The high rollers will get a little higher at Casino Monte Carlo later this year.

If you’re a high roller who can’t get enough action in the world’s biggest poker tournaments, you’ll want to book a trip to Monaco in November for a tournament with a higher buy-in than any other in the world.

The International Poker Players Association, an organization founded by long-time high-stakes poker player Yosh Nakano, is holding its first Monte Carlo Championship at the end of this year. Playing out in a no-limit hold’em shootout format, the tournament sports a $250,000 buy-in, easily trumping the $100,000 buy-in at the Aussie Millions High Roller event and the $50,000 buy-in at the WSOP Poker Players Championship and simply crushing the buy-ins at other “high roller” poker tournaments around the world.

The IPPA’s tournament is offering $5 million to its winner. Normally that sort of sum is reserved for tournaments like the WSOP Main Event, with thousands of players’s buy-ins making up the top prize. But the IPPA tournament is limited to just 48 players, and the winner will only have to beat a small portion of that field thanks to the shootout format. Of course, with a six-figure buy-in the field will be of the highest caliber; Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, Michael Mizrachi and a dozen or so other top poker pros - and Gus Hansen - are already reported to have registered for the event.

The IPPA Monte Carlo Championship is scheduled to run from November 29 to December 2 at Casino Monte Carlo in Monaco.

Vanessa Selbst is a November Niner - in France, if not the U.S.

When the WSOP first announced that it was going to suspend play in the Main Event for three and a half months once the final table was reached, the public reaction was mixed at best. Now that the concept has proven to be a popular one after two years, it’s taking hold overseas in France’s Partouche Poker Tour.

The PPT recently held its third season Grand Final, an €8,500 buy-in tournament that attracted a solid field of 764 players and built a €5,684,160 (US $7,226,273) prize pool. The tournament played down to its final table on Tuesday, and then proceedings were put on hold until November. It’s a blatant copy of the successful WSOP November Nine model, with the PPT even waiting until the same month before getting back to the table.

But unlike the WSOP’s November Nine, there are several recognizable pros among the French group. Vanessa Selbst, winner of the NAPT Mohegan Sun main event earlier this year, leads the pack. Right behind her is Fabrice Soulier, France’s ninth all-time leading money winner. Also at the final table when things resume in November will be Ali Tekintamgac, winner of this year’s WPT Spanish Championship; former EPT Grand Final final tablist and Danish Poker Championship winner Soren Kongsgaard; and EPT Grand Final High Roller winner Tobias Reinkemeier.

The Partouche Poker Tour Grand Final will resume on November 6, with the final heads-up showdown taking place on November 7. First place is worth €1,300,000 (US $1,652,690).

Jake Cody locked up his second major tournament of the year in London.

One year ago Jake Cody was an up-and-coming online poker player with some extremely modest success to his credit in live poker tournaments. Today he’s two-thirds of the way to poker’s Triple Crown, now that he’s won his second major live tournament of the year at WPT London.

Cody had the most career earnings of any of the players at the final table in London, almost all thanks to his $1.2 million victory at EPT Deauville back in January, but he began the day in the middle of the pack with a little less than half the stack of chip leader Giovanni Safina. But after claiming the first two eliminations of the day, Cody seized the chip lead and made himself a force for the rest of the tournament. 

When Cody knocked Safina out in fifth place he had a solid advantage that allowed him to put lots of pressure on his remaining opponents. And from there it all looked as easy as it could be - every time Cody got an opponent all-in he won the hand, shrinking the field until he held a 5-to-2 chip lead on Nichlas Mattsson. Even the last hand seemed to be destined, with Mattsson moving all-in with A-Q only to find himself up against Cody’s pocket queens. The ladies held, sending Mattsson home in second and giving Cody the £273,783 (US $425,492) WPT London win.

Jake Cody will get the chance to complete his Triple Crown next week when WSOP Europe begins. If he can win a bracelet there, he’ll become only the third player to win the Triple Crown - and more importantly, he’ll become the first to do so in a single calendar year. Even if he can’t pull of that feat, he’s certain to go down as a major part of the enormous success that British poker players enjoyed in 2010.

Englishman Jake Cody seeks his second major tournament title tomorrow.

After four days of poker the final table is set at the WPT London main event - and while the names might not be too familiar to many poker fans, there are some accomplished players still in the mix. 

EPT Deauville champion Jake Cody will have one of the short stacks when play resumes tomorrow, but he also has the most live poker tournament earnings of anyone at the table with $1,215,611. He’ll be joined at the table by Kristoffer Thorsson, who won the 2009 Master Classics of Poker in Amsterdam and has $1,138,389 in career winnings. 

Saarisilta Mattsson, Thorsson’s tablemate from that Master Classics final table who has won $787,040 since 2006, will also take a seat at the WPT London final table tomorrow. Meanwhile Bruce Atkinson is the elder statesman of the table, sporting a poker resume that dates all the way back to 1989 and includes 16 cashes in WSOP events. In that time he has won $637,359 - not bad for an Elvis-impersonating old-timer who mostly plays small events.

Even the bubble boy in this tournament sported an accomplished history with the game. Priyan de Mel, who has won $696,185 since 2005, ended the first day of WPT London with the chip lead, but he wound up being the final table bubble boy today when his 6-6 couldn’t best Kristoffer Thorsson’s K-9.

The man with the chip lead heading into the London final table, Italy’s Giovanni Safina, is arguably the least-experienced player remaining in the field, having grabbed almost all of his live poker earnings through a made-for-TV event that he qualified for online. But that means he’ll be pretty comfortable on set with the bright lights and cameras on him - and that might be the biggest advantage of all.

Play resumes for the final time tomorrow at 3 p.m. local time and continues until the WPT has crowned its first champion on English soil.

Poker is booming on Oklahoma, and now Choctaw Casino is in on the action, too.

With a full month of poker in London dominating the international tournament schedule, the WSOP Circuit wisely scheduled a break between its recently completed first stop at Horseshoe Council Bluffs in Iowa and the second stop at Horseshoe Southern Indiana. But the tour is still making news thanks to a recently announced addition to its 2010-2011 schedule.

The newest stop on the fully revamped WSOP Circuit will run at Choctaw Casino Resort in Durant, Okla., from January 6-25, 2011, in between the Regional Championship at Harrahs Atlantic City and the smaller stop at Harrah’s Tunica in Mississippi. The Choctaw Casino Resort recently underwent a $300 million expansion that included a new 30-table poker room housed on its own executive level within the casino.

The WSOPC stop at Choctaw marks the first time that a Circuit event will be held at a casino not owned by Harrah’s. “After visiting the property, it was a must that we brought a WSOP Circuit stop to Choctaw Casino Resort,” said WSOP Vice President Ty Stewart.  “This is a huge poker market that has clamored for high stakes tournament poker and we’re ecstatic to be hosting a WSOP Circuit in this gorgeous property in Durant come January.”

A total of 10 gold WSOP Circuit rings will be up for grabs in Oklahoma in January, including one in the Main Event that will come with a seat in the WSOP National Championship. With thousands of poker players within driving distance in Oklahoma and Texas, the new stop should have no trouble becoming an overnight success. Harrah's is also promising to add one more stop to this year's WSOP Circuit schedule soon, so there should be a bit more news before the schedule is locked in for good.

Toby Lewis EPT Vilamoura survived to win his first major live poker tournament.

Three British poker players came in ahead of five other Europeans at the EPT Vilamoura final table, and the young man who started the day with the advantage ended up walking away the winner.

Teddy Sheringham started the day in third place and mostly played a tight game while the rest of the table duked it out with his fellow Brit Sam Trickett. The former England international soccer star did manage one knockout when his 5-5 held up against A-J to send Frederick Jensen out in sixth place. But he finished the day in fifth place when he flopped top pair with K-Q only to see that Martin Jacobson’s Q-J had flopped a straight, earning him €93,120 ($119,454).

Sam Trickett came in essentially tied for the chip lead, and his active stance at the table made it clear that he wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than going for it all. The former pro soccer player stayed aggressive throughout the day but the deck conspired against him the entire time; he lost with A-8 to K-7, J-J to Q-Q, A-3 to K-J, A-K to A-2, and with T-5 on a T-T-4 board when his opponent held 4-4. The sheer size of his starting stack helped to buffer him against some of those losses, but in the end a massive coin flip with deuces against Martin Jacobson’s Q-J was the last thing that would go wrong for Trickett. A jack on the flop secured a fourth-place exit, and €139,680 ($179,181), for him.

The last British player at the table was none other than incoming chip leader and online poker star Toby “810ofclubs” Lewis. He entered heads-up play at a 3-to-2 chip disadvantage against Jacobson but he had turned that to a 3-to-2 lead by the time the players reached their first break, extending it even further before Jacobson won with 7-7 to Lewis’ A-8 to nearly even things back up. But Lewis held onto the lead long enough to find himself in a perfect situation, turning a disguised set of fives that gave Jacobson two pair and getting him to five-bet all-in drawing to just two outs. Neither of those outs came on the river, and Lewis became the second consecutive online player to win an EPT event.

Jacobson settled for €297,984 ($382,105), the biggest cash of his career ahead of a second-place finish at last year’s WPT Venice. Toby Lewis, meanwhile, gets the breakthrough he’d been waiting for in live tournaments and takes home €467,835 ($599,905) to boot.

There won't be any WPT main event cash for Phil Ivey this time around.

Just 39 players returned today for Day 3 of the first-ever WPT stop in London - and Phil Ivey wasn’t one of them. Ivey enjoyed a good run until he lost most of his stack with pocket queens against online qualifier Giovanni Safina of Italy when Safina flopped three tens with J-T. The rest of Ivey’s stack went when Luke Schwartz flopped the nut flush against him, leaving the Great One plenty of time to play high-stakes London cash games before WSOP Europe gets started in two weeks.

A handful of notable players did advance to Day 3, though. Praz Bansi and Richard Ashby were among the group of British poker pros who won WSOP bracelets this year, and both are still in contention to win the first WPT event on British soil. Angry young man Schwartz made it through to Day 3, but he lost a coin-flip in the early going to bust out. WSOP Tournament of Champions winner Huck Seed also found a way to get to Day 3 and even moved toward the top of the leaderboard for a bit, though he took a nasty beat holding A-K against A-9 shortly afterward to find his stack in jeopardy.

Today will likely be a short day for WPT London, since there are two more days of play left and the last is reserved for the final table. Tomorrow will see the tournament play down to that final table, as well as the £15,000 WPT London High Roller event, which at three times the buy-in of the main event should be enough to get the attention of Phil Ivey.

British online poker star Toby Lewis leads EPT Vilamoura. (Photo: The Hendon Mob)

Four days are down in Vilamoura, Portugal, site of the latest European Poker Tour main event, and the top three chip stacks heading into the final table all belong to British poker players.

Chip leader Toby “810ofclubs” Lewis (3,322,000) is a successful online poker player who’s a relative newcomer to live poker tournaments. Already the eighth-ranked online player in the UK according to PocketFives, Lewis’ first live cash came with a win in a £200 buy-in tournament in Brighton back in the spring of 2009. Since then he has piled up another $171,669 in live tournament earnings, including two EPT cashes. He has already secured the biggest live tournament cash of his career regardless of his finish tomorrow.

Second-place man Sam Trickett (3,365,000 in chips) has been cashing in poker tournaments for only about the last three years, but he’s made the most of that short time by winning nearly $1.33 million, impressing nearly every time he sits at the table. His fourth-place finish in the 2008 WSOP $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em event was worth $245,927. At this year’s Series the biggest of the former professional soccer player’s six cashes ($505,725) came from a second-place performance in the same event, and he had a chance at an even bigger score before becoming the final table bubble boy in the $25,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event and settling for a $141,168 payday instead. A win tomorrow would mark the seventh tournament victory of his short career.

And in third place is Teddy Sheringham (1,783,000). With 415 English Premier League games and 51 international appearances for the English national soccer team under his belt, Sheringham picked up live poker tournaments as a hobby. He nearly had a big breakthrough at last year’s WSOP Europe Main Event, finishing in 14th place of 334 players to grab a $66,738 prize. If he finishes in seventh place or higher in this tournament he’ll have grabbed his biggest career cash.

Of course, there are still five other players left, including short-stacked former EPT Grand Final champ Rob Hollink. But at the 12,000/24,000/2,000 level they’ll all need some luck on their side since none of them have more than 50 big blinds. Along with the three British poker players dominating the leaderboard, they’ll be back in action at noon local time tomorrow to see who takes the €467,835 ($597,285) top prize.

It’s business time for Luke Schwartz at the Mayfair Palm Beach Casino.

With starting flights out of the way, WPT London began the task of whittling the survivors down to a final table today. Tournament director Jack McClelland took a page out of his Bellagio Cup VI playbook and kept registration open all the way through the end of Level 8, enticing a few late arrivals like Yevgeniy Timoshenko and Jeffrey Lisandro to get into the game. 

Once the last chance to get a ticket on this train was gone, the total number of entrants stood at 171 - not a number that will blow anyone away, but not a bad total for the WPT’s first stop in London (with an EPT event running concurrently in Portugal, no less). The total prize pool was £820,800 ($1.27 million); 18 players will get paid, with 18th receiving £8,848 ($13,591) and £273,783 ($420,558) set aside for the winner.

As for who that winner will be, there’s still the matter of playing two more full days of poker before we can find out. Priyan de Mel started the day with the best chance of the 90 remaining players, holding a tournament-leading chip stack of 235,000. Right behind de Mel was 2010 WSOP bracelet winner Richard Ashby (229,800), with eight-time WSOP bracelet winner Erik Seidel (226,200) right on his heels. Not too far behind is Phil Ivey, who will be looking for a record-tying 10th WPT final table appearance. As of right now, though, the chip leader is none other than sandwich-thieving poker pro Luke Schwartz, who put a cooler on Seidel for most of his stack. That got Schwartz into something of a confrontation over table etiquette with Phil Ivey. With more than 140,000 in his own stack, Ivey won't be rolling over for the brash Brit anytime soon.

Play will continue today until 27 players remain, with those survivors coming back to resume their journey to the first WPT London final table at 12 p.m. local time tomorrow.

Blair Hinkle has earned the first seat in the WSOP Circuit National Championship.

The new slogan for the World Series of Poker Circuit is “First The Ring, Then The Bracelet” - but the first WSOPC main event winner of the new season decided to write his story in reverse.

Blair Hinkle, who won his first WSOP bracelet in 2008 just two weeks after his own brother Grant had earned his own WSOP hardware, emerged victorious at the WSOP Circuit main event at Horseshoe Council Bluffs in Iowa. He may have been the only previous gold bracelet winner of the last 13 players, but the final day was anything but easy for Hinkle, whose stack swung back and forth and had him on the verge of elimination several times throughout the final table.

The day began with 13 players, but the final table wasn’t set until ESPN poker analyst Bernard Lee was eliminated in 10th place with A-K against Jack Do’s K-K. After eliminating John Wakeen in eighth place Hinkle found himself in the lead, but he quickly surrendered it after doubling up three-time WSOPC ring winner Dwyte Pilgrim with A-2 against Pilgrim’s A-K. Another confrontation shortly afterward saw Hinkle get in behind Pilgrim with K-Q to A-2 but come out ahead when a queen hit the turn. 

A key coin flip (9-9 vs. Charles Moore’s A-K) with five players left saw Hinkle grab the lead, and then Shiva Dudani leapt ahead when he knocked out Matt Lawrence to leave the game three-handed. Thirty minutes later Hinkle finally got the best of Pilgrim, flopping a straight with 8-6 against Pilgrim’s top pair with A-T to send the multiple-ring-winner home and set up the heads-up match. Hinkle and Dudani played for nearly an hour and a half before Dudani bluffed all-in on the river with a busted straight draw; Hinkle called with two pair and ended the first stop of the new WSOP Circuit season.

For the win, Blair Hinkle takes home $88,555 and the gold WSOP Circuit ring. He also earns the first seat in the 2011 WSOP Circuit National Championship, which will be held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas next May before the WSOP begins.