McDaniel.

Bosch.

James McDaniel gets sentenced today. McDaniel, of course, is the smooth-talking, purple-suit-wearing rogue Dallas underground-poker-room-operator/drug-dealer convicted in June for contributing to the overdose death of SMU coed Meaghan Bosch. Good money says he will go to prison for the rest of his life … as he was already on parole after serving 20 years for the murder of a former Dallas cop before he got into the underground poker scene. Jurors in the Bosch case were not told his past murder conviction, nor were they allowed to consider allegations from up to a dozen young women claiming they were drugged and raped inside his poker room, some of them apparently on video.

UPDATE: McDaniel did indeed get life. He is currently in custody at Seagoville’s federal prison, but will likely be sent to a less comfortable state prison to finish out his old murder sentence before being sent back to Seagoville for his time on Bosch’s death.

Oscarsson.

Meanwhile, Swedish police are still looking for clues around Europe in the murder of PokerListings founder Andreas Oscarsson. They’ve concluded that indeed his killing was carefully planned by a professional hitman — with his family home fully staked out, exits noted, etc. … allowing the killer to break into the house and fire six silenced shots into Oscarsson and then leave without waking his six family members also asleep in the house that night. And while no motive has been disclosed, apparently investigators have unearthed at least a few death threats against him. and possibly have ruled out some Latvians.

Click here and here for Google translations of the latest from Hungarian news reports.

Dean.

Urch.

And Daniel Dean will get a new trial in the death of fellow amateur poker player Mark Urch. The two players were involved in a drunken dispute over hands in an Australian amateur pub tourney, and when they took matters outside, Dean leveled Urch with a single punch to the head, a blow that caused his death a couple days later. Australian courts sentenced Dean to seven years for manslaughter (eligible for release in May 2011). However, an appeals court threw out the conviction last month and ordered a retrial, on the grounds that the judge may have misinformed the jury about provocation and self-defense matters of law.

There’s a Daniel Dean support group on Facebook.

Besides Kevin Schaffel, Mike Sexton discusses his being inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame, the latest poker news, previews of tonight’s WSOP episodes (the first half of day 8 coverage) and Phil Ivey’s ESPN: The Magazine cover appearance.

In an interview Sunday on Mediocre Poker Radio from WJFK in Washington DC, AJ Benza said Kara Scott will be his replacement when taping resumes in November. Kara is best known in the US from her cashes in the past two World Series of Poker Main Events, gaining the affection of Norman Chad in the process. She was also the presenter of the European Poker Tour for the first five seasons, before moving over to Matchroom Sport to present in their made-for-TV tournaments in the UK. An article at Pokernewsdaily.com, which mentions the Benza interview, only confirms that Shana Hiatt will not take part in the show and that no contract has been signed in regards to AJ’s replacement.

More details to come…

Short jokes aside, “the little corporal” of poker is on a Napoleonic quest to dominate the poker world … or at least the WPT.

The WPT Festa al Lago final table gets underway this afternoon/eve (4pm PT). After all the early tourney hubbub about super-late registrations and related blind structures, the final table looks not unlike just about every other WPT final table — with one well-known pro, one kinda-sorta known pro (Vedes), and four other guys.

Freddy Deeb is the chip leader going into today’s action, but not by much. This is Deeb’s fifth WPT final table (out of 70 appearances) and stands to be his third win, which would tie the WPT bracelet record currently held by Gus Hansen. Deeb also has two WSOP bracelets to his name.

The Festa al Lago final table, by chip count, with seats yet to be drawn:

1. Freddy Deeb – 3,840,000
2. Shawn Cunix – 3,670,000
3. Tommy Vedes – 2,990,000
4. Craig Crivello – 2,570,000
5. Jason Lavallee – 2,045,000
6. Jason Burt – 1,375,000

You can follow the play-by-play at WorldPokerTour.com or via PokerListings here.

A presumably friendly game outside of Pittsburgh got robbed last week …

From the Associated Press:

Police Chief Vernon Barkley says the game was held at the Heidelberg volunteer fire hall and was breaking up about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday. That’s when the promoter, 53-year-old Sara Lazzaro, was hit on the head and accosted by three armed men who took an unspecified amount of money.

The chief says one player spent a lot of time on his cell phone, and police suspect he may have been conspiring with the robbers.

Hmm, this MO sounds familiar (though with less guns at this point). Am starting to think it may not be the same gang of poker bandits wreaking havoc nationwide, but rather independent cells using standard poker robbery procedure according to some sort of Anarchist’s Super/System. If the process that we have seen replicated in Dallas, Houston, North Carolina, Atlanta, etc. plays out … it shouldn’t be long before more violent firepower comes into play.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania supposedly has every intention of eradicating this problem before it really takes hold by offering fully legal games … but state officials are still bickering in Harrisburg over who gets how much of whatever proceeds that may or may not generate. Gov. Ed Rendell, state-repped casino interests, and now municipalities are all making different threats and demands down to single-digit tax percentages … and there’s even some additional fighting over who gets to appoint board members to oversee it all.

Pennsylvania still doesn’t have a state budget, btw, and apparently the remaining battles over poker (and other casino games) are the last thing holding it up.

More specific details on Pennsylvania poker’s legislative tangle here.

People may not realize this … because we have gotten along just fine even with the UIGEA for more than three years now … but December 1st is something of a D-Day for online poker. If no bill or procedural measure undoes the status quo in the next six weeks … well it’s not clear how the game will change, but it will. Dramatically.

That’s why the PPA has partnered with many groups to get this enforcement deadline extended — including the horse racing people, who should LOVE the UIGEA, since it specifically singles them out as A-OK. But even they know the law itself, as it was passed in 2006, is whack … and potentially will mess up their business big-time.

The PPA’s John Pappas gives a brief explanation:

The Kentucky Supreme Court will be holding a hearing at 11am ET today regarding the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s efforts in seizing 141 domain names. A live stream of the arguments will be available on the Supreme Court site for those wanting to watch the proceedings, with updates available over at the Poker Players Alliance website. iMEGA’s site should also have their own analysis of the proceedings this afternoon.

For those interested, video of the hearing is now available below:

This one isn’t for a special occasion or tournament or anything … just pretty standard 5th-floor parking at the Venetian on any given Wednesday:

This player is not nearly as creative as he thinks he is.

More douchebaggerous debaucherous good times leaking out from the UB’s big annual Aruba event … the kinda special gathering that even Full Tilt Red Pros attend. And here we see some guy I hadn’t heard of before, Poker Rapper, show Jeff Madsen that the one-time WSOP Player of the Year will never be the Eminem of Poker. (He almost sounds like he’s crying when he tries to comeback from the schooling by kicking it into Marshall Mathers gear.)

via PokerNews

Big players are (back) in Las Vegas … low Festa al Lago prelim field sizes suggest nothing is as it was a couple years ago, but the higher-stakes action is moving at Bellagio … or at least arriving there.

Seen last night at North valet:

Also seen a little off to the side by our secret valet informant: David Levi exchanging cash through a car window with presumed backer Eli Elezra. (Not sure which direction it was going, though. New guy, lots of cars to park … )

We low-stakes players love the deep-stack events … but as Matt Savage pointed out this summer, and a concern that Andy Bloch has re-raised more recently, big-time pro tourneys don’t necessarily benefit in the same way from these structures.

(The basics of the beef: the blinds move too slow early, and too fast in the middle of the tournament.)

Should be extra interesting to see these issues in action tomorrow for the start of the WPT Festa al Lago $15k main event. Not only are stack sizes in relation to the blinds in play, but also — and I’m pretty sure this part is new — players will be allowed to late-register (with a totally fresh starting stack) well into Day 2!

For a better explanation, WPT Lead Tournament Reporter BJ Nemeth breaks it down a bit more. Says BJ:

There are currently 40 players registered for this WPT event, & there is only one starting day (tomorrow).

Like the December tourney, this one will let you register anytime during the first *eight* levels. [So] they’re letting players register until 5:00 pm on Day TWO.

This tourney begins with 60,000 in chips (4x stack) and blinds at 50-100. That’s 600 big blinds. (Though I still expect someone to bust in the first level or two.)

If you skip Day 1 and show up at the start of Day 2, you’ll have 75 big blinds to work with. If you wait as long as possible and begin play at the start of Level 9, you’ll have 37.5 big blinds in your stack.

Hmm, OK … we’ll have to see if this adds fuel to Andy Bloch’s fire, or satisfies those who pony up the $15k buy-in enough that complaints about overly deep stacks fail to grow any teeth. Word is that tournament-side WSOP officials will be watching closely at how it plays out.

Click below to see Bellagio’s venerable TD Jack McClelland’s blind structure for tomorrow’s big event in its entirety:

More…

It’s Tuesday, which means a new episode of ESPN.com’s Inside Deal, featuring November Nine participant Joe Cada along with news spanning the poker community.

Almost forgot to tell you … if you hadn’t noticed already, we’ve got a poll up (to the right, and down a bit) wondering: Who’s the Best Twitterer in Poker?

You should vote. As many times as possible. It’s a tight race. A lot on the line. Criteria completely random and subjective … though I do hope you all realize there’s a big difference between tweets from @Erik_Seidel and @DonkeyBomber, half a dozen bracelets notwithstanding.

@AllenKessler got a little peeved at @Pokerati last week for “spoiling” The Amazing Race. Whatever … This week, @Alexpokerguy blew it for me — I had completely forgotten about the show, or at least that it was Sunday. Asshole. Bummer, but hey, such is life when anyone has the ability to condense an hour-long TV show into 140 characters or less.

In case you did miss the show, you can catch episode 5 in its entirety here.

All we’ll tell you about it is that the Racers travel to Dubai, where eight teams are reduced to seven. Semi-spoiled: Tiffany being Tiffany + Maria driving => karmically fitting results.

And for something a little extra, here’s @TiffnyMichelle discovering that not all Arabs are terrorists:

It’s an ad for just, um … online poker. New to me; I somehow missed it in 2005. In case you did, too, it’s an amusing reminder of how far we’ve come in nearly five years since not even Moneymaker, just Raymer: