Sammy Farha, 67, has been banned for life from a Houston club where he regularly played. He struck a dealer after a verbal altercation; the dealer had retrieved an acquaintance’s hand from the muck and turned it face up.  

After criticism from Sean Deeb, WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas reduced the rake in 12 of its 20 bracelet events. The cuts are as high as 50%: in $50,000 high rollers, for example, the rake dropped to $1,000 from $2,000. 

Jeremy Ausmus won Event #7 of Poker Masters, a $15,700 no-limit hold'em tournament, for $278,400. In Event #8, Vitaly Zavorotny came close to claiming his second title of the year but lost heads-up to Keith Lehr.

2005 world champion Joe Hachem won an Omaha Hi-Lo tournament with 48 entries in Melbourne, Australia. It was the 60-year-old's seventh career tournament victory. 

After busting on the bubble several times, Adrian Mateos finally won a $10,500 NLH event at Poker Masters for $229,500. He also took the lead in the race for the series' Player of the Series title and its Purple Jacket. 

CoinPoker cash games have become more expensive: the site has started charging preflop rake, raised the caps at high stakes and increased the ante from 0.16 to 0.25 BB. 

GGPoker has banned third-party software outright and introduced new security measures. The company also said it had traced some of the funds stolen by Paul Gregg and was trying to recover them. 

At Poker Masters in Las Vegas, Adrian Mateos finished on the direct bubble in three of his four tournaments. In the fourth, he took second place, losing heads-up to Nikki Palme. 

Bryn Kenney has filed a lawsuit against the owners of GGPoker. The former ambassador claims the company failed to pay him millions of dollars in commissions and did not formalize his 5% ownership stake in the company.

The new Moneymaker is Shrikant Pillamarapu. He qualified for the WPT Championship main event at The Lodge through a free satellite (the buy-in was $1,100) and went on to win it, despite reaching the final table as the short stack. He took home $148,527 for the victory.