP bracelet winners Richard Ashby and Josh Tieman all cashed but fell short of advancing to the final day of play. 

In their place is a tough, international group of players headed up by chip leader Miguel Proulx of Canada, who enters play with 877,000 chips. Frenchman Patrick Hanoteau is close behind with 824,000 but the rest of the field is trailing him by 350,000 or more. Bulgaria’s Dilyan Kovachev, England’s Michael Greco, Germany’s Karl Gal, and Americans Joe Serock and Tommy Le (brother of poker pro Nam Le) will all be looking for a chance to break one of those big stacks down and get some ammunition for the run to the bracelet. They’ll get started again and begin playing down to a winner at 2:30 p.m. PT.

Cake Poker player Justin Gardenhire, who won a $12,500 Cake Poker WSOP prize package back in May, came close to his first Day 3 berth of the summer in this event. Pot-Limit Omaha can be a cruel game, and Justin’s exit was proof; within three hands he went from having a 260,000-chip stack to being all-in with a big draw against an opponent who had more than a few of his outs. A miss on the river meant he had to leave the tournament in 21st place.

Because Cake Poker qualifiers allow players to “play, stay and even wear what they want,” Justin elected to play a number of preliminary bracelet events instead of putting all his eggs in one basket with the Main Event. That’s been a good decision so far, as his run in this event netted him his third cash of the WSOP. He’ll be looking to make another run starting today in Event #33, $2,500 Pot-Limit Hold’em/Omaha, and we’ll keep up with his progress when that tournament begins at 5:00 p.m. PT. If you'd like the chance to join Justin and other Cake Poker qualifiers at the WSOP, check out the full information right here.

Cake Poker player Justin Gardenhire beside ElkY early on Day 2.

Cake Poker player Justin Gardenhire entered Day 2 of the $2,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event fifth in chips today, holding a stack of 97,700 with 105 remaining. That was quite some distance from the money, which started paying out at 54th place, but his sights are set on the final table and the bracelet, anyway. 

Justin has had some pretty famous tablemates throughout the day. At his first table he was seated directly to the right of Tournament of Champions participant Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier. Later he was moved to a table featuring former EPT Dortmund champion Sandra Naujoks and 2005 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Joe Hachem. He later squared off against Chau Giang and on-again, off-again chip leader Bryce Yockey, but luckily for him he was moved back to another table with the gorgeous Naujoks, where he still sits right now.

It's been a stack-building kind of day for Justin.

Most of the day Justin’s stack has fluctuated between 120,000 and 160,000, though he moved a bit over 200,000 earlier when he hit a royal flush. Now, as the evening draws to a close and just 28 players remain in the event, Justin is still hanging tough with a stack of roughly 190,000. That’s a bit above the average of 160,000, leaving him plenty of room to maneuver with blinds at 1,500/3,000. (There are never any antes in pot-limit Omaha.)

The plan for tonight is to play until 3 a.m. PT, which will be the end of Level 20. It’s unlikely that the final table will be set by then, so tomorrow could well be another long day here at the WSOP. We’ll have our eyes on Justin as long as he’s still going - which will hopefully be up until the moment he’s strapping a gold bracelet onto his wrist for winning Event #28.

Cake Poker player Justin Gardenhire had a great day of Pot-Limit Omaha yesterday.

Event #28, the second Pot-Limit Omaha tournament of the 2010 World Series of Poker, was the noon tourney yesterday at the Rio and a solid field of 596 players turned up for a chance at the $315,311 top prize. Just 105 of them remained by the end of the first day of  play, including former world champion Joe Hachem, friend of Cake Poker T.J. Cloutier, and 2010 bracelet winners Frank Kassela, Josh Tieman, and Tex Barch, who won the bracelet in the first PLO event of 2010. 

Also among the players coming back for Day 2 later today is one of Cake’s own, Justin Gardenhire. Not only is Justin returning to play tomorrow, but with a stack of 97,700 he’ll actually be among the leaders when things get started up again this afternoon in the Amazon Room. We chatted early on in the day and not much had happened yet, but a lot of small-ball and a few key pots later in the day helped push Justin into the top 10.

The 100-200 level saw a very large pot develop when Justin limped behind two other players with K-K-J-3; the cutoff raised to 800 and they all came along to see a flop of K-Q-4 with two clubs. The player under the gun led out for 2,400 into a 3,200 chip pot, and Justin raised to 10,500. The preflop raiser in the cutoff tanked and eventually shipped his entire stack for 17,500, and when the under-the-gun player called Justin did as well. When the board ran out 7-5, his top set held up against K-Q-7-6 and A-A-J-6 with two clubs to ship him a 40,000-chip pot.

On the last level of the night (400-800) he opened for 1,900 in second position holding K-Q-J-J with three diamonds and got callers on the button and in the big blind. The flop came down T-9-3 with two diamonds, a fantastic board for Justin’s hand. He led out for 3,800 into the 6,100 pot, the button called, and the big blind folded. The turn brought the king of hearts, giving Justin the nut straight. This time he checked and the button bet the full pot of 13,700; Justin then pulled out the check-raise for the full pot, committing fully half his stack. The player on the button tanked and finally let it go, shipping Justin his biggest pot of the night and pushing him toward the front of the pack.

Justin and the other 104 remaining players in this WSOP Pot-Limit Omaha event will resume play in the Amazon Room at 2:30 p.m. ET today, with play scheduled to continue down to a final table in anticipation of Day 3. You can keep up with Justin’s progress on his Twitter account (@gardyone), and we’ll be keeping an eye on him here on the Cake Poker Blog as well.

Poker tournaments worth throwing some elbows to get into.

Cake Poker is rolling out some ultra-high value poker tournaments called Door Crashers between May 1 and 15.

Door Crashers are not technically scheduled for any specific time, but they will pop up between the hours of 12 – 2 PM and 9 – 11 PM ET everyday of the promotion. They will all have limited seating and will only have 10 minutes time from when they are announced to when they begin.

The Door Crasher poker tournaments will vary in value from good to amazing, all buy-ins will range from one Gold Chip to $30 and seating will always be limited. So remember poker people, you won’t want to waste anytime when you see a Door Crasher pop-up because they will fill-up fast.

If you haven’t already, you can download the Cake Poker free poker software. And don’t forget, new sign-ups get a 110% deposit bonus.

The cream of the online poker tournament crop is this Sunday.

It can earn you points towards Card Player’s Online Player of the Year Award. It can earn you the respect of your online poker peers. But most importantly, it can earn you big fat gobs of cash.

That’s right it’s that time of the month again. No, not THAT time of the month. The Cake Poker $250K Guaranteed Tournament time of the month.

If you’re looking for a seat to this premiere online poker tournament there are plenty of ways to get in from $3 satellites, Gold Chip satellites, direct Gold Chip buy-ins and direct cash buy-ins for $268.

This month has a good chance of seeing some overlay so that means a good deal for poker players looking for high value.

If you haven’t already you can get Cake’s free poker download and start off right with a 110% deposit bonus.