Top News – More WSOP and Some UIGEA

So we're through to another week of World Series of Poker and it's going faster and faster. New events are starting every day bringing more and more players to the tables. WSOP bracelet winners are awarded on the daily basis which means that there's plenty of poker action going on in the world's largest poker event of the year. With thousands of poker players in the house bad things sometimes happen and the World Series is no exception – an incident involving a player to be banned from WSOP for life has occurred and we'll tell you everything there is to know. In other news we've got UIGEA going into full effect starting June 1, although it's still unclear what is or isn't going to change in online gaming. We also have Nacho Barbero winning LAPT Lima and Phil Laak playing poker non-stop.

WSOP Ban for Life

While Party Poker is running a special promo called WSOP for Life giving away 40 years of World Series Main Event entries, one man has decided to do the opposite – get banned from WSOP for the rest of his life. It's not that he intended to get banned or anything, but his actions lead straight to it.

Most of us know that stealing is bad and that thieves are very likely to end up in prison. And although stealing casino chips is not such a big deal in the real world, it definitely is in the world of poker.

It all happened on Day 1a of the Event #3: $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em just before the break between level 2 and level 3. As usual, players, not involved in the game left their tables while a few remained seated to finish the ongoing hands. It was during one of these hands when the winning player decided to get a bit more than he deserved. As he leaned towards the table to collect the chips he just won, he used only one hand for that purpose and set the other one next to the chip stack of the player sitting next to him who had left for the break. It seemed as if he was just holding to the table while gathering the chips, while he was actually pulling out a bunch of them from his neighbor's stack. He did this rather quick and remained unnoticed by the dealer, however, the fraud was discovered eventually and the surveillance tape confirmed it.

The player was escorted from the Amazon room by three Harrah’s security guards and the tournament director Jack Effel was explicit: “He’ll be banned from the World Series forever.”

The online poker community condemned the guy immediately and they probably have every right to do so. Check the twoplustwo.com poker forum for more feedback on the story.

Nacho Barbero Wins PokerStars LAPT Lima

Jose "Nacho" Barbero became the champion of the PokerStars Latin American Poker Tour Lima and collected $250,000 by knocking out the 384 player field. It appears that Barbero is having the time of his life as this is already his fourth title this year! He won the LAPT Punta del Este in February, the French Poker Series event in May and the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker. That's some impressive run for Barbero, will he be able to keep it up? Guess, we'll have to wait and see.

And here's how the PokerStars LAPT Lima final table wrapped-up:

1. Jose 'Nacho' Barbero $250,000
2. Ben Barrows $144,000
3. Erick Cabrera, $88,400
4. Ismael Cádiz $65,100
5. Silvio Martins $46,500
6. Rene Aguilar $37,300
7. Carlos Herrera $28,000
8. Valerio Valera $18,600

Guinness, Baby

A few weeks ago we told you about Phil Laak and his plans to break the world record by playing poker the longest in a single sitting. Last week he succeed – 115 straight hours of playing poker, that's a new world record, ladies and gentlemen! Laak has beaten the previous record – 72 hours, set by Larry Olmsted, by almost two days. Paul Zimbler was also known to play poker for nearly 79 hours without sleep last September, however, his attempt was not accepted by the Guinness World Records.

During this 115 hour poker session which started last Wednesday and finished this Monday morning Laak won $6,766 and will donate half of the money to Camp Sunshine, a Maine camp for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. Poker fans with the internet access had the ability to watch the game live and over 130,000 people did it every day. “Wow, 115 hours, I should have my head examined,” said Phil Laak. “I am definitely sick.”

So the new world record is set. Will anyone try and beat it? We'll just wait around and see and if anyone does, we will definitely tell you all about it.

UIGEA On – So What?

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act finally went into full effect on June 1. However, no one seems to be really sure about what is going to change and how it will affect the US online poker market.

At the moment poker sites are running as usual, players are folding and calling and everything is in the same place as it was before. So what happened?

John Pappas, executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, seems to have the answer: “I've been saying for quite some time now that the expectation is this date and enforcement will merely be a blip or bump in the road for poker players, not a catastrophic event that will shut down Internet poker in the U.S. I think there's always going to be responsible channels that people can use to deposit. It should not affect ACH (Automated Clearing House) deposits or deposits outside the credit system. It also should not affect people getting money off a site.”

As long as withdrawals are concerned, the regulations clearly state that they should not impact people taking money off sites, however, making a deposit could become an issue. The PPA say that they “hear from a number of folks today that they are continuing to make deposits”, but at the same time ask players to be patient with their deposits and withdrawals while the aftermath is sorted out.

The Poker Players Alliance also want to hear from online players about any issues they encounter while depositing or withdrawing their money from poker sites, especially withdrawing. Any issues can be brought to the PPA's attention by e-mailing email@theppa.org or filling out the contact form on the PPA's website.

“Our efforts have always been on two tracks, to see what we can do to neuter and delay the UIGEA, which we have successfully done over the past four years, and to seek and achieve licensing and regulation of Internet poker,” said John Pappas. “The next step will be Barney Frank's markup (of his Internet gambling licensing and regulation bill in the House Financial Services Committee), which he has committed to sometime in July. We're focusing on that and making sure we have the best-possible outcome for that vote.”

WSOP Underway

Last week we told you all about the first 5 days of the 2010 World Series of Poker. This time we bring you all the WSOP bracelet winners along with the Top10 players of each event and their cash winnings.

Event #3: $1,000 No Limit Holdem Tournament

1. Aadam Daya – $625,872
2. Deepak Bhatti – $385,106
3. Gabe Costner – $279,327
4. Bart Davis – $206,904
5. Nicholas Mitchell – $154,425
6. Cory Brown – $116,141
7. Isaac Settle – $88,025
8. Dash Dudley – $67,221
9. Rich Rice – $51,735
10. Irving Rice – $40,121

Event#5: $1,500 NLH WSOP Championship

1. Praz Bansi – $515,501
2. Vincent Jacques – $320,913
3. Calvin Kordus – $223,069
4. David Tuthill – $160,654
5. Tomer Berda – $117,416
6. Donald Offord – $86,858
7. Hugh Bell – $65,097
8. David Sands – $49,409
9. Kyle Knecht – $37,943
10. Santiago Nadal – $29,795

Event #6: $5,000 No Limit Holdem Shootout

1. Joshua Tieman – $441,692
2. Neil Channing – $273,153
3. Stuart Rutter – $179,617
4. Joseph Elpayaa – $125,387
5. Nicolas Levi – $92,543
6. Brent Hanks – $71,998
7. Cary Katz – $16,607
8. Danny Estes – $16,607
9. Julien Nuijten – $16,607
10. Benjamin May – $16,607

Event #7: $2,500 Deuce to 7 Triple Draw Lowball Championship

1. Peter Gelencser – $180,730
2. Raphael Zimmerman – $111,686
3. Don McNamara – $73,803
4. David Chiu – $50,157
5. Jameson Painter – $34,843
6. Leonard Martin – $24,723
7. Shunjiro Uchida – $17,903
8. Tad Jurgens – $17,903
9. Farzad Bonyadi – $13,232
10. Pat Poels – $13,232

Event #8: $1,500 No Limit Holdem Championship

1. Pascal LeFrancois – $568,974
2. Max Steinberg – $352,916
3. Kevin Howe – $249,351
4. Daniel Wjuniski – $179,286
5. David Aue – $130,617
6. James Andersen – $96,422
7. Kurt Disessa – $72,087
8. Joshua Brikis – $54,579
9. Saar Wilf – $41,843
10. Jose Gatmaitan – $32,456

Event #9: $1,500 Pot-Limit Holdem

1. James Dempsey – $197,470
2. Steve Chanthabouasy – $121,963
3. JJ Liu – $86,512
4. Mark Babekov – $62,232
5. Scott Haraden – $45,393
6. Armen Kara – $33,573
7. Joseph Williams – $25,166
8. Edward Brogdon – $19,120
9. Gregg Wilkerson – $14,715
10. Julie Farkas – $11,468

Event #10: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship

1. Men Nguyen – $394,800
2. Brandon Adams – $243,958
3. Steve Billirakis – $152,788
4. Nikolay Evdakov – $110,629
5. Joe Cassidy – $86,461
6. Michael Mizrachi – $68,949
7. Vladimir Schmelev – $55,991
8. Sirious Jamshidi – $46,206
9. Dan Heimiller – $38,676
10. Todd Barlow – $38,676

Event #11: $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em

1. Simon Watt – $614,248
2. Tom Dwan – $381,885
3. David Randall – $270,299
4. Austin McCormick – $194,939
5. Jason Young – $142,346
6. Michael Smith – $105,185
7. Marvin Rettenmaier – $78,681
8. Kyle Winter – $59,547
9. Eric Ladny – $45,603
10. Nicholas Phillips – $35,327

Event #12: $1,500 Limit Hold'em

1. Matthew Matros – $189,870
2. Ahmad Abghari – $117,272
3. Terrence Chan – $83,185
4. Georgios Kapalas – $59,838
5. Adrian Dresel-Velasquez – $43,647
6. Jason Potter – $32,281
7. Jameson Painter – $24,198
8. Roberto Truijers – $18,385
9. Mark Burford – $14,149
10. Frank Kassela – $11,027

Event #14: $1,500 2-7 Draw Lowball

1. Yan Chen – $92,817
2. Mike Wattel – $57,375
3. Nicholas Binger – $37,857
4. Derric Haynie – $25,839
5. Todd Bui – $18,096
6. James Bord – $12,997
7. Alexander Kravchenko – $9,568
8. Daniel Nicewander – $7,215
9. David 'Chino' Rheem – $5,572
10. Sean Snyder – $5,572

And that's about all we had for today, join us next week for another edition of Top News bringing you all the latest, most important and the most interesting news stories from the world of poker.

To know all about the best online poker promos and bonuses follow OnlinePoker10 on Twitter and like our Facebook page.