Daily Rewind: WCOOP Round-Up, Brian Townsend's Race, Unibet Update

In today's Daily Rewind we get the latest from the WCOOP, catch-up with Brian Townsend's latest activities and report on yesterday's action from the Unibet Open in London.

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 discovered the following topics for you:

WCOOP update

Staszko went deep

PokerStars' $530 2-day WCOOP event came to a conclusion yesterday after 711 players were whittled down to a winner. The $200,000 guarantee was easily smashed, leaving the eventual winner, "da69kid", with $64,879 in prize money.

Probably the most famous finisher in the event was WSOP finalist Martin Staszko. The Czech player finished in 22nd place and took home $1,368.

Event #34 attracted a plethora of talent including PokerStrategist George 'georgedanzer' Danzer. The German player managed to battle through the 860-player starting field to finish in 10th place. In the end though, it was "ZISIMO7" from Greece who took home the top prize of $97,952.

The final event to conclude yesterday was the 2-7 Triple Draw event. 428 players started and despite notable online players such as Shane "shaniac" Schleger and Anders "Donald" Berg finishing 3rd and 6th respectively, it was "erras" from Sweden who logged off the winner.

Tune into WCOOP Radio inside the Daily Rewind later on today to get all the latest WCOOP news and gossip.

Townsend wants to run good

Brian Townsend is used to running good online but he'll be hoping for the run of his life next week when he takes to the Sahara Desert.

Having been noticeably absent from the online poker scene for a while, Brian is reportedly living in Vancouver and has been training for the ultimate endurance race.

Running as part of the RacingThePlanet series, Brian will be running 250km in five days across the desert and in the run-up to his race the high stakes legend has been blogging about his training.

In his latest entry he wrote: 

"This week I ran 70 miles in mostly soft sand with a 20lbs pound pack, except for today when I took a 15lbs pack. Next week I want to do 80 miles in sand. Then I am going to dial it back to 60 miles as I have had three big weeks. Then up to 85-90 depending on how I feel. Then hopefully get two 100 mile weeks before I start a two week taper."

To keep track of Brian's progress, click here.

Townsend has swapped chips for trainers

Unibet UK

The Unibet Open hit the UK capital yesterday with its €1,650 main event. Having already kicked off earlier in the day with a heads-up tournament, a selection of the UK and Europe's finest descended upon the Aspers casino in London.

Among the recognisable faces making it through the first day was 2009 WSOPE runner-up John Tabatabai. The Welshman ended the day with 84,700 chips, which was good enough for 10th place overnight.

The man who bagged the most chips, however, was Dariusz Charski. The Polish player will come back for Day 2 with 151,200 chips.

Day 1b is already underway with the likes of Toby Lewis in the field vying for the first place prize.

Toby feeling confident

High stakes corner

Ben "Ben86" Tollerene enjoyed the bulk of yesterday's high stakes PLO action after he banked $324,500.

Taking place between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the action included the likes of Viktor "Isildur1" Blom, "patpatman" and Jens 'jenskyllonen' Kyllonen.

Also running well in the last 24 hours were "Chung Ho" ($157,000) and "ChipUniter" ($155,600).

In contrast, "patpatman" continued to lose money for the third day in a row, this time dropping $110,308 before logging off.

Also struggling to keep hold of their bankroll was the likes of "RaiseOnce" (-$107,856) and "Odd_Oddsen" (-$95,101).

Daily Signoff

Brian Townsend was undoubtedly one of the best players in the world a few years ago, but in the following clip he felt the wrath of one of the game's other greats, Patrik Antonius.