The Grand Casino Helsinki offers great entertainment off and on the green felt with top class shows and acts guaranteed to make your poker holiday even more enjoyable. So, whether or not you go on and win the main tournament, you’re sure to have a truly memorable time in the Finnish capital.

Poker Heaven have packages worth €4,000 to the main event, which includes the €3,000 tournament entry and €1,000 travel and accommodation money. To be in with a chance of winning one these highly sought after packages, simply take part in our daily Rebuy and Satellite tournaments.

The 3-year deal allows the partners to create televised broadcasts every year around the poker events. The inaugural WPT Main Event will be held in October of this year and there will be several satellite poker tournaments on Chilipoker.com, as well at other online casinos on the iPoker Network, that will allow poker players to qualify for the WPT Marrakech as soon as this month.

The WPT Marrakech will take place at the famous Casino de Marrakech, which has been a fantastic casino since it was established in 1952. Currently the casino organizes the Marrakech Poker Open with the Es Saadi Gardens & Resort’s palace and 5-star hotel. The beautiful and popular tourist town is a perfect venue to attract poker players from not only Europe, but from all over the world. Chilipoker.com will take full advantage of the draw of Marrakech in order to organize other poker events, including a Ladies tournament as well as the Main Event.

Alexandre Dreyfus, Chilipoker CEO, recently stated,

Chilipoker is delighted to be associated with a world-renowned brand like the World Poker Tour in the creation of this unique and attractive event. With the creation of WPT Marrakech, Chilipoker also intends to emphasize Marrakech’s attributes as a highly desirable destination for European and African poker players.

1.Chris Karagulleyan — 4,080,000
2.Mike Sowers — 2,405,000
3.Pat Walsh — 2,200,000
4.Binh Nguyen — 1,895,000
5.Cornel Cimpan — 1,740,000
6.Chris Ferguson — 1,565,000

The first player to go down was Chris Ferguson, who went out in 6th place ($240,538) after 66 hands of play. Pat Walsh doubled up on his chips a couple of times before going out in 5th place ($310,694). After that the pace quickened as the blinds went up and after that
Chris Karagulleyan went out in 4th place ($430,963) and Mike Sowers went out in 3rd place ($654,797).

Leading into the heads up match Binh Nguyen had the chip lead. The heads up match lasted 5 hours long, as Ngyyen had the advantage over Cimpan at the beginning, but then Cimpan flopped a 2-pair to stay along even though Nguyen had him beat before the flop. This happened 3 more times, as Cimpan kept doubling up his chips until he eventually became the chip leader. At the end of the heads up match Cimpan won the poker tournament a little before 3 in the morning. With the win at the L.A. Poker Classic Cimpan won $1,686,760 and Nguyen won $935,424 for placing second.

In total, there will be $30 million in guaranteed prize money for the 2009 SCOOP and the actual payouts may be much higher. The SCOOP series includes a couple of different events for high rollers and lead up to the $5 million guaranteed SCOOP Main Event, which will take place on April 12th.

Some of the different events in the 2009 SCOOP are the $10,300 High-Roller H.O.R.S.E. tournament, the $25,500 Heads-up NL Hold’em tournaments, an Eight-Game Mixed event, the Six-Max No-Limit Hold’em tournament, Mixed Hold’em, and the Six-Max PLO, which has one re-buy and one add-on.

Buy-ins will begin for as little as $5,50 for low tier tournaments and satellite tournaments will be even less expensive to play in, as they are available for only $2.20 through FPP (Stars Frequent Player Points) entries.

There is even more incentive in the tournament series, as for the top players 3% of the total prize pool will be taken out and then awarded to the series’ top 3 players, based on points earned, which means that besides some huge prizes the top ranked poker player over the series can win around €10k for obtaining more league points than their series opponents.

ICOP Medalists additional prizes break down as, ICOP Gold Medalist – 50%, ICOP Silver Medalist – 30%, and ICOP Bronze Medalist – 20%.  Check out the ICOP leaderboard.

ICOP Satellites will be available starting February 23rd at the Poker Heaven lobby. This means that no matter how big a player’s bankroll is, they still have a chance to win the €600k.

The ICOP Series is a great chance for poker players to take advantage of the newly added draw tournaments at Poker Heaven, such as Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo, 5 Card Stud, and 7 Card Stud.

The ICOP Series is expected to smash the €600K Guaranteed over the series, and represents a great opportunity for players to enjoy draw tournaments newly added to Poker Heaven, such as Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo and 5 and 7-card stud.

The Spanish Poker Tour has some of the biggest poker tournaments in Europe and the reasons are that they have great structure and they are run very well by Thomas Kremser’s TK poker Events.

The tour will start on March 20th of this year in the Gran Casino Aranjuez and Everest Poker will give the tour a new image with some radical changes. The Executive Producer of the Spanish Poker Tour Paloma Benito recently stated,

There will be many new additions to this season, including new destinations, improved structure and more online qualification options.

Maria Maceiras, who is the number one ranked female poker player in Spain, said,

The Spanish Poker Tour is definitely a must on my agenda. This tournament is very important for the career of any Spanish poker player. It is extremely rewarding and fun to participate in.

The BOPC will bring together some of world’s best online poker players, each of which will have the chance to build a bankroll by playing at multi-table tournaments as well as Sit’ n Go’s exclusively on the Lock Poker website. Every poker player will begin with $200 and they have 30 days time in order to build up their bankroll. The player that has the greatest return at the end of the 30 days will be featured on the cover of BLUFF Magazine.

Co-founder of BLUFF Media Eric Morris recently stated, “We wanted to find a way to recognize the best players online and give them a real challenge. By putting the winner on the cover of BLUF we’re not only recognizing the achievement but also giving the players something to play for.”

The BOPC will begin on March 1st and run through the end of the month. In order to make the challenge even more challenging the players cannot reload their account at any time and players cannot play in cash games. BLUFF Magazine will provide players with a Flip video camera in order to allow them to create a video blog, which will be posted on their website. The players in the BOPC will be uploading the videos throughout the challenge on a daily basis.

They have a fantastic prize worth €4,000 to be won, which includes €2,850 + €150 entry to the no limit freeze out event, as well as €1,000 travel and accommodation money!

The Grand Casino Helsinki is the venue for the three day big money tournament from the 14th of January 2009 and with another huge prize pool expected it is sure to be one of the most eagerly anticipated seats up for grabs at Poker Heaven.

Helsinki Freezeout Tournament Structure

Check out how to qualify for the Helsinki Freezeout.