The Rundown: Poker News for the Week

by Deke Marston | Nov 18 2011

Gus Hanson aims at becoming the world champion of rackleton and a new form of poker gets its first major tournament in London.

Denmark
His poker play has been a bit quiet recently, but it turns out that Gus Hansen has been plenty busy away from the table. He's working hard to become the world-champion of the little-known sport racketlon. Described by Wikipedia as a racquet-sport cousin of the triathlon and decathlon, racketlon combines table tennis, badminton, squash and tennis into a single match. The game is built around the concept of two players each playing one another in all four sports in a single match. Originating in Finland, the game now has over 2000 ranked players in over 48 countries.

Play in online poker tournaments at Bodog today!


Yes, it's just as insane as it sounds and the Danish pro looks to become the world champion of the sport. Thankfully, he's not abandoned the game entirely; he's in London at the moment for the International Federation of Poker's Nations Cup, which brings us to the next item in our roundup!

London
Some of the biggest names in poker have made it to London for the first-ever International Federation of Poker Nations Cup, which started on Thursday. The event is part of the London Mind Sports Festival and pits teams from 12 countries (including the US, UK, Germany, Spain and France) in a series of duplicate poker matches.  If you've never heard of duplicate poker, it's a newish variant where each table is dealt an identically-shuffled pack of cards, which means the player sitting in the small blind at table three has the same hand as the guy sitting at the small blind at table ten.

IFP head Tony Holden, author of Big Deal, told the press "Duplicate poker removes the element of luck and conforms more to a truly sporting occasion. Rather than competing against those at their table, duplicate poker pitches players against opponents dealt exactly the same cards in exactly the same position on neighboring tables. With all players in a particular seat given the same allocation of cards the only determining factor in the result of the tournament is how skillfully each player uses them."

Sam Trickett, who took the Partouche Poker Tour's main event recently for a seven-figure score is heading up the UK team with Barny Boatman, Sam Holden and Liv Boeree. Other notables taking part in the two-day contest include 2011 Poker Hall of Fame inductee Barry Greenstein, November Niner Eoghan O'Dea, Padraig Parkinson, the immensely entertaining Australian Tony G and (of course) Gus Hansen.

Get more bang for your poker buck with our instant poker deposit bonus program!

As mentioned on The Beat some time ago, this event's going to be played at the London Eye, meaning that the players will actually be in separate cars, looking over the city as they try to best one another.

| | |