When we last monitored the game it was down to another epic WSOP heads up between Eddie Blumenthall and Texas gynaecologist Geffrey Klein, with the former holding a massive 7 million chip lead but Klein staging a remarkable performance that ultimately saw him take a 2 million chip lead of his own in the wee small hours of the morning.

That led to a final victory for Klein, rewarding him with a bracelet and $544 388 in prize money, and leaving his opponent with a $334,756 runner-up pay day.

It was Blumenthall’s second final table in this WSOP, both in tough events with large fields of talented players.

Event 11, the $10,000 buy-in Omaha Hi-Lo Championship, required another day of play to find a winner, but the bracelet was finally awarded to Viacheslav Zhukov.

22 survivors – all that remained from the entry field of 202 – started the third day with George Lind at the top of the leader board, chased hard by Zhukov, and Steve Billirakis at the bottom but still hunting for his second bracelet.

Others still active and dangerous included Guillaume Rivet, Mikael Thuritz, Richard Ashby and Josh Arieh.

After ten levels, play ended day three with a requirement for an extra day in order for Lind, Billirakis and Zhukov – the final three left in the competition – to decide a winner. Lind and Zhukov were at that point millions ahead, but Billirakis is always dangerous and appeared calm and determined when the extra day of play kicked off.

Barely an hour into play Billirakis was out of it, eliminated by Zhukov in a move that left George Lind and Zhukov in the heads up, fighting for the $465 216 first prize in a clash that lasted for three long hours.

Finally, at level 32 the exhausted players played their last hands, and it was Zhukov who emerged victorious to claim the main prize and the bracelet – his first.

Lind collected a check for $287 444 for his time and trouble.

David Diaz turned out to be the best of 1 340 starters when the third day of play in event 12 – the $1,500 buy-in Triple Chance No-Limit Hold’em contest came to a conclusion late Thursday night Vegas time.

Diaz collected the winner’s check for $352 808 after three days and 28 hours of play that saw the elimination of the other 1,339 entrants.

With just four tables left, the exciting event still had the likes of Sam Trickett, Cliff Josephy, Bill Chen, Andy Black, J.C. Tran, Getty Mattingsly and Dan Smith in contention, but it was Diaz’s night to collect his first WSOP bracelet, having started the day 9th in a 10 player remaining field.

After maintaining a low, under-the-radar strategy for much of the match, Diaz exploded into aggressive action relatively late in the game to rise to the heads up.

In his final confrontation with Anders Meli that lasted less than a half-hour, Diaz triumphed, leaving his adversary with a second placing check for $218,183.

Event 13, a $1,500 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em Shootout contest, concluded its second day late Thursday night with just 16 players remaining from an initial field of 1 440, and formidable opponents such as David Pham, Dan Kelly, Andrew Pantling, Frank Kassela, Vitaly Lunkin, Erik Cajelais, David Robinson, Robbie Verspui, Joseph Webber and Daniel Makowsky all keen to do battle for that $369,371 first prize.

160 players survived into day 2, and now all but 16 of them are gone.

When play recommences Friday afternoon Vegas time the format will be of a two table sit ‘n’ go with eight players at each table, all starting with 450,000 chips.

The second day of event 14: $3,000 Limit Hold’em kicked off Thursday with 163 players left from the initial entry field of 337 and Marc Traniello holding the chip lead, but facing some fierce competition from the likes of Victor Ramdin, Casey McCarrel, Tobin Banks, Shawn Buchanan, Sorel Mizzi, Nicholas Grippa, Mike Thorpe, Shaun Deeb, Jeff Shulman, Matt Glantz, Justin Bonomo, Dwyte Pilgrim, Maria Ho and Jason Mercier.

By the early hours of Friday morning PST only 19 survivors remained, led by Victor Ramdin and Dmitry Gromov. The main prize in this event is worth $220 817.

Two new events kicked off Thursday – the $1,500 buy-in Pot-Limit Hold’em and the $10,000 buy-in NL 2-7 Lowball Championship.

In the event 15, the Pot Limit Hold’em, 765 entrants created a prize pool of $1 032 750, representing an increase over last year’s entry field of 115 players.

Day one encompassed 10 hours of tough action which saw the elimination of some big names from the field, including Layne Flack, David Sklansky, Paul Magriel, Antonio Esfandiari, Humberto Brenes, and Liv Boeree.

Among the 88 survivors going into the second day of action today (Friday) will be James Dempsey, Joe Sebok, Ali Eslami, John Racener, John Dolan, and Alessio Isaia.

The chip lead at the end of day one play was held by Ronald Lee.

The first day of event 16: $10,000 2-7 Draw Lowball Championship (No-Limit) concluded in the small hours of Friday morning with just 88 players left after the first eight hours of play, and Vince Musso holding the lead, closely pursued by Shaun Deeb.

The event attracted an entry field of 126 liberally sprinkled with star talent, creating a prize pool of $1 184 400. The entry field was a 25 player improvement on the same event last year.

Notable entrants included Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, John Monnette, Justin Bonomo, Chris Oliver, Nikolay Evdakov, Hasan Habib, Billy Baxter, Steve Zolotow, Doyle Brunson, Barry Greenstein, Mike Matusow, Carlos Mortensen, Jean-Robert Bellande, Tom Dwan, Daniel Alaei, Alessio Isaia, Vladimir Schmelev, Tom Schneider, Steve Billirakis, last year’s victor David Baker, Chino Rheem, Dave, David Singer and Dan Shak.

Veterans Doyle Brunson and Eric Cloutier fell by the wayside in day one, along with Chris Oliver, Tom Dwan, Jean-Robert Bellande, Phil Laak, Justin Smith and Justin Bonomo, but there is still a strong field of aces in the game, including former WSOP champ Greg Raymer, David “Devilfish” Ulliot, Richard Ashby, Daniel Negreanu and Eugene Katchalov.

Twaits said online poker sites, which he claims cost the local industry hundreds of millions of dollars annually, should also be part of new legislation aimed at cracking down on new measures to stop match-fixing in sport.

The measures have been backed by Australia’s big four online gaming sites, Sportsbet, Betfair, Centrebet and Sportingbet.

“While it is pleasing to see both the federal and state governments taking the integrity of betting in sports seriously and on a united front, the present legislation is clearly not working when it comes to online poker,” Twaits said.

“Online sports betting in this country turns over A$300 million a year, is highly regulated and we pay our taxes, while operators of online poker sites are not, many of which are controlled and run offshore.

“That’s the real challenge facing not just the federal and state governments of this country, but governments across the globe.

“It is estimated that the turnover in this and other forms of illegal betting is A$125 billion worldwide. That’s why as an industry we welcome any tightening of the present legislation in this country.”

Twaits’ call comes as ministers for sport from the federal, state and territory governments prepare to meet today (Friday) to address issues of preserving the integrity of sporting events.

Executive chairman of Sportsbet, Matthew Tripp, said the big four operators remained committed to working with governments to ensure a zero tolerance policy.

“Our customers and the broader community demand sporting events be contested on their merits and without the taint of corruption,” Tripp said.

“We also support consistent legislation across Australia to combat match-fixing and penalties of up to 10 years in jail for individuals found guilty of corrupt behaviour.”

2,412 survivors from Days 1a and 1c were headed in the chip counts by Corwin Cole (228 000) as cards hit the air in the next stage of event 57, the main event No-Limit Hold’em Championship competition.

Still in the field were double Main Event champion Johnny Chan; the $50,000 Players’ Champion, Michael Mizrachi and top caliber players like Barny Boatman, Sammy Farha, Carter Phillips, and Hoyt Corkins.

Multiple WSOP bracelet holder Jesper Hougaard, and internet high stakes cash game specialists Patrik Antonius and Cole South were also on the table lists.

By the time play reached 4 levels over a thousand of the entrants had been eliminated, including Dennis Phillips, Matt Glantz, Lee Markholt, Greg Mueller, Brock Parker, James Akenhead, Marcel Luske, Rob Hollink and David Bach.

Other high profile casualties included Carlos Mortensen, Berry Johnston, Tom McEvoy and Bobby Baldwin, along with 2010 bracelet winners Dutch Boyd and Daniel Alaei.

At level 8 tournament officials called for the chips to be bagged as Day 2a was concluded, with 1,359 players ready to go through to Day 3 and Boulos Estafanous in the lead on 344,100, closely pursued by Randy Dorfman on 337,000.

With Day 2b up next, competition for the winners prize of $8,944,138 is still wide open.

Initial reports indicate that PokerStars moved quickly to deal the cheaters out, and has already agreed to reimburse players impacted by the fraud to the tune of $587 000.

The ring apparently operated on $108 Double or Nothing sit and go tournaments, starting last summer but being unmasked as early as February this year.

One of the fraudsters, using the nickname Jane0123 brought the issue into the limelight when he whined on the 2+2 forum that his PokerStars account containing winnings of $10 000 had been frozen by the operator.

In the storm of responses that followed it was alleged that the poster had been a member of the ring who had been reported by other players to PokerStars, and that relevant Sharkscope data showed that Jane0123 had played 11,766 Double or Nothing tourneys with an average stake of $87 and had achieved a profit of $56,300.

Other big players from the Double or Nothing leaderboard at PokerStars were also accused, including one Wudiya who made around $96 000 on the DoN games last year.

2+2 revelations include the claim that often half of the players in any given game have been part of the ring, most of them coming from the Chinese town of Hangzhou.

The cheaters may have generated up to $600,000 as rake to PokerStars, some posters claim. While users on 2+2 admit that DoN’s are an easy target for colluders and such collusion can be difficult to detect, others say that the cheating happened on such a scale and duration that PokerStars’ security should have put their sensors up much sooner.

Investigations continue, but many suspect that so is the cheating, this time possibly by another group of Chinese players who recently joined from the Wenzhou area in China.

For anyone who doesn’t know how a wide-area online progressive jackpot works, it is essentially a networked jackpot between multiple online casinos, each contributing a percentage of every wager made on the progressive game. There is no extra “cost” for the online casino. In fact, the player receives a smaller payoff overall in order for this percentage of their wager to go toward the jackpot. Therefore, if an online casino happens to be the host where a lucky player hits the “big one” so to speak, you can bet your bankroll that casino is going to advertise the win.

As mentioned, the latest, notable jackpot wins took place on the Rival Gaming network. Although it hasn’t been identified just yet which Rival Gaming licensee was the host for the jackpot, records show the game was “One Million Reels BC” – a popular progressive video slot, which in many respects, has been one of the Rival Gaming’s hottest slots this year. Just six months ago, it paid out nearly $250,000 to one player, as well as several multi-thousand dollar wins this month.

One Million Reels BC can be played at all Rival Gaming Casinos, which get two thumbs up by the online casino review team here at OCS. Although smaller than the likes of Microgaming and Playtech, Rival Gaming has a fast growing number of licensees, most all of which are still open to U.S. players. The Top Rival Gaming Casinos reviewed at Online Casino Suite include SlotoCash, Paradise 8 and Cocoa Casino.

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Antonius recently won the two biggest pots in the short history of online poker cash games, including the first million-dollar pot ever recorded. Earlier this week, Antonius played another online high roller, known only by his screen name “isildur1”, in a heads-up pot-limit Omaha match. “isildur1” was on the button during the big hand, where the blinds at this table were the highest available at the site: US$500/1000.

Before the flop, the two combatants raised and re-raised the maximum until each player had over US$81,000 in the pot. The flop came as a nondescript two, four and five with three different suits. Antonius led out for US$91,000 into the US$162,000 pot. His opponent considered the bet, just over half the pot, then raised the full amount, US$435,000. The bet left “isildur1” with only US$162,000 in his stack, thus committing the rest of his chips to the hand.

Antonius’ next bet forced his opponent all-in, which was called. Antonius showed (Ah, Kd, Ks, 3s) for a five-high straight on the flop. His opponent showed (9s, 8h, 7d, 6d) for a potentially higher straight draw. A three would give “isildur1” a seven-high straight, while a six would give him an eight-high straight, giving him a forty-five percent chance to win with two cards to come.

The odds tilted in Antonius’ favor after the turn card showed (5h), making him nearly a three-to-one favorite. The river was the (9c), giving Antonius the hand and over US$1.3 million, the largest cash-game pot in online poker history. This hand surpassed the record that the two players set last week, when Antonius hit a gutshot straight on the river to take down a pot worth almost US$880,000.

Understandably, slots are the most popular of all online casino games with players. Furthermore, it’s no surprise how much casinos embrace anything related to slots, whether it be slots bonuses or tournaments, for these entertaining and loaded games are indeed the “one-armed bandits”. In other words, online casinos make more money overall off slots than they do on other games.

Being that Blackjack actually offers one of the lowest House Edges (when played with perfect blackjack strategy), let’s just say that online casinos typically do not like to encourage unbridled action on the Blackjack table when they can do the same for slots. Nonetheless, some online casinos are willing to “take a hit” and offer online blackjack tournaments to the base of players who truly love the game of “21″.

The blackjack savvy online casinos, like Cherry Red, will even offer Mano a Mano tournaments in addition to multi-tournaments (multiple players, multiple table and multiple tournament rounds). Mano a Mano is similar to online poker tournaments in that players compete directly against each other in head’s up play.

So, going back to the original quandary of US players finding a varied selection of online blackjack tournaments (other than Cherry Red Casino and Rushmore), I am happy to report that the Club World Gaming group should be added to the list of reputable U.S. facing online blackjack tournament destinations. Specifically, it’s Club USA Casino that is gaining momentum from the U.S. crowd – steadily building up a demand for online blackjack tournaments, and as such, greater prize pools altogether.

Club USA also offers a “blackjack compatible” welcome bonus and reload loyalty bonuses, meaning that blackjack wagers (penny for penny) will go toward the play-through requirement. Unlike most other bonuses that either exempt blackjack from meeting the wager requirement (going so far to disqualify bonus money if exempted games are wagered on before the entire play-through has been met), or only counting a very low percentage of wagers toward the play-through (sometimes as low as 5%), Club USA Casino offers a true blackjack bonus, imposing a moderate 50x on blackjack wagers with the only game restrictions being imposed on Craps, Baccarat, Roulette and Sic Bo. The bonus (claim code NEW100) is worth 100% up to $150 Free, and can also be used on Video Poker. The maximum cashout is 5x the bonus amount ($750), which is also a favorable term.