Weekly Poker News Report October 4th-10th 2010

This was an action packed week in the poker industry therefore some of the smaller stories slipped under our noses, but here is a round-up of this weeks biggest headlines.

Switch Poker has successful launch

On Friday we reported on the launch of SwitchPoker.com which is the first and only site which lets poker players play for real-money on their iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices. The site is web-based therefore players have no software or applications to download, however it is not open to US players and currently the site only offers 6-max No-Limit Hold’em ring games with much more variety to be offered soon.

To celebrate the launch SwitchPoker.com were giving away €10 completely free for the first 250 players who registered, however they actually ended up giving free money to over 450 players. Friday saw over 1,000 players register which proves just how popular mobile poker could be and already they have announced more giveaways – this time it is iPads and iPods on offer!

William Thorson joins Svenska Spel

In a suprise move, 27-year old Swedish poker player William Thorson has signed a deal with government-owned gambling site Svenska Spel to become their poker representative. This is a massive coup for Svenska Spel which translates to ‘Swedish Games’ because Thorson is a high-calibre player who any online poker site would be happy to have amongst their team of pro’s. Thorson will have his own room on the site and will also be blogging about his personal life, his poker antics and even tips to help players improve.

Thorson is currently 4th on the all-time Swedish money list with over $2.7 million in winnings, with his largest cash being 3rd in the 2006 EPT Dublin €5,000 buy-in Main Event for €184,780. He also narrowly missed out on the 2006 WSOP Main Event final table by finishing 13th for $907,128.

Lars Torngren wins Irish Poker Festival 2010

The €500 buy-in 2010 Irish Poker Open Main Event took place this week in Killarney and drew a 632 entrants with Swedish player Lars Torngren proving victorious winning €75,000. This was Torngren’s first big win and he has been playing poker for 8 years but he did excellent to overcome a tough final table which included Ladbrokes Poker pro Jon ‘Skalie’ Kalmer. Jon Kalmer and Richard Connoly were the only U.K poker players at the ten-man final table, with the other seven players all being from Ireland. Irish players Paul Lucey and Barry McGleenon finished second and third for €50k and €30k respectively. Congratulations Lars!

Other news you may have missed

• PartyPoker announced the three Palladium VIP winners for their WPT Foxwood’s competition.
• Brian ‘tassarast’ Rast joined Daniel Negreanu’s poker training site PokerVT where he will create PLO and NLHE videos.
• Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan won $32k from Daniel ‘jungleman12’ Cates in the latest session of the Durrrr Challenge.
• PokerStars announced the schedule for UKIPT Season 2 with the first stop being in Galway, Ireland.
• PokerStars also announced the signing of Russian poker player Maxim Lykov who joins as a Team PokerStars Pro.
• Scottish poker player David Vamplew won the EPT London/UKIPT Main Event for £900,000 then won the Champions of Champions event meaning he gets free entry to every UKIPT Season 2 event.