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PokerOrg published a sneak peek from Garrett Adelstein’s upcoming interview in which he says the famous J-4 controversy should not be read as a personal attack. In the clip, Adelstein says he first felt wronged, but has since come to see the episode as alleged con artists finding vulnerabilities in Hustler Casino Live’s setup and taking their shot.

He says the fallout had real personal consequences, but that it “wasn’t about me” and could have been anyone sitting in his seat that day. The teaser is part of an interview with Craig Tapscott, and PokerOrg says the full conversation will follow later this week.

The preview also points to Adelstein’s memoir, Beneath The Cards, which PokerOrg says will be published by Permuted Press on Sept. 1 and distributed by Simon & Schuster. The book comes as the hand remains one of the most debated live-stream moments in modern poker.

The controversy began on Sept. 29, 2022, when Robbi Jade Lew called Adelstein’s all-in shove on Hustler Casino Live with jack-four and won a $269,000 pot. Hustler Casino Live’s own J-4 report says the hand was streamed to a worldwide audience and that Lew later agreed to return half the pot.

That report also says Bulletproof found no evidence of tampering, remote access, viruses, rogue hardware or previously installed programs on the machines it inspected. At the same time, the assessment said the system review was inconclusive and that no security process can fully stop mechanical or electronic cheating.

Against that backdrop, Adelstein’s new framing is that the episode was about opportunists exploiting weak points in the livestream, not about him personally.

The €1,650 PokerStars Open Main Event at EPT Barcelona finished its eight Day 1 flights with 4,333 entries and a €6,239,520 prize pool. A total of 648 players moved on to Day 2, and Maor Zaharagi led the survivors with 864,000 chips.

The numbers were down from last year. PokerOrg said the 2025 version drew 5,036 entries and a €7,251,840 prize pool, while PokerNews’ 2025 results page lists the same event at 5,035 entries, including 2,750 re-entries, with the same prize pool. As covered in our Aug. 12 look at the Barcelona festival, PokerStars had already added a new €2,200 In the Money at 180,000 event to the stop alongside the usual headline action.

A few familiar names were still in the hunt. Jamie Dwan returned with 682,000 chips, and PokerOrg noted that he had finished fifth in Event #17: €20,000 NLH for €58,400 and fourth in Event #3: €1,100 NLH for €17,480 at Barcelona. The same report also pointed to his recent Super High Roller win at the GUKPT stop in Coventry for £47,200, plus six bracelet-event cashes at the WSOP in Las Vegas and a $50,000 NLH High Roller title worth $2,276,961.

Thomas Eychenne was another notable name in the Day 2 field, starting with 504,000. He won the 2025 EPT Barcelona Main Event after a heads-up deal with Sebastian Ionita that left both players with €1,117,175 and reserved €100,000 for the champion, and PokerNews said it was his first live tournament win.

Eychenne also described the victory as a pressure release, saying he expected to play with less pressure going forward. PokerNews reported that he told Ionita during deal talks that he was a heads-up specialist and felt he had the edge because he had played many more hands in that format.

The Open will crown its champion on Saturday, the same day the EPT Barcelona Main Event gets underway.

World Poker Tour has filled out the map for WPT Seoul at INSPIRE Entertainment Resort in Incheon, with the festival set for October 30 to November 9 and 46 events spread across 11 days. The headliner is the WPT Seoul INSPIRE Championship, which carries a KRW 1 billion guaranteed prize pool and a KRW 1.75 million buy-in, and the final table is slated for a dedicated livestream.

As covered in July, this will be the first tournament staged in INSPIRE’s new second-floor entertainment space. That area includes the purpose-built YY Poker Club, which features 70 tables and its own livestream studio, along with Daia and Ultra Lounge.

The opening day leans into mixed formats and quick-fire side events. The schedule begins on October 30 with an Inspire Superstack, PLO, a Turbo Bounty, and a 15-second Hyper Turbo, along with a Championship Warm Up that guarantees KRW 100 million and a Mini High Roller Warm Up. Early on, the series also adds Mystery Bounty, Freezeout, Monster Stack, Survivor Bounty, multiple PLO events, Big O and several High Roller tournaments.

Buy-ins start at KRW 300,000 and run up to KRW 8 million. The championship itself starts on November 5, with four starting flights, 40,000-chip starting stacks, registration open until the start of Level 10 in each opening flight, and re-entry allowed. The best-stack-forward format applies across the championship flights.

The opening days also line up with a KRW 8 million Super High Roller on November 5 and a KRW 3.5 million High Roller on November 8. The closing stretch on November 9 includes the championship final day, High Roller Day 2, Mini Championship Day 2, a Closer, PLO Bounty Turbo and Championship Turbo, plus evening events.

The same coverage also says WPT Seoul will be directed by Danny McDonagh. WPT’s event page adds one important wrinkle: the stop is listed as a special event presented by Khartes, not an official World Poker Tour event, so players will not earn WPT Player-of-the-Year points.

Brent Carter, a two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner and a 1990s poker legend, has died at 77. His partner of 32 years, Jane Paquette, said the exact cause of death was not revealed.

Paquette said he was one of the kindest people she ever knew, that he never accepted anything for helping someone, and that when he won something, everyone got something. She also said he had suffered several heart attacks and strokes in the past.

He won his first WSOP gold bracelet in 1991 in the $1,500 no-limit hold’em event for $156,800, then added a second in 1994 in the $1,500 limit Omaha event for $83,400. PokerNews also noted that he finished third in the 1995 WSOP Main Event for $302,750, which was his career-high score.

That Main Event result was part of a broader WSOP record that also included four third-place finishes and three runner-up finishes. The Hendon Mob listed $3,099,501 in lifetime tournament earnings dating back to 1986, and his last recorded cash came in 2015.

Paquette said Carter’s poker career began at the Stardust with the Stairway to the Stars tournaments, where he learned on the job. She said he mostly played Omaha but played everything, and he was the kind of player who studied schedules closely enough to point out when events overlapped and kept some players from entering both.

Before poker became his full-time focus, Carter raced harness horses. He later compared the two worlds by saying both came down to strategy, and that the best horse or the best hand does not always win.

His later years also included a federal case tied to the New York State Gaming Commission. In 2021 he was charged with spreading a hoax after allegedly mailing suspicious white powder and threatening letters to the commission’s headquarters in Schenectady, New York; he later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served in a June 2023 update.

Paquette said she met him in 1994 and they were together almost from the first day. She said he took food to homeless people two or three times a week and could talk to anyone.

CoinPoker has been named the presenting sponsor of a seven-day High Stakes Poker livestream run on PokerGO from Aug. 25-31. The broadcasts will come from the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas, and PokerGO plans to stream live high-stakes cash games every day across the full week.

The deal gives CoinPoker branding inside the livestreams and in related promotional content throughout the run. That means the operator will be visible across multiple broadcasts instead of a single sponsored episode. PokerGO CEO Brent Hanks said the seven-day format was a first for High Stakes Poker, and described the show as a place for the biggest personalities and the highest stakes in the game.

The first lineup announced for the week included CoinPoker ambassador Alejandro Lococo, Andrew Robl and Rick Salomon. More players were expected to be added before the broadcasts begin, along with exact broadcast times and other details.

As covered earlier in August, CoinPoker had already launched its Global Online Poker Championship, a separate $50 million series that runs through Sept. 28. CoinPoker said the High Stakes Poker partnership fits its push to continue expanding in the online poker market, while also giving Lococo a direct presence in the action at the table.