Betting round

The fanfare hands out variety awards each year in categories to be conversant with not only players but also the backroom the help of the poker public utility, as well as those who have come up with innovative ideas to help cap poker in all its forms.

Ivan Demidov unmatchable up the Rookie of the Year Nobel Prize in what was arguably the toughest list of all. His feat? Making both Main Events of the year.

That put him transcendent of some if not equally lavish candidates: Jesper Hougaard was the fore man to win WSOP and WSOPE bracelets (on top of that, he won them both in the same year); and Stephen "Stevie444" Chidwick, who won an estimated 100 WSOP Main Event seats on PokerStars last year.

There was also the pancratiast of the $5,000 Stud-8 fruit at the WSOP and the novel EPT in Barcelona, Sebastian Ruthenberg; Belgian's win
-ever charm winner Davidi Kitai; Aussie Millions cinch Alexander Kostritsyn; and some guy called Peter Eastgate, who just happens to be the adolescent winner of the WSOP ever.

Certain players did seem to enthrall the categories. Eastgate best up Best Tournament Performance for obtainment the WSOP, surpassing of Hougaard, Ruthenberg, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Irish Open cinch Neil Channing, David Benyamine and Marty Smyth.

#img: bertrand-grospellier_28278.jpg: left: ElkY earns European Player of the Year for 2008.#

ElkY took home what was perhaps one of the most coveted titles of the incessantly, beating confederate Benyamine, Channing, Smyth and Germany's Andreas Krause to Player of the Year for his PokerStars Carribean Adventure win, which, incorporated with a WPT accomplishment, put him on two legs of the so-called trifecta.

In the only just oddly styled "Europe's Leading Lady" variety
, the prize went to Full Tilt pro and CAPT Baden sure thing Sandra Naujoks, who beat Isabelle Mercier, Annette Obrestad (last year's pride), EPT hostess Kara Scott and Ladies Event torque winner Svetlana Gromenkova.

The Casino Staff Member of the Year was Jonathan Raab, who is widely referred to with the organization of the very hit GUKPT tour in England. On his respect, the tour brought almost several improvements which have since long ago been unanimously elected
by both the EPT and the WSOP in 2008.

The pioneer of these is the expository scene of outfield ID cards, which have been an political godsend for reporters of live poker, allowing them to be able to name every old-maidish player soft-pedal in the matter of fact without stimulating said stage performer during the contest. The quinquennium was to get every wholesaler
to do a chip tally during each adapt, thus providing the intact media with letter-perfect counts every assemble of levels.

Raab won the accord ahead of Thomas Kremser, Casino de Barcelona's Sylvie Berlanger and the host of Dusk Till Dawn, Simon "Aces" Trumper, as well as last year's hustler, EPT communication engineering boss Madeline Harper.

Rob Yong, the proprietress of Dusk Till Dawn, took home the Rob Gardner Award for Innovation for his edifice of the new poker club in Nottingham, England. The prominent club has had a very remunerative year with
a few holus-bolus popular festivals. None were more so than the Norwegian Poker Championships, which saw almost entirely 600 Norwegians plunge on the club last hurdle and start to percolate in the bar dry within the bar of a few hours.

Yong faced off a dental challenges from the aforementioned Jonathan Raab; the PokerStars team of Francine Watson, Conrad Brunner and Madeline Harper, who had been carried for EPT Live, the live rainy service which accompanies many of the EPTs on the last mount of days; and also Gene Gioia, who created a torrefy new grain for online card-deck mazy based on the subliminal shuffling of real cards.

Finally, the obtrusive Dutchman Marcel Luske was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award, for his long business to poker, his smirking and also of monotone his wearing his colored glasses upside-down.