The Full Tilt online poker tables in the high stakes area were abuzz last night as Isildur1 – the successful mystery player whom many believe to be Swedish player Viktor Blom – appeared for more action and was challenged by Finn Patrik Antonius, undeterred by his substantial earlier losses.

In the event it proved to be quite an evening with the mystery maven dropping around $2.4 million and a new record for an online poker pot being established over the nine hours and well over 2 000 hands that were played. It was a great session for Antonius, who took home over $2.4 million and the distinction of winning online poker’s biggest pot yet.

Isildur1′s successful run over the past few days in particular came to an end when he and Antonius faced off across four $500/$1,000 Pot-Limit Omaha tables. Highlights of the big money action were no fewer than six pots of over $500 000 each, another six over $400 000…and that monster record pot of $878 959, which Antonius made his own after an exciting passage of play that began with almost even stacks held by both players.

Adding even more spice to the evening, Antonius and Isildur1 at one point switched to the $500/$1,000 NLHE tables, where Antonius continued to crush his gutsy opponent, this time for $275 000, according to the independent poker statistics site MarketPulse.

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Joe Cada, a 21-year-old from Chesterfield Township, Mich., became the youngest champion of the World Series of Poker main event in Las Vegas.

“It gives me a lot of freedom,” Cada said after winning the $8.55 million first prize in the no-limit Texas Hold’em tournament that began in July with 6,494 players.

Cada, who left community college to play poker full time, said he had won $500,000 playing poker before he entered the main event, helped by backers who paid his $10,000 entry fee in exchange for a 50 percent cut of his winnings.

Cada won a nearly three-hour, head-to-head match against Darvin Moon, 46, a logger from Oakland, Md., who settled for $5.18 million.

PokerStars have revealed details of the forthcoming UK and Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT) which will begin in December 2009 and will run through to October 2010. The Grand Final will take place in the Metropole Hotel in London On 2nd to 8th October 2010 with buy-ins of £5,000 + 300. This is the first season of this event.

Buy-ins vary through the tour. The lowest buy-ins are £500 and these are available at the G Casino event in Manchester 11th to 14th February 2010 Manchester February, the G Casino in Coventry between 8th and 11th April 2010 and the Dusk Till Dawn event in Nottingham between 13th to 16th May. There are also several events with £1,000 buy-ins and the first event of the tour takes place at the Radisson Hotel in Galway, Ireland from 11th to 14th December 2009 where the buy-in is €2,000.

There will be special bonuses at each one of these events with guaranteed prize pools of £100,000 for the £500 + £50 buy-ins and a €250,000 guaranteed prize pool for the €1,000 buy-ins at Killarney and Dublin. Each event winner will be awarded a free seat at the Grand Final in London.

It is anticipated that the tour will also feature a number of high roller events and given the fact that it is certain to attract some of the top professional players, there is a strong possibility that at least part of it will be televised, though no announcements concerning this have been made to date.

Qualifiers for the first event at Galway are already in progress at the PokerStars website. UKIPT leader board points will also be given and the season’s best players will receive prizes with first place being a free seat and hotel expenses at all of the main events in season two of the UKIPT.

The most prestigious event on the European poker calendar the WSOPE has gotten underway today with 329 players taking their seats for the no limit hold’em event.

Empire Casino in London’s Liecester Square is plastered with poker pros from around the globe include Phil Hellmuth, Annette Obrestad, Phil Ivey and Andy Bloch.

After last night’s WSOPE launch party hosted by sponsors Betfair at the casino things have taken a more sober atmosphere at the tables as day 1a of the 4 day event begins to take shape.

The schedule of the 3rd WSOPE is as follows:

Sept 18th (Event #1 – 4 days) – NLHE – £1,000 + £75
Sept 21st (Event #2 – 3 days) – Pot Limit Hold’em/Omaha – £2,500 + £150
Sept 23rd (Event #3 – 3 days) – Pot Limit Omaha – £5,000 + £250
Sept 26th (Main Event – 6 days) – NLHE – £10,000 + £350

In a WSOPE warm up event, Greek amateur Anestis Metsas took down the free Million Dollar tournament held by Betfair at the casino. Facing just 17 other players Metsas conquered the field and took home a cool $1 million.

David La Ronde beat a strong final table to claim the inaugural English Poker Open title and with it a first prize of £208,367. Swedish pro Michael Tureniec was the favourite going into the final table holding a handy chip lead over nearest rival John Eames but none of them was able to beat the Colchester new poker star.

Tureniec, a runner up at EPT London and a finalist in the current Partouche Poker Tour, had to settle for second place after a lengthy heads up battle with La Ronde. The chips eventually went it with La Ronde holding A7 and Turenic K10. The board provided no assistance and the Swede was forced to settle for a second place cash of £121,815.

La Ronde’s victory may be his largest on the UK circuit but he is certainly no stranger to big money cashes. His runner up finish behind Sam Trickett at last year’s GUKPT Main Event in Luton earned him a score of £62,000.

The final table positions and payouts were as follows:

1 David La Ronde £208,367
2 Micheal Tureniec £121,815
3 James Moult £73,089
4 Julian Leonard £51,290
5 John Eames £38,468
6 Simon Pearson £28,851
7 Martyn Bebb £22,440
8 Eric Liu £16,028
9 Thor Drexel £12,823

A benefits fraudster who cheated the taxpayer out of thousands of pounds had six secret bank accounts loaded with winnings from online poker, a court has heard.

Alan Forsyth once won $49,000 in a single day gambling online – yet was claiming he could not afford to pay his council tax.

Forsyth, 36, of Scott Road, Thorpe Park, Norwich, pleaded guilty to seven charges of benefit fraud at Norwich Magistrates’ Court on Thursday.

He started claiming the benefit in October 2003 when he first denied having any savings, but actually had two bank accounts that he did not declare.

While at the time they had “relatively little” in, he used the accounts to deposit the winnings from his online poker enterprise.

He continued to claim the benefit fraudulently until June 2007, by which time his number of undeclared accounts had reached six, with two accounts opened in 2005, one in 2006 and another in 2007.

Throughout this period, Forsyth was registered unable to work with ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which he was diagnosed with in 1997.

In interview, Forsyth said his condition stopped him from filling out the forms completely.

Prosecuting on behalf of Norwich City Council was Yvonne Blake. She said: “If you have the concentration to play poker to the extent that you can win $49,000 in a single day, you have the concentration to fill out a form.”

The council say that in total, Forsyth claimed £3,706 in council tax benefit, a figure he has since paid back in full.

In mitigation, Ted Bell pointed out that Forsyth stayed in work for five years after his initial diagnosis, saying “he has always been hard working”.

He added: “This is not a well man. He suffers greatly with pains and fatigue. He has no potential prospect of being able to work again.

“He got stuck in his own web of deceit. He did start winning money and more accounts were opened. He was scared it would be backtracked to the original offence.”

Magistrates ordered him to pay a total of £1,400 in fines – £200 for each offence, as well as £15 surcharge and £150 towards prosecution costs.

Presiding Howard Gill said: “You’ve got seven charges of making a false statement. This took place over a long period of time and was premeditated. There was a risk of substantial loss of money to the tax payer.”

Brazil versus Argentina is the biggest rivalry in South American football and that rivalry looks like it’s spread to the poker felt after a hotly contested Americas Cup of Poker.

Six-player teams from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and the USA gathered in Bariloche in Argentina for the first Poker Stars Americas Cup competition and it was the old rivals who were to battle for victory.

Brazil’s Alexandre Gomes overcame Costa Rica’s Humberto Brenes to set up a meeting against Argentina who sprung a surprise in the semi-final by beating Canada.

As fate would have it the two countries were meeting in a World Cup qualifier as the poker action was taking place and the result was the same with Brazil defeating their hosts to take the spoils.

The winning team shared a first prize of $100,000.

Beautiful Barcelona – full to the brim of excitement (a queue to get in), sunshine (humid and overcast) and energy (deep lethargy thanks to last night’s welcome party). The 207 players arriving today were skipping the pot-limit Omaha 6-max, the no limit single draw 2-7 with re-buys and 8-game events in the World Championship of Online Poker. Instead they arrived, paid their bill, took their seat in this live enactment of an online tournament, and started their epic Dora the Explorer type journey to the final table next Wednesday. Can you say “final table?”

First among them tonight is Diego Arias, a PokerStars qualifier from Spain, on 193,000. Behind him is a two-way scrap between Carlos Lopez and Friedrich Franz, both of whom hover around the 150,000 mark. Jorn Walthaus on 130,000 and Jan Collado on 110,000 make up the heavyweights of the chasing pack.

It turned out to be a good day for German players who, if the EPT was deemed a team game, would be well and truly on course to at least win the penalty shootout. The likes of Malte Strothmann (a Team Germany World Cup of Poker winner no less) and Florian Langmann on 98,000 rollicked their way through the day. It was almost that way for last year’s winner Sebastian Ruthenberg, whose Saturday is now free after a last minute coin flip, his ace-queen flush draw losing out against pocket sixes. Katja Thater also busted on what must have been the last hand of the day.

Also gone is Joe Cada, the PokerStars sponsored November Niner. He’s getting in some match practice ahead of his date with destiny at the Rio in a couple of months, but it didn’t end well in Barcelona. He was crippled with jacks against Michael Greco’s queens and then he was gone.

Johnny Lodden remains in, just, after a day of swings so implausible it was the poker equivalent of skydiving, finding your chute hadn’t opened but then landing on a large cushion. Up to 90,000 at one point, then down to just 7,500 with various stops in between; Lodden regained control long enough to bag up a potentially lethal 10,000.

There was no cushion, just a splat, for our other casualties today. They included the honourable Luca Pagano, Jason Mercier, Marcin Horecki (“Official report: no good.”) and Arnaud Mattern. Survivors left to live with their mess include Freddy Deeb, Dragan Galic, Roland de Wolfe, William Reynolds and Benny Spindler. Marc Goodwin joins them in better shape than he may have counted on, up to 80,000 after a penultimate hand drama against a now crippled Julien Nuijten.

We look forward now to tomorrow (25 degrees, sunny intervals) when hundreds more are expected to turn order into chaos at the registration desks and beyond. If you’re not lucky enough to be here you can keep tabs on all the proceedings here, perhaps filling in the gaps between hitting F5 playing the latest WCOOP event. Just think, by this time tomorrow you could have your very own WCOOP bracelet and a grainy webcam-produced photo of yourself on the blog for all to see. Simply brilliant.