After a seven-handed final table that had everything, Connor Drinan saw off some of the best poker players in history to seal a historic 5th Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) title and win $322,264.

With $1,590,000 in the prize-pool due to the 159 entries, Linus Loeliger held the chip lead with just 54 players left, and with just 18 players reaching the money. Plenty of the players would miss out on a return on their investment, but the most painful cut of all is always on the bubble. That fate was suffered by Alex Difelice when he was busted by Gavin Cochrane in 19th place.

Loeliger was still top at that point, but that would change after Cochrane went on a tear following his elimination of Difelice on the bubble. He wasn’t the only player proving themselves able to leapfrog his opponents, as by the time the final table was reached, Jen Kyllonen and Joao Vieira both held the chip lead. Connor Drinan timed his attack perfectly, however, as he busted one of the best players remaining in the field in 8th place as he dispatched Ben Tollerene to bring about the final seven.

Having led for so long in the event, Loeliger would have been disappointed to be the first player to hit the rail in 7th place. All-in and at risk against Vieira, Loeliger had a suited ace-king as part of his PLO hand, but couldn’t overtake Vieira’s flopped pair of tens, despite opening up straight and flush draw possibilities on the turn.

Manila area casinos have been closed for over two months now, and it’s unclear when they might be allowed to reopen. As the country slowly starts to ease quarantine rules, government officials can’t seem to find common ground on just how safe it is for the population to leave their homes. That kind of confusion has City of Dreams (CoD) Manila and Okada Manila striking two very different tones in their recent announcements.

The situation is still unclear

The Metro Manila area has been in an Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) since mid-March, with all non-essential work and travel prohibited. Basically, if you aren’t going to the hospital, an essential job, or to buy food, you could get arrested. That’s meant casinos in the Entertainment City, like Okada and CoD, have had to shut down entirely.

As the number of new infections has stayed roughly flat but consitent at 200 new cases per day, President Rodrigo Duterte hasn’t seen it fit to end the ECQ, instead opting to modify it to allow some businesses to resume. That meant a flood of people returning to work, and on the weekend, to the shopping malls.

After an action-packed final day’s play, Swedish player Christian Jeppsson has become the latest name to be added to the legendary World Poker tour Main Event trophy after winning the inaugural WPT Online Championship.

Going into the final day, Jeppsson had a small lead over the Canadian poker sensation, Sam Greenwood. With Pascal Hartmann chasing hard in 3rd position and Alexander Clark a mere big bet behind, it was anyone’s title:

Place

Player

There was a time when the U.K. National Championships seemed too quaint an idea to include on the tennis calendar. Tim Henman pulled out, an appetite for the competition was on the wane and – 18 years ago this year – the LTA pulled the plug.

With tennis having gone away for months and with little hope of Grand Slams on the ATP or WTA calendar this year, plans are afoot to bring back The National Championships, an event to celebrate the best U.K. talent in mens, womens, juniors and wheelchair players sections of the game.

With the initial plan to stage the championships this coming Autumn, any decision will be beholden to the Coronavirus restrictions in place at that time, but an indoor tournament with the necessary distancing and testing regulations to make the environment a safe one is the idea.

The prospect of a fit-again Andy Murray facing off against some of the young pretenders after his throne such as Dan Evans or Kyle Edmund is mouthwatering.

If there is one thing that really angers Fortnite players, it is the possibility that before the game starts and the battle bus prepares to empty its passengers onto the Battle Royale island, some of those players have an unfair advantage.

The whole concept of the game is based on equality, after all. No skin gives one player less of a target to hit, no matter how big Chapter 2 Season 2’s Brutus looks. No weapon should be deadlier in one players hands compared to another, and yet it’s exactly that threat that this week has seen player power influence the popular Esport in a way it never has before.

Despite the ‘level playing field’ element to Fortnite, there have always been ways of gaining an advantage over other players. We all recall the ‘ballers’ of late Chapter 1. Who can forget the disastrous Airplane’s, typically hovering around as late at the top five players in a solo until shot down in flames? But the recent ‘Aim Assist’ row in the professional Fortnite gaming world is something else.

Put simply, the only players to have an advantage are PC gamers who then use an external plug-in controller to get an aiming assist that helps them find their target not through their own skill but through external help.