Top News – Barcelona, Macau and Poker Records

In this week's OnlinePoker10 edition of Top News we'll tell you all about the two major tournaments that saw their finale tables last week – WPT Barcelona and APPT Macau, the winners have been determined and lots of cash was given away. In other news we have the WSOP-C record breaker who became the first woman to win two gold rings and Phil Laak who decided to break one of them records himself. We will also tell you about the latest addition to live high-stakes poker action in Vegas – the Ivey room and a new and very intriguing team PokerStars member. No waiting, let's get started.

WPT Barcelona

This year's World Poker Tour event in Barcelona has gathered as many as 326 players which made it the biggest-ever WPT event to have taken place in the Catalonian capital. The event featured a prizepool of over €1 million with a €315,000 first-place reward.

Quite surprisingly the winner of WPT Barcelona came out to be a German player Ali Tekintamgac. Although it was only his second live poker event, Ali managed to make it all the way to the final table and eventually beat all of his opponents.

He was a definite chip leader coming to the final table and stood his ground during the last phase of the tournament. At the beginning of the heads-up challenge Tekintamgac had a 5 to 1 chip lead against Roberto Garcia Santiago and it didn't take long for him to take the final victory. Next to the €315,000 cash prize Ali also got a seat in the WPT World Championship and a shiny new Tiffany bracelet.

Here are the final WPT Barcelona standings:

1. Ali Tekintamgac - €315,000
2. Roberto Garcia Santiago - €160,000
3. Mats Erik Iremark - €81,000
4. Manuel Blaschke - €71,000
5. Mads Smith Hansen - €61,000
6. Tristan Quentin Clemencon - €51,000
7. Per Emil Mattsson - €41,000
8. Bartolome Gomila Romero - €31,000
9. Manuel Cuberos Lopez Cozar - €21,400

APPT Macau

It was Sunday night at the Grand Lisboa Hotel and Casino when Day 4 of PokerStars.net Asian Pacific Poker Tour came to an end and the big winner Victorino Torres collected the APPT honors along with the big cash prize – 3,246,200 Hong Kong dollars (HKD).

When Torres came to the final table his chip stack was only second from the bottom. However, when it all finished, he was announced the winner of APPT Macau. It was Torres' biggest tournament victory in his poker carrier.

The chip leader entering the final table was Cole Swannack from New Zealand followed by Jeppe Drivsholm from Denmark. However, none of them managed to maintain their advantage and ended up in third and fourth place respectively.

Here's how the APPT Macau final table ended up:

1. Victorino Torres - 3,246,200 HKD
2. Chong Cheong - 2,088,000 HKD
3. Cole Swannack - 1,177,600 HKD
4. Jeppe Drivsholm - 891,000 HKD
5. Kenny Nielsen - 700,000 HKD
6. Brian Green - 572,900 HKD
7. Kai Paulsen - 445,600 HKD
8. Albert Kim - 350,100 HKD
9. Keith Hawkins - 254,608 HKD

Breaking the WSOP-C Record

This season's World Series of Poker Circuit final event in New Orleans saw another one of its records – Daphne "Tweety" Turner collected her second gold ring and became the first woman to win two WSOP-C events.

The $300 + $40 buy-in mixed game included 68 players and at the end it all came to Turner and Allen "Chainsaw" Kessler whom she beat in a heads-up matchup to go into the record books as the first woman to win WSOP Circuit event twice. However, this wasn't the first of her records as Daphne's first WSOP-C win two years ago was also the first to be won my a woman. Turner hopes to break even more records and her eyes are all on this year's WSOP.

WSOP.com has the full story

Laak Sleep?

And talking about breaking records, a more famous poker person Phil Laak has decided to become the One to play poker the longest in a single sitting. The still-running record in this category belongs to Paul Zimbler who played poker for 78 straight hours in 2009.

The possibly longest-ever one-man's poker game will take place at the Bellagio and will start on June 2. Phil says he's been preparing for this for a while now and is determined to set the new world record. Here's what he had to say: “I have played many enduro sessions of poker, but never anything of this magnitude. I know this will test my limits but I love a good challenge and am excited to be trying to beat this record in Vegas' top poker room.”

The world record attempt also has an honorable cause, Laak will try and raise money for Camp Sunshine – a charity that helps children and families of children with life-threatening illnesses. Good luck, Phil!

You can read all about it in his blog @ unabomber.com

The Ivey Room

A couple of weeks ago we told you that the Ivey room is set to open in no time and now it's official – the Ivey room has been opened. Lots and lots of poker big shots came to the party all, of course, in hopes of putting even more cash into their pockets and hunting-down one of the bounties that were not set on their own heads.

The action took place last Saturday at Aria Resort & Casino at CityCenter. The exclusive high-stakes room only allows big cash games and the name of the room says it all. Its first event was a $1 million freeroll, plus a bunch of bounties for kicking-out the big pros and Phil Ivey himself.

Chino Rheem was the man to collect $100,000 of the cash for busting the show host Phil and the main prize of the night – $250,000 went to Larry Litton. He also had the opportunity to swoop another quarter-of-a-million as Litton was challenged by Ivey for a heads-up match. However, Phil proved that there's a reason why the new fancy room is called Ivey and not Litton by beating his opponent in one-on-one play.

Doyle Brunson, Jennifer Harman, David Williams, Tim Phan, Phil Laak, David Benyamine, Eli Elezra and many many more have honored Ivey on his first night as the room host and Kristy Arnette talked to them and Ivey himself about the event, check out the video:

Gigi Poker

Recently we were all about the poker invasion to F-1: PartyPoker signed their youngest driver, FullTilt logos were all over the Virgin Racing cars and gear, but now online poker has decided to take a step further. Football is the world's most popular sport, after poker, of course, and Gianluigi Buffon or Gigi, how Italians like to call him, appears to be the latest addition to the PokerStars.it team.

He's arguably the world's best goalkeeper, or at least the most expensive one valued at 25 million British Pounds and now he signed a deal with PokerStars which should make Italians even more interested in poker.

Barbara Beltrami, PokerStars’ Italian country manager said: “It’s a union that combines the qualities often found in both sport and poker – those of skill, hard work and mental concentration. It also highlights that the very best players relish the challenge, whether it’s on the football pitch or at the poker table – a passionate pursuit of victory.”

Now you don't need to be a professional football player to play against Buffon – sign up for a new PokerStars account and bust him out in a game of poker.

$30,000 in WSOP Freerolls

There's still time for you to get your free seat in this year's WSOP! Two WSOP packages will be given away at the Full Tilt Poker room on June 5 and June 6. To get yourself into one of these WSOP freerolls you only need to register a new Full Tilt via OnlinePoker10 account and make a minimum deposit.

Both new and existing Full Tilt players who signed up through OnlinePoker10 may qualify for one of the freerolls by collecting 500 Full Tilt Poker points until June 4. So get a Full Tilt account, make a deposit and collect those points. And that's it – you're in a free poker tournament which will award the best player with a full 2010 WSOP package.

The two WSOP freerolls on Full Tilt will be running on June 5 at 15:25 EST and on June 6 at 15:25 EST so don't worry if you can't make it for the first one, cause we've got two freerolls and two WSOP packages. Feel free to chose one of the two tournaments and register as soon as you collect 500 points.

The two winners will each get a WSOP package worth $12,000. The package includes $10,000 buy-in to the 2010 WSOP Main Event and $2,000 cash for travel and accommodation. $3,000 cash will also be added to the tournament prizepool and given away to the rest of the players from 2nd place.

Download Full Tilt Poker now and go to 2010WSOP for free!

So that's it for today, join us next time for more of the poker's latest news.

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