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Tom Dwan plays the highest stakes in poker as may have heard from the Durrrr Challenge. Dwan is currently facing off against Patrik Antonius, who was one of the first players to accept the challenge, and Dwan just regained the lead this week. They previously faced off at the Aussie Millions Million Dollar Cash Game in January. Antonius managed the better result in their heads-up match in Australia, setting the stage for a tense showdown in subsequent months.

Here's he's response to this question: "Would you agree the Patrik is especially hard to read because he is so emotionless at the table?"

Durrr: "Most good players are really hard to read. David Benyamine would be a great example of somebody who is always moving around and talking a lot who is still hard to read live. If somebody is smart enough and thinking about enough, you can’t gain reads off of little things they do, especially if they play poker very often at high stakes."

Read the article in full on Cardplayer.com

Network Ten is set to air a reality TV series featuring a houseful of poker players being tutored by Australian world champion Joe Hachem, Mumbrella understands.

The show, with the working name of The Poker Star, is planned to have eight one-hour episodes.  

Melbourne-based Hachem picked up the world’s biggest poker prize of $7.5m when he won the World Series of Poker in 2005.

The series will be set in a house in Melbourne, where the contestants will be filmed 24 hours a day. Hachem will make occasional appearances while hands-on training will come from a poker pro known as The Lieutenant. The contestants will face a new challenge in each episode as well as a weekly game with a larger cash prize as every programme passes. The eventual winner will have entry funded into a major global tournament.

A number of brands are understood to be in conversation with the makers of the programme, which is being produced by Radical Media. The show is not Ten’s first fliration with poker. The celebrity show Joker Poker - which saw some episodes funded by Pernod Ricard’s Wild Turkey Bourbon - rated well in a late night slot in 2005 and 2006.

Source: mumbrella.com.au

So Tom 'Durrrr' Dwan is playing the second episode of Season 5 in High Stakes Poker and has limped in to a 8-way family pot with QT suited. Also playing is Eli Elezra, David Benyamine, Peter Eastgate, Daniel Nagreanu, Ilari "Zigmund" Sahamies, Barry Greenstein and Doyle Brunson. He manages to outplay poker legend Greenstein and new WSOP main champ, Eastgate out of their best hands.

Skip to the 4:40 mark to see this hands action.

High Stakes Poker Season 5 Episode 2

Nicole Gordon from Pokernews looks at WSOP and WPT winner since the boom and those who have feasibly lucked the bracelet or big pay packet.

10. Saro Getzoyan – WSOP Bracelet Winner, 2007 $5,000 World Championship Limit Hold'em
Getzoyan entered the final table as one of the short stacks, so he had figured out an alternative travel arrangement to make it back to Massachusetts without missing work. As he was not knocked out of the tournament, he missed his flight. An hour after the tournament was over he was booking his return trip. "Money doesn't change anything. That's just the way I am," he was reported as saying.

09. Jiang Chen – WSOP Bracelet Winner, 2005 $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em with Rebuys
Chen has recorded only one other cash since his bracelet-winning performance, earning €405 for eighth place in a €100 buy-in tournament at Paris' Aviation Club in October 2007.

08. Michael Graves – WSOP Bracelet Winner, 2007 $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em with Rebuy
Graves returned to medical school after his win and must be more focused on medicine than poker these days, as this young talent has yet to cash another event.

07. Bryan Sumner – WPT Champion, 2007 Gold Strike World Poker Open
The 32-year-old accountant played the part of the unknown, in via a $1,000 satellite, at a table of poker giants including JC Tran, Thang Pham and Negreanu, and furthered the case that yes, anyone can win when it comes to tournament poker.

06. Alex Kahaner – WPT Champion, 2005 Legends of Poker
A construction company owner from Van Nuys, CA, Kahaner had never played a major tournament until that night. Kahaner prefers to stick to cash games now, and hasn't recorded another tournament cash since.

05. Soren Turkewitsch – WPT Champion, 2006 North American Poker Championships
He was humping three jobs to make ends meet when he decided to take a shot at a $90 satellite into the WPT North American Poker Championships at Niagara Falls' Fallsview Casino.

04. John Stolzmann – WPT Champion, 2005 Jack Binion World Poker Open
Stolzmann earned nearly $1.5 million for his win and played the circuit for the next couple of years, but thus far hasn't come close to his past success.

03. Jamie Gold – WSOP Bracelet Winner, 2006 Main Event
After winning $12 million in 2006, Gold banked $68,000 for his 2007 tournament play, and added a donut hole for 2008.

02. Jerry Yang – WSOP Bracelet Winner, 2007 Main Event
These days, Yang is more likely to be found playing $2-5 NLHE at his California home casino, Pechanga, or playing a few lower buy-in events around the west coast.

"I study my opponents very carefully, and when I sensed something, when I sensed some weakness, I took a chance. Even if I had nothing, I decided to raise, reraise, push all-in or make a call....The only way that I could win this tournament was by being aggressive from the very beginning and that’s exactly what I did. And thank God I was also able to pick up some good cards at the same time."
- Jerry Yang, pictured above (summarizing he's tournament strategy).

01. Hal Fowler – WSOP Bracelet Winner, 1979 Main Event
In what is considered by many to be the greatest upset in the history of the WSOP, California businessman Hal Fowler cracked Bobby Hoff's pocket aces with 7-6 offsuit to win the 1979 Main Event and $270,000. Fowler almost immediately lost the totality of his winnings in the pit and disappeared from the poker scene.

 Source: Read the full article on Pokernews.com

Background

After graduating with a degree in business and finance but not enjoying her job as a business analyst, she moved to Colorado where gambling was just legalised in a few communities. She discovered $5-limit poker and her destiny was made.

Tournament Professional

She grinded some early wins with second place in the 1997 WSOP $3,000 buy-in NL her first six-figure ($124,000) prize sum. In 2005, she found herself at the final table vying for a $1 million prize. She took down the event and became the first woman to win a $1 million first-place prize.

The $5 Million Mark

12th Place Finish - 2009 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure

Near the bubble, with 20 players left, Liebert was put to a decision. Equipped with a decent chip stack, she looked down at A 10 under the gun. She looked to her left, and an aggressive loose player was in the blinds. He’d been a chip leader for much of the tournament but had recently lost a large portion of his stack.

“I realized that if I played this hand, it was likely that he’d move all-in into me. There were 20 players left, and it paid 18, so my first instinct was to fold. Then I thought it was unlikely that he would have a big hand, so I raised. He did go all in for almost all of my chips. I decided to call, and he had pocket aces.”

Failing to improve, the hand left Liebert crippled and nearly all in in the big blind the very next hand. She was dealt a dismal J-3 and was eliminated. Her devastation didn’t last long, as she soon found out that another player was eliminated in the same round of hand-for-hand play. They would split 18th place money. Liebert took home $5,519, pushing her over the $5 million mark by a mere $577.

Source: Cardplayer.com