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WSOP.com offers 14 2020 WSOP bracelets for online poker tournaments 2: March 23rd. GG Daniel, when i was in dusseldorf thought of going to vegas manytimes for wsop summer series. Tournaments Poker ranking Rakeback. FIFA21 PS4 FIFA20 PS4. TSV Fortuna Dusseldorf II - Borussia Monchengladbach II. Wednesday, July 03, 2019 to Tuesday, July 16, 2019. $10,000 No-Limit Hold'em MAIN EVENT - World Championship (Event #73). Annie Duke, a behavioral scientist and former poker champion, appears on 'Influencers with Andy Serwer.' “It's like a bad turn of a card; there are also good turns of the card,” adds Duke, the author of a new book, “How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices.” “And then there's just a lot of stuff that you don't know when you enter into negotiation — you don't know what.
The final nine at the EPT Malta Main Event represents a showcase for some of the most in-form players in the game today.
All eyes at this stage are naturally on Dominik Panka(2,780,000 chips), who, in the past 14 months, has risen from almost complete anonymity to become one of the most recognisable tournament poker players on the planet. The 24-year-old from Brześć Kujawski in Poland make his tournament breakthrough in the Bahamas, taking down the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure title in 2014, denying Mike McDonald the chance to become the first double EPT champion.
Now, returning to a final table himself, Panka has the chance to follow in Victoria Coren Mitchell's footsteps and claim a second crown. Since prevailing at the PCA, Panka has also won an EPT High Roller title, in Deauville, and has become the poster boy for a poker boom in Poland. His countryman Dzmitry Urbanovich has already won three tournaments in Malta this week, but Panka now has the chance to shift the spotlight back in his own direction.
The remarkable rise to prominence of Fedor Holz(2,675,000 chips) bears comparison with that of Panka. This time last year, Holz was just one of a group of talented young German players making their way on to the professional circuit, picking up the occasional expenses-covering side event score at major festivals. But Holz was also crushing tournaments online, where he plays as CrownUpGuy (explanation: 'I just like crowns') and his career suddenly vaulted to another level late last summer.
In Barcelona in August, he demonstrated just how well it had been going online when he anted up in the €50,000 Super High Roller event. Although that was a whiff, he won a €2,000 side event and made the final table of another.
But then back at the online tables, he suddenly had that one enormous score: Holz won the WCOOP Main Event on PokerStars for $1.3 million. 'It means pretty much everything to me poker-wise,' Holz said of the win. 'Although I'm just 21 I've been through very tough times as well as I've had a lot moments of joy...I want to be a positive influence on as many people as possible and that's why I set very high standards for myself.'
Hossein Ensan(5,505,000 chips), the chip-leader, also plays under the German flag, but is another player whose career took an enormous boost in Barcelona last summer. Originally from Iran, Ensan moved to Germany when he was 25 and now lives in Münster. When he came to Barcelona, he said he still considered himself an amateur player, who had played hold'em for ten years. But at that EPT festival, he followed up victory in the seniors' event (he had just turned 50) with a third-place finish in the Main Event, good for more than €650,000. This is now his second final table of the season and he set it up with a devastating rise through the ranks on Day 4.
Speaking of final tables in Barcelona, Antonin Duda(1,050,000 chips), who is 28 and lives in Jablonec in the Czech Republic, is also a veteran of that particular slab of felt. Duda has been a professional poker player for the past four years, specialising in multi-table tournaments and during that time he has become a familiar face on the European Poker Tour. His best result was seventh at EPT Barcelona in Season 9, and the €125,950 he won there accounts for more than half of his recorded live tournament cashes.
Jean Montury(3,925,000 chips) has so far enjoyed the kind of Day 4 that most players dream of, knocking out Rudolf Zintel with ace-king to ace-queen and then ending Sergio Aido's tournament with aces against Aido's ace-king. Montury never even had a sweat. Not that the 41 year old from Arras, France, seems to be the kind to grow anxious playing poker. He said he plays multi-table tournaments as a game of choice 'all over the world' and has twice been in the last 50 at an EPT Main Event. This, however, is his best finish at the end of his most consistent week of play. He has already made three other final tables in Malta during this festival, in PLO, seven-card stud and a big ante deep-stack turbo.
Poker Tournament Dusseldorf 2019
Remi Wyrzykiewicz(1,230,000 chips) is a 24-year-old multi-table tournament player from Poznan, in Poland, who is rapidly growing in stature in both online and bricks and mortar environments. 'I'm just starting out on a live career,' he said, and is now desperate to go one better (at least) than his previous best finish, last month at the Eureka Poker Tour stop in Rozvadov.
'I got the unofficial final table,' he said, referring to a ninth-place finish, which was one off the official eight-handed final. Back then, he also played a lot with Ensan, who finished eighth in that event, and the two have again been sharing a lot of table time this week. Wyrzykiewicz has had one of the biggest stacks in the room for almost all of the event, but now has half the average and is refusing to look much further than just getting into the last eight.
Although originally from Paris, France, Valentin Messina(3,745,000 chips) is playing on home turf having relocated to Malta about a year ago to play poker online. He has been a professional for five years, usually playing tournaments online and live, and cash online. He studied in France to be an engineer, but said he was making more money playing poker, usually at the $2-$4 and $5-$10 tables.
Stefan Schillhabel (3,310,000 chips) is the one true amateur among the final nine. The 28 year old, from Dusseldorf, Germany, says poker is 'just a hobby for me. I play only a bit if I have time.' He has played four or five EPT events prior to this, but usually plays tournaments online.
Schillhabel is studying sociology and works to pay for his studies. He has no ambitions to be professional. 'I like the game it's fun,' he said. 'I'm doing fine, but it's just fun for me.'
Javier Gomez Zapatero(2,530,000 chips), who was chip leader at the end of Day 3, is now the last Spanish player in the tournament and carries the hopes of becoming the first EPT champion from the country. The 24 year old is originally from Salamanca but has lived in London for two and a half years, now sharing a house with Sergio Aido, who also went deep in this event, and Adrian Mateos, who won the WSOP-E title last year. Zapatero plays both tournaments and six-max cash but says: 'I prefer cash for everyday but when you go deep in tournaments it's very good. There is glory.'
Here's how they all line up in this bid for glory:
Seat 1 - Antonin Duda 1,050,000
Seat 2 - Stefan Schillhabel 3,310,000
Seat 3 - Javier Gomez Zapatero 2,530,000
Seat 4 - Valentin Messina 3,745,000
Seat 5 - Remi Wyrzykiewicz 1,230,000
Seat 6 - Hossein Ensan 5,505,000
Seat 7 - Dominik Panka 2,780,000
Seat 8 - Jean Montury 3,925,000
Seat 9 - Fedor Holz 2,675,000
Follow coverage of the EPT Malta Main Event on the EPT Malta Main Event page. There are plenty of side events going on, and the €10,000 High Roller starts at 1pm. Keep abreast of everything via the EPT App, available on Android or IOS. Snigger, snigger. He said 'a-breast'.
If you're in Germany, you're probably left wondering what kind of poker games you're actually allowed to play. Currently, the confusing legal situation in the country is not helping anyone answer that question.
With norms to regulate online poker left in the hands of 16 different Länder (German Federal States) and home games partially allowed after a recent ruling from the German Federal Administrative Court, playing poker in the country that produced champions like Marvin Rettenmaier and 2013 GPI Player of the Year Ole Schemion is far more difficult than one would guess.
So, while German players keep crushing one international event after another, let's have a quick look at how things work in Europe's largest national economy.
Live poker in Germany: What is allowed, and what isn't?
In Germany, only state casinos are allowed to host poker cash games or tournaments. All sorts of real-money gambling poker outside of casinos (like home games, card clubs, etc.) is forbidden, and police raids of underground games are not unheard of.
There are however a few exceptions: playing for very small stakes in home games is not prosecuted, and sometimes it is also possible to find particular tournaments allowed to be organized by non-state casino hosts.
On Jan. 27, 2014, the German Federal Administrative Court ruled that tournaments with very low buy ins (around €15) do not constitute illegal gambling. This law applies so long as the buy-ins are mainly used to cover the costs of the event and are not redistributed among the players.
Despite the fact it does not refer to events with significant figures, the ruling was widely welcome by Germany’s poker community as the country has a rather vivid scene of those very low buy-in tournaments.
The most prominent host for that kind of events is the PokerBundesliga, a circuit which offers €15 tournaments where the participants can win entries to other tournaments. Their yearly final in Leipzig regularly attracts over 1,000 players.
In Short: Poker in casinos is allowed, low-stakes home games are OK, and low-stakes tournaments are also OK.
Online Poker in Germany: Where things get confusing
It is difficult to have a complete understanding of Germany’s online poker regulation. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that each one of the 16 German Federal States has its own laws regarding online gambling and does not request to work together with the others to build a homogeneous, national system.
What we do know is that 15 of the 16 German states do not allow to for the providing of online poker services, even though none of those 15 different pieces of legislation mention whether it is allowed to play online poker or not.
Up until now no player has ever been prosecuted in Germany for playing online poker, but legal certainty regarding online poker is not provided by the legislation in those 15 states.
Currently, all German states are working on an amendment to the current gambling law, which in its current revision reinforces the strict prohibition of all forms of online gambling with the exception of the federal lottery.
But as the European Court of Justice has already decreed in 2010, that such a broad prohibition is against EU law, it seems likely that this new revision will be overruled once again.
One German Federal State, Schleswig-Holstein, is the only one that tried to differentiate from others and decided to allow both online gambling and sports betting in mid-2011.
Schleswig-Holstein started issuing licenses in early 2012 for some companies to offer online gambling to Schleswig-Holstein residents. Among the first rooms to secure a license from the state are industry leaders PokerStars, 888 and Ladbrokes.
Unfortunately for poker players, right after Schleswig-Holstein passed this online regulation, the state government was voted out of office, and the newly elected governor of Schleswig-Holstein announced his intention to revoke the whole piece of regulation.
All this said, up until now the new state government did not follow through on that announcement, even if the current situation in Schleswig-Holstein is a stalemate since neither players nor providers have any legal certainty that online poker stays legal and regulated in the state.
In short: Providing online gambling is not allowed (with the current exception of Schleswig-Holstein), and playing online is not prosecuted.
Poker’s tax heaven … until you win
In general, poker players do not have to pay taxes in Germany as gambling winnings are non-assessable. Up until 2010 poker was considered a game of chance by the German jurisdiction.
Broadly this still holds true to date, even if Cologne's Financial Court ruled in October 2012 that under certain circumstances revenues generated via poker tournaments are taxable.
In the now famous Eddy-Scharf-Ruling, which forced the two-time WSOP bracelet holder to pay taxes on his winnings as 'they counted as commercial income as they were linked to his personal skills,' the Cologne court decreed that a person who regularly generates income via poker games has to pay regular income taxes on those revenues.
Thus, now many professional poker players reside in Austria or England to avoid having to pay income taxes. For the average casino player the Cologne verdict has no consequences, though, as long as poker is not his main source of income.
In short: As long as poker is not your main source of income, your winnings are not taxable. If you win big, you better live elsewhere.
*Lead photo courtesy of fc02.deviantart.net.
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