How often do you see or hear a poker streamer win a major online tournament live in front of their audience?

Well, PokerStars Team Pro Lex Veldhuis was very close to winning the Main Event of WCOOP for over $1 million and in front of almost record-breaking 35k viewers, but he ended up finishing in 58th place and taking home a little over $23k.

Streamers like Spraggy, Kevin Martin, Felix Schneiders, Arlie Shaban, etc do regularly win online MTTs while streaming, but often the winning prize is either small or the tournament field size.

On Tuesday, a player from Germany with the nickname “121323243434545” (pretty much the number of chips he had at the final table) binked the Main Event of the recently concluded Bounty Builder Series at PokerStars to take home a staggering $300k including 100k in bounties.

The Main Event attracted a massive field of 5673 entries to create a prize pool of $2.83 million—well over the original guarantee of $2 million.

He achieved this feat in front of two thousand viewers and it’s probably the first time a player has shipped a tournament series’ Main Event live on Twitch.

Watch his reaction after he binked the event to take home $305,929.95:

Jason Mercier, a once long time pro of PokerStars that parted ways with the company earlier in the year, seems to be now creating an alliance with PokerStars’ rival partypoker.

Check out Mercier’s tweet giving away tickets to a partypoker MILLIONS Online event.

Just goes to show that his recent tweet in April of this year doesn’t age well. Awkward.

Those in Sweden that enjoy playing online poker and casino games could see dramatic changes in the types of offers that are available to them, and those changes could potentially impact the types of games they play and where they play them.

On January 1, 2019, new regulations will take effect in Sweden, significantly changing the landscape of the online gaming market. While trying to point to concrete changes that will be the most different from the current environment is difficult, it is safe to say that there will be a flood of new operators and sites offering online gaming.

Within the first couple of weeks that the Swedish government began taking applications from online gaming companies for the new regulated markets, more than 30 companies applied to offer real money gaming over the internet.

The Current Online Gaming Landscape in Sweden

Currently only one company is legally allowed to offer online poker and casino games. In connection with the Swedish government, Svenska Spel AB has a monopoly in the market. Without other companies to provide competition, offers for the players in Sweden have been less attractive that those available to players in other countries. This has allowed companies operating outside Sweden to target players in the country and essentially circumvent the regulation put in place that was designed to protect players.

With so many players in Sweden flocking to these foreign companies to play online, the government sanctioned company suffered and as a result, so did the Swedish government as it does not collect tax revenue from these “illegal” operators.

However, the profits that these foreign companies made from players in Sweden must have been a lot because the Swedish government has been inundated with applications for online gaming. Earlier this month, the government reported that it received 55 applications for online gaming licenses. It even had to tell potential licensees that the regulator could not answer questions about the new regulations because it would need to devote the entirety of its resources to processing the glut of applications that have been received.

How Will Changes to the Swedish iGaming Market Affect Players?

With the gaming regulator in Sweden not providing guidance on following the new regulations, it is impossible to tell for sure what players in Sweden should expect.

Increased competition could result in more bonuses and promotions that will benefit players. However, some of the regulations add certain restrictions that could limit what operators are able to offer players as an incentive, so players may want to take advantage of some of the existing offers.

There are plenty of sites that provide current information about bonuses, free play and other promotions, such as Casino.se, which players in Sweden could use to choose where to play

iGaming Companies Preparing for the New Market

The current Swedish online gaming operator plans to remain in the market, and in preparation Svenska Spel has teamed up with NetEnt AB, a leading global online gaming content provider with roots in Sweden.

”NetEnt was an obvious choice when selecting an online casino supplier ahead of our re-regulated market entry on January 1st, 2019,” Fredrik Wastenson, MD and Head of Business Unit, Svenska Spel Sport & Casino said in a press release announcing the new deal. “We are convinced that NetEnt will deliver casino games of the highest quality and become a very important partner for us,” Wastenson continued.

Only a few days ago we saw Triton High Roller Series produce the biggest-ever televised pot of $2.35 million when Tom Dwan fell victim to Paul Phua’s Aces. Well, the same series has produced yet another biggest-ever televised pot, but this time it happened in a Short Deck game which they call Triton Hold’em.

In the latest episode of the Triton Poker SHR Series held in Jeju, where the cash game buy-in is $1 million, something extraordinary happened. Three players got dealt pocket pairs and they weren’t any random medium pocket pairs but Aces vs Kings vs Queens—something that you’d see in a movie.

Of course, this led to a massive $1,248,300 pot which happened to be the biggest Short Deck pot ever.

Check it out to see if Aces were good enough for Rui Cao, or if Paul Phua once again won the biggest pot with his Kings, or if Qiang Wang triumphed with Queens:

Also, Triton has released all the episodes of NLHE and the Triton Hold’em (Short Deck) cash game from Jeju. You can watch it here: Short Deck and NLHE

Joey Ingram branched out from his usual poker and PLO video content in early October to dissect what really happened between McGregor & Khabib in that post UFC brawl that kicked off after their recent fight in Vegas.

Since publishing his breakdown of what happened between the pair, the video has got 6.9 million views and sees no signs of slowing down (it genuinely was the best breakdown of what happened that I could find on the internet.) Ingram also has seemed to have gotten the UFC to overturn a recent copyright issue over the video!

Its amazing to see someone in the poker world get so much mainstream success. A huge congrats to Joey!

You can watch his first video on the topic below.

The name Chris Moneymaker has been synonymous with the WSOP for the past 15 years and for very good reason.

As an underdog who went on to take down the coveted WSOP Main Event back in 2003, Chris Moneymaker sits down with EPSN 15 years on to talk about that fateful tournament series on the 30 for 30 podcast.

Famous poker pros like Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson are part of the conversation as well.

Listen below.