DAILY BUZZ: Benyamine on 2M2MM, Where’s Wahlroos?, Extreme Poker

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DAILY BUZZ: Benyamine on 2M2MM, Where’s Wahlroos?, Extreme Poker

Jason Kirk | September 5, 2009

Welcome to the BLUFF Daily Buzz, where we scour the entire internet for all the latest news in and around the world of poker. If it involves chips and cards, or people known to associate with chips and cards, we’re there.

Benyamine, Schoenberg visit 2M2MM

Not to say Brian “flawless_victory” Roberts, Emil “WhiteLime” Patel, Dani “ansky” Stern, and Jay “Krantz” Rosenkrantz are bad looking guys, but the inclusion of guest star Erica Schoenberg on this week’s episode of Two Months, Two Million on G4TV is definitely going to raise the hotness factor of the boys’ Vegas residence by a degree or two. Schoenberg, the model-turned-poker-pro, will join her fiance and fellow Full Tilt pro David Benyamine on the show that’s exposing the joys of the online poker lifestyle to geeks all around America.

One has to wonder at the wisdom of taking on Benyamine, given that Stern and Rosenkrantz told Olivia Munn on Attack of the Show that they’re not “mathematically on track” to top the $2 million mark in two months, but it should make for good television.

(Erica Schoenberg Appears On Next Episode Of 2M2MM - WickedChopsPoker.com)

Whatever happened to Thomas Wahlroos?

A few years ago Thomas Wahlroos of Finland was a fixture on the international tournament circuit, booking final tables in the $10,000 2006 WSOP Pot Limit Omaha World Championship and the $25,000 2007 WPT Championship and scoring red pro status on Full Tilt. But the Finn hasn’t been around as a red pro lately - not only does he not appear on the “Full Tilt Pros” page on the poker room’s website, he doesn’t even show up on the “Friend of Full Tilt” page. That has one 2+2 poster asking the question: whatever happened to the Walrus?

One poster suggests “martonas,” the previously unknown screen name who showed up at the Full Tilt $300/$600 PLO and $500/$1,000 NLHE tables late last month and burned through seven figures against Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, was actually Wahlroos, though the poster offers no definitive proof. Other posters claim that Wahlroos has gone into banking like his father, Björn Wahlroos, one of the richest men in Finland.

Though Wahlroos might not have his own icon anymore, the Finn’s fans can still find his former Walrus avatar on their computers in the directory where Full Tilt Poker’s software is installed, under the subdirectory \Graphics\Table\Avatars\Pro\61.

(What happened to Thomas Wahlroos? - 2+2 NVG Forum)

Poker in the Sky…

In a stunt that brings back memories from the good old days of the online poker boom, when the likes of Juha Helppi, Phil Laak, and Robert Varkonyi took to the felt underwater and in the Arctic to play “extreme poker,” PartyPoker will send 22 poker players into the air 150 feet above Town Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark, to play “Poker In The Sky.” That might not sound too extreme to some people, but one player has already apparently backed out after realizing that humans weren’t meant to hang around in the open air 15 stories above the ground.

Satellites for the Sep. 11 unique event were limited to players from Denmark, presumably because only a nation known for producing players crazy enough to four-bet pre-flop with hands like 5 2 could fill the 20 seats in the sky. Apparently players who are knocked out will have to remain on the elevated platform until the game has been completed. The winner of the match will earn a $10,000 seat in the PartyPoker World Open V, scheduled for next month in London, while the losers will presumably try to avoid looking down until the game has finished.

(Poker In The Sky Takes Game To New Extremes - Poker News Daily)

…and Poker Underwater

Speaking of poker in strange places, Bottomless Lakes State Park outside Roswell in southeastern New Mexico is hosting its fourth annual “Bottomless Bubblefest” this weekend. Normally that wouldn’t merit mention in a poker news piece, but this year they’re including something interesting called “dive poker.”

Apparently the game is played by taking two decks of weighted cards, throwing them into the park’s lakes, and setting scuba divers free for the rest of the weekend to retrieve any five cards to make the best possible poker hand. It’s not exactly poker since there’s no betting, but then again from what we understand those lakes aren’t really bottomless, either.

(The Alibi’s Weekend Hit List - Alibi.com)

Ireland’s Secret Stealth Poker Training School

Every time there’s a post on a forum from a young kid asking if he should drop out of school to play poker professionally, an astute observer will often comment that among the many reasons it’s a bad idea is that failure leaves a big hole in your resume that can be hard to explain. But if you finish your degree before jumping into poker full-time, you might not have any problems. In fact, your hobby might help you in the future if you want to be a trader.

In an article about the new virtual trading floor at the University of Limerick’s business school in Ireland, one of the program’s backers says that a background in poker is helpful for success in business. “It helps if you’re a good poker player,” says David Murtagh, a trader whose firm invested in the university’s new program. “Good poker players tend to be very suited to trading.” Murtagh doesn’t mention anything about how successful bad poker players are at trading, though, so if you have a weakness for chasing gutshots you might want to stick with your previous plans.

With that quote and a picture included with the article showing some of the business school’s old guard hovering with smiles on their faces in front of a bank of flat-screen monitors, you can forgive me for speculating that this so-called “University of Limerick business school” is actually a stealth Irish poker training site aiming at complete domination of the online game. If a stream of talented players begin to issue forth from the Emerald Isle to take all your mobneys in the next few years, remember you were warned here first!

(Students get low-down on high finance - Irish Times)

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