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Upeshka De Silva, one of the nine finalists, for the 2020 World Series of Poker (WSOP) $10,000 Main Event on WSOP.com has tested positive for Covid, Joey Ingram announced the news on Twitter.

As a result, he has been disqualified for the Main Event and will finish at 9th place for $98k.

He becomes the second player after Peiyuan Sun from China to miss out the live portion of the WSOP Main Event. Earlier this month, Sun who made the Final Table on the International leg held at GGPoker did not travel to King’s Casino in the Czech Republic due to travel restrictions.

The WSOP.com Main Event is set to be played out to a winner later today at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

US offshore online poker site Americas Cardroom has appointed former PokerStars Team Pro Randy Nanonoko Lew as the room’s new security consultant and gameplay expert.

Lew will be responsible for working with the room’s security team on any suspicious activity including collusion, bot activity and fraud. He will also be reviewing hand histories and provide his own expert opinion if needed.

Known under the alias “nanonoko,” Lew holds a Guinness World Record for playing most poker hands played in eight hours with a profit. The multi-tabling legend created this record in 2012 by playing 23,493 hands in eight hours and ending with a profit of $7.65.

He also achieved a rare milestone of surpassing the $1 million mark in cash game earnings back in 2009. He has over $1.6 million in live tournament earnings.

The American professional poker player left PokerStars in April 2019 after serving as their ambassador for nearly ten years.

It appears that partypoker may soon be launching a new game type that would inject extra cash or coins into cash game pots.

While no further details are available as of now other than the title Table Booster, based on the animations and a reconstruction of the table by F5 using the image assets in the client, the new game feature may be inspired by Run It Once Poker’s Splash the Pot concept.

Splash the Pot (STP) is Run It Once Poker’s innovative way to reward players and at the same time create action at the cash game tables. At the start of every hand, the STP feature periodically adds money to pots before the preflop betting round. The amount of the added money ranges from 1 to 100 big blinds.

Soon after STP was introduced, GGPoker, clearly inspired by Run It Once, added its own “Cash Drops” feature.

However, unlike STP, GGPoker’s Cash Drops is also only available at the operator’s fast-fold games under the name “Rush & Cash.”

The idea of adding money to pots is a practice that has been around the online poker industry for years. PokerStars has used it to a great effect with milestone hand promotions. It has also been used by other operators, including Unibet, Winamax, and partypoker itself along with Borgata in New Jersey.

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It remains to be seen how partypoker’s Table Booster feature would be utilized. Or it could be just a simple marketing promotion that incentives players to start games.

We may find out soon.

Padraig “Smidge” O’Neill beat a field of 230 players (212 players plus 18 re-entries) to take down the Unibet Open Main Event title and over €52,000 in prize money.

It is the second time this year that O’Neill is a Unibet Open Main Event winner.

“It’s slightly surreal to go back to back,” O’Neill told f5. “I’m just incredibly lucky! The final table was full of strong players. With the anonymous nature of Unibet I only knew David Lappin. Battling versus a former coach of mine for a title was a fun experience and if he finds time away from his media duties I’m sure hell be finding silverware in the future.”

Lappin, a Unibet Ambassador, also went deep, finishing 4th place for over €20,000 in prize money.

O’Neill took down his first Unibet Open Main Event back in October for €79,998.

“I would like to thank Unibet for putting on another great festival,” O’Neill went on to say and that he is “Llooking forward to hopefully being at a Unibet live stop later next year.”

O’Neill gained his seat at the Main Event via a €50 satellite—which no doubt will please Unibet Ambassador Dara O’Kearney who has written the a book on satellite strategy.

Partypoker’s knockout-exclusive tournament series, KO Series, is set to make a comeback this Christmas.

While officially yet to be announced, as per the banner on the website, the KO Series will kick off on December 25 and run through January 11.

In the previous edition, held in January this year, the series had guaranteed $10 million in prize money across 230 tournaments. For the upcoming edition, it is very likely that the series will retain the same overall series guarantee.

As with all the bounty tournaments at partypoker, there will be no rake on the bounty portion of the buy-in, making the tournament offerings significantly cheaper than its competitors.

Further details, including the full schedule and total guarantees, are expected to be revealed soon.

The KO Series is likely to go head to head with PokerStars’ Winter Series which is expected to run at the same period.

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