Annie Duke appeared on the Craig Ferguson show earlier this week to promote the Epic Poker League coming to CBS later this year.

When asked by the late-late night host (around the 1:30 mark) if poker was illegal, Duke responded: “Only online.”

Watch the entire interview here:

The second Epic Poker League Main Event kicked off Tuesday afternoon with a field of 97 players, down 40 from the first event of the inaugural season. A crowded poker calendar with events in Barcelona, Paris, and Oklahoma and the PokerStars WCOOP tournament series helping contribute to the lower numbers. At the end of play 50 remain as Pro/Am “qualifier” Jaime Kaplan took advantage of a player disqualified from playing to end the day as chip leader.

The first EPL Main Event winner, Chino Rheem, was put on probation shortly after winning $1,000,000. Rheem is obligated to pay back players he owes money to with any winnings or he’ll no longer participate in EPL events. He finished Day 1 in 6th place after six levels were played Tuesday afternoon. The smaller field means twelve players will cash, with the winner earning $782,410.

Here’s the top 10 in chip counts going into Day 2:

1. Jaime Kaplan – 324,600
2. Dan O’Brien – 321,400
3. Alec Torelli – 231,500
4. Mike McDonald – 199,600
5. Nam Le – 176,300
6. Chino Rheem – 173,300
7. Sean Getzwiller 165,400
8. Andrew Robl – 149,700
9. Adam Levy – 145,400
10. Marco Johnson – 145,200

Day 2 updates available starting from 12pm PT at www.epicpoker.com

EPL Preliminary Action

The $1,500 Pro/Am event featured an overlay of nearly $50,000, meaning only nine $20,000 Main Event seats were available when the field was down to 9 players. The event earned points towards the Global Poker Index, giving players incentive to play down to a winner. Greg Mueller defeated Nam Le heads-up to become the official winner with Phil Hellmuth finishing 3rd. Brandon Meyers and Sean Getzwiller each qualified for the Main Event for the second straight Pro/Am, but Meyers was eliminated on Day 1.

Jaime Kaplan was the 10th place finisher in the Pro/Am, but he earned a Main Event seat when qualifier Michael DiVita chose not to participate in the Main Event after information about his being a convicted child molester came to public light.

After the Pro/Am concluded the EPL held a charity event for Fallen Heroes USA, an organization dedicated to assisting families of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. Epic Poker’s own Michael Craig took down the bracelet, defeating Phil Hellmuth heads-up as $25,000 was raised for the charity.

“We’re going to do everything we can to legalize online poker,” said US Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) to a crowd of mostly women Friday night at the Golden Nugget. She was the opening speaker at the Women in Poker Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and wanted to let nearly 300 attendees know that she hasn’t wavered in her position against government interference in online poker, and now is the time for Washington DC to get Americans back online.

Berkley, who declared her intent to run for US Senate the day before Black Friday, was one of the few representatives to call the UIGEA “a travesty” at the time of its passage and one of the first to jump on board to co-sponsor Joe Barton’s (R-TX) post-Black Friday online poker bill.

“There’s no reason people shouldn’t be playing online. It will be good for the 26 million poker players … it will be good for our country, and it’s going be good for our economy,” she said. “We’ve got to get this piece of legislation passed!”

Have a listen to what all she had to say in Las Vegas before heading back to DC:

Shelley Berkley at the Women in Poker Hall of Fame 2011
4:58

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More…

In the good-for-poker category … Poker Gives is in the midst of its second annual National Poker Month. Not to be confused with the PPA’s National Poker Week, PG’s September declaration is about a nationwide series of charity tournaments “that unites the poker world to generate goodwill through ‘giving back’ and supporting worthwhile charities.” (Emphasis theirs, not mine.)

There have already been events in Arizona and yesterday here in Vegas at the Venetian. Coming up are an event Monday at the Golden Nugget and another at the new Tropicana Poker Room (which fyi, few know, had its opening day on Black Friday) on Saturday. More than 15 events — in the $60 to $125 range — in 15 different venues in seven states.

Click here for the complete schedule.

Our goal is to disperse the highest percentage of funds possible to the charities. While some fundraising operators are actually businesses for profit, Poker Gives is designed to give back and we do so in every way possible. Board members and founding members of Poker Gives receive no salary whatsoever. All expenses and administrative costs are minimized so that the maximum is directed to our charities.

– Poker Gives

Charity tournaments can be a dime a dozen … or more appropriately for poker, probably closer to 5 dimes a dozen. And some are better than others as an event and/or as a fundraiser. But apparently some big-timers in the poker biz (Mike Sexton, Linda Johnson, et al) saw too many such tourneys used as fronts for shady activities I mean not necessarily distributing funds appropriately, and thus back in 2008 created Poker Gives. It’s an effort designed to cultivate the collective giving of poker players and poker rooms around the country to make more notable donations to more mainstream 501c’s (Paralyzed Veterans of America, Make a Wish, Special Olympics, the USO, the Shriners, among others). It also becomes, imho, part of what some say is becoming a “movement” to clean up poker and make it more, er … presentable?

Also this week, as in today, is an Epic Poker charity event at Pokerati’s home room, the Palms. It’s a $240 with $100 rebuys event — hosted by Kevin Pollak, with all sorts of extra goodies overlayed — and the top three winning seats to the upcoming $1,500 Epic Pro-Am.

While this isn’t officially part of National Poker Month (I’m curious why not, too) tonight’s tournament at the Palms does benefit Fallen Heroes USA, a PG thumbs-up charity partner. Should be good times for a good cause; and who knows, maybe a Pokerati Game will break out with extra players in the mood to just be giving money away?

A lot of you know the addictive nature of buying web domains. It’s a phase young web-maestros go through when we realize, heck, it’s just $8 … but then, after buying several dozen we realize, shit, unless we wanna get in on Dutch Boyd’s action, there’s not exactly much value in squatting on web domains with no plan for development. Then we go a year forgetting to click off the auto-renew before eventually we say “enough!” and decide to take our chance on life without possession of yet another (incredibly clever) URL.

GoDaddy has been a strong supporter of poker and poker bloggers with not-so-inexpensive domain-buying habits for years.

So I’m lettin this one go — WSOPolitics.com — it’s expired and I’m not gonna renew. It was a brilliant idea ahead of its time Not sure what I was thinking, duh … so let the bidding war begin? In lieu of an option to “buy-it-now”, I’ll consider trading the web property for up to $50k on Full Tilt or the magic green dice on Zynga.

UPDATE: Ooh, pokerishy.com is available, too! Who wants it?

Full Tilt Poker has been very quiet about their non-payment to players since the Black Friday indictments effectively stopped their US facing operations. This week, however, they issued a statement that was predictable at best… blaming the Department of Justice for the payment delays. Also, J Todd looks at poker traffic on the web and welcomes two special guests.

 
Write-up to come soon….

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