Online Poker Buzz: Van Fleet Pockets a Million Dollars; WPT Goes Virtual

This month has been an incredibly busy month for punters and poker enthusiasts. Right now, the events that have been attracting the most attention include PartyPoker’s Online MILLIONS event and the World Poker Tour Five Diamond World Poker Classic. PartyPoker has made tremendous steps towards matching up to PokerStars which is its greatest competitor – the competition has gotten stiffer since PartyPoker managed to migrate their MILLIONS brand to the online space without any problems. There were, however, a few concerns that resulted from glitches that was in form of a 45-minute run over on Day 1A of the event – this glitch cost PartyPoker a whopping $25,000 in apology money. That aside, PartyPoker has come a long way and at the moment, it is quite safe to say that they can match PokerStars three most popular offerings; Online MTT Online High Stakes cash action and live MTT.

In the PartyPoker event, 1,047 entrants participated in $5,300 buy-in Online Millions and exceeded the $5 million Guarantee by $135,000. Jonathan Van Fleet emerged victorious and pocketed a whopping $1,027,000 first prize. This win sums Van Fleet’s total earning to over $9.5 million in online MTT earnings. The poker pro, commonly known as Apestyles, has earned well over $7 million playing online poker at Full Tilt and PokerStars. He also won the $2,100 High Roller for $87,290 in 888 Poker’s Super XL Series Main Event in January.

Other worthy mentions include; Dan Smith who won the $100,000 High Roller for $1.4 million, Rainer Kempe who won the $25,000 High Roller for $351,000, Kristen Bicknell who won one of the $5,000 High Rollers for $288,144, Chris Moorman who won the $1,000 Turbo for $37,132, Jared Jaffee who won a $1,500 for $84,348 and Scott Clements who walked away with $21,184 from the $1,000 Pot-Limit Omaha.

In similar news, Charles Johnson Jr also got to pocket a whopping $272,744 for beating all 957 entrants and taking down the Main Event in North Carolina.

In other news, Breakout Gaming has decided to join the large number of poker sites that are currently part of the ever-growing cryptocurrency-powered online poker sites. As part of the GG network, Breakout Poker players are allowed to use US dollars, Bitcoin and BRK cryptocurrency which is even already trading in several online cryptocurrency exchanges.

New Jersey has also been making headlines with a proposed bill that could potentially blur the line between local and international poker players. The bill, which was proposed by Senator Lesniak over a week ago seeks to lift the law that restricts online gaming servers to be located in the state of New Jersey.