Another weekend with little activity in the poker world except for the WPT Championship, the WPT Championship’s low turnout, Shaun Deeb acting a greedy player by winning again, and players whining about expired Diamond Cards. I’ll take the slow times this week as next weekend brings about a daily overload of WSOP events and before the degens go broke.

Shaun Deeb is just showing off now. Gave him props last week and I guess it was a little too early as he went one louder by winning the $2,100 H.O.R.S.E. for another $46,000 and change. With his other three titles this SCOOP series coming in Stud events, I’ll just make the assumption that he sat out during the Hold’em and Omaha portions of the tournament just to keep it fair.

The only other events of note leading to the WPT Championship this weekend were the Cal State Poker Championship and Heartland Poker Tour Main Events. 316 players entered the Matt Savage operated Cal State Main Event and Nathan Bjerno won the Big Bear trophy and $133,075 after a heads up chop. Just missing out on the final table were David “The Dragon” Pham*, Allen Cunningham, and Gavin Griffin.

The latest Heartland Poker Tour stop was at the Majestic Star Casino located in lovely Gary, Indiana (aka East Chicago). HPT has been running hot this season and just missed a record field at this event, although they topped their numbers from 2011. Daniel Acevedo was the last player standing at the televised final table and picked up $133,081.

* – Not a real dragon

This Week’s Boxscore

Shaun Deeb $46,325 PokerStars SCOOP $2,100 H.O.R.S.E.
Nathan Bjerno $133,075 Cal State Poker Championship
Daniel Acevedo $133,081 HPT Majestic Star

Link Dump

White House Responds to Online Poker Petition – Thousands of poker players (but not tens of thousands) signed a capitlization-challenged petition calling on the US Government to licence and regulate online poker. Brian Deese, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, responded with a 339 word “thanks but no thanks”. I’m sure Gaming Counsel might have a more articulate read than mine.

New World Series of Poker Bracelet – The WSOP unveiled their newest champion’s bracelet, which apparently diminishes the accomplishements of THE previous Main Event winners.

Wait until you guys see the WSOP Main Event bracelet.Let’s just say this is THE year to win the Main Event. #blingerisbetter

— WSOP(@WSOP) May 17, 2012

I realize it’s just a marketing blurb meant to pump up the excitement, but I imagine the bracelet could be the most hideous piece of jewelry in the world and it wouldn’t stop players from trying to win the Main Event.

WPT Championship Numbers Down – I meant to write a few words on the significant decrease in the WPT Championship field size but ESPN Poker’s Andrew Feldman 1) beat me to it and 2) is a better writer than this hack. He lays out several reasons for the decline including SCOOP, Black Friday, and the Bellagio treating the event like crap. It will be interesting to see the numbers from the WSOP this summer.

The Micros are back! – A kind of back. The brilliant minds behind the popular web series released a comic the other day to which we can all relate. Enjoy.

Click image to embiggen

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Hi, my name is Al. You may know me on twitter as @AlCantHang, or not. Doesn’t much matter. I recently found myself with a lot of time on my hands when the latest job to support my nomadic lifestyle ended up in the bankruptcy courts. I suppose that is a little better than my other former employer who is currently under indictment by the Department of Justice. so when Dan asked if I was available to help him row the Pokerati boat, I said sure, criminal background check pending.

Nowhere better to start than what happened over the last few days in the poker world. It’s been pretty slow on the live poker scene as players get ready for the move to Vegas for the WPT World Championship and the 2012 WSOP. That didn’t stop us from seeing big things online, especially during the PokerStars SCOOP series.

Shaun Deeb is a sicko. First he crushes the major online games back in the olden days when we could still play in the States then “retires” at the ripe age of 24 then comes back like nothing changed. Now he’s just making a mockery of the latest PokerStars SCOOP Player of the Year race by winning three tournaments for over $120,000. All three titles were in some variant of Stud but I will leave the jokes for the comments below.

This Week’s Boxscore

Shaun Deeb $41,600 PokerStars SCOOP $2,100 STUD
Shaun Deeb $44,200 PokerStars SCOOP $2,100 Triple Stud
Shaun Deeb $40,330 PokerStars SCOOP $2,100 Stud Hi/Lo

Link Dump

Dear Shaun Deeb – Deebs exploits prompted this great post from our friend Brad over on the PokerStarsBlog. Instead of spending time with his family on Mother’s Day, he was “forced” to watch Deeb go for glory. And this was written before he won his third SCOOP title of the year.

World Poker Tour Season XI Schedule Announced – The first part of the new WPT schedule was released including all dates through the end of the year with plenty of National and Regional action. For the first time since the start of the World Poker Tour, Foxwoods World Poker Finals does not appear on the schedule.

Poker World Record Attempt 2012 – I only found out this news thanks to my twitter account catching a random follower. It looks like Barry Denson will be the next player to attempt to break the streak of 155 hours set by Phil Laak in 2010. Denson will be using his powers for good as he will use the event for charitable means, benefiting Hope for Heroes. To date they have raised £30.

Women in Poker Hall of Fame Nominations – Nominations are now open for the 2012 Women in Poker Hall of Fame class to join past inductees who include Linda Johnson, Jan Fisher, Jennifer Harman, and Kathy Liebert. The Induction Ceremony will take place on August 31st at the Golden Nugget.

That’s it for a pretty slow week but things will pick up during the weekend with WSOP-C and Cal State Poker Championship Main Events along with plenty of online action to finish up the SCOOP action. We’re also just a few weeks away from hearing stories about degenerate poker players dropping water balloons from Panorama Towers, so we’ll keep an eye on the police reports and emergency home owners association meetings.

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In the weeks leading up to the World Series of Poker, grinders all over Vegas start making big plans. Even small-stakes guys like me and my friends want a piece of the action. But with the major online sites shuttered for US players, we must hunt for a way to qualify for a bracelet event.

WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart told reporters that Caesars properties would increase satellites leading up to the series.

Caesars Palace just launched its WSOP Warm-Up, running through May 20, with tournaments as low as $130 that have $20,000 guaranteed prize pools and $1,000 WSOP seats.

My friends and I decided to skip those tournaments for now — thinking we’d hit a few of the smaller Caesars properties to increase our chances of scoring a seat. These rooms wouldn’t be as packed with local grinders, we figured, and the games would be less volatile.

With the construction of the Caesars’ Linq project underway, the Imperial Palace poker room moved from the front of the casino, by which all the tourists would stumble, to a rather inconvenient spot up on the third floor.

“I don’t get it. They had such a great location,” said one of my poker buddies — an out-of-towner who takes most of his vacations to Vegas.

More…

Lawsuits and bankruptcies are a corporate voyeur’s dream. Legal disclosures offer an upskirt peak at a company’s financial panties. In the case of Federated Sports & Gaming, parent of the troubled Epic Poker League, bankruptcy filings reveal a full-fledged internet domain-name fetish. Literally hundreds of domain names were listed among Federated’s personal property … and in that list, perhaps, lies a bigger story about Epic’s intent.

Companies often buy variants of their own domain names to foil malicious cyber squatters and aid surfers prone to typos and spelling errors. This explains why Federated bought epicpoker.us, epicpoker.xxx, eepicpoker.com and eapicpoker.com along with its primary domain name, epicpoker.com. 

Perhaps proving Federated was more psychic than solvent, epicpokerfail.com and epicpokerfailure.com were among the company’s portfolio of web properties. Of course my favorite was fuckepicpoker.com.

And why epicpokerstars.com but no epicfulltiltpoker.com?

It’s hard to know whether names like epicbridge.com, epiccasino.com, epiccheckers.com and epicsportsbook.com represent Federated’s expansion plans, reveal a business model dependent on online gambling legalization, or was just the results of a bad case of domain-name OCD. 

The list goes on and on — everything from palmspoker.eu, .net, and .co.uk to epicscotch/rum/tequila.com — and you can only wonder what market verticals Epic was thinking about when they locked down ticklemedanny.com.

But particularly curious are dozens of web addresses starting with “wicked” — wickedpoker.com, wickedchess.com, wickedbasketball.com, etc. Since Federated isn’t based in Boston, this presumably has something to do with the talented boys over at Wicked Chops Poker. No wonder their coverage of the #EpicFail has been so … well … I hear they had to take last week off just to search for the near-NSFW pics to pair with their story of who ultimately got who’s what in the end.

Read the relevant bankruptcy court document here.

UPDATE: Wicked Chops apparently has more to say on this matter — and they’re naming names! Not just domain names, but real human ones too.

The Stratosphere’s quaint 10-table poker room sits in the back of the casino, past a row of slot machines, craps tables, another row of slot machines, down the ramp past Roxy’s Diner, near the escalators to the Top of the World restaurant — just before the Double Down Pit and Back Alley Bar. On Thursday, there was a sole 1-2NL table of action about 30 minutes before the nightly tournament.

You’d hardly know that this room has supposedly become the new Sahara when it comes to Las Vegas’ most popular small buy-in dailies — with the 7pm event drawing consistent fields of 50 players or more.

I approached the podium and purchased a seat for the event. The buy-in is $45 for 4,500 in chips, plus a $20 add-on that gives you 4,000 more chips, which you can purchase any time within the first hour. (There’s also an option for unlimited re-entry within that time frame.)  With 20-minute levels, that add-on is necessary, especially considering there are no automatic shufflers in the tournament tables.

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Here’s a “big” poker happening @CLVPoker catering to a different kinda dbag … the Caesars MBA Poker Championship.

It’s a closed tournament open only to current MBA students and accredited MBA alumni (please show your proof of registration or diploma at the window?) … but with a few hundred chicks and dudes hoping to power-suit their way to the personal 1-percenthood coming to town for multiple days — and tourney instructions that say: “this event has traditionally attracted players who are familiar with Texas Hold-em (so we suggest you read up on the rules before you arrive)” — it might be worth checking out.

Competing with the cash games for their Business School interests are a bunch of “networking seminars” — which are supposedly what draw the MBAers here on this special (to them) pokery weekend.

Check out the vid of what the Caesars Empire currently has populating one poker corner of the Las Vegas Strip:

One of my favorite charity tourneys of the year is this Saturday — Operation All In … Randy Couture’s  poker tournament and charity auction benefitting his Xtreme Couture GI Foundation. Karina Jett hosts the event, so you can expect her usual brand of fun and merry band of Full Tilt Red Pros in exile. And because OAI is more MMAish than pokery … well, let’s just say you can be sure to see some rather douchetastic! unique table interaction. And with a reasonable buy-in ($220 w $100 rebuys), you stand to get a fair share of genuine downtown tourists, too — excited by their chance to play with the fighters more so than the poker pros.

The winner gets $10k in cold American cash this year, too … no fancy qualifiers for some future maybe-cool new event in some other country. And though I haven’t personally looked into how legit Randy Couture’s foundation is, I do get a sense he takes the effort kinda personally and isn’t going to let the funds raised here get squandered en route to the beneficiaries. For many soldiers, the war isn’t over just because they are starting to come home.

It’s been an interesting relationship in Vegas between mixed martial arts and poker over the past 12 or so years … the state of which will be on display in the form of tax-deductible feelgood poker … this weekend at the Golden Nugget.

Read below for official deets on what’s going down.

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La Sengphet took down another one on the WSOP-circuit — winning a $345 NLH at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, Calif. for her fourth WSOP-C victory (third in a ring-bearing event) and a $25k payday. Her other half, David Clark, made a final table the day before, and won his second ring just a couple stops earlier at WSOP-Tahoe. Their story is becoming sickeningly charming … perhaps even inspirational … showing that true love and poker success can go hand-in-hand for a couple of old-fashioned rounders making their way across an ever-unpredictable poker landscape.

(That, or … Go Team Pokerati!)

More…

It feels like we’ve been talking about Caesars going public since before they were Caesars (we have) … but their latest S1/A filing with the SEC suggests not only that CZR really is might be ready to kick it Zynga-style with a big fat IPO … but also that any public offering from the worldwide gambling empire may be in preparation for imminent legalization of US online poker.

While such hefty levels of high finance are still probably a little beyond my ken … you can read the nearly 300 pages of Big Casino corporate speak and decide for yourself. Somewhere in here, I’m pretty sure, is a blueprint for the future of poker and/or online gambling.

At a minimum, I found this snippet on page 7 suggesting that Caesars is getting ready for something big related to online gambling poker:

We believe that additional jurisdictions will legalize online gaming due to consumer demand, a broader understanding of the need to regulate the industry and to generate income through taxes on gaming revenue. As such, we support efforts to regulate the online gaming industry to ensure that consumers are protected. We believe that the potential for online gaming is substantial and believe that we will command, at a minimum, our fair share in any legal jurisdiction. An H2 Gaming Capital study conducted in 2010 projects that the global online gaming market will grow to $36 billion in revenues by 2012. We believe that the largest opportunity in online gaming in the near term is the legalization of online poker in the United States. [emphasis added]

There’s tons more in this document worthy of perusal … some of which I’ve already skimmed. And it doesn’t take much to see how an actual Caesars IPO — not just talk of it — could-well coincide with legalized American online poker hubbub (finally!) reaching critical mass.

Caesars, after all, formerly known as Harrah’s, was a publicly traded company until going private shortly after passage of the UIGEA in 2006. Changed their name to Caesars in November 2010 — the last time they prepped seriously for an IPO (right after their boy Harry Reid won re-election and owed them a favor) only to withdraw plans for a public offering of stock shares right after someone told them the lame-duck online poker Reid bill was just a farce for other political purposes a couple weeks later.

Oh, almost forgot to tell you … two Pokerati Game players are/were bounties in this weekend’s Epic Poker Pro-Am satellites. Both have far more accomplishments to their Hendon Mob cred than just playing 1/2 NLH/PLO with me, obv … but still, happy to declare that this is plausibly proof that playing in the Pokerati Game at the Palms is key to satellite success.

Kathy played yesterday, and Stacey takes her seat in just a couple hours — so get to the game @PalmsPokerRm ASAP! Today’s event is a $100 NLH with $50 rebuys. More Epic satellite details here.

Every “professional” poker player has some sort of a story as to how they found themselves with that job title. A lot of kids on the scene nowadays spent the majority of their free time in college grinding online and getting really good… so good that they didn’t see much point in getting a job working for somebody else, and naturally continued to grind after they left school. You hear about other people who had jobs they lost, and then turned to poker, a field that is always accepting new applicants without any need to update your resume or buy a tie for interviews. And there are those who had jobs, some good, but always unfulfilling compared to the allure of being your own boss and the thrill of using your wits to earn a cash payment every day on your own terms.

Life as a professional poker player has been a massive learning experience, of which the strategy and theory is only a small part of the process. You have to learn how to LIVE as a poker player …

More…

 

Germany’s Pius Heinz eventually wore down the Czech Republic’s Martni Staszko after over 100 hands of heads-up play to win the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event, earning a cool $8,715.638 and coveted gold and diamond bracelet. Staszko settles for runner-up money of $5,433,086 as Ben Lamb earns $4,021,138 after playing only four hands Tuesday night.

 

If you want to read about what happened Tuesday night, check out Pauly’s live blog from the Rio. Nolan Dalla also has a final table recap and a review of the 2011 WSOP chock full of information. Short-Stacked Shamus’ 15-minute delayed live blog gives a view of the action from the comfort of his home.  You can also catch a replay of the final table at ESPN3.com.

Finally, catch up on Pauly and Michalski’s Tao of Pokerati podcasts from Nov. 9 weekend here.

Things ready to get underway … Ben Lamb vs. Pius Heinz vs. Martin Staszko. The score is 55 to 108 to 43 … ball on the 600k/1.2mm yard line. The Pius Heinz fans are singing songs in 57 varieties of central European … big hairy Sasquatch is tromping through the crowd giving WSOP fist-bumps … and the Ben Lamb camp is hootin’ it up something fierce. The guy in the actual lamb costume gets on stage with Vegas hoochie-hottie dancers for a few bumps and grinds before Ty Stewart, the noble WSOP shepherd, realizes he’s not part of the show and diplomatically encourages him back to the stands. Woulda been cooler to see cops with billy clubs dart from the sidelines and deck him like a streaker, but hey, maybe next year.

To keep you entertained in the 15 minutes of interim before what’s going on here in the Penn and Teller Theater makes it into the WSOP cloud … enjoy the Brett Richey rap song about Ben Lamb, with a line inspired by Team Pokerati’s favorite crazy DonkeyBomber spouse, Julie Schneider, in “Stack ‘em to the Top”:

via DonkDown

UPDATE: Ben Lamb all-in on first hand! 35bb v 22bb … No suckout …

Phil Collins is no longer at the WSOP Main Event final table, but that doesn’t stop me or many others from breaking out a classic Genesis album from the 1970′s. Around 5:50pm PT tonight (8:50pm ET, 2:50pm in the UK) Pius Heinz, Ben Lamb and Martin Staszko will return to the Penn & Teller Theatre in a battle where the winner earns $8.7 million while second and third place will have to settle for $5.4 million and $4.0m respectively.

Here’s the chip counts when action kicks off again tonight with the blinds starting at 600,000/1,200,000 with an ante of 200,000:

Seat 1: Pius Heinz – 107,800,000
Seat 2: Ben Lamb – 55,400,000
Seat 3: Martin Staszko – 42,700,000

 

Hand for hand updates at PokerNews and WSOP.com. PokerNews also has a chat going off the ESPN broadcast here.

ESPN will start their 15-minutes delayed coverage at 6:00pm PT, 9:00 ET. Streaming will be available at www.watchespn.com as well as the WSOP.com site.

Some twitterers to follow tonight for live updating:

@taopauly, @oskargarcia @howardstutz @casekeefer @pokernews @jesswelman @bluffmagazine @pokerlistings @lance_bradley @eric_ramsey @donnie_peters @avpoker

Live blogging from Pauly while Shamus will be blogging a few minutes behind the coverage.

Expect Tao of Pokerati episodes throughout the night.

 

6:35pm UPDATE: Ben Lamb was eliminated on the 4th hand after Staszko doubled up on the first hand: 77 >KJ to become crippled. Lamb shoved with Q6 into Staszko’sJJ and didn’t improve to earn $4,021,138 as Staszko takes the chip lead.  Here’s what Lamb got shortly after being eliminated:

 

6:50pm UPDATE: Heinz has dominated the early action heads-up to regain the lead with 132 million chips to Staszko’s 73 million.

7:40pm UPDATE: Staszko has gone on a rush as the blinds are now at 800,000/1,600,000/200,000 to retake the lead 110.65m – 95.25m

8:30pm UPDATE: Staszko gave up his lead, but turned up the aggression once again to hold a 113.6m – 92.3m chip lead. Heinz appears tired while Staszko has renewed confidence.

9:25pm UPDATE: The lead has now changed hands for a seventh time heads-up as Heinz wins several hands in a row to hold a 116.9m to 89m chip lead as the blinds go up to 1,000,000/2,000,000 with a 300,000 ante.

10:20 UPDATE: Now Staszko takes the lead once again as he wins several hands in a row as he now takes a commanding lead again: 146.6m to 59.3m.

11:30pm UPDATE: The poker media is getting restless as the heads-up battle rages on. Staszko had Heinz under 45m in chips, but the gap has been narrowed. Staszko leads 132.8m to 73.1m for Heinz.

12:00am UPDATE: Over 100 hands of heads-up play and not a single hand featured an all-in and call. That would change shortly after the blinds went up to 1,200,000/2,400,000 with an ante of 300,000. Heinz shoved with Ah Qh on a Ks Tc 7c flop. Staszko called with Qc 9c. The turn and river bricked out and Heinz now leads with 161.5m chips to Staszko’s 44.4m.

Good times at the WSOP … thanks for hanging with Pauly and me as we use this opportunity to try out some newfangled podcast technology. You know, kinda like ESPN and the WSOP (and NGCB) are trying out newfangled technology with this whole “live” broadcast thing. (Once upon a time we used those “quotes” around the word “live” for mockery. But now, at just 15 minutes off of reality, no less sarcasm intended.)

Episode numbering seems to be the only tricky thing … and maybe using the geo-locator toggle. But it didn’t seem to matter as we sought the best way to insta-podcast the exciting highlights “semi-live” as the November Nine whittled down to the three that ultimately would matter tonight, in a few hours, live from the Penn & Teller Theater, and “live” on ESPN and possibly in your pocket:

Nov. Nine – Giannetti Lives (Ep 5) by taopokerati

Dan and Pauly are ringside for a decisive hand between Matt Giannetti and Martin Staszko. Giannetti was crippled on the previous hand and moved all-in. Staszko called with a dominated hand. Dan and Pauly call the action….

Tao of Pokerati: Quad Lambs by Pokerati

Tao of Pokerati: Non-silence of the Lamb at Penn & Teller Theater by Pokerati