End of 2010

In the closing days of 2010 the poker world was rocked by various players leaving their websites, it also saw the Player of the Year positions confirmed.

The final week of 2010 proved to be more eventful than expected in the poker world. The beginning of the week provided big news when Lee Jones, the cardroom manager at Cake Poker, announced that he was leaving the website. He made the announcement in a forum post on 2+2 and said that the management had made a number of strategic decisions that he did not feel happy with. This was very quickly followed by a post in Cake’s feedback thread from the website’s tournament director Serge “Adanhar” Ravitch announcing that he is also leaving the website.

Funnily enough, Ravitch was part of a group of people who were involved in discovering superusers on Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet a number of years ago.
There were two shock announcements on the final Thursday of the year. First Annie Duke announced that she was leaving UB poker for personal reason and professional growth. Her announcement was shortly followed by Phil Hellmuth who is also leaving UB. For the last few months Hellmuth has been spotted in a number of places without the UB logo which he has worn for a number of years. In a manner typical of Hellmuth he Tweeted the news a number of hours after the rest of the poker community had found out. However, Joe Sebok from UB poker said that both players were ready for a change and wished them both well for the future. He also mentioned there will be a new signing in the near future which should be a “big surprise”.
The end of the year also brought the official announcement that Sorel Mizzi is going to be named the BLUFF Player of the Year. Mizzi rose to the top of the rankings in March last year and never lost the top spot. He finished over five hundred points ahead of Tom Marchese. Businessman Fernando Brito managed to make some ground in the final three months of the year, earning 800 points and finishing third. Most of his points came from “High Roller” event on the European Poker Tour. Forth spot went to David Peters and fifth went to Vanessa Selbst who also won the Wicked Chops Poker’s Player of the Year award.

The New Year tournament season began with the preliminary events at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, WSOP Circuit in Durant, Oklahoma, and WPT Southern Poker Championships in Biloxi, Mississippi.