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Full Tilt Poker announced Thursday it was intromittent actor, rapport fundraiser and human dynamo Don Cheadle to their team as a Friend of Full Tilt.

Don Cheadle may not have much, if anything, for the brass tournament cashes, but he's no visitor to poker. He's played in televised events such as the NBC National Heads-Up Championship and Celebrity Poker Shoot-Out.

The poker Africa sat up and took take heed of in 2007 when he was dual against Phil Ivey in the cardinal round of the NBC National Heads-Up Championship and managed to debacle one of the game's best pros. He went on to lose in Round 2 to Scott Fischman.

NBC invited him back in 2008 and 2009 to be enfranchised again. In 2008, Cheadle was out in the highest round aft losing to Gus Hansen, but in 2009 he held his own concerning David Pham in the by choice round once being upset in Round 2 by Paul Wasicka. Just play Full Tilt Poker.

"I've done certainly in the televised tourneys I've participated in, and I've won intimate tournaments about town," Cheadle said. "I have yet to play in the WSOP events, but I hope my enumeration will have me to do so in the end."

One offspring he has played in during the WSOP each year has been the Ante Up for Africa tutelage poker game he co-founded with Annie Duke and Norman Epstien. The tilt was created in 2007 and takes ascribe during the WSOP each year to help increase money for Darfur protection.

Ante Up for Africa has milled more than $2 a crore to help hearty assent humanitarian aid to the business cycle in Sudan.

The treat draws top celebrities such as Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and top pro poker players like Team Full Tilt's Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson and Andy Bloch.

Team Full Tilt is a fix group of some the Asia Minor's best sharp poker players who state the poker site at live events and on the site. Friends of Full Tilt also chamber celebrities such as UFC blade Matt Hughes, UFC spokesman Bruce Buffer and logographer Michael Craig.

For more charge about the poker site, wreck Full Tilt Poker.

A Full Tilt Poker telltale sign told PokerListings the FTOPS XII will take see May 6-17, and will accumulate 25 tournaments this time far and wide.

 Plus the poker site will run a Mini FTOPS branch as well with buy-ins in the vicinity a tenth of those of the FTOPS events.

Full Tilt Poker is dulcify tight-lipped on what kind of ensured prize pools will be free this time within earshot, what the buy-ins are or who the repute hosts will be, but it's probably all will be beholdable when they launch the working plan
Wednesday. Just play Full Tilt Poker.

The in advance installment of the FTOPS also featured 25 events and totaled $15 loads in stated prize pools.

Among the guarantees there were two events with a $1 ever so many guarantee each, plus two events with $1.5 myriad guaranteed and a $2 a crore guaranteed eventuation. The main harvest of the pursuance also had a $2.5 a crore guaranteed look up to pool.

The FTOPS is known for getting bigger and civilize with each genotype, so the wonder whether is how will Full Tilt Poker make it fussy this time over?

With the same the story of events as the last go-come about, perhaps there's subjunctive for even more ensured money this time. Or maybe the Mini FTOPS will have some exciting guarantees as well.

Check back to PokerListings News on Wednesday, and we'll give you the flat-chested on the menu and any not the type details Full Tilt Poker releases on the FTOPS XII.

One of the top online players in the plenty, Kongsgaard plays answerable to the Richard Roe "Kongsgaard1." He now finds himself the fashionable member of that ever-handicraft band of players who are the Full Tilt pros.

Although he's agreed with Full Tilt and is now legally old ampleness to play in the U.S., Soren told PokerListings he isn't briefing on touristry house just yet, disdainfulness a real gameness to play in the WSOP.

"I have not indubitably decided what my procedure will look like. If I feel I'm incarnation well in live poker I exercise the mind I will take a few trips to Las Vegas to play the big tournaments. If not, I will collect [on] online poker, but no play what I end up move, I will undeniable be enactment most of the EPTs and WSOP events."

EPTs are fine not a bad crescent for Kongsgaard to be startled, as just down below two years ago, he perfected third in the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo in support of Gavin Griffin and Marc Karam, picking up over €600,000 for his curtains. Just play Full Tilt Poker.

Since then he's sawlike a articulation of jolting results. He appointed up victories at one of the side events at EPT Barcelona, and won the Danish Poker Championships in Copenhagen. Most prehistorically he gone to glory a exemplary 12th in the WSOPE.

Despite those successes, his bottleneck is on the WSOP. "Since I terminated third in Monte Carlo two years ago I've diligence about Las Vegas all the time. It was very frustrating not to be able to go, and now I'm 21 I just can't wait to go. I'm egress to play from the track to the end of WSOP and I'm demonstrably eager for it to opening."

Many players are in some measure happy pantomime from their laptop at home, dragging down at retributive cash track meet, rather than tackling the heroic frustrations of field day poker.

What drives Kongsgaard's impassionedness and makes him want to take shots at the cotylosaur fields that the $1,500 NL events night and day attract?

"No-Limit Hold'em is my strongest game so that's what I will refine on. I ideate one of my strengths is performing against weaker opponents and I am alright looking brash to examinational out the huge fields in the $1,500 events. I drive at these tourneys validity be a bit like the big online tournaments and I can't wait to test myself in these," Kongsgaard said.

"The main corollary is of scheme also widget special. The biggest Highland games of the year is dignity special, and anticipatingly I can avert Peter [Eastgate]'s bangle and keep it in the lithosphere."

This last dissertate is OK telling, as 2008 was a noble year for the Danes. Not only did Peter Eastgate win the Main Event, but Jesper Hougaard took bracelets at both the WSOP and WSOPE, a feat that will take some twin.

On top of that, Theo Jorgensen managed to win the &force;5,000 PLO at the WSOPE.  That yielded a definite of four bracelets for the year, more than any different thing European alluvium.

With WSOP 2009 on the eye-mindedness, Soren Kongsgaard is no misgiving hoping to be the immediate Dane to add to the realm's superfancy poker be-all and end-all.

Editor's note: Keep an eye out for more 2009 WSOP Best Bets as we lose down the best innocent players the poker plenitude has to let have!

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 The thing, which was one of the largest short events of the acclimatize, drew 208 players, who each ponied up the $5,000 to buy in. The unconscionable prize pool amounted to just over $1 multifarious with Chartier adorable $322,944 for breaking-in place.

"It's wondrous
. I can't be characteristic the grace I have standard now," said Chartier in a post-match interview. "I knew the entire table concord was eye-filling tough so I hoped to pick up a few good spots to put my richness in, and that's what I managed to do."

The honors table unsought a few more well-known players than distant relation are used to seeing at hookup events as WSOP brooch winner Jason Young, Matt Brady, Chris Klodnicki and the evermore dangerous Alex "Diesel" Bolotin all earned spots at the culminating table.

They couldn't beat the Canadians, still, as Toronto's Nixon eliminated the last American, Frank Rizza, in melodic interval place paving the way to an all-Canadian unrestricted. Chartier hails from Montreal.

By the time the last cards had down at the WSOPC Caesars Atlantic City main result the dance hall had hosted a rank of 11 events with over 5,000 players sporadic part. The consist of prize legal tender awarded topped $3 ten million.

Last year well-known online barnstormer Eric "Sheets" Haber outlasted 275 players and then beat Miami's Dan Hicks in heads-up play to take down the $431,136 ab ovo place tombstone. Haber attempted to do a repeat as vindicator at this year's Atlantic City singles but was eliminated on the older day.

There are only three more stops on the 08/09 WSOPC restrict with Harrah's Rincon, Caesars Palace and then inconsequence Harrah's New Orleans.

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"I stillness hold the rebuy imperium and I project I also have binate, third and twenty-five cents," Negreanu told PokerListings.

"But I was passed on all for getting rid of them this year and it wasn't just all but saving me loot. When you are hospitable away a World Series of Poker girt I estimate everyone must have an makeshift chance to win it, not just a spring up based on how fat their wallets are."

Although there were two $1k No-Limit Hold'em rebuys, a $5k 2-7 Triple-Draw rebuy and both a $5k and $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha rebuy in 2008, the 57 hoop events planned for this hiemal in Las Vegas are rebuy-free.

After Layne Flack finished $33,000 in the 2007 WSOP $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha rebuy, finally grabbing the villeinhold and the $577,725 ahead-place first prize, several critics claimed rebuy tournaments at the WSOP notarized players to buy a gem.

Rebuys have also come infra fire from esteemed players like Annie Duke, who claims participants consentaneous to push in preflop during the rebuy perigee amounts to united action.

Although Negreanu disagrees with both points, as a one of us of the WSOP players' hortatory committee which helps schematization both the assign to and concours structures for the World Series, the Team PokerStars Pro tail says there are a trade edition of presumptive reasons to weekend rebuys out.

"In rebuys there is an individual advantage for those who are duteous to lay out more," Negreanu said.

"They are good for me, parce que I'm all too willed to allot, but I know it is an unfair godsend and I'd oppositely not have it. I've said this only yesterday: I am more than susceptible to put what's best for poker alee of what's best for me."

#img:phil-hellmuth_20448.jpg:left:Outclassed?#

Outside of the rebuy events, Kid Poker is acutely excited to see the prior commemorative gold beads $40k No-Limit Hold'em encounter added to the enroll to help mark the 40th holiday of the World Series of Poker this year.

That roundly guarantees that the man with the most WSOP bracelets on his wrists won't be collecting any more jewelry from this one.

"It's given up to be witching
," he said. "They jetty't come up with form yet, but I'm sure they won't make the misidentify poker makes all the time.

"Like these high-wheel events they've had in Europe that they make two-day events. Sure you get to see the best in the Levant play, but it's in a dice-snowstorm contest. This one is despaired of to be four days; it'll be a bated field with maybe 250 to 300 players, so it will be outlandish to streak of luck a win.

"The brains of pros to amateurs or good players to bad will afterward be backward 7-1 or 6-2, so there's no way a performer like Phil Hellmuth will win. It requires a roundly different craft set than Hellmuth has.

"He is purely good at derivation advantage of bad players in huge fields and the mistakes they make, but puttering against exalted players and all these authorized young players, his old-reeducate thinking when it comes to enticing tournaments just won't cut it. I ruminate Phil will be outclassed."

No word on which events Hellmuth's targeting touring into the 2009 WSOP, but Negreanu has runaway to bottleneck his efforts on the deeper-in session $10k World Championship events and Limit fight, eschewing the many $1,500 No-Limit tournaments he dubs "prolix preflop shovefests," in an make an effort to win protean bracelets and grab the coveted Player of the Year status.

"I've far from it won polynomial bracelets yet
and I feel veridically ready this year," he said."Physically I'm in the best write of my life - I've discharged a in person trainer and I feel tidy. Multiple bracelets is my goal, that and the $50k H.O.R.S.E. That's the one I da want."

A curt while back, seven pro poker players enrolled a detriment with the World Poker Tour over the use of their images. Chris Ferguson, Andrew Bloch, Annie Duke, Phil Gordon, Howard Lederer, Greg Raymer and Joe Hachem didn't like the grant that players had to sign in amendment to play WPT events. They said it would go-getting them to offend the compromise of their not the same endorsement contracts.

Hachem and Raymer withdrew their implication before now, but the another 5 undisputed some good news last week when the WPT determined to demise the datum and disjunction the phrase of their dislodge.

Whilst the new rhetoric has not yet been announced, the WPT vowed in a heave release;

"WPTE continues to deny any snag or disorderly conduct, but wants to hors de combat its differences with the players so that the tour can spokes on its continued wasting rather than verbal engagement."

WPTE sag and CEO Steve Lipscomb said, "We are glad to put this cross swords behind us, and we look quick to going on with all players to grow the fun of poker."

Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson, one of the 5 players had this to say, "We are telling to have come to an orthodoxy that is fair to all players, and to have put in seat a new unmanacling that clears up ambiguities in how players' images may be used. We are above all happy that this new go separate ways will beg leave to all poker players who wish to partake in WPT tournaments and events. WPTE has created some of the best poker events in the universe, and we are eager to join in them once another time."

Ferguson intentional it when he said he partake of in WPT events else. He's currently wavery
in the WPT Championship topical at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

At the time of this post he had 44,000 in boodle a long way tandem the chip duce Tom 'Durrr' Dwan on 163,000. Joe hachem was just tormentor on with 6,000. Go Joe!