Poker gods have heard our prayers and sent us gift of PokerStars Championship Sochi! We’ve barely had time to enjoy new records of EAPT nor discussed enough an upcoming tournaments with million dollars guaranteed prize fund (held in Sochi) before getting an official information from PokerStars: in May, Russia will hold the most expensive series in history!

That is not an exaggeration!

Buy-in of the Main Event will be $5,590 or 318,000 rubles. This sounds scary but is big poker. Guaranteed prize fund of the main event is corresponding – 150 million rubles or $2.5 million.

Today the first casino opens in Krasnaya Polyana gambling zone “Sochi Casino and Resort”. This is a huge entertainment complex in “Gorki Gorod” with restaurants, boutiques, conference-halls and a bar. The casino will have 569 slots, 70 gaming tables and – what’s the most important – poker club “SOCHI” for ten tables. 

It holds a major stage of EAPT series with $500,000 guaranteed prize fund under the management of Artur Voskanian in January.

The official opening of the complex is scheduled on January, 5^th though it will operate in New Year and throughout the end of December 2016. It turns out that the first casino here starts operating not later than six months after the decree of making a new gambling zone by the government of Russian Federation.

Once you get to the casino, you stay there for at least several years. The dealer’s job is attractive and exhausting at the same time. Many people become the hostages of high salaries and their habits. You have to earn 10-15 hours a day but it is easy to adjust in some time. You’ve got to make no mistakes to avoid getting hit in the face by a tattooed fist, a pack of chips or getting shot by a traumatic gun.

We wanted to get a little information about the life of poker dealers in various countries. How do dealers work in the heart of the cards world – Las Vegas, at WSOP. And how do they feel themselves in the other corner of the Earth – at underground clubs of Russia and Ukraine. Are there any differences (you bet there are!) and what are they?

The issue with the tips (how much and when should we tip? Should we tip at all?) exist in all the countries with poker clubs. The major part of the problem is that the decision is up to the players. From one side, one doesn’t want to seem unthankful chipshot, but from the other side tips can negate all the profit, especially at the lower stakes.

To tip or not to tip – that is up to every individual. It is common to leave 10% of the bill to the waiters in restaurants. This is too much in terms of poker. However, in Japan, for instance, tips aren’t habitual and the level of service is always top. Should you try to handle the Japanese waiter the tip – in most cases – he politely won’t take it.

World Series 2016 starts in the very end of May. The biggest poker event of the year traditionally attracts thousands of players from the entire planet including the most experienced regulars. Get to know what organizers prepared this year. 

So WSOP 2016 begins May, 31, and the address is still Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Satellites, bracelet tournaments (total number of 69) and cash games will be played 50 days is a row.

One of the main tournaments begins right from the start. The first open event is $565 Colossus II, which had 22,374 registrations last year. Now it’s even bigger with increased prize fund of $7 million in comparison with $5 million last year and guaranteed $1,000,000 to the winner.

We’re expecting a new record on number of players in a live tournament this year.

EPT Monte Carlo €50,000 Super High Roller winner is Fabian Quoss. Or should we say two Germans: Quoss and Schemion who made a deal before heads-up. 3^rd and 4^th place owners are much more interesting. Aidyn Auyezkanov of Kazakhstan and Murad Akhundov of Azerbaijan took these places respectively.

The final stage of 12^th season of European Poker Tour took place in Monaco. Both super highroller tournaments with €50k and €100k are finished, Main Event is under way. The most expensive events have a nice list of final table participants. New faces aren’t rare here,

Ali Reza Fatehi (€828,500) took the 3rd place in €100k Super High Roller, and that was his first career EPT stage.

It sounds insane for Russia, but in America sports events organizers share profits with the players and spend 40 to 60 percent of total income to this matter. There is another system in poker, which came out of date and needs to be changed, as many think.

There is an interesting announcement on popular petition site change.org with the proposition to share wsop earnings: “Increase the prize pools at the World Series of Poker; eliminate rake on the Main Event”.

“Please eliminate the rake on player buy-ins into the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event poker tournament; and start a revenue-sharing program to supplement the prize pools for the top WSOP poker tournaments.”

WSOP earns big money on TV contracts, sponsorships, licensing and so on. They are called major source of financing. World Series of Poker profit is immense.

Should one eliminate respect from poker – there will be only market relations. Soulless chips trade, pure competition with no conscience involved. Limit Hold’em is pretty close to that. It is quite regular to use sitting scripts at top stakes for a long time. There are also various forms of angle shooting in practice. Russian top regular Feruell is accused of heavy buttoning and he admits it.

“King of Limit” Feruell, one of the most famous Russian regulars, was banned at PokerStars in July 2013 for buttoning (avoiding posting blinds).

Stars sent Feruell a warning – should he continue breaking the rules, he will imminently receive permanent ban. And so it happened. Elite regular with still secret name (what gives him some sort of being fantastic) can’t play in the biggest poker room on the planet:

“Well, I have my PokerStars account closed. Forever… I had a warning before that for some bullshit, I wrote about this on 2+2 with the text from PokerStars support. Now I have permanent ban.”

Despite all the irreversibility and strictness of punishment, Feruell got his right to play at PokerStars back. Looks like he found “the right words” in conversation with the security department.

And now we have this thread in the end of March 2016 where the mysterious player gets old accusations in the other room.

The first season of Global Poker League, the most ambitious league imaginable starts this week. This series has principles of sporting events, cyber sport and UFC fights united. Series final will take place in London in November.

Update: the first matches ended with some serious performances from New York Rounders and Hong Kong Stars. Both teams are at the top of GPL Americas Standings and GPL Eurasia Standings respectively. The Twitch channel has all the goods.

The first season of GPL will take place from April, 5 to November, 23. There will be many matches and they will happen every day, all the coverage will be available on GPL.TV and Twitch.

As some other sports seasons, GPL has several stages:

WPT and WSOP have already paid a visit to Eastern Europe. They were a success. West starts to realize it’s not just about finding treasure in Asia, something is out there In some European countries. Georgia, Armenia, Poland, Moldova, Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan all have huge demand and growing passion towards poker.

Not so long ago Tbilisi hosted the first stage of WSOPC. American took home victory, Steve O’Dwyer was the best high roller. And there are reasons for that. But we’ll talk about it later.

World Series of Pokers wasn’t the first. Tbilisi hosted first stage of World Poker Tour National last year. It was a tremendous success. Looks like movement at WSOP started right after that series: it was a successful market so we should try something as well.

The champion of the most expensive tournament in Georgia history is… American Brian Senie ($85,800)… Highroller tournament was won by Steve O’Dwyer himself, one of the top players in the world. The list of those who travelled to Georgia also included: Daniel Cates, Dominik Panka, Konstantin Puchkov, Vitaliy Lunkin, Dzmitry Urbanovich and Peter Eastgate. The latter opened the series.

Debut of World Series of Poker in Tbilisi was a success. The proof of this fact is that guaranteed money were covered almost in every single event! Main Event had 395 entries registered with guaranteed prize fund exceeded by $90,000 making $390,000. The same story with all other events.

All the sevens rings found their owners, many of them just visited Georgia for a brief time. Meanwhile, about the guests. There were lots of good reviews and comments about local people and players. Famous Georgian hospitality and cordiality can’t stop surprising guests. It’s uneasy to get used to it. But we’ll come back to that.

On March, 3-9 in The Sports Palace of capital of Georgia, in the very heart of the city, a grand event will take place: World Series of Poker makes a first stop in Eastern Europe! PokerDiscover team made a special service package for our players and subscribers who decided to visit series.

WSOP took a step on lands of Eastern Europe for the first time in its history. This stage will go down in history. The most famous tournament series in the world took with itself not just many years of experience of such competition but $700,000 in guaranteed prize money, which is spread between twenty something events.

World Series tournaments have a different structure and many peculiarities. One of which is WSOP Circuit branded rings distribution with seven of the tournaments where you can win one at the Georgian stage.  This is some sort of equivalent to WSOP Golden Bracelets but on a smaller scale.

WSOPC Tbilisi Main Event with $1,100 buy-in champion and the best player of the series will go to Las Vegas to participate in the biggest event of the whole season – WSOP Global Casino Championship with $1,000,000 guaranteed.

The first stage of WSOP Circuit in Georgia with guaranteed prize pool of $700,000 scheduled to the beginning of March could have become a disaster or a tournament with gigantic overlays at least. Turned out that all the tournament winnings will be paid without 20% of income tax!..

First info about this enormous tax came from Adjarabet representative in the evening of January, 29^th:

“The situation with taxes is the following – 20% of income tax will be taken from those prize money owners during the payout”.

“It is required by Georgia law. We don’t take commission on this prize fund, like 3% to the stuff or anything else”

A real tropic storm started momentarily. Players were threatening with their fists and were telling they have given the tickets back or going to do that; they were telling all the reservations were cancelled and this entire situation looks like racketeering and stealing from them in the middle of the day.

Extrapolation is a friend of statistician, economist, marketer and any other person who works with huge amounts of data. They are no numbers relevant to poker. Poker stands alone. And sometimes logic behind its development is very hard to get.

Extrapolation can be used to make a forecast of some events or trends. Everything is very chaotic in poker to make some scientific conclusions, however it is very interesting to speak about it.

We’ve already defined the best poker players of 2015, told of the most important events of 2015, it’s time to look into the future.

Other World

The world has changed. It is in human nature that he can’t see everything with an untired eye. There are always tons of factors separating him from the right conclusions. The oil is becoming cheaper with each and every day despite many countries were trying to make the most of it by selling and selling it over the years.

One just can’t change the way of thinking he got through the years momentarily.