Jason Kirk Blog

Welcome to the BLUFF Daily Buzz, where we scour the entire internet for all the latest news in and around the world of poker. If it involves chips and cards, or people known to associate with chips and cards, we’re there.

Brandon Cantu takes his taser like a man

Cantu takes a taser for TASER

From the annals of charity poker tournament prop bets comes this video from Phil Hellmuth, shot at the TASER Foundation tourney that recently went down in Arizona with Hellmuth playing the host’s role. The video has a lot of set-up and starts to feel like it won’t be worth it, but then comes the great payoff of Brandon Cantu taking a taser in front of a crowd of poker players and hangers-on who are all chanting, “TASER! TASER!”

Hat-tip on this one goes to Pokerati, who says that Cantu was paying up on a prop bet he lost to Clonie Gowen at the tournament last year.

Corporate fringe benefits don’t look like this

Taking the odd taser shot to pay off prop bets probably wouldn’t be considered a side benefit of being a poker player, but judging a beauty pageant would definitely fall into that category - if you can get the work, that is. Luckily for Absolute Poker pro Matt Vengrin, he’s been hired on to lend a scrutinizing eye to the Miss California Teen USA pageant this weekend.

“As a poker player, I know how fierce competition can be,” said Vengrin. “Just like playing in the World Series of Poker, these girls are in for a grueling but fun weekend and I’m excited to be an integral part of the experience.”

Vengrin signed with Absolute this June, his reward for playing well enough to earn more than $2 million in online tournaments over the last two years.

Dwan crushes George on final day of Million Dollar Challenge

With the way Isildur1 has been spanking him lately on Full Tilt, it’s a good thing Tom “durrrr” Dwan ran good on the last day of has the Full Tilt Durrrr Million Dollar Challenge to help recoup some of his losses. After two days of five-figure swings and a relatively small total profit against two professional opponents, the third day of the challenge saw Dwan take amateur Sammy George for $750,000 to end the challenge on a high note.

Tom Dwan, Hammer Master

George started off well but had to rebuy when he ran his A-K into Dwan’s aces. Then the two players started playing “the 7-2 game,” with anyone who won a pot showing 7-2 getting $10,000. George managed to win a few good pots that way, but Dwan pulled off the coup of the night with the hand known to many as The Hammer. With about $130,000 in the pot and the board reading J A 6 3 3, Dwan moved all-in with 7 2 for $400,000; George held A 6 for two pair and would have won a million-dollar pot, but he elected to fold and gave Dwan the chance to show the spirit-crushing bluff.

“We’re playing the 7-2 game and the board has come very strong – he either had the nuts or nothing and I was so close to calling,” George said of the hand. “But you can’t in that situation – if I’d called and he has the nut-flush I’m an idiot, if I call and he has air I’m a hero. But I enjoyed my game and the way I played, I guess there are a few things I could tweak but not totally change. I’m a bit disheartened by the loss and I know a lot of people thought I would lose but when it airs people will see a different side to the result.”

With his small loss to Marcello “luckexpress” Marigiliano and his relatively small win against Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies figured in, Dwan’s total take for the three-day challenge was $790,000.

(Dwan ends Million Dollar Challenge in fine style - Matchroom Sport)

Canadian Olympic curling hopeful is online poker player

The Winnipeg Free Press featured a story earlier this week about 25-year-old Olympic curling hopeful Jason Gunnlaugson, who plays online poker to pay the bills while he tries to make his way to Vancouver for the upcoming 2010 Winter Games. Not only is the story a good read, but the writer seems to have a pretty good handle on the language of poker, too.

Gunnlaugson, he of the wild mop of hair and exuberant fist-pump, lives in a Winnipeg crash pad with five other 20-somethings and when he’s not throwing rocks and working on his plot to overthrow the old boys of curling, Gunnlaugson flops down in front of his computer and attempts to grind out a living playing online poker.

“It’s a bit of a different lifestyle but I’m basically in love with the game of curling. I want to spend as much time as possible playing and learning about it and to do that… well, the cards thing just came about because of the amount of time we have to take off to play. Most employers aren’t cool with that, so I had to find something on my own that was a financial fit,” said Gunnlaugson, who last weekend clawed his way through the pre-qualifying event in Prince George to grab a berth in the Road to the Roar Olympic qualifying event in Edmonton.

“I make a little bit of money. Nothing fancy. It kind of becomes like a normal job where you sit at the computer for a couple of hours and you make like an hourly wage. It’s better than anything else I could do.”

Gunnlaugson and his team are seeded last in the final tournament that will determine who becomes Team Canada for the curling competition next year in Vancouver.

(Curler is coming up aces - Winnipeg Free Press)

Poker: better for your job prospects than you may have believed

Contrary to what you’ve heard from your nagging relatives, it turns out that taking time off to play poker for a few years actually can land you a job.
Bloomberg took a look at the intersection of poker and finance today in an article that examines how suitable successful poker players are for jobs in the financial industry. With the success of so many players with financial backgrounds that’s not too surprising, but a few of the quotes in the story will definitely an eyebrow or two.

After the World Series of Poker started in Las Vegas four months ago, Options Group recruiter Simon Satanovsky said he received a hedge-fund request for online poker players with no financial experience. He wouldn’t identify the client. “Before, we were asking about GPA or the Math/Physics Olympiad,” Satanovsky, a former Russian national bridge champion, said in a telephone interview. “Now, we’re asking questions about poker successes.”

The article features plenty of input from Full Tilt pro Brandon Adams and even a few quotes from new world champ Joe Cada, who says he won’t be taking a job in finance anytime soon.

(Harvard Poker Pro Says Texas Hold’em Can Teach Traders To Fold - Bloomberg)

Comment

Day 3 at EPT Vilamoura is in the books and the rich continued to get richer as Antony Lellouche and Jeff Sarwer steamrolled the field for a third straight day.

After two days of letting Sarwer enjoy the top spot, today was Lellouche’s turn to assume the role of chip leader. The French pro, whose resume boasts three EPT final tables including a second-place finish at the 2008 EPT San Remo, more than doubled his stack over the course of the day to end the day as the only player to crack the one-million-chip mark. Sarwer, meanwhile, piled up nearly another 400,000 chips to end the day at 913,500.

Of the 45 players who busted today, 24 made the money, each taking home a minimum of €7,652. Tomorrow’s payouts will go from €10,151 for 17th through 24th places, all the way up to €23,426 for ninth and tenth places. Play is scheduled to resume at 12 p.m. local time tomorrow.

Host country Portugal is home to six of the remaining 24 players, including three who will enter Day 4 with one of the ten largest stacks in the tournament. Tops among them is pro Ricardo Sousa, who is looking to make up for a second-place finish at the 2008 EPT Warsaw with a win on his home turf; Joao Barbosa, the only Portuguese player ever to win an EPT event, is still in the running to become the first player ever to win two EPT titles; and Claudio Coelho has already achieved his first EPT cash but moved up late in the day thanks to being on the right side of a queens-over-jacks all-in confrontation with Ruben Visser.

EPT Vilamoura Day 3 Top Ten Chip Counts

1. Antony Lellouche (France) 1,134,000
2. Jeff Sarwer (Canada) 913,500
3. Ricardo Sousa (Portugal) 765,000
4. Ruben Visser (Netherlands) 749,000
5. Jan Skampa (Czech Republic) 562,000
6. Claudio Coelho (Portugal) 508,500
7. Jude Ainsworth (Ireland) 491,000
8. Gino Gabriel (United Kingdom) 385,000
9. Matt Johns (United States) 374,000
10. Joao Barbosa (Portugal) 362,000

Comment

Two days of poker are in the books at EPT Vilamoura in Portugal, and former child chess prodigy Jeff Sarwer of Canada leads the way with only 69 players still in contention for the top prize of €404,793.

Sarwer, who also held the chip lead at the end of Day 1B, made the most out of several confrontations with his friend Shaun Deeb, especially the last one when he flopped a straight against Deeb’s top pair, top kicker. After leading this tournament for two days it appears that he is once again poised to make a run at the final table, which eluded him at EPT Warsaw last month when he finished in tenth place.

Sitting right behind Sarwer is French pro Antony Lellouche, who was one of the chip leaders along with Sarwer on Day 1B and Day 3 in Warsaw. Lellouche was fortunate enough to pick up Jason Mercier’s stack on a hand where aggressive young champ decided to make a huge move at the wrong time; his K K held up against Mercier’s Q J and boosted his stack past 400,000 late in the day. Lellouche is looking to add to his already impressive total of three EPT final tables, though a win here would be his first championship.

Also in the top ten are new Dutch Team PokerStars pro Ruben Visser, Day 1A chip leader Ljubomir Josipovic, Dutch online star Johan “busto_soon” Van Til, and new Irish Team PokerStars Pro Jude Ainsworth, who sits in tenth place heading to Day 3 despite only beginning the day with a stack worth 13,100. Still in the hunt, but further down the leaderboard, are the Hendon Mob’s Ross Boatman, Season 5 EPT Warsaw winner Joao Barbosa, Dutch pot-limit Omaha guru Rolf Slotboom, 2007 WSOP Main Event final tablist Alexander Kravchenko, and 2005 WSOP Main Event final tablist Andy Black.

Day 3 begins tomorrow at noon local time at Casino Vilamoura.

EPT Vilamoura Day 2 Top Ten Chip Counts

1. Jeff Sarwer (Canada) 549,800
2. Antony Lellouche (France) 484,700
3. Ruben Visser (Netherlands) 389,500
4. Ljubomir Josipovic (Austria) 371,700
5. Martin Wendt (Denmark) 360,300
6. Luis Rodriguez (Spain) 321,500
7. Pierre Neuville (Belgium) 270,500
8. Gino Gabriel (United Kingdom) 264,800
9. Johan Van Til (Netherlands) 259,500
10. Jude Ainsworth (Ireland) 230,600

Comment

Welcome to the BLUFF Daily Buzz, where we scour the entire internet for all the latest news in and around the world of poker. If it involves chips and cards, or people known to associate with chips and cards, we’re there.

Full Tilt Durrrr Million Dollar Challenge continues

Tom “durrrr” Dwan completed the second leg of his live Full Tilt Durrrr Million Dollar Challenge at the Les Ambassadeurs club in London yesterday, and his opponent was none other than the combustible Finn, Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies. Blinds began at $500/$1,000 and went as high as $2,000/$4,000; the two both bought in for $250,000, and each opted for one $250,000 rebuy during the 500-hand session of pot limit Omaha.

Still tired from the previous day’s session against Marcello “luckexpress” Marigliano and a night of high stakes action with mysterious Swede Isildur1 on Full Tilt, Dwan nevertheless managed to carve out a $68,000 win against Ziigmund during a session that saw some big swings in both players’ favor. Afterward both of them acknowledged that it could have gone either way, though Sahamies admitted to fatigue near the end of the match. “I played badly in the last five hours and made six or so bad calls in the last half an hour,” he said. “But we played for such a long time that I was a little bit tired. It was one of the toughest I’ve ever played in and it was great to be involved.”

Minus the loss to Marigliano, Dwan is up $42,500 over the first two days of the three-day challenge. Tomorrow he will face businessman and high-stakes amateur Sammy “Any Two” George in what Bluff Europe calls Dwan’s “most +EV match of the challenge.”

(Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan beats Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies in Full Tilt Million Dollar Challenge - Bluff Europe)

Marcus Bebb-Jones may be extradited to the US on murder charges (Photo: The Daily Telegraph)

British poker player faces extradition to US for wife’s murder

A British poker player with more than $240,000 in tournament winnings since 2007, is facing extradition to the United States on charges that he murdered his wife.

Prosecutors for the United States government told a British extradition court today a sordid tale with Marcus Bebb-Jones, now 46, at the center. The prosecution maintains that in 1997 Bebb-Jones murdered Sabrina Bebb-Jones, dumped her body in a national park, and then took off for a weekend in Las Vegas where he racked up thousands of dollars in charges on her credit cards. Over the course of his “playboy lifestyle” weekend he attempted suicide by firing a gun into his mouth but somehow managed to survive the incident without serious injury. He later moved to live in Kidderminster, England, with his mother and his son, who is now 15.

After returning to England, Bebb-Jones found success playing mostly small buy-in tournaments in the United Kingdom. His first win came in September of 2007, when he booked £90,000 ($184,370) for winning a £100 pot-limit holdem tournament at the Grosvenor Grand Prix in Walsall. All told he has eight final tables to his credit, including an appearance in the final nine of the 2008 Grosvenor UK Poker Tour main event at Brighton, where he finished in seventh place.

Bebb-Jones was questioned by police at the time of his wife’s disappearance but never faced criminal charges, as her body could not be found. Her skull was found by a rancher in a mountain pass in northwest Colorado in 2004, however, opening the door to criminal charges. If extradited to the United States, he would face a maximum punishment of life in prison without chance of parole. The British Home Secretary is set to make a final decision on Bebb-Jones’ extradition by next week.

(Champion poker player facing extradition over wife’s murder - The Daily Telegraph)

Cada media blitz continues

Joe Cada has been the WSOP Main Event champion for a little more than a week, but life hasn’t slowed down for him since the moment he won the tournament. David Letterman and CNN have come calling this week, following on the heels of FOX, CNBC, CBS, and countless radio stations. This evening he continued his media tour with a stop in the Bristol, Conn., studios of ESPN, where he appeared on SportsCenter. (If you missed it, you’re in luck - ESPN runs it a few hundred times per day.)

Cada will keep with the sports theme this weekend when he travels to Ann Arbor, Mich., for the Michigan-Ohio State football game on Saturday. There’s no advance word as to whether he’ll appear on that broadcast, but given how quickly he’s taken to the media game it also wouldn’t be a very big surprise.

A Piece of Taylor could be worth $5,000

Piece of Taylor up for grabs at CardRunners

CardRunners founder Taylor “Green Plastic” Caby will be at the final table of the Full Tilt Poker Million early next month, and you can win a piece of his action - for free.

Truly Free Poker Training (TFPT), a program sponsored by Full Tilt, is backing the Piece of Taylor promotion which will see one of its members win 1% of Caby’s action at the Poker Million final table. TFPT lets players earn free memberships to training sites CardRunners and StoxPoker just by playing at Full Tilt, and the accrued benefits don’t affect any bonuses or rakeback. That means it doesn’t cost anything at all to take part in this promotion - a rarity in poker.

Anyone who is signed up at TFPT by December 3rd will have a chance to win the Piece of Taylor, which is guaranteed to be worth at least $500. But if Caby can overcome fierce opposition from the likes of James Akenhead, Luke “FullFlush” Schwartz, Dag Martin Mikkelsen, Juha Helppi, and Peter Vasiliou at the December 4th final table, the value of the one-percent share goes all the way up to $5,000.

(Piece of Taylor - CardRunners)

Comment

Today was the second starting flight at Casino Vilamoura in Portugal, where the European Poker Tour’s latest main event is taking place. Yesterday’s field of 136 and the 186 players at the tables on Day 1B combined for a total field of 322, building the prize pool to €1,561,700. A total of 48 players will make the money, with €404,793 designated for the winner.

Rising above the fray on Day 1B was Canada’s Jeff Sarwer, a former chess prodigy who just missed out on an EPT final table in Warsaw when he finished in tenth place. Today saw him making plans to do himself one better in Portugal, as he ended up with a stack worth 143,400 by the end of play thanks in large part to two big pots in the final levels. One of those was his elimination of Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier; Sarwer flopped trips with 9 7 on a 9 9 6 board and managed to outrun ElkY’s A 8 to begin his climb up the leaderboard.

Among those who registered but busted out before the day’s play was complete were the aforementioned Mr. Grospellier, Peter Eastgate, Sebastian Ruthenberg, Dario Minieri, and Vanessa Rousso. Noteworthy Day 1B survivors include high-stakes online cash game player Sami “LarsLuzak” Kelopuro, 2009 WSOP double bracelet winner JP Kelly, 2005 WSOP Main Event final tablist Andy Black, Belgian WSOP bracelet winner Davidi Kitai, 2009 WSOP Europe Main Event final tablist Praz Bansi, 2007 WSOP Main Event final tablist Alexander Kravchenko, and former EPT Player of the Year Luca Pagano.

Day 2 play begins tomorrow at 12 p.m. local time.

EPT Vilamoura Day 1B Top Ten Chip Counts

1. Jeff Sarwer (Canada) 143,400
2. Stefan Mattsson (Sweden) 125,100
3. Vishal Pundjabi (Germany) 124,600
4. Rob Yong (United Kingdom) 123,300
5. Amir Pirbazari (Ireland) 122,800
6. James Collopy (United States) 122,400
7. John Eames (United Kingdom) 110,200
8. Marco Della Tommasina (Italy) 109,600
9. Eduardo Lopez (Spain) 106,100
10. Rumen Nanev (Bulgaria) 104,600

Comment

Welcome to the BLUFF Daily Buzz, where we scour the entire internet for all the latest news in and around the world of poker. If it involves chips and cards, or people known to associate with chips and cards, we’re there.

Dwan drops first Live Challenge match

The Full Tilt Durrrr Million Dollar Challenge is officially underway, and its namesake came out on the wrong end of the first match - though not by much.

Durrrr lost some pocket change to Marigliano at Les Ambassadeurs

Tom “durrrr” Dwan played Marcello “luckexpress” Marigliano heads-up for 12 hours yesterday at the Les Ambassadeurs club in London, with a $250,000 initial buy-in and the first 11 hours of play consisting solely of no-limit hold’em before the format changed to pot-limit Omaha for the final hour. Dwan won 55 percent of the pots in the match, but that wasn’t enough to keep him from posting a $25,500 loss at the end of the session.

“It was a really aggressive match,” said Dwan. “There was a time when Marcello folded 20 hands in a row then the next hand he picked up a gutshot and decided to win the 150k out there. But he made two really good reads and without either one of them he ends up down 50k or so but instead he’s up. They were key hands really and there were some other big hands but it was an interesting match – of course I wish I’d won.”

Next up for Dwan is Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, followed by Sammy “Any Two” George. The series of heads-up matches is being filmed to air on British television next year, while Americans will have to be content with reruns of the WSOP and whatever new “poker game show” the networks throw our way until it’s time for the new season of High Stakes Poker.

(Marigliano wins Million Dollar Challenge opener - Matchroom Sport)

2010 WSOP: more space, July 4th off, no commissioner

WSOP spokesman Seth Palansky talked to the Las Vegas Sun yesterday about next year’s plans for the Series, and while Jeffrey Pollack is no longer along for the ride it seems as if the former commissioner’s tradition of meeting past mistakes head-on and making every year better than the one before is still in place.

This year’s Main Event scheduling snafu, which saw Day 1D sell out after the poorly-attended Day 1B fell on July 4th, is being fixed permanently: the Main Event will either start after the national holiday, or there will be no poker played that day. “We hope to address it somewhat with an expanded footprint for this year, which means more poker tables so we can have more players,” Palansky said. “But it’s more important to make it abundantly clear to register in plenty of time.” As for the rest of the schedule, there will be an even bigger focus on events with lower buy-ins in light of the success of this year’s “Stimulus Special” tournament. (A preliminary schedule was leaked on the WSOP.com website yesterday but has since been removed.)

Finally, Palansky confirmed that there are no plans to replace the commissioner role that Pollack vacated. “There’s no plans to replace the commissioner role, nor do we feel that there’s a void there,” Palansky said. “We feel that the brand has grown and the staff that has been here throughout is here and ready.”

(World Series of Poker looks ahead to 2010 - Las Vegas Sun)

Matt Keikoan banked $106,435 for his win at Harvey's Lake Tahoe

Matt Keikoan wins WSOP Circuit Lake Tahoe main event

The latest stop of the WSOP Circuit has concluded at Harvey’s Lake Tahoe, and 2008 WSOP bracelet winner Matt Keikoan came out on top of the championship event.

The tournament drew just 64 players and took only two days to play to completion. Despite the small field, Keikoan’s ascent to the top was anything but guaranteed. Recent Festa al Lago champion Tommy Vedes, former WSOP bracelet winner Michael Woo, and online pro Alan “BodogAri” Engel all had designs of their own for capturing the gold ring. It was Keikoan’s confrontations with the loose-aggressive Engel that helped him to secure the tournament, particularly the hand where he spiked a two-outer on the river to eliminate Engel and seize a big lead with just three players remaining.

“I’m really excited to win, but I’m also really tired,” Keikoan said. “There were some good players here.  But I always feel comfortable playing at Lake Tahoe because I have come here to the Circuit each year it’s been held.  It’s kind of a home field advantage for me, I believe.”

(Cop Gets Beat By a King - WSOP.com)

Cada media tour hits CNN; ESPN on deck

The Joe Cada World Tour continued today on CNN’s American Morning, where the youngest WSOP Main Event champ of all time got a chance to talk with hosts John Roberts and Kiran Chetry for several minutes and acquitted himself well, much like he did last night on the Late Show With David Letterman. Check out Cada’s appearance on CNN here, and the Letterman video here.

The World Tour continues tomorrow at ESPN’s website. If you’ve got a question of your own that nobody’s asked Cada yet, you’ll have a chance to ask him yourself tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. ET when he stops by ESPN SportsNation for a chat with fans. You can send in your question or comment at this SportsNation page.

PPA’s Twitter campaign gaining attention in Washington

With time nearly out before the UIGEA regulations go into effect on Dec. 1, the Poker Players Alliance has organized a “Tweet For Poker” campaign to contact Senators and members of Congress directly via Twitter and urge them to protect online poker. While it’s hard to gauge how effective the campaign has been so far, it’s worth noting that Tweet For Poker has earned the notice of Washington-based political paper The Hill.

In a column that normally covers activity on the Twitter accounts of politicians and diplomats, The Hill drew attention to the PPA campaign, which is noteworthy for what constituents are telling politicians instead of the other way around. The writer got a few minor facts wrong (such as saying the UIGEA banned online gambling, which it did not), but even having poker talked about outside of regular poker circles is a good thing. After all, as Oscar Wilde once said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

(Online poker group organizes Twitter advocacy campaign - The Hill)

Comment

A total of 136 players showed up today for the first of two starting flights of the European Poker Tour main event in the Portuguese seaside resort region of Vilamoura, the newest addition to the the EPT’s Season 6 schedule.

EPT Vilamoura Day 1A chip leader Ljubomir Josipovic - photo courtesy PokerStars

The overnight chip leader is Austria’s Ljubomir Josipovic, who closed out the day with a stack worth 192,900. Josipovic has five final table finishes at non-EPT European poker festivals since last August, including a second-place finish in a preliminary event at the Master Classics in Amsterdam last week.

Trailing Josipovic is Lithuanian Dominykas Karmazinas. On the last level of the day he hit the action flop of A 7 6 a little harder than his American opponent, Tyler Bonkowski. Karmazinas held K 8 for the king-high flush to Bonkowski’s A A for top set, and it held to send the American home and Karmazinas to the top of the leaderboard.

Dutch PokerStars pro Ruben Visser finished the day in third place, thanks mostly to a huge pot against France’s Guillaume de la Gorce. The two both got their stacks in on a T 8 6 9 9 board, de la Gorce with J T for the jack-high flush and Visser with 6 6 for a full house and one of the biggest pots of the day.

Plenty of familiar names are sprinkled throughout the list of 76 remaining players who will return on Thursday for Day 2, including Jason Mercier, Katja Thater, Chad Brown, Shaun Deeb, Antony Lellouche, and Joao Barbosa. Play on Day 1B, when Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Dario Minieri, and Luca Pagano are set to hit the felt, is scheduled to begin at 12 p.m. local time. Prize pool and payouts will be available after registration closes tomorrow.

EPT Vilamoura Day 1A Top Ten Chip Counts

1. Ljubomir Josipovic (Austria) 192,900
2. Dominykas Karmazinas (Lithuania) 183,000
3. Ruben Visser (Netherlands) 172,400
4. Daniel Drescher (Germany) 146,800
5. Pierre Neuville (Belgium) 141,100
6. Mohamed Razab (Netherlands) 97,100
7. Alexey Yuzikov (Russia) 96,500
8. Pedro Tomas (Portugal) 87,900
9. Michel Abecassis (France) 85,500
10. Goncalo Santos (Portugal) 84,400

Comment

Welcome to the BLUFF Daily Buzz, where we scour the entire internet for all the latest news in and around the world of poker. If it involves chips and cards, or people known to associate with chips and cards, we’re there.

New poker game show features familiar faces

Mike Sexton will host new MyTV game show Shuffle Up And Deal

Poker game shows are apparently the biggest trend at the crossroads between television and poker right now, so it’s not surprise to hear that another one called Shuffle Up and Deal is coming to the small screen in the near future. According to the press release announcing the show:

In each episode, amateur poker players choose their own cards from an over-sized electronic board, and the turn of each card either helps the contestant’s hand or destroys their chances of winning. The main objective of the game is to finish with the largest amount of cash winnings amongst the five contestants. The one that advances to the bonus round plays for a progressive jackpot that seeds at $250,000 and goes up ten thousand dollars for every day it is not hit. The jackpot will eventually top out at one million dollars.

That doesn’t sound all too poker-y, but it seems that’s the cost of doing business as “TV’s First Family-Friendly Poker-Themed Game Show.” The lineup of talent attached to the show helps to tilt it back in the right direction, though; hosting the show will be none other than 2009 Poker Hall of Fame inductee Mike Sexton, along with former Ultimate Poker Challenge hostess Brandi Williams. A traveling live version of the show will also visit casinos around the US, sporting former Bluff Player of the Year Chad Brown as its emcee.

The myTV network, which reaches some 50 million viewers in the U.S., has ordered 13 episodes of the show to air early next year.

World champ to appear on Letterman tonight

Newly crowned world champion Joe Cada is just beginning to enjoy his reign. After appearing on WWE Monday Night Raw at Madison Square Garden last night, the 21-year-old is continuing his New York trip with a scheduled appearance on the Late Show With David Letterman.

It looks like he’s the first poker player to appear on the late night king’s show since 2004, when Annie Duke was a guest, which has to put Cada’s WSOP Main Event win firmly in the “good for poker” category - especially if Dave asks him about playing online and gives him a chance to stump for the entire community. Cada said last night that he’ll be playing a cash game backstage with the Late Show production crew before heading back to MSG for a New York Rangers-Washington Capitals hockey game - not a bad way to spend the evening whether you’re the world champion or not!

The Late Show With David Letterman airs on CBS at 11 p.m. ET.

Bodog bids Bellande bye-bye

Bellande out at Bodog

You wouldn’t know from looking at his Twitter feed, where Bodog’s logo is still prominently featured, but Jean-Robert Bellande is no longer a member of Team Bodog. Sources close to Bellande say that his sponsorship contract expired at the end of October and the online room declined to renew it.

The move doesn’t come as a big surprise. With the exception of a second-place finish in a bracelet event at the 2008 WSOP, success in big tournaments has eluded Bellande for the last several years. However, he made the most of a 2005 televised final table appearance at the WSOP Circuit Las Vegas, spinning that face time into an appearance on CBS’ reality series Survivor and the Bodog sponsorship. Who knows - with the public’s appetite for reality television as hearty as ever, JRB might be able to spin up another sponsorship if the online market in the U.S. is ever opened up.

Bodog still has three sponsored pros on its roster - Justin Bonomo, Evelyn Ng, and David Williams - none of whom are expected to leave anytime soon.

Keep up with Jean-Robert Bellande to see what he does next by following his Twitter account.

Cake Poker introduces synchronized tournaments

Starting today, Cake Poker is giving its tournament players a break - a synchronized break, that is.

The growing online poker room today implemented synchronized breaks across its entire tournament schedule, giving players the chance to actually step away from the computer long enough to grab a quick bite or hit the bathroom without missing any of the action. All multi-table tournaments on the site, including those in late registration or the first blind level and multi-table sit-and-go tournaments that started with more than 30 players, will now go on break at 55 minutes past the hour, every hour.

Shark Out Of Water

And finally, have you ever noticed just how few good poker movies there are? There’s the Steve McQueen classic The Cincinnati Kid, the pre-poker-boom Matt Damon flick Rounders, and maybe the improvisational The Grand, and then not much else to choose from - unless you’re one those people who actually liked Deal or Lucky You, in which case you might want to consider never telling anybody about your forbidden love.

Maybe the reason so many directors have gotten it wrong is that they’ve gone feature-length, rather than going for the short film route. If that’s the case, there’s hope for director Juan Riedinger’s Shark Out Of Water, a newly-released 18-minute film that’s making the rounds of the North American film festival circuit. Shark boasts cameo appearances from Phil Hellmuth and Brad Booth, and with such a short running time there’s no room for a bloated plot, which has to bode well. Right now there’s no way to see the film without attending one of the many film festivals for which it was selected or buying it on DVD for $10, but there are apparently plans to release the film via iTunes sometime in the near future.

Check out the sharp-looking trailer at the official Shark Out Of Water website, where you can also purchase the DVD. A tip of the hat goes to Pokerati, who first alerted us to the Shark in the water.

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Welcome to the BLUFF Daily Buzz, where we scour the entire internet for all the latest news in and around the world of poker. If it involves chips and cards, or people known to associate with chips and cards, we’re there.

Dude looks like a lady redux

Once again, a man has won a ladies tournament. No, Abraham Korotki isn’t traveling the country trying to break the hearts of women everywhere. This time Greg Sessler, a 22-year-old communications and film major at the University of California at Davis, irked the female poker-playing public when he took down the $340 WSOP Circuit Lades Championship at Harvey’s Lake Tahoe.

The next target for women poker players everywhere

Sessler told the WSOP afterward that he only played the tournament because it was on his day off. He was one of four men in the 96-player field, and the only one who cashed. “Me playing in this tournament really had nothing to do with trying to take advantage of the ladies or thinking it was a softer field,” he said. “If (poker pro) Jennifer Harman would have come and played in the ladies event, she would have been much tougher competition than me.  I came here because I only had one day, and I really like the structures and the payout.  This was the only tournament I could play.”

Of Sessler’s participation in the tourament, Nolan Dalla wrote:

How is this possible, you may ask?  Easy.  The WSOP isn’t a political organization and can’t be expected to get involved in debates about sexism, discrimination, or other polarizing issues which may be applicable to poker tournaments.  While the WSOP makes a sincere effort to promote women in poker and offers quasi-exclusive tournaments designed to increase female participation in the game, officials generally do not turn away those who want to play in the event, based solely on gender.  In short, the WSOP hopes that by offering and supporting ladies-only poker tournaments and providing an event for which there is considerable interest (by women), others (namely men) will respect and understand the spirit of competition.”

Mega-mainstream outlet USA Today picked up on Sessler’s win this morning and ran a story on it.

Jeffrey Pollack’s exit interview

Last Friday was WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack’s final day on the job before heading for greener pastures. The initial news didn’t offer much insight into his departure, but RawVegas sat down for a three-part interview on Friday to talk with Pollack about his reasons for leaving, what he accomplished during his four years with the WSOP, his appreciation of the poker media (thanks Jeffrey!), the future of the poker industry, and his plans post-WSOP.

Pollack’s departure was met with a sense of loss from almost everyone in the poker community, and the reasons why come across very clearly in the interview. He

Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the interview.

Another bad beat for Pa. poker game organizer

Sara Lazzaro can’t catch a break. First she took a pistol to the head a few weeks ago when her poker tournament in a Volunteer Fire Department hall outside Pittsburgh, Pa., was raided by armed robbers. Now she’s been arrested on 69 counts of illegal gambling for running the tournament where she was assaulted and robbed.

Police served a search warrant on Lazzaro’s home this weekend and seized 21 poker tables, thousands of poker chips, a computer, and numerous tablets and notes related to the game that was raided in Heidelberg, a suburb of Pittsburgh. That was the game where the 54-year-old Lazzaro was pistol-whipped by the robbers, who made off with $5,900. Lazzaro was not home when police served their warrant, but she later turned herself in and was released on her own recognizance.

Lazzaro will have a preliminary hearing before this Thursday before District Judge Gary Zyra.

(Texas hold’em hostess arrested for gambling - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Golden angles on the Tao

As if anybody needed another reason to avoid downtown Las Vegas, this morning Dr. Pauly posted a sordid tale from the Golden Nugget poker room called “Golden Angle Shooters at the Nugget” over at the Tao of Poker.

Pauly was at the Nugget for a fun night of poker with some friends from the poker media and ended up having the fun ruined by an angle-shooting local. Anyone who has ever played poker on vacation has invariably seen a ruling from the floor incorrectly go to a local player and will empathize with the good doctor’s treatment at the hands of Nugget floorman. It had to have been pretty bad, because it takes a lot to make Pauly write something like this:

It goes without saying that I’ll never return to the Nugget to play poker again. I hope the poker room manager reads this because he needs to know what type of environment he’s condoning. This post should have a sub-heading “Why I’ll never play at the Golden Nugget ever again.”

Check out the full post at Tao of Poker.

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Welcome to the BLUFF Daily Buzz, where we scour the entire internet for all the latest news in and around the world of poker. If it involves chips and cards, or people known to associate with chips and cards, we’re there.

Kid Poker & Vincent Chase, together at last

Erik Seidel was the first professional poker player to make an appearance on an HBO show when he turned up in the background of Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it looks like he won’t be the last.

Daniel Negreanu announced on his Twitter feed earlier this week that, like Seidel, he too had purchased a spot on an HBO show at a charity auction - with Kid Poker’s choice being the slightly younger, slightly hipper Entourage. Negreanu described his appearance as “a walk-on role,” but it’s not exactly clear right now whether he’ll be in the background like Seidel was on Curb or have a more prominent moment on camera like rapper 50 Cent did on the show’s recent sixth season when he made fun of Turtle at a stoplight. A non-background moment could be a lot of fun - it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Vince and the gang heading to Vegas for the weekend and running into Negreanu on the golf course or in the Bellagio poker room.

No word yet on when the episode will air, though it could be a while since Season 6 concluded last month.

I Bet You gets some (belated) critical love

The Onion AV Club - the part of The Onion that’s meant to give serious reviews of culture rather than to make you double over with gut-busting laughter - recently put together its list of the top TV reality shows of the decade, and poker plays a prominent role. Besides the inclusion of shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race that have featured poker players as contestants, televised poker itself actually comes in at the #5 spot on the list. The AV Club loves poker because it “made household names out of dozens of previously obscure weirdoes, degenerates, and social misfits.” Awwwwwww, gosh, AV Club, we love you too!

Sharing the spot on the list with televised poker in general is the the Antonio Esfandiari-Phil Laak show I Bet You, which the AV Club calls “one of the damnedest, most delightful reality series of all time.” For two season the two made prop bets against each other on all sorts of things, from F1 racing at the Mario Andretti Racing School to a demolition derby in Tennessee, before host network Mojo HD went under (presumably not due to Esfandiari and Laak’s show). Another season is already in the can but, sadly, currently has no place to air.

(The best reality series/competitions of the ‘00s - The Onion AV Club)

Sunday Million guarantee jumps to $2.5 million this weekend

One thing about being a market leader, you’re always hitting milestones. PokerStars will reach a pretty big one tomorrow when it will cross the $250 million threshold in total prize money awarded on the site since it first opened its doors. That’s a lot of daily donkaments, SCOOPs, and WCOOPs! To celebrate the milestone, PokerStars is upping the guarantee for this week’s Sunday Million to $2.5 million. With $200 per person in the prize pool, that means 12,500 players will have to show up to break the guarantee.

All the regulars will be playing the tournament just like they usually do. But if you’re not a regular, hear these words: if there were ever a time to try to win your way into this tournament on the cheap, it would be right now. Satellites to the Sunday Million start at just $1 and the top prize will be worth at least $300,000 - take a shot!

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Welcome to the BLUFF Daily Buzz, where we scour the entire internet for all the latest news in and around the world of poker. If it involves chips and cards, or people known to associate with chips and cards, we’re there.

Sebok cracks a million - Twitter followers, that is

Monty Brewster had to spend money like a drunken sailor to get his first million; Joe Sebok only had to post his thoughts 140 characters at a time.

Sebok has been on the forefront of the Twitter revolution for some time now, gathering plenty of attention from outlets like the New York Times for PokerRoad’s work with Twitter during this year’s WSOP. The guys who run the show at Twitter repaid Sebok with a spot on its list of suggested feeds for users to follow, which has led to people who don’t know anything about poker knowing all about Joe Sebok. A lot of them, in fact.

One meeeeeel-yun followers!

The UltimateBet-sponsored player’s Twitter feed crossed the one-million-followers mark today and continues to climb higher, making him more popular on the microblogging service than more mainstream celebrities like Paris Hilton (978,000 followers), TV personal finance maven (and Kristen Wiig impression fodder) Suze Orman (917,000 followers), and UFC president Dana White (763,000).

You can find Joe Sebok’s Twitter feed, along with plenty of your other favorite poker players, on our Poker Tweets page.

Tweet of the day

Speaking of Twitter, here’s a great one from one of my favorite poker tweeters, Erik Seidel:

My kids think the website and book, “Stuff White People Like” is my unauthorized biography.

Tom "durrrr" Dwan is now a poker blogger

A won-durrrr-ful blog

Online poker fanboys, prepare to spend a little time getting to know one of your favorite players a little bit better: Tom “durrrr” Dwan has a new blog.

The newly named Full Tilt pro dishes on plenty of topics in his catch-all first post, titled Hiya, including his recent European travels, his love of skydiving, and a helicopter ride with Patrik Antonius and Phil Ivey:

We were heading to what I thought was a Jay-Z concert with Coldplay opening, however in the UK, it was the other way around… news that Patrik and I were not very happy to hear.  As way bigger Jay-Z fans, both of us were pretty sad about his shorter set… I thought Patrik was gonna head-butt someone. I wasn’t quite as bothered as he was, but was still pretty disappointed. Regardless, the show was still super sweet.  The funniest part of the night was when the helicopter landed in a huge soccer field, and some kids supposedly thought Phil was Jay-Z, which is hilarious if true.

Dwan also mentions his recent heads-up matches with “Isildur1,” noting that “there have been some huge swings because of both of our aggressive styles.” He doesn’t go into more detail, though; it looks you’ll have to come back next month to learn more about what it feels like to dump $2.9 million to a mysterious Swede without blinking.

(Official Poker Blog of Tom “durrrr” Dwan)

Gambling is bad, mmm-kay?

Well, that didn’t take long

With all the mainstream coverage of Joe Cada’s WSOP triumph, you knew it wouldn’t be long before somebody used the 21-year-old champ as their own personal soapbox. Today’s example comes from the Detroit Free Press, which published an editorial by former Michigan attorney Michael Burke, the author of a book called Never Enough: One Lawyer’s True Story of How He Gambled His Career Away. (Axe to grind much, Monsieur Burke?)

Cada attributes his success in poker to the skill he has honed over the course of playing a million hands, a fact that Burke uses as a jumping-off point for an anti-poker rant which demonstrates that Burke either has little understanding of the game or is hiding his understanding in order to make his desired point, which seems to boil down to “gambling is bad, mmm-kay?”:

Most poker players live under the illusion, or delusion, that the game relies primarily on skill. They will tell you their success is based on their ability to understand and apply certain mathematical probabilities and on their skill at detecting any sign given by another player that might serve as a clue to that player’s hand. Of course, those who play poker online have little opportunity to refine their skill in understanding these “tells.”

To buttress their position that poker is a game of skill, most players will never use the term “bad luck.” Instead, when a player loses, you will hear that player say he had a “bad beat.” The 40th annual World Series of Poker attracted 6,494 poker players. Some 648 players received prizes. I can assure you that every one of the 5,846 players who lost their buy-in fee of $10,000 will have a story of how they lost due to a bad beat.

Instead of talking about the fact that large numbers of the players in the Main Event field have won their seats through satellite tournaments, Burke prefers to cling to the illusion that every one of them has ponied up the cash on his own by painting a picture of “the unemployed auto worker who removed the final $10,000 out of the family savings, or the gamblers who invaded their dwindling pensions and IRAs, or the mothers and fathers who raided their children’s college funds.” Rather than speaking of personal responsibility and acknowledging free will, much less acknowledging the reality of how so many people get their WSOP seats, Burke blames the existence of gambling itself for the problems of his nameless, faceless examples.

Columns like Burke’s are thrown together hastily whenever a poker story gets widespread attention, so it’s a good thing the game has achieved enough of a mainstream following that people recognize the skill involved in making solid decisions at the table time after time. Otherwise, people might actually buy in to his kind of fluff.

(Know when to fold ‘em: Before you start - Detroit Free Press)

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Welcome to the BLUFF Daily Buzz, where we scour the entire internet for all the latest news in and around the world of poker. If it involves chips and cards, or people known to associate with chips and cards, we’re there.

ESPN’s WSOP finale numbers down slightly; overall numbers up slightly

Attendance numbers at this year’s WSOP Main Event might have been down a bit thanks to the worst economy the country has seen in decades, but the number of people watching the tournament held generally steady in 2009 compared to 2008.

ESPN’s same-day coverage of the Main Event drew more than 2.1 million viewers this year, earning a 1.8 household coverage rating. Overall, ESPN averaged a 1.0 rating for the entire 31-episode run of its 2009 WSOP coverage, which held steady compared to last year. ESPN saw increases in weekly averages for households (up 7% to 1,024,901) and viewership (up 9% to 1,228,008), and a significant jump of 13 percent in the important Male 25-54 demographic. Translation to English: the overall numbers are up thanks to your dad and his Tuesday night home game buddies.

Those kinds of modest gains are pretty good news for ESPN in light of the long-term deal with the WSOP earlier this year, especially given the change in format to avoid airing earlier bracelet events and focus more on the Main Event. It seems like people have responded to the new coverage, which hopefully will encourage ESPN to continue evolving the way it presents the WSOP to the public.

Brad Booth is the new spokesman for GR88.com

Brad “Yukon” Booth signs on with new poker site

GR88.com is one of the newest members of Merge Network of online poker sites, and to help promote their brand they’ve recruited Brad “Yukon” Booth. A former Full Tilt Poker and Doyle’s Room pro, Booth has joined on as GR88.com’s official spokesman and Head of Poker Development. The latter title is likely to be especially important to Booth, who was among those taken for a ride during the superuser scandals.

“Yukon Brad’s talent, undeniable work ethic, and desire for fairness makes him the perfect partner of GR88.com,” said Peter Karroll, CEO of International Arts Management, the parent company of GR88.com. “Our site offers players around the world premium poker and casino games, programs and tournaments all set within a secure and trust-worthy environment.”

While you wait for a chance to play with Booth on GR88.com, check out this video of Booth hitting a straight flush against Daniel Negreanu on Season 2 of High Stakes Poker, or this video of Booth running a gigantic semi-bluff on Phil Ivey on Season 3 of HSP.

Social media - the next frontier of online poker?

Austrian online gambling giant Bwin has been making waves on the market side of its business this year, but now it’s turned its eyes to the software side of its poker business for its next big move - social media integration.

Bwin has spent some €45 million developing its new online poker client, currently in testing, which replaces the standard online poker chat box with a “shoutbox” filled with social media options tied into existing social media services like Twitter and Facebook. Players will be able to make comments on specific bets and hands, invite their friends to the table, and generally be more, um, social while they’re playing their favorite game. (Hopefully one of the options will be a button to gently remind all the loudmouths at my table not to knock on the fishtank.)

“It’s really the customer experience that’s key,” said Bwin’s Chief Technological Officer, Thomas Kiessling, of the company’s decision to move into the crossroads of online poker and social media. “Customer relationship management, customer intelligence, usability studies. That is a major priority for me.”

(Bwin Add Social Media To Online Poker - FlopTurnRiver.com)

Beth Shak is much more clothed here than she was in News Of The World yesterday

Beth Shak appears in British gossip paper

I write a lot about “poker in the mainstream” news in this space, so today I’m going to throw you some balance with a little “poker in the tabloids” news.

Beth Shak appeared in yesterday’s News of the World, the British tabloid that features all the latest in television gossip, sports gossip, and Michael Jackson gossip. The interview, which talks plenty about strip poker but sadly doesn’t go into the merits of semi-bluffing the turn when you’re down to just your underpants, is probably not going to be of much interest to most of you. Luckily there are pictures of Shak in stockings and lingerie accompanying the interview to keep your mind off whatever it is you’re ducking to read poker news.

No big surprise that the tip of the hat here goes to Wicked Chops Poker, who read News of the World daily, link to pictures of women in various states of undress almost as often, and sometimes even write about poker.

(Shak Attack! - News of the World)

ESPN Inside Deal wrap-up

And finally, ESPN Inside Deal posted its wrap-up episode with the two remaining interviews it hadn’t gotten yet: Darvin Moon and world champion Joe Cada. Check out the last episode of Inside Deal with hosts Laura Lane and Bernard Lee here.

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Welcome to the BLUFF Daily Buzz, where we scour the entire internet for all the latest news in and around the world of poker. If it involves chips and cards, or people known to associate with chips and cards, we’re there.

Rivers to Brunson: “Go and die under a deck of cards”

Poker-hate queen Joan Rivers was in Miami for a performance yesterday and did a phone interview with the hosts of SportsTalk 790 AM The Ticket, who didn’t exactly give her a soft start to the interview by reading her a quote from Doyle Brunson’s blog where he said that if you gave Joan Rivers a penny for intelligence, you’d get a refund. Unsurprisingly, Rivers went off on an epic rant against Texas Dolly:

Who is this person? I’ve never heard of him. Oh, go away and leave me alone, and get off trying to get famous on my back. I’m really upset. What’s his name? Who the hell is he? Who gives a damn? Tell him, darling, when he’s 76 years old, and he’s had a career like I’ve had, and when he graduated Phi Beta Kappa at 19, and when he’s got an IQ at 135 and over, come and talk to me. You moron. And get off my back, because I don’t know who you are, nor do I care. Go and die under a deck of cards. I love when people who don’t know you and aren’t in your league comment.

After discussion turned to how Rivers called Annie Duke “Hitler” on Celebrity Apprentice, Rivers quickly hung up on the hosts. Then later in the show, Brunson was on to promote his new book, The Godfather of Poker. After the hosts replayed a snippet of Rivers’ rant, ending with “die under a deck of cards,” the living legend gave a hearty chuckle for a few moments before responding.

“That’ll be a pretty good place to go,” he said. “That’ll be better than dying under what she dies under - a pile of manure. She insulted poker players as a group and I’m very upset with her. She had no call to berate the poker community like she did. I think it showed no class. Joan Rivers don’t need us and we don’t need Joan Rivers, so good luck to her. By the way, I’m 76 too - you can tell her.”

So, let’s see: Rivers delivers an egocentric rant, Brunson responds with wit and a defense of his community. I do believe that makes the current score of this feud Poker 2 - Joan Rivers 0.

The full Rivers interview and aftermath here. The full Brunson reaction here. And a tip of the Daily Buzz’s hat goes to Pokerati on this one.

People are talking, talking ‘bout Cada

Cue up the standard “good for poker” discussion. Joe Cada is getting plenty of attention after becoming the youngest WSOP Main Event champion in the tournament’s 40-year history, and a fair bit of it is coming from outside the poker world.

Time Magazine published an interview with the young champ today that gives him a chance to display his intelligence - and also to stump for legal-and-regulated status our favorite game here in the United States. “Poker isn’t gambling. It’s a hobby, an activity, a game,” Cada said. “It’s not about luck — it’s about logic, decision-making, math. We all should be able to play poker on the Web if we want to, and I believe that making it illegal strips us of our rights. This is an important issue, and hopefully we’ll see it resolved soon.”

Over in the Detroit Free Press blogs, meanwhile, local radio morning show sports director Jamie Samuelsen took Cada’s win as an opportunity to defend poker against people who say it’s bad for the kids:

Cada's win has the mainstream talking poker

Look, I know that poker carries a stigma because it’s associated with casinos and gambling and addiction and money loss and men named “The Mouth” and “Fossil Man.” But it’s also a game that challenges your mind, forces you to train your memory and concentrate fully and try to outsmart every single person you’re playing against. I know plenty of poker players, and the best ones are usually the smartest people in the room. I envy it.

Most of the poker sites out there are not gambling sites. They simply allow folks to play against other players and improve their games. If my kid is playing poker nonstop and failing out of high school, well, of course, I’m not thrilled. But if he’s playing in his spare time, is that any worse than playing “Madden” or “Modern Warfare”? There are plenty of studies that say you should exercise your brain every day the same way you exercise your body. And with all the calculations that go into poker at the highest level, that’s a pretty good workout.

Let’s hope that Cada’s win continues to promote these kinds of conversations about poker in our society at large. Every non-poker-player who sees the game as a hobby and a game of skill puts us closer to a fully legal industry in the U.S.

Jamie Samuelsen’s Detroit Free Press blog here. Time Magazine’s interview with Cada here.

Absolute Poker: where people stop being polite and start being real!

Plenty of poker players have made the jump to reality television in the last couple of years. Tiffany Michelle and Maria Ho of The Amazing Race are the latest rounders to tread the path that was first blazed by Annie Duke on Celebrity Apprentice and Jean-Robert Bellande on Survivor. But now it looks like that path has been opened up going the other direction.

Trishelle Cannatella, best known for her time on MTV’s reality series The Real World: Las Vegas way back in 2002, has joined on as a “celebrity endorser” of online poker room Absolute Poker. It’s still not clear whether that’s a step up or a lateral move from appearing on television shows like Punk’d, Fear Factor, Criminal Minds, Ninja Cheerleaders, The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning, The Surreal Life, and Dr. Steve-O, but one way or another Trishelle seems excited. Very excited.

“I’m very excited to be Absolute Poker’s new celebrity endorser,” she said of her new association. “Poker has always been a passion of mine and I can’t think of a better team to be a part of.”

(Reality TV Star Trishelle Cannatella to Endorse Absolute Poker - Marketwire)

Palms settles over inadequate poker tournament oversight

Finally, the Palms Casino in Las Vegas, known so well to players and media alike for its WSOP parties and late-night diner (get the Nutella crepes and thank me later), has agreed to pay $100,000 to the Nevada Gaming Control Board over complaints about two poker tournaments run at its property by third-party operators.

Tournament operators Michael Eakman & Associates held a tournament at the Palms in August 2007 benefiting the Jewish Community Center of Southern Nevada but failed to pay the charity its share until four months after the event.  The United States Poker League held its tournament at the Palms in October 2007 and failed to pay the winners their complete winnings, offering half the winnings in cash and the other half in post-dated checks. A total of 22 players were came up $450,416 short because the USPL’s checks were returned for insufficient funds.

While the Palms stepped in to pay the tournament winnings in full, the Control Board still took exception. In addition to its $100,000 settlement, the casino agreed to accept more responsibility in future tournaments and set up new guidelines for future events.

(Palms agrees to pay $100,000 to settle complaint - Las Vegas Review-Journal)

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Welcome to the BLUFF Daily Buzz, where we scour the entire internet for all the latest news in and around the world of poker. If it involves chips and cards, or people known to associate with chips and cards, we’re there.

Dark side of the Moon

The city of Baltimore has a fine journalistic tradition dating back to long before the days of The Wire, so it’s no surprise that an enterprising reporter there did a little digging on Darvin Moon’s background and turned up some interesting tidbits from the WSOP Main Event runner-up’s past.

Maryland court records show him pleading guilty, and receiving probation before judgment, for forgery and theft in 2003 (including a restitution order of $6,146) and for three counts of passing bad checks in 2004. Two other bad-check cases in 2004 were dropped, as was a criminal harassment charge in 2007. He also pleaded guilty and was fined for open burning, and he failed to appear for traffic violations, resulting in his license being suspended.

Moon has also posted bail for others twice, and has a number of liens worth somewhere in the region of $35,000 outstanding - though one has to guess they probably won’t remain outstanding for too long now that his bank account is about $5 million fatter than it was this time last year.

In the Slightly More Bizarre Moon Background Stories category, Wicked Chops pointed to this. It’s a strange, strange, strange world.

(WSOP’s Moon Owes Debts Back Home - Baltimore City Paper)

Seidel kept his poker face in the background of this scene

Seidel on Curb

If you’re a fan of the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, you can count yourself as having on more thing in common with Erik Seidel. But unlike the eight-time WSOP bracelet winner, you’ve most likely never been an extra in Larry David’s neurotic wonderland.

Seidel recently appeared in the background of a restaurant scene with David and poker aficionado Cheryl Hines, who plays David’s wife in the series. For those out there doubting it was actually Seidel in the background, he confirmed it on his Twitter account:

Yes, that was my ugly mug on Curb. From a charity auction, I’m a huge fan of the show.

The current season of Curb features a storyline following a fictional Seinfeld reunion, with Hines’ fellow celebrity poker player Jason Alexander portraying himself.

888 eyes French, Italian online markets

On the heels of its announcement of a strategic partnership with WSOP owner Harrah’s to provide online services for its brands in the United Kingdom, online gambling giant 888 is taking aim at the two of the largest unexploited online markets in Europe.

888 CEO Gigi Levy told the Financial Times today that his company will be applying for a license when the French government officially opens up its newly regulated online sports betting and poker market. The already-opened Italian market is seeing big expansion right now and 888 plans to have a significant presence there as well.

“We have pretty big plans for France and very big plans for Italy,” said Mr Levy. “We are going to continue to invest in the UK, but also in continental Europe.”

That’s great news for France and Italy. Meanwhile we Americans still have to dream of the day when we can play WSOP satellites from the comfort of our own homes.

(888 Targets France and Italy - Financial Times)

Mike Sexton’s induction ceremony

For those of you who weren’t on hand for Mike Sexton’s Poker Hall of Fame induction ceremony, our friends at RawVegas have a condensed 12-minute video hitting the highlights that you might want to check out. There’s a great anecdote from Doyle Brunson and a few from Sexton himself, including one about his involvement in the history of PartyPoker and another time he was “between bankrolls” at the Four Queens Classic and ran into Scotty Nguyen.

ESPN Inside Deal final table special

Finally, the ESPN Inside Deal crew of Laura Lane, Bernard Lee, and Andrew Feldman was on hand at the Penn and Teller Theater at the Rio this weekend along with Bluff and the rest of the poker world. Today they posted their WSOP Main Event Final Table special featuring analysis of how the final table played out and interviews with all the players who busted before heads-up play began (except, noticeably Phil Ivey). You can check out the special here.

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Join Bluff Magazine this week in putting a bad beat on cancer with a special tournament on PokerStars.

The Bad Beat Poker Challenge is being held in honor of poker player Nicole Rowe. She was the second-place finisher of the women’s event at the recent Borgata Poker Open, which she entered at the urging of friends in order to relieve the stress of an upcoming breast cancer surgery. The tournament was won by a man, Abraham Korotki, who said he wasn’t aware the the tournament was a women’s only event until after he had registered.

The buy-in for the Bad Beat Poker Challenge is $10, with $10 rebuys available through the first two levels, and all proceeds from the tournament will go to the Prevent Cancer Foundation, whose mission is to help with cancer prevention and early detection through research, education and community outreach. The top 50 finishers in the tournament will receive prizes donated by Bluff Magazine and numerous other sponsors, including packages donated by poker pros Phil Gordon, Joe Sebok, Gavin Smith, Daniel Negreanu, Jamie Gold, Tom McEvoy, Vanessa Rousso, Matt Glantz, Tom Schneider, and former UFC Light Heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz.

Awaiting the tournament’s winner is the top prize, the Two Months, Two Million Scholarship, a lifetime membership to online poker school DeucesCracked.com donated by the stars of the hit G4TV reality series.

The Bad Beat Poker Challenge starts at 9:00 p.m. ET this Thursday, November 12th, on PokerStars. You can find the tournament under the Tournaments -> Private section of the lobby.

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