It’s been a strange year for poker especially online poker with the industry turned upside down on Black Friday. Online poker traffic has decrease by 31% as a result of an unstable US market.

Not all online poker rooms suffered a loss in traffic, CarbonPoker and Merge Gaming Network experienced an increase of traffic up to 76%.

Notable Poker players for 2011 include: Erik Seidel new leader on the poker all time money list, Phil Hellmuth, Ben Lamb (Player of the Year) and Pius Heinz (2011 World Series Of Poker Main Event Champion)

Read more for the top poker articles and major event winners of Poker 2011.

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Pius Heinz is the 2011 WSOP Main Event champion, the 22 year old is the first player to win the title and bracelet for Germany. The final heads-up match featured European players Pius Heinz verses Martin Staszko when Ben Lamb was eliminated on the fourth hand finishing in 3rd place.

The chip lead switched several times between the two heads-up players, the aggressive battle last more than five hours but in the final hand the German beat the 35 year old player from the Czech Republic.

The epic Heads-up match was the longest lasting event for the last 10 years of the World Series of Poker.

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The WSOP final table will be broadcast live (15 minute delay) on ESPN, so far more than 36 hours of Main Event footage has been shown leading up to the Final Table which will feature the 2011 WSOP November Nine, the top 9 players who return to play the final table on 6th – 8th November and determine who the 2011 World Series of Poker Champion.

The WSOP final table features commentary by Lon McEachern, David Tuchman, Norman Chad and Antonio Esfandiari who will discuss the plays virtually live, with hole cards revealed of players who are involved in the hand after the flop, no pre-flop folded hands will be shown.

Poker fans will see the WSOP televised in a new exciting format, with coverage also available streaming online, smartphone applications and on Xbox live.

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2011 WSOP Day 6 comes to an end with only 57 players remaining of the 6,865 registered for the Main Event. Day 7 starts this Monday with coverage being broadcast on ESPN2 between 7-11 pm.

There are only two more days remaining until the November Nine are announced, the 2011 WSOP Final Table will continue on 5th November where the winning player will earn the most respected trophy in poker, a World Series of Poker bracelet and $8,711,956 of the prize pool.

The current Chip Leader is Ryan Lenaghan with more than 12 million chips going in to Day 7.

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PokerStars Bertrand Grospellier ElkY has won his first WSOP bracelet in event #21 Seven-Card Stud World Championship, this was the first time Elky had ever played in a 7 Card Stud tournament. The PokerStars French Pro has already won an EPT and WPT title and more than $7 million in tournament earnings in his career but the WSOP bracelet is one of the biggest accomplishments in poker.

Elky was also a pro gamer on the StarCraft Team who then focused his attention to online poker and then live poker and become a member of Team PokerStars Pros.

The first place prize was $331,639 although winning a WSOP bracelet is worth far more to ElkY than the prize money.

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