Poker in the News — Weekly Round-up for December 01, 2017

By Brian Cullingworth, Last updated Dec 1, 2017

Spanish Poker Ace Takes Down The Caribbean Poker Party Millions Finale

Adrian Mateos is a quarter of a million dollars wealthier following victory over Anatoly Filatov

23-year-old Spanish poker ace Adrian Mateos was at it again over the weekend, this time taking down PartyPoker’s $5,300 buy-in 2017 Caribbean Poker Party Millions competition to claim the $250,000 main prize in his seventeenth final table appearance this year.

The win brings the young Spanish pro’s live tourney career earnings to just short of $5 million..

With a million dollar guarantee, the event attracted 215 competitors to the Melia Caribe Tropical in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

Mateos faced Anatoly Filatov in the heads up stage, with the Russian pro holding around a third advantage in chips, but a determined Mateos soon levelled the stacks by winning a major pot before going on to dominate his opponent and take the main prize and send Filatov home with the runner-up purse of $165,000.

Other final table cashes included:

Kenny Hallaert $110,000
Tom Waters $87,600
Manig Loeser $70,000
Marc-Olivier Perrault $55,000
Bartlomiej Machon $45,000
James Walker $35,000

Staying with PartyPoker’s Punta Cana festival, the $5,300 buy-in main event also concluded over the weekend with Canadian pro Sam Greenwood claiming the main prize of $1 million, bringing his career live tourney earnings to almost $7 million.

1,061 entrants registered for the main event, with a stellar array of international poker pros among them.

The heads up stage saw Greenwood and Russian ace Andrey Shatilov duking it out in a very combative finale that lasted for three hours before Greenwood was finally able to send his last opponent to the cashier for a well-earned $650,000 runner-up prize.

Who Says That Poker Is In The Doldrums?

Comparison of third quarter financials shows an encouraging upward trend

The publication Poker Industry Pro posted an interesting article this week that gives another perspective to claims that the online poker sector is languishing.

The article examined third quarter results from five major providers, with almost all showing year-on-year improvements that indicate full year forecasts will be met or exceeded.

The five providers surveyed were The Star Group, 888Poker, GVC’s PartyPoker, Zynga and Kindred.

Zynga enjoyed a strong third quarter in poker terms, trailing only Stars Group in total real-money revenues, and although Kindred group’s Unibet saw a 7 percent decline in Q3 it remains on track to perform better than 2016 and its forecast over the full year.

The Stars Group saw third quarter revenue rise 12.5 percent to $221.4 million – its strongest quarter in the last two years, whilst PartyPoker saw revenue increases of 57 percent to $29.1 million, well ahead of the impressive growth achieved in the previous quarter.

888 recorded a less impressive, but still positive, increase of 1 percent to $21.3 million.

Overall, the four big real-money operators collected $275.6 million in revenues, an increase of 14.5 percent year-over-year.

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