The World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event is perhaps the most well-known poker tournament in the world. The $10,000 live freezeout game is a bucket list item on many poker players’ lists, and cashing the Main Event is considered a significant milestone in a poker career. WSOP PA players have weekly chances to win their way into the Main for a fraction of the retail value.

There have been chances to win your way into the Big Show online for decades now—Chris Moneymaker famously turned an online satellite win into the 2003 Main Event title, and launched a new era in poker in the process. Pennsylvania residents could be the next Moneymaker, with $215 Main Event satellites running every Sunday on WSOP PA.

There is at least one seat guaranteed every week in the satellite, but WSOP PA is offering an extra ticket as well—the August 8 running of the $75K GTD Big Sunday will also award a $10,000 Main Event ticket to the winner on top of the regular prize pool.

Sunday is the day to win your way into the Main Event in Las Vegas in November, and WSOP PA is the place to do it. Get into the games this Sunday, and you could be the next Chris Moneymaker.

In case you missed last Sunday’s Sunday Million result, PokerStars Team Pro and Twitch streamer Tom “Majincast” Hayward took down the operator’s longest-running tournament.

He bested a massive field of 26,651 for a payday of $53k after ending up with a three-way deal.

While other PokerStars Team Pros have won major events but it is thought to be the first time a Team Pro has won the Sunday Million event.

The Sunday Million on August 1 ran as part of the ongoing 50/50 WCOOP series in which the buy-ins of all the tournaments are set to $50 including the operator’s iconic tournament. It was played as a progressive knockout tournament in which half of the buy-in was allocated to the bounty pool.

It drew 17,590 players who rebought 9061 re-entries to swell its total prize pool to $1.2 million.

Hayward along with nearly a dozen of Twitch streamers was signed up by PokerStars in May 2019. Hayward is a part-time music producer based in New Zealand.

“I’ve won [the Sunday Million] in my sleep several times, then I wake up to the realization that I’m not actually up $100k and the day’s grind is still yet to begin,” Hayward told PokerStars Blog. “I know that overcoming a field of that size is a bit of a pipe dream, and it took some very clear run good and patience in some key spots, so I’m thankful to have been the person who ran the best on the day. But deep down, I just had a sick feeling that I’d bink the Sunday Million eventually.”

Scott Robbins claims he was joking when he asked the front desk clerk at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa whether he would survive if he had to jump from a higher floor window. Borgata took a different view, banning Robbins for life even after a psychiatric exam cleared him.

There is no question Robbins escalated the joke. As the clearly alarmed front desk clerk asked him not to jump, he asked if he might survive a jump from a lower floor. Robbins claims in the lawsuit that he was talking about a fire or earthquake emergency forcing him to jump, and he was eventually able to convince the clerk to give him a 30th floor room.

Shortly after settling in to watch TV in his room though, hotel security showed up at his door and told him he’d need to submit to a psychiatric evaluation or be evicted from the hotel. As he was already qualified for a WPT event at Borgata, he didn’t feel he had much choice.

To make matters worse, even after he was cleared mental health experts, Borgata still banned him for life. In the suit, he claims this would mean lost income of $85,000 a year for ten years, and is also asking for $200,000 in punitive damages.

The allegations are yet to be tested in the courts, but Robbins is suing for more than $1.25 million in total damages. It remains to be seen if Robbins’ sense of humor will cost him, or if Borgata will have to pay for missing the joke.

The New Season of The Chip Race is proving to be an absolute humdinger.

The two most recent episodes feature—among others—EPT Champ, Toby Lewis; all-round general winner-of-twitter, Barny Boatman; and the peerless poker authority (ok we may be slightly biased here), our very own Christian Zetzsche.

Christian goes into great detail about live poker blogging—how to do the job well, and without annoying the players. He also chats about the trials and tribulations of translating Dara’s satellite book into German.

Barny talks over a famous hand he played against Vicky Coren with his usual wit and humility. Seriously, if you don’t already follow him on twitter, go and do it now!

All that, plus Jesse Sylvia, Padraig Parkinson, and K L Cleeton, who discusses LearnProPoker and his “Baller Van”, which the poker community ponied up $75,000 towards.

Which goes to show—when it’s not getting involved in cheating scandals or denigrating women—poker can still do feelgood stories.

Businessman, author, and high-stakes poker player Bill Perkins sat down with Jeff Gross for an in-depth talk about life, poker, and everything. The author of Die with Zero dished advice on how to optimize your life for the maximum experience.

Excerpted from a longer discussion held live on Gross’ Twitch channel, Perkins hammered home his ideas about how to optimize your life. His main point is that the order you do things in is a crucial consideration that few people consider as they should.

Perkins sees life as a “big bucket of experiences” that we all have access to. The problem, he says, is that “in order to do them all, you have to get the order right.” To illustrate the point, he pointed to Gross’ own life experiences.

“So, if Jeff waited to do all his Burning Man/Raving days until after he got married, I’d be like, sorry Jeff, you didn’t get the order right, you don’t get the Burning Man experience.”

Catch the highlights of a conversation that was almost two hours long at the link below, or click here to listen to the full 100 minute interview.

With the WSOP domestic bracelet series in full swing in the US, and beginning internationally, the gentlemen from The Lock-In invited poker media guru and WSOP spokestweeter Kevin “Kevmath” Mathers to the show. While it was hard to pin him down on a lot of specifics, there was a bit of WSOP dirt dished out by Kevmath.

The informal chat show, which started as a response to the covid-19 lockdowns last year as a side project for Dara O’Kearney and David Lappin, the hosts of The Chip Race podcast, brings wide ranging guests on for discussions about poker, gambling and life in general, and the timing was perfect for a visit from Mathers.

Mathers admitted he wasn’t fully in the loop on a lot of things, but perhaps the most interesting hint he let out was his strong belief that the WSOP will not be held at the Rio in 2022. While he was careful not to say anything with certainty, and rumors have abounded for a while now, Mathers is in a position to have a bit more information that the average Joe.

There were a lot of other interesting topics on discussion, with more interesting WSOP talk, in addition to a superstitious admission from Kevmath. In a segment on poker superstitions, Mathers confessed that when he is all-in and needing to fade cards, he calls for his opponent’s cards, assuming his bad luck will mean those cards won’t come.

Check out the full interview below, and get inside of the head of Kevmath.

Despite a title likely to enrage at least a certain segment of poker players, The Card Counter puts the poker and gambling world as the backdrop of a gritty Martin Scorsese redemption drama. Starring Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan, and Willem Dafoe, the movie looks to follow the story of an ex-con who makes it big in the poker world before his past catches up with him.

Slated for a theater release on September 10, the new movie has some high-profile poker personalities behind it as well. Joe Stapleton, half of the inimitable PokerStars' commentary duo with James Hartigan, tweeted with the trailer release that he was a poker consultant on the film.

Check out the trailer below, and look for The Card Counter in theaters on September 10.