The Water Cooler: Poker News for Weekend of October 3
by Bodog Poker | Oct 4 2010
London
After a weekend filled with hot and heavy poker action, the final table of the European Poker Tour's London stop has been reached and eight players are currently battling for the £900,000 first-place prize. The weekend two players leap far ahead of the rest of the pack: Kyle Bowker currently has 7,165,000 in chips as of this writing and four-time WSOP bracelet winner John Juanda is right behind him with 7,075,000. Juanda steadily accumulated chips all weekend with two notable gains occurring when he eliminated WSOP Main Event winner Joe Hachem with AQ to JQ on a queen high flop and snipered French pro Thomas Bichon.
Bowker's play, unsurprisingly, has been nothing to sneeze at, either. He kicked overnight leader Chance Kornuth to the curb in a couple of big pots. David Vamplew, who was the leader for a significant chunk of the tournament has been relatively quiet, but was never out of the top five during play. With 3,670,000 in his stack, he could feasibly make a run for the top spot if he eliminates the right players. As it stands, the bottom three players (Kayvan Payman, Per Ummer and Fernando Brito) will have less than twenty big blinds when the next level starts.
Meanwhile, the EPT High Roller event is being led by Yale law student Vanessa Selbst, surprising absolute nobody. The 21-year-old has made rapid inroads in the poker world, already claiming a WSOP bracelet and seven cashes.
Pleasanton, California
The Alameda County DA's office is not going to seek the death penalty in the trial of Ernest Scherer III, a professional poker player who is charged with killing his parents last year in their Pleasanton home to get his $1,000,000 inheritance ahead of schedule. A preliminary hearing revealed that Scherer lead a Vegas lifestyle well beyond his means and incurred a stunning amount of debt in a relatively short time, including a $616,000 short-term mortgage from his father. Authorities state that in 2009, he turned off his phone and drove from Vegas to Pleasanton, murdered his parents, and then drove south to the Brea house that he shared with his wife and son. His wife has since filed for divorce.
Two of the wannabe poker pro's acquaintances were put on the stand and each testified that Scherer had asked each of them to buy him a gun within a few weeks of the murders, but they both declined. Because of a gag order, the District Attorney's office has declined to state why they've opted to not seek the death penalty in the capital crime.
Cincinnati, Ohio
The Cincinnati Film Festival kicks off this weekend with "Hitting The Nuts," a locally-produced mockumentary about the 2009 Scott County, Indiana Texas Hold ‘Em Poker championship. Featuring a broad cast of characters including the town preacher, the redneck dad, an Amish farmer, a busty past-her-prime waitress and the local poker champion aiming at another victory, it's done in the style of movies like “This Is Spinal Tap” and “Best In Show.”
