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.

Recapping Sunday night’s action:

Bracelet Winners go 1-2-4 in Limit Shootout

Greg Mueller becomes the fourth double bracelet winner at this year’s WSOP, taking down the $1,500 Limit Holdem Shootout, good for $194,854 as he denied Marc Naalden his second bracelet this year. The only year where more players have won more at least two bracelets was 2003 (Ivey, Juanda, Men Nguyen, Ferguson, Chan and Flack) . Millie Shiu finished in 3rd, tied for the highest placing woman in an open WSOP event this year(Ming Reslock in the $1,500 Omaha-8 and Laurence Grondin in the $2,000 NL Holdem). David Williams finished in thirdfourth..

Lunkin Looking to Make it Five in $50k HORSE

Vitaly Lunkin, winner of the first open bracelet ($40,000 NL Holdem) leads the remaining 19 players in the $50,000 HORSE event going into day 4. Three players will make zero on their investment, as they play down to the final table today starting around 2pm. Here’s how the remaining players will be seated:

(Table 58)
Seat 1: Erik Sagstrom – 1315000
Seat 2: Erik Seidel – 464000
Seat 3: Steve Billirakis – 576000
Seat 5: David Chiu – 397000
Seat 6: Mike Wattel – 779000
Seat 7: Chau Giang – 616000

(Table 60)
Seat 1: Huck Seed – 672000
Seat 2: Ray Dehkharghani – 262000
Seat 4: Brett Richey – 671000
Seat 6: Todd Brunson – 145000
Seat 7: Vitaly Lunkin – 1527000
Seat 8: Frank Kassela – 499000

(Table 62)
Seat 1: Tony G – 642000
Seat 2: David Bach – 1265000
Seat 3: John Hanson – 815000
Seat 5: Ville Wahlbeck – 842000
Seat 6: John Kabbaj – 678000
Seat 7: Freddy Deeb – 1300000
Seat 8: Gus Hansen – 801000

Durand Looking for Durability in $1,500 NL Holdem

Day 3 of the $1,500 NL Holdem starts with 30 players remaining, with Thibaut Durand (1,650,000) holding the chip lead when play resumes around 1pm PT. Owen Crowe (1,025,000), Josh Schlein (875,000), and Alex Jacob (274,000) are the most recognizable names remaining. When the final table is eventually reached, bluffmagazine.com and wsop.pkr.com will stream all the action.

Australians go 1-2 in Triple Chance

Day 1 of the $3,000 Triple Chance NL Holdem ended with 149 players remaining and it’s two Australians who hold the top spots when play resumes around 2pm today. Tim Horan is the chip leader (149,000), followed by Harris Pavlou (137,300). Notables returning on day 2 include Jeff Lisandro, Antonio Esfandiari, Shane Schleger, Nick Binger, Mike Caro, Noah Schwartz and Praz Bansi.

Prescott Gives Field Allie Can Handle in Stud 8

Day 2 of the $1,500 Stud Hi/Lo 8 or Betterevent resumes around 2pm with 146 players remaining, with Allie Prescott leading the field with 52,500 in chips. Notables returning include Jim Geary, Annie Duke, Marcel Luske, Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein, Jon Turner, Matt Savage and Norman Chad.

Monday’s Tournaments

The 12pm $1,500 NL Holdem Donkament is already sold out, although there’s always the slim chance they’ll open a few more seats during the day. This is the seventh event of the $1,500 NL Holdem of this year’s WSOP, so it’s a “new” event, not having a winner last year. The 5pm (if it starts on time) event is the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball event, won last year by John Phan for just over $150,000 in a field of 238. The WSOP Staff Guide projects a field of 262 entries.

Today and tomorrow will both be extremely busy with six tournaments going on at the same time, so check out www.wsop.com for live updates, and Pokerati for other stuff during the day.

You may have noticed the Pokerati World Standings (presented by Betfair) for the 2009 WSOP (presented by Jack’s Links Beef Jerky) have been updated. Some interesting trends and plausibly coincidental occurrences over the past several events …

It took some time, but the Europeans have clearly arrived – now with more bracelets and final tables than California, and money won than Nevada.

Some of that came from Crocodile Lisandro, who claimed his first bracelet on behalf of Australia, but his second for Italy. Not sure how that will work out with taxes – but hey, if he wants to spread it around in the official standings, what can ya do? On that same day, Italy lost 0-3 to Brazil.

Similarly, we have our first big mistake (to be corrected on the next go-round) as it relates to Marc Naalden’s bracelet in $2,000 Limit Hold’em … which he won as a Belgian, but claims for the Dutch, the other country that runs through his border town.

ALT HED: Belgian Waffles, lol.

European newcomers to the world beyond the bubble include Portugal and PokerStarzistan Isle of Man.

Perhaps inspired and educated by neighboring Russians, Alaskans, specifically Alaskan’s from Wasilla, keep cashing.

Boooo Kentucky!

One of the other “bad” states representing at the WSOP is Washington. They had four players cash in $2k Limit Hold’em, which in and of itself would not seem like a major accomplishment in a 446-player field … but here all four made the final table.

In the way Northeast of North America, Newfoundland finally got on the board, as did Vermont — leaving Wyoming as the only state to not pop into Vegas and pick up some WSOP cash.

California is still unbeaten — batting 38-for-38 in this year’s WSOP — but just barely, thanks to Isaac Baron’s lone Cali-cash (10th place) in the $5k PLO.

When you’re done scrolling through the Standings, get your European poker news at Betfair.

Roland deWolfe, the most recent WSOP bracelet winner, representin’ the GBR Joe Elliot-style.

One of today’s bracelets goes to Sweden. Any chance Tomas Alenius will request the Finnish national anthem be played — you know, to make things right in Scandiland? Doubt it …

In addition to Alenius’ bracelet, the UK picked up two in recent days, and Canada one — making things start to look a bit more normal … it’s not all about the Russians this year. In fact, are they still here?

And though Europe has caught up with the two US powerhouses (Nevada and California), they actually lost a bracelet (and some other cashes), as we’ve corrected Jeff Lisandro’s results to show up on behalf of his new homeland, Australia. (This way this data is collected, player info comes from whatever’s attached to their Harrah’s Total Rewards card … so if they haven’t updated their info in, say, several years … the old address is what’s on record.)

Lisandro’s defection from Italy to a land down under also altered the tertiary emerging market standings — with Asia-Pacific re-taking a slight lead over Latin America — despite Chile and Bolivia getting their first cashes of the year.

Texas has finally taken down a bracelet, btw.

And a player from Wasilla, Alaska, finished in the money — there’s a town we wouldn’t have taken note of in last year’s WSOP. It’s Canadian neighbors in the Yukon Territory also got on the board.

Hong Kong also made some money.

And though we don’t really track by cities, apparently Chicago is really good at sit-n-gos, as the Windy City sat three players at the final table in the $1,500 NLH-Shootout. Could just be variance, of course, but for now we’ll pretend it’s not.

An appellate court in Washington State has reached a decision in the on-going battle against that state’s online gambling ban. Plus, does our industry now have to be concerned over internet filtering from Oz?

In this special episode, I begin interviewing possible Benjo scabs should the Tao of Pokerati’s non-American correspondent go on strike and find none other than Garthmeister J sitting with a big stack during the first break in a $110, 100-player Binion’s tourney. Our favorite work-vacationing Aussie gets his jabs in, calling Benjo his favorite Tao of Pokerati personality “that crazy French guy on crank”, while learnin’ us on why American beer is like sex in a canoe and why Binion’s will always hold a special place in his poker heart.

Book 9: Coup d’ePoker (feat. Garthmeister J)
Episode 9.1: Poker on, Garth 4:24

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Also, an extra-special guest appearance reminding us that Tao of Pokerati is the favorite poker podcast of former members of Public Enemy, and that black could theoretically be a foreign accent, too.

Interesting article out of Australia about the development of bots at the online poker tables. (via Live Action Poker.)

While this “threat” is real … the truth is bot-prejudice is already taking root in the non-poker world. Think how much you hate it when an automated voice calls you on the phone — guess what, that’s a bot, too. So how these non-human entities get regulated in poker would set some semblance of a precedent for how the non-poker world eventually has to deal with them.

Yes, there are things going on in Hollywood besides Britney Spears’ life crumbling before our eyes and Sally Field’s speech at the Emmy’s being censored by Fox.

Personally, Survivor isn’t one of my favorite shows but I’m tuning in this season (Thursdays at 8pm PST on CBS) because Survivor: China features poker’s own Jean-Robert Bellande. Bobby did well on the first episode, and rumors circulate that he doesn’t get voted off anytime soon. My only question is… Did he have to take a slow boat to China and make straw huts to get his chance at a million dollars? Sure, it’s a freeroll, but still…

Speaking of crazy, Russell Crowe has been known to do some ridiculous things, like throwing that telephone at a NYC hotel employee, but now he’s taking his antics to moral ground. He has decided that he doesn’t want poker machines in his sports club – or any Australian clubs or leagues – because a study revealed that some of the players use their welfare money to play. Ummm, that’s how gambling has survived the test of time, Russell. Duh.

Gambling brings us to the film Lucky You that was released in theaters back in May. The odds were against it from the start, not only because it was released on the same day as Spiderman 3, but it was a disappointing movie. Warner Bros. had an acclaimed producer/director, all-star cast, and even true poker pros as extras and consultants, but it just flopped. (Eliminate Drew Barrymore and it might have been less painful…) Well, the DVD is now available for rental or purchase. Do what you wish with your spare change.

And let’s end with Jose Canseco. He and a group of men showed up at the California State Poker Championship series to play in the… wait for it… Ladies No-Limit Hold’em tournament. Either long-term use of steroids confuse the brain, or he was making a point that ladies-only tournaments are discriminatory. Wouldn’t women go absolutely nutty if a casino tried to keep them out of a tournament? Seriously, let’s turn the poker tables here.

Photo courtesy of PokerPadz & London Gallagher