PTP News Hit and Run: November 17th

Chris Grove : November 17th, 2009

Good news for online tournament players, Phil Hellmuth fans and anyone who likes nosebleed online action – we’ve got updates involving all of the above in today’s survey of the pokerverse for November 17th, 2009.

The latest installment of the Full Tilt Online Poker Series is wrapping up, and that means there’s another FTOPS Main Event champ. The winner: zhivago2, who took home a whopping $418,839 for the win. Read more FTOPS results over at Pocket Fives here.

News that counts as a win for all online tournament players: Doyles Room has joined the list of rooms that have synchronized breaks for their tournaments at :55 past the hour. Since Doyle’s is on the Cake Poker network, that should mean synchronized breaks for all Cake skins.

Industry snippets: Bill Rini has an interesting take on a recent report that shows the UK Poker market is contracting. Bill’s conclusion: “I think the bottom line here is that what we’re seeing is industry contraction. Many of the smaller rooms won’t be around in a year or two. Players are flowing upstream to the liquidity and anybody who thinks they can run poker as a side business to their main cash cow is going to get squeezed because the market is going to get too competitive.” PND has an interview with Bodog Poker VP Jonas Odman about where his plans for a larger Bodog Poker network are heading.

The industry might be shrinking, but Patrik’s bankroll is growing, especially after taking some $3 million from Isildur1 in their latest high stakes battle.

If current poker TV programming is somehow not meeting your needs, good news – UB is putting recent sign Joe Sebok to work as the co-host of a new FoxSports show Poker2Nite. Bit more detail and a trailer over at Pokerati.

Also available on the small screen: Shark Out of Water, an indie short film now available on DVD. The 18 minute film features appearances from Phil Hellmuth and Brad Booth and looks a bit darkish. Trailer below:

Joe Cada continued to be fairly everywhereish post-WSOP win, showing up on WWE Monday Night Raw this week as part of a junket that includes spot on Letterman. Said Cada to Bluff Europe: “I highly recommend playing poker for a living and shipping the Main Event. I’m very grateful”

Plan on taking his advice? Don’t sign up to play online without rakeback. View all of our available offers at major rooms like UB, FTP and others here.