The Water Cooler: Poker News For The Weekend Of October 31, 2010

by Bodog Poker | Nov 1 2010

Vienna

He hit the final table as chip leader, but Daniel Negreanu failed in his attempt to become the third player in history to win live poker's "Triple Crown" of World Poker Tour, World Series and Poker and European Poker Tour titles. Instead, the victory in the €5,300 Main Event at EPT Vienna went to 20-year-old economics student Michael Eller.  Eller came out on top of a field of 587 players, meaning that he's won the largest and richest poker tournament yet held in Austria.

The first to get booted from the final table was Bruno Launais, who was kicked to the rail within 30 minutes of the eight-handed table's start. He was followed two and a half hours later by Matthair Lotze and an hour after that, Andreas Wiese. Another two hours went by (which shows how hard this table was) before Luca Cainelli found his way out after a nightmare hand between himself, Negreanu and Martin Hruby.  Negreanu was crippled after that and ended up busting out in fourth place, but not without making a bit of a fuss first, trashing Hruby for “slow rolling him” as the cameras captured everything.  Negreanu's recent outbursts have become the subject of no small amount of discussion both online and in broadcasts of the sport, putting him neck-and-neck with Phil Hellmuth in the “person we'd least like to see sitting down across from us” stakes.

Third place went to Kostantinos Nanos, who actually qualifed for EPT Vienna through a $22 satellite in an online poker room. The Greek-born German national hit a career-best cash for this event, earning €265,000 on a very small investment.  The final battle between cheap leader Hruby and eventual champion Eiler lasted 90 minutes and seemed anti-climactic compared to the fireworks that happened earlier at the same table.  Eiler's steady pace defused Hruby's chip lead and made fairly short work of the pro.  Hruby  took away €470,000 and the champion got a very, very tidy €700,000 for his excellent play.

New York

The CEO of Viacom, a media company that owns multiple television networks including MTV and Comedy Central, has made a bit of a splash by putting his money where his mouth is and moving more of the company's content on the web. The company made almost $3 billion last year across the board in multiple sectors and is branching out into markets that, while not quite untested, are at least outside of the traditional model for the media giant.  They've signed off on a five-year, $1,000,000,000 deal with Netflix to make movies available online through the Epix movie service and is considering putting content back up on the web video site Hulu.

Why's this interesting to poker players? Philippe Dauman, the soft-spoken 56-year old former attorney and friend of controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone, paid his way through college over 40 years ago by playing poker.

It's a skill set that he calls on every day as he weighs decisions both large and small and helps steer the titanic corporation through a landscape that has changed radically in a very short amount of time.  Some have described his latest moves as making strong bets in a very high-stakes arena and it will be interesting to see how he calls upon his poker smarts to help make the right decision.

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