Old news, but first time I’m seeing it … (thanks KevMath for the embed code) … a very positive-for-poker segment on Good Morning America, with George Stephanopolous playing a private Poker After Dark sunrise sit-n-go against Annie Duke, Phil Hellmuth, Jason Lee, and Steve Begleiter. George played admirably and finished 3rd, after getting it in with the best hand.

Nice. What I couldn’t help but notice:

• Sweet mini-gig for Ali Nejad, getting to host an event on Good Morning America.
• Duke, who understands a thing or two about Washington and proper patching up, wore no UB.
• Hellmuth did however — and not just UB.net, but dot-COM. Did Phil miss a memo or something?

Seriously, not to take away from the respectability of this sorta TV play … nice job by all, and hearing Stephanopolous declare his excitement about playing Ante Up for Africa-DC probably couldn’t have been a better result. But really … UB.COM? Notably either bold, ignorant, or inconsequential.

It really is getting almost eerie the success “mindset” guru Sam Chauhan’s clients are finding at the poker table … not to mention in the MMA octagons. If you haven’t noticed, Chauhan is the non-player who has been showing up all over various poker places of late. He’s currently the subject of the cover story in the April issue of Bluff Magazine (by Lance Bradley), which tells how a guy who hardly knows the difference between suited connectors and a busted flush draw has helped turn around results for Antonio Esfandiari, Paul Wasicka, Gavin Smith, and the ever-tiltable Phil Hellmuth.

But since that story went to press, Chauhan has put up even more impressive results — most recently standing by the side of newly crowned WPT World Champion David Williams. In fact, three of the Top 16 finishers were Chauhan clients, two of whom made it to the final table. (Hellmuth went out on the TV bubble.) Away from poker, he gets credit (at least a small percentage, based on coaching deals we’ve learned about) for helping rising MMA star Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal take the Strikeforce light heavyweight title from Gegard Mousasi, who was a 3-to-1 favorite in the match.

That all kinda blows my theory that the key to Williams’ re-found success had everything to do with his new hair. Check out the video snippet below of a bushy-fro’d Williams stepping outside the Fontana room for some mantra and affirmation exercises before taking his seat at the final table:

Wow, that’s all there is to it? Didn’t realize winning at anything, let alone life, was so easy. Seems like if you could turn that into an iPhone app Sammy might really be able to help people. Chauhan, however, is not without his haters (just ask Google). But poker players know you can only get super-lucky so many times.

ALT HED: Mind over Variance

Check out his site at MindsetVT.com.

The longest day of the $25,000 WPT World Championship at the Bellagio took place on Friday, as the remaining 10 players took their sweet time getting down to the televised final table of six. When play finally ended, it was Full Tilt Pro David Benyamine who was the chip leader by just 5,000 chips over David Williams, who eliminated an extremely short stacked Phil Hellmuth in 7th place. Video of that final hand appears below, thanks to a company called All360Poker, which has been filming select tables during the WPT World Championship, including yesterday’s table. It’s a 360-degree camera that shows the entire table, and allows the viewer to click within the image to select a different POV of the action around the table.

[ED NOTE: Video removed because of autoplay]

Here’s how the final six players will be situated when play resumes around 4:30pm PT:

Seat 1. John O’Shea – 1,200,000
Seat 2. Billy Baxter – 2,440,000
Seat 3. Eric Baldwin – 4,490,000
Seat 4. David Williams – 4,700,000
Seat 5. David Benyamine – 4,705,000
Seat 6. Shawn Buchanan – 1,965,000

Follow the live updates with BJ Nemeth, Jess Welman and the rest of the WPT Live Updates crew here.

For the third time in seven weeks, a woman has won a major poker tournament. Today, it was UB sponsored pro Liv Boeree the winner of the PokerStars.it EPT San Remo event, officially winning 1,250,000 Euros (about $1.7m US), defeating Jakob Carlsson in heads-up play. Below is a clip of the winning hand:

Meanwhile at the WPT World Championship, Heather Sue Mercer started Day 4 second in chips (1,364,000) with 35 players remaining. The only woman to win a non-ladies WPT event was Van Nguyen’s win at the sorta-open 2008 WPT Invitational. Among other notables remaining when play resumes at noon PT: Shawn Buchanan (1,841,000), Billy Baxter (887,500), Faraz Jaka (856,000), Phil Hellmuth (806,500), David Benyamine (731,000) Carlos Mortensen (586,000) and JJ Liu (495,000). Follow the live updates over at the the World Poker Tour site.

UPDATE: Mercer out in 20th

Here’s the latest episode — a good one with Phil Hellmuth in studio talking a little EPT-Berlin robbery, significance of the NBC Heads-up, and his recent non-collapse collapse at Bay 101.

They also talk with his “mindset coach” Sam Chauhan … and the process of keeping players focussed.

It doesn’t get weird until Andrew Feldman and Bernard Lee start to talk about Hellmuth shirtless.

The final table of the Bay 101 Shooting Stars Classic concluded early Saturday morning as McLean Karr, down to just 10 big blinds with 27 players left when day 3 started, winning $878,500, which includes a $25,000 WPT Championship seat, defeating Andy “BKiCe” Seth in heads-up play. Phil Hellmuth was the first elimination at the final table, when his QQ lost to Seth’s AJ when another ace hit the river, causing Hellmuth to curl up in the fetal position, leading Tony G to blog an open letter to Hellmuth, expressing concern for his mental health after his stunning elimination. Here’s the full results from the final table:

1 McLean Karr $878,500 including $25k WPT seat
2 Andy Seth $521,200
3 Daniel O’Brien $292,800
4 Hasan Habib $234,300
5 Matt Keikoan $175,700
6 Phil Hellmuth $117,000

Here’s an interview tournament director Matt Savage had with McLean and friend Maria Ho after his win:

After having what he admitted was his worst year in poker last year, Phil Hellmuth decided some changes were in order. In his blog from February, Hellmuth hired mindset coach Sam Chauhan and had a battery of tests among other changes to get his poker game back to the when he was considered by more than himself as the best player in the world. It appears to be paying off this week, as Hellmuth has made the final table of the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars Main Event Friday afternoon. Here’s how the rest of the final table will be seated when play resumes around 4pm PT (results come from the Hendon Mob Database):

Seat 1: Hasan Habib – 455,000
Seat 2: Phil Hellmuth – 1,433,000
Seat 3: Andy “BKiCe” Seth – 2,164,000
Seat 4: Matt Keikoan – 371,000
Seat 5: Mclean Karr – 1,112,000
Seat 6: Dan O’Brien – 1,129,000

Other big names who missed the final table: Scotty Nguyen (8th), “Miami John” Cernuto (11th), Nick Schulman (13th), Chau Giang (14th), and current WPT Player of the Year leader Faraz Jaka (18th). Live updates will be available from BJ Nemeth and the other good people over at the WorldPokerTour.com site.

In other news related to Hellmuth, Ultimate Bet has decided to cancel the 2010 Aruba Classic as they decided to expand their offerings online, including having a second Ultimate Bet Online Championship series each year.

Valentine’s Day was the debut of season 6 of GSN’s most popular show, High Stakes Poker. AJ Benza is no longer on the show, replaced by Kara Scott to provide some player interviews, leaving Gabe Kaplan to provide commentary solo. This would have been up earlier if GSN decided to put the full episode on Youtube, but they decided to only put it up on their own site.

The rules for the 2010 World Series of Poker were released this afternoon, with the obligatory press release appearing on the next page. To alleviate the fears of Phil Hellmuth, there has NOT been a change to what logos a player can be sporting. There were some minor changes to reflect the latest rules published by the Poker TDA, as well as some changes for players who choose to register late (Rule #12) and clarification for those who registered but don’t show up (Rule #14). Also of note is there was a change to the rule regarding cell phones and electronic devices that “banned” the Iphone, Blackberry, Itouch, and similar devices has been removed for 2010 in light of the immense popularity of Twitter. One other new rule that someone pointed out on 2+2, part of rule 37 about player conduct (bolding is my emphasis):

B. All participants are entitled to expect civility and courtesy from one another at every Tournament table and throughout the Tournament area. Any individual who encounters behavior that is not civil or courteous — or is abusive in any way — is encouraged to immediately contact a Tournament official. This shall include, but is not limited to, any player whose personal hygiene has become disruptive to the other players seated at their table. The determination as to whether an individual’s personal hygiene is disruptive to other players shall be determined by the Tournament Staff which may, in its discretion, implement sanctions upon any such player who refuses to remedy the situation in a manner satisfactory to Rio.

More…

This shoulda gone up about two-and-a-half months ago … but hey, we were busy with the November Nine and Tiger Woods was busy banging every chick in Vegas who ever said “call me!” … not to mention posing for photoshopped covers of Golf Digest with advice for Barack Obama. No wonder he didn’t have time to be smoking pot with Michael Phelps …

Still, before golf officially decided to go the degen route — or perhaps in preparation for it? — Golf Magazine ran a feature in their November issue about Phil Hellmuth, Layne Flack, Erick Lindgren, and Gavin Smith hitting the Las Vegas links, apparently foreshadowing the concept of risking big-big bucks on every hole:

Golf Magazine feature on High Stakes Poker Players Golfing

This week, featuring Phil Hellmuth in studio for an interview, a preview of the WPT Doyle Brunson Classic at the Bellagio, Chino Rheem (the defending champion) discussing a key hand with Justin Young, and other stuff. As usual, parts 2 and 3 appear on the next page:

More…

The Poker PROducers showing they can feed the poker die-hards:

This week, and next, Poker After Dark is forgoing its usual $20,000 short-handed sit-n-go (yawn) for a Full Tilty high-stakes cash game with a $100k min and $250k max buy-in. (No rebuys maybe? Not sure … ). The players: Tom Dwan, Patrik Antonius, Phil Ivey, and Gus Hansen + Daniel Negreanu (representing PokerStars) and Phil Hellmuth thrown in for good measure.

I’m guessing Mori Eskandani doesn’t know who Isildur1 is either?

While PAD generally makes solid stumble-upon viewing, it’s been a while since they’ve assembled such a unique game that should play as real what everyone’s been watching on their computer screens lately. Sounds like there should be a lot of interesting (big) hands … and you gotta wonder just how much at least four of these people really want to give up about their cash-game play under the watchful eye of the hole-card cam.

I also wonder: would they ever do a similar show with the game being Omaha? The biggest hands (in history) these days seem to be playing out mostly in PLO … but conventional poker wisdom says, supposedly, that non-Texas hold’em doesn’t play well on TV.

I gotta say, @Phil_Hellmuth really is turning into one of the best poker reporters out there … I read his blog, follow his tweets and generally occasionally love his vids; you can tell he is actively working on his 21st-century media game.

Most recently, at his own TASER Foundation charity tourney in Phoenix — the biggest high-society charity poker shindig of the year in Arizona — he was there to report on Brandon Cantu’s being shot with a taser gun … Cantu was paying off a prop-bet he lost at last year’s event with Clonie Gowen.

Damn, ouch … but cool … didn’t realize you could bounce back so quickly from those things.

BTW, an extra-funny … @DonkeyBomber was there as one of the “star poker players” who help make the event extra fun for the Big Charity donors who play … but even on his home turf, our favorite business-exec-turned-author-turned-2007-WSOP-POY-turned-struggling-poker-pro is no Layne Flack or even Roy Winston:

More…

Did I just miss this movie, or is it due out soon? Gotta say, I’m kinda intrigued, despite Phil Hellmuth’s involvement:

Here’s the official movie website — I think maybe it was a straight-to-DVD thing? It did get nominated for Best Short Drama at the Leo Awards, whatever they may or may not be.

Just like Panorama Towers (across the street from the Rio) seems to be the place to live if you are a bachelor/ette Las Vegas poker pro … N9NE Steakhouse (across the street from the Rio), seems to be a regular dining joint for the poker elite.

This in from our Palms spy earlier today/yesterday:

Greetings,

Poker legend Phil Hellmuth dined at N9NE Steakhouse inside Palms Casino Resort Thursday night (11.12.09). Accompanied by three friends, Hellmuth enjoyed a rib eye and a beer.

That’s it, he was the only notable person there on Thursday. We can only imagine how disappointing it musta been for Phil to find no pro athletes or music stars to exchange cell phone numbers with. Things were different about three weeks ago (sorry, leftover sighting) when, according to our embed, “Matchbox 20 lead singer Rob Thomas was dining downstairs at N9NE, as were former Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer and “Glee” actor Mark Salling, who ordered lobster potstickers and a kobe burger.”

+Devilfish palling around with (aging) British boy-bander

That same night:

In Playboy Club English professional gambler and poker player David Ulliott (known by the nickname Devilfish), was joined by six guests including entertainer Matt Goss who arrived later in the evening with 15 other guests. The group was drinking Ketel One cocktails.

Devilfish’s mate (in the British sense) Matt Goss is, according to an LA Times blog, “the hottest Vegas act you haven’t heard of” … and the newest musician in residence at the Palms. (He sold nearly 20 million albums 20 years ago.)

In lieu of our semi-regular Friday Night Video(s), here’s Goss’ new single, which features writhing chicks in lingerie amidst plenty of poker action: