19 Jan 12

Daily Rewind: TCOOP Begins, Caught at Customs, Olympic Poking

Today's Rewind sees the start of the PokerStars TCOOP. There's bad news for three Americans in the Bahamas and we hear the story of a young Brit who hopes his poker skills can help him achieve Olympic glory.

The Daily Rewind is your one-stop-shop for a sharp review of the day in poker. Join us here for a mix of the latest news and a more irreverent insight into the poker world. Today we bring the following stories to you:

TCOOP begins

Today marks the start of the inaugural Turbo Championship of Online Poker over at PokerStars.  

Forget 2-day tournament grinds, this is high octane, high variance action, designed for those with a little less time on their hands.  

The series will see 50 events of differing buy-in levels with $10 million guaranteed in total.

For the complete TCOOP schedule, check out the PokerStars Blog. 

Four events run today, and here’s the choices:

•  01: NL Hold'em (6-Max) $20.00 + $2.00 ($200k GTD)
•  02: NL Omaha Hi/Lo $30.00 + $3.00 ($50k GTD)
•  03: NL Hold'em (Knockout) $125.00 + $9.00 ($250k GTD)
•  04: NL Hold'em $30.00 + $3.00 ($100k GTD)

TCOOP kicks off today

Caught short at the airport

A story emerged today that proves when it comes to border patrol, it's best not to take any risks.

The Tribune (daily news from the Bahamas) reports that three unwitting Americans who had travelled to the Bahamas for the PCA ran into trouble last week when attempting to pass customs without having declared they were carrying more than $10,000.

Two brothers, Sean and Michael Ruane, and their cousin Thomas Freeman Jnr were found to be carrying $26,158, having signed waivers stating that they weren't holding more than $10,000.

One of the defendants, Sean Ruane said that "we invested money in some of our friends." "One of them won," he added, "and we got a percentage.

It seems that the younger of the Ruane brothers should probably work on his poker tells as the authorities felt compelled to undertake "a secondary search of the defendants brought on by the nervousness of the sweating younger brother."

A Nassau court yesterday ruled that the hapless trio would return to the US with $0 of their winnings, which were confiscated in full. 

Poking fund

BBC Sport yesterday ran an interesting story on British Olympic fencing hopeful Jamie Kenber.

The young Oxford graduate revealed in an interview that he "supplements the funding he receives as an elite athlete by tutoring maths students and playing internet poker."

Kenber draws on similarities between the games of fencing and poker, stating that "in fencing someone might show you something and you don't know whether they're actually going to go through with it or if it's just an early bluff. That happens in poker as well."

We’ll keep an eye out for Kenber this summer, and see if all of those long nights of poker can assist him in his quest for gold.

Kenber hoping to out-foil his opponents

High stakes corner

Yesterday's action in high stakes land belonged to "Fake Love888". 

The rumoured account of Finnish poker star Patrik Antonius snagged a tidy $104,114 according to our friends over at HSDB. 

Perhaps Phil Galfond's new blog is distracting him from his A-game; the man also known as "MrSweets28" capped off a testing couple of days with a loss of $146,452 chalked next to yesterday’s results.

Daily Signoff

Today we wince at the out-counting skills of "Brokeliving" Jean-Robert Bellande.

Here's JRB at the WSOP Main Event falling from grace in fairly embarrassing circumstances. Bye-bye Bobby!