Tao of Poker

November Nine Logos: Poker Stars 3, Full Tilt 3

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

As expected, the final tally for the sponsorship battle at the November Nine is deadlocked at 3-3. PokerStars and Full Tilt have tied. It's a stalemate thus far. The real winner will be determined by the outcome... will a Full Tilt or PokerStars player win the Main Event? Or will one of the three players take it down?

PokerStars recently signed Joe Cada, who became the third November Nine player to wear PokerStars gear at the final table. Kevin Schaffel and Eric Buchman are the other two November Niners playing for PokerStars. Schaffel recently went deep at the WPT Legends of Poker when he finished in second place after losing to Prahlad Friedman heads up.

There's a new rule that was in effect for the 2009 WSOP that stated any given online poker site was allowed a maximum of three players per table with logos. By chance there were four or more, only three would be allowed and selected by a random draw.

The new rule meant that once the November Nine rolled around, the big sites would only be allowed to logo up three players. Last year, PokerStars was the clear winner with six final table players including eventual champion Peter Eastgate. This year, the playing field was evened.

Outside of Phil Ivey, Joe Cada might be one of the better players at the final table. He definitely played like a world class veteran in the last couple of days of action at the Rio in July. On the final day of play, Cada wore an Ultimate Bet logo. Since then, his agent signed up up with PokerStars to fill their third and final spot.

At that point, Cada really had no other place to go. Full Tilt had their three spots filled with Phil Ivey, James Ankenhead, and Steven Begleiter. Ankenhead qualified for the Main Event via PokerStars, but the short-stacked Brit jumped to the other side. On the flip side, Full Tilt lost Buchman to PokerStars.

The lone Frenchie, Antoine Saout, won his seat through a satellite on Everest Poker. He'll remain one of their players. Happy Shulman will be sporting the Spade Club, the subscription based online site run by CardPlayer. Maybe he'll be wearing a Phish t-shirt?

And Darvin Moon? He's the lone wolf. He's not wearing any logos because he claimed that he's never played a single hand online. That's why I'm offering him the whopping sum of $1 to wear a Tao of Poker hat at the final table. So Darvin, if you're reading this, I'm dead serious. $1. Think about it. To sweeten the deal, I'll also give you a free autographed copy of Lost Vegas.

And that's not all. I'll also toss in a copy of Super Bad dubbed into German...



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