PTP News Hit and Run: February 2nd, 2010

Dustin : February 2nd, 2010

“durrrr” takes a million off of Ivey in live play, and PartyPoker cracks down on play money play? We’re playing seven-figure pots in today’s edition of the PTPN Hit and Run.

If you like keeping up with the turtle-like place of the durrrr Challenge, here’s an interesting recap/lookahead of the battle between Tom Dwan and Patrik Antonius. We recently reported that Dwan is now leading the challenge by more than a million dollars. The article estimates that the challenge will be over in August at its current pace, which would mean it took more than a year and a half to complete.

And more on Dwan, this time playing with Phil Ivey (and Antonius) in a live cash game. Dwan took a pot of $1.1 million from Ivey in a televised game (on Europe’s SkyTV), the largest pot in televised poker history. And video of the hand below:

In some more high-stakes news, Brian Townsend, who recently served a suspension at Full Tilt Poker regarding hand histories being shared before Brian Hastings took millions from Isildur1, lost a big chunk of change. He dropped nearly $600K in a session playing 7-game.

PartyPoker is cracking down on…play money? It’s true, you can read about it here. Some players have built up millions of chips over the years, but Party has now limited the maximum number of play money chips to 250,000 for a single account. The move was made in part to deal with sites where play money chips could be purchased on third-party sites. And we suppose the move is also to make the play money games a little more entertaining/like real poker. And more on Party here, with an ESPN story talking about the site trying to regain its spot atop the online poker universe. And more on “free play” poker over at pokerati, where they talk about a new xBox poker game.

Story here about how much money online poker sites have raised for relief efforts in Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake. More than $2M was raised by Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars.

If you’ve been keeping up to date on legal news in United States poker, you probably already know that New Jersey is considering the legalization of intrastate online poker and gambling. Here’s a story that looks into how this might affect the state’s players who play “out of state” poker, notably the U.S.-facing sites like Full Tilt, PokerStars, et al. The Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association seems to think the proposed legislation doesn’t affect those sites at all. So play on, Garden Staters.

Good news if you’re a Canadian poker player — you’ll be seeing more of Lacey Jones. She just signed with the Canadian Poker Tour to be its new “face.” And quite a face it is.

Interview with the always entertaining “Elky” here, including how playing StarCraft translates into his poker game. We need to brush up on our StarCraft. It’s been a while.

We love some of the stories they come up with at pokernewsdaily.com, when there seems to be nothing else to write about. Here’s one where they recap interesting stuff that poker players tweeted about this week.

We promise you’ll never get bored at Full Tilt Poker. And it’ll be even more entertaining if you sign up with rakeback. Check it out today.