Rat Pack Poker News

Ladies and Gentlemen here is some of the latest poker news for you.

• Aussie Millions is taken down by a native 68yr. old Aussie David Gorr.  Mr. Gorr will take home a nice AUD$2Million for his win over the likes of Patrik Antonius who finished in a respectable 8th place for AUD$130,000
• Erik Sidel won the Aussie Millions SUPER HIGH ROLLER event which had a buy in of AUD$250,000 and a tough field of 20. Mr. Sidel will take home AUD$2.5 Million
• UB/Absolute Pokers UBOC 6 Series is coming to an end this weekend with just a few events left, but  big ones. Today at 4pm is the $100k GTD NLH Unlimited Rebuys Turbo for $100+9, along with a MINI-UBOC $10k GTD NLH Unlimited Rebuys for $10+1.   
• Sunday at 4pm we'll see UBOC $1 Million GTD CHAMPIONSHIP MONSTER STACK NLH w/ a buy in of a mere $1,000+50. The event will be hosted by Prahlad Freidman. Also at 4pm is the MINI-UBOC $50k GTD Championship Monster Stack NLH w/a buy in of $50+5.  Then at 6:30pm there will be the UBOC $100k GTD NLH Deep Stack Turbo w/a buy in of $300+20 and MINI-UBOC $10k GTD NLH Deep Stack Turbo w/a buy in of $10+1
• GSN's High Stakes Poker season will be back but this time sponsored by PokerStars, and we're not sure if Full Tilt Poker players will be playing or not. When we know for sure, we'll let you know.

Frank Sinatra from  Playboy mag. Feb.1962 "I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels. But to me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle."

Classic Cool Poker News: GSN's High Stakes Poker season 7 etc....

Ladies and Gents we've been away to long. Out smoking cigars and sipping some scotch with friends but here we are with some much needed poker news

• High Stakes Poker is finally back and will be starting up on Feb. 26th on GSN.  Gabe Kaplan and Kara Scott return but that's where the similarities may possibly stop.  You may remember we reported awhile back that Poker Stars had slid in and taken the sponsorship spot from Full Tilt and thus we are not sure if you will be seeing the likes of Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, and Erik Lindgren, just to name a few.  There is no cast list yet released but we'll keep you up to date.
• Poker Stars Pro Daniel Negreanu has stated that he is going to try and reach Poker Stars SUPERNOVA status.  A status reserved for those who reach 100k VPPs no easy feat, last year Negreanu reached just over 55k VPPs
• Patrik Antonius smashed the online tables at Full Tilt over the weekend to the tune of $447k + and on top of that he took down massive pots in the Aussie Millions High Stakes cash game
• UB.com's UBOC $2,100 Super High Roller Event saw a nice sign up of 387 players with a prizepool of around $774k. The official winner was user JARFISH taking home $124k (it was actually a 4 way chop) .UB.com's UBOC $162 No Limit Hold'em Deep Stack Sniper Event saw a nice 3-way chop too
• in smaller news BWIN announced it's iPhone app for real money play, you can read more about that here BWIN iPhone App (we say small news b/c we're in America and we can't play on BWIN)

Ok ladies and gents we'll be back with more poker info. this week

Poker News

Ladies and Gents we apologize for being away for the past couple of days, but we here we have some poker news for you.

• TAMBROYLES has signed up with UB/Absolute Poker via Rat Pack Poker and we couldn't be more excited!
• 2010 WSOP Main Event Champ. Jonathan Duhamel has signed with PokerStars making it "3 n a row" for PSTARS. (they signed both Joe Cada and Peter Eastgate after their wins)
• REMATCH!!! yes the 2010 WSOP Main Event "November 9" are set to play again via a rematch at Foxwoods Resort & Casino on Feb. 8th 
• Patrik Antonius takes over $400k from high stakes player KAGOME KAGOME. you may not recognize the name but the player used to go by the id IHATEJUICE but was asked to change his name when it was pointed out that the player resides in Germany and the term "Juice" is used as slang for Jews. Interestingly enough the term Kagome is Japanese and translates to "Demon/Ogre" and Kagome Kagome is a Japanese childrens game like tag. See the infamous wiki for more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagome_Kagome

And also CAO's La Taviata Maduro Cigar is AMAZING!!!

we'll also be back to finish up the SinatrasStyle Stories!

Isildur1 revealed!

That's right ladies and gents, after much speculation in the poker community PokerStars reveals and confirms that Viktor Bloom is indeed high stakes online player "Isildur1".


During PokerStars PCA High Rollers Event it was announced that the identity of online player "Isildur1" would be revealed and about an hour and a half later Viktor Bloom registered for the event but wasn't in the event too long after being eliminated on day 1

Phil Hellmuth talks about leaving the UB brand

yes ladies and gents, Phil Hellmuth has broke his silence. HA just kidding, he's never silent, however he did do an interview with CardPlayer.com about his recent departure from UB.com. Here is an excerpt:


Julio Rodriguez: Did UB decide to cut ties with you, or did you decide to leave the company?

Phil Hellmuth: It was honestly a joint decision. It was a business related decision for me, and I think it was the same for them. It’s pretty simple really. Annie [Duke] and I happened to leave at the same time, and people may not read that as a coincidence, but if you ask her she’ll confirm that it was.

JR: Speaking of Duke, did the two of you discuss leaving with each other, or was it just a coincidence that she also decided to not renew her contract?

PH: It really was a coincidence. I knew that Annie was thinking about leaving, and she was obviously aware that I was in the process of leaving, but it really was a coincidence that we both happened to officially leave on the same day. I mean, I’ve been talking with UB about the possibility of leaving since November. If I had to guess, I would have thought that we’d be leaving a month or two apart from each other, but I that’s not how it worked out. I don’t know her situation, but for me, it was purely a business decision.

for the full interview click the link here Phil Hellmuth's Interview about leaving UB

Joe Sebok Confirms UB.com is the place to play!

Shortly after Daniel Negreanu went on a twitter rampage about how he felt with Prahlad Friedman's possible signing with UB.com we reported that we had emailed UB/Absolute Poker support to ask the simple question. "is Russ Hamilton still affiliated with UB.com or the current management in any way", and we never herd back for 24 hours. Even after tweeting the two poker rooms directly we still didn't hear anything back.

But....after just one mention to Joe Sebok on the twitter page asking the same question he swiftly took care of business by tweeting us back "..of course. the answer is no. see my blogs for the last 18 months regarding it pls." and we greatly appreciate the quick response of Mr. Sebok and here is a link to his blog regarding the issue.
Joe Sebok's Blog

• We pursued this rather simple question so much b/c UB.com and Absolute Poker have been a favorite of ours and we never like something or someone we believe in coming into question with out being given the chance to prove themselves.  After the "super user" scandal years ago, these two poker rooms came under fire, but even after they tried to fix the problems and become a better company both in reputation and in security measures there are still doubters out there.  Hopefully this will help clear up the air a bit.
• In all points of online poker there will always be questions raised ex. did Andy Bloch put bots on Full Tilt's site, do they do it to fill tables, did PokerStars know about the Chinese collusion ring..etc  All poker sites will face things and hopefully come out for the best. What we can surely say is that UB and Absolute Poker have given us no reason for doubts since then and have become a great site to play poker and their pro's will talk to you about their love of the game just ask them!

Here is an email that was sent in response to our email to UB/Absolute Poker support:

Hello Andrew,

I hope this email finds you well.

Your email was recently sent to me by my staff, I would like to thank you for taking the time to write to us and would like to let you know that Russ Hamilton is not involved in our operations and has no ownership interests in the company whatsoever, we are in no way at all currently associated to him.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Best Regards,

Mark Kandler

Poker Security Manager

NBC's Poker After Dark

Ladies and Gent's NBC's much anticipated new season of Poker After Dark returns tonight at 2am.

The Buy in is a smooth $100,000, The Prize, a cool $600,000 and the players...well here they are:

• Phil Ivey
• Tom Dwan
• Phil Galfond
• John Juanda
• Huck Seed
• Erik Lindgren

We can't wait to see how the cards come and the chips fly!

Prahlad Friedman To sign with UB/Absolute Poker

 Recognize the name Prahlad Friedman and Ultimate Bet....probably b/c back during the Ultimate Bet/Russ Hamilton (and maybe Freddy Deep) Scandal one of the guys taken for his bankroll was Prahlad Friedman (no we don't know how to pronounce it) the other big name was Mike "the mouth" Matusow.  Since then Ultimate Bet has changed ownership and added SSL security and offers a special log in pin (free of charge) to ensure nothing like this happens. HOWEVER, Daniel Negreanu spoke out on twitter about the possible signing of Prahlad's signing with UB.com  (ok we're calling him Piranha from here on out) via twitter.com/RealKidPoker

So disappointed in @prahladfriedman signing with the devil who stole millions from him.He was so "anti sellout" then he did the unthinkable.


They must have paid him a lot to join the dark side and endorse the exact same people who ruined him. So sad and so mind boggling


The current owners of AP/UB are spending Prahlad's money, they must be mocking him at this point. Cheat the dude and watch him endorse us!


As far as we can tell UB and Absolute Poker have done everything they can to fix the problem they had with Russ Hamilton using a Super User account and have since proven to be a great place to play poker.

Happy New Year!

From everyone here at RatPackPoker.net we would like to wish you a Happy New Year and much success in the world of Poker!