The final table of the Epic Poker League Main Event at the Palms is now set as the remarkable year of Erik Seidel continues with another final table. He’ll attempt to improve on his 2nd place finish to Chino Rheem in the first EPL event.

Day 3 started with 23 players with a dozen making the money. Day 2 chip leader Fabrice Soulier was the short stack on the money bubble, but when Allen Bari shoved over Soulier’s raise with pocket jacks, Isaac Baron woke up with pocket aces to eliminate Bari in 13th place.

Matt Glantz, Tim West and Amit Makhija were eliminated after the dinner break, earning $46,020. Adam “Roothlus” Levy bubbled the televised final table for the second straight EPL event, also pocketing $46,020.

David Steicke, who earned most of his tournament winnings in high buy-in tournaments in Asia and Australia, starts the final table as chip leader with Seidel a close second, the only two with over 1,000,000 in chips. The winner will collect over $780,000 with the top five earning a six-figure payday.

The rest of the final table consists of 2011 WSOP bracelet winners Sean Getzwiller and Fabrice Soulier, “young guns” Isaac Baron and Mike McDonald, Nam Le, and Dutch Boyd. For the second straight event, a Pro/Am qualifier (Getzwiller) makes the final table.

Boyd’s appearance at the final table will cause consternation among some in the poker community after seeing Rheem placed on probation after the first EPL event for failure to pay back players he owed money.

Here’s how the final table is seated when play resumes Friday at 3pm with 18:05 left with the blinds at 5,000/10,000 with an ante of 1,000:

Seat 1: Fabrice Soulier – 537,000
Seat 2: Mike McDonald – 357,000
Seat 3: David Steicke – 1,059,000
Seat 4: Dutch Boyd – 359,000
Seat 5: Isaac Baron – 876,000
Seat 6: Sean Getzwiller – 235,000
Seat 7: Erik Seidel – 1,031,000
Seat 8: Nam Le – 362,000

Hand-for-hand updates of the final table at www.epicpoker.com.

Day 2 of the Epic Poker League at the Palms concludes with 23 players remaining as Fabrice Soulier’s decision to bypass playing the World Poker Tour stop in Paris is currently paying off as he starts Day 3 as the chip leader. Only 12 players make the money, so expect a long day starting at 12pm Thursday as the field will play down to the televised final table of eight.

Players sent to the rail on day 2 included EPL debuting players Tom Dwan and Mike Matusow. Michael Binger, Andrew Robl, Pro/Am winner Greg Mueller, Phil Hellmuth and November Niner Ben Lamb also had to leave the Key West room when they were left without chips.

Chasing Soulier among the top five in chips Soulier is David Steicke, Erik Seidel, Nam Le, and Matt Marafioti. Jaime Kaplan finishes the day 9th in chips as Matt Glantz, Christian Harder, Chino Rheem and Allen Bari also remain in contention make the money and take advantage of the season-ending $1,000,000 freeroll.

Here’s the top ten chip counts:

1. Fabrice Soulier – 453,500
2. David Steicke – 436,000
3. Erik Seidel – 353,500
4. Nam Le – 306,000
5. Matt Marafioti – 306,000
6. Dutch Boyd – 262,000
7. Adam Levy – 253,500
8. Chris Moore – 250,000
9. Jaime Kaplan – 245,000
10. Isaac Baron 217,500

Thursday also features a $2,000 turbo tournament open to all players, information available along with Day 3 updates at www.epicpoker.com.

So earlier in the day … I’m in the media room for the Epic Poker League final table. (Stop LOLing.) One of the PR ladies running the room asked me if I had any predictions. LOL. “I think you’re asking the wrong guy,” I said.

But I decided to look at who was left, what the chipstacks were (in relation to the blinds), position at the table … damn, this is a tough FT … and indeed, offered up a prediction, based on the above factors and a little bit of karmic guesstimating. We already knew Huck Seed was out in 6th, so that one was a freebie. But with that could I accurately call the bust-out order for the remaining five? I bet I could …

And that got me thinking about what kinda impact Epic might have on or with sports-betting, as recent changes to Nevada law have allowed casinos to offer betting lines on non-athletic events, such as the WSOP .

So with imaginary money on the line, I made my predictions:

EPL Pick Six
1. Erik Seidel Jason Mercier
2. Jason Mercier Erik Seidel
3. Chino Rheem
4. Gavin Smith
5. Hasan Habib
6. Huck Seed

UPDATE: Game over: Seidel out, Chino wins, creditors rejoice.
UPDATE: Jason Mercier 3rd.
UPDATE: Hasan Habib 4th.
UPDATE: Gavin Smith out in 5th.

Hmmm, now I remember why I stopped betting horses.

The first Epic Poker League tournament of their first season ended with Chino Rheem overcoming the rungood of Jason Mercier, Erik Seidel and The Micros to win the first Main Event, earning a cool $1,000,000 defeating the Seiborg heads-up. The final table last over 200 hands, recap the blow-by-blow action starting here or just read @AlCantHang’s recap.

According to Ben Lamb, he was paid in full for money he was owed by Chino. Others, not so much. The forums were no different “congratulating” Rheem on his win.

Final table results:

1st: Chino Rheem – $1,000,000
2nd: Erik Seidel – $604,430
3rd: Jason Mercier – 360,970
4th: Hasan Habib – $237,560
5th: Gavin Smith – $154,260
6th: Huck Seed – $107,980

The final table of the first Epic Poker League Main Event resumes with Hasan Habib leading an impressive final six with $1,000,000 going to the winner when play resumes Friday afternoon. He’ll be joined by WSOP bracelet winners Erik Seidel, Huck Seed, Jason Mercier and Gavin Smith. Chino Rheem is the only player without a bracelet, but he’ll have several interested players sweating him as he starts the final table second in chips.

Play started with the remaining 18 players in the money, guaranteed over $43,000 and an early advantage in the EPL standings for the February 2012 $1,000,000 Epic Poker League Championship freeroll. Day 3 was a short day for Justin Bonomo and Hoyt Corkins, the first two to collect their EPL winnings. Pro/Am qualifiers Brandon Meyers (9th) and Dan Fleyshman (15th) will have another chance to qualify for the Main Event in the September Pro/Am. Day 2 chip leader Sam Trickett had a disappointing Day 3, finishing 11th.

The elimination of Eugene Katchalov in 8th place meant the remaining players gathered at one table to play down to the televised final table, airing on CBS and Velocity later this year. The final hand involved Adam “Roothlus” Levy going all-in with pocket queens against Chino Rheem’s pocket kings. The A-A-Q flop moved the DeepStacks-sponsored pro into the lead, but an ace on the river meant it was a ruthless end for Levy. Rheem knocked out another DeepStacks pro, Matt Graham, on the money bubble to end Day 2.

All players at the final table earns a six-figure payday, a boon to those players Chino owes money. Here’s how the final table will be seated when play resumes around 2pm with blinds at 8,000/16,000 with an ante of 2,000.

Seat 1: Hasan Habib – 1,655,000
Seat 2: Erik Seidel – 1,109,000
Seat 3: Chino Rheem – 1,432,000
Seat 4: Gavin Smith – 766,000
Seat 5: Jason Mercier – 1,495,000
Seat 6: Huck Seed – 396,000

What they’re playing for:

1st: $1,000,000
2nd: $604,330
3rd: $360,970
4th: $237,560
5th: $154,260
6th: $107,980

Hand-for-hand updates of the final table, videos and photos and more available at www.epicpoker.com

Day 2 of the $20,000 Epic Poker League Main Event concluded with Sam Trickett leading the remaining 18 players, all guaranteed $43,190. Trickett is the only player with a seven-figure chip stack as the field will now be playing for a $1,000,000 first prize as the players agreed to move money from 2nd place to the winner.

Day 2 started with 63 players as Eugene Katchalov, Ben Lamb and Brian Rast held the top three spots. Only Katchalov survived the day with chips as the early action was dominated with several eliminations as Vanessa Selbst, Dwyte Pilgrim, and Phil Laak were among the familiar faces hitting the felt.

Some players complained about the fast structure; leading Commissioner Annie Duke and Tournament Director Matt Savage agreeing to review the structure, among other aspects of the EPL, before their second tournament in September.

The remaining 29 players reached the dinner break with an average stack of about 80 big blinds, with the objective of finishing the day after bursting the money bubble. Antonio Esfandiari, Brandon Cantu, Nam Le, Tom Marchese and Frank Kassela all fell short of earning their first EPL cash when 19 players remained, one from the money. A prolonged bubble period gave Trickett the opportunity to add to his stack, becoming the first EPL player to hold over 1,000,000 in chips.

Two hours into hand-for-hand play, Matt Graham added his name to the long list of EPL firsts as his pocket jacks were cracked by Chino Rheem when he turned a flush to become the EPL’s first bubble boy.

The remaining 18 players return Thursday at 12pm to play down to the final table of six. The field consists of 20 WSOP bracelets, 3 WPT titles and almost $80,000,000 in tournament winnings. Two players who qualified through the Pro/Am over the weekend, Brandon Meyers and Dan Fleyshman, become EPL-eligible for the rest of the season if either player wins the tournament on Friday. Here’s how the Day 3 field will be seated with play resuming with blinds at 2,500/5,000 with a 500 ante (the average stack having ~76 big blinds):

Table 1:

Seat 1: Adam Levy – 587,000
Seat 2: Dan Fleyshman – 82,500
Seat 3: Hafiz Khan – 144,000
Seat 4: Hoyt Corkins – 252,500
Seat 5: Brandon Meyers – 109,500
Seat 6: Isaac Baron – 637,500

Table 2:

Seat 1: Noah Schwartz – 259,500
Seat 2: Matt Glantz – 453,000
Seat 3: Ted Lawson – 210,000
Seat 4: Huck Seed – 93,500
Seat 5: Chino Rheem – 408,000
Seat 6: Gavin Smith – 357,500

Table 3:

Seat 1: Hasan Habib – 646,000
Seat 2: Eugene Katchalov – 418,000
Seat 3: Sam Trickett – 1,032,000
Seat 4: Jason Mercier – 535,500
Seat 5: Justin Bonomo – 42,000
Seat 6: Erik Seidel – 609,000

Live updates and more available at www.epicpoker.com

The signs of Rapture are all around us. No, I’m not talking about the idiot who spent his life savings putting up billboards around the country to tell everyone the world was going to end on May 21st. I’m talking about the world in which I exist, the poker world, where we’re clearly in a time loop, as the same things happen over and over again and nobody seems to notice. Déjà vu was certainly the theme for this week’s winners in poker.

Scott Seiver Breaks Through On WPT; Seidel Wins Another High Rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
WPT Championship & Super High Roller, Bellagio, Las Vegas, Nevada

C/O WPT

There are times in the poker world in which a situation goes beyond explanation. Sometimes players, for no better reason than running bad or random chance, a player will go an extended period of time without a big score. Michael Mizrachi’s previous results at the WSOP leading up to last year’s explosion comes to mind. A player of the caliber of Scott Seiver doing no better 19th place in 5 years of WPT tournaments defies explanation. Unless the explanation was that he was saving up all his rungood for this past week’s $25,000 WPT Championship.

Seiver beat an impressive collection of players in the final six, including 2011 PCA Champion Galen Hall, Justin Young, and Farzad Bonyadi. For his breakthrough WPT performance, Seiver raked in an impressive $1,618,344.

In news that can’t possibly surprise anyone who knows anything about poker, Erik Seidel took down the inaugural WPT Super High Roller Event. 28 of the sickest gamblers of the world decided to put up $100,000 to vie for second place to Seidel. The lucky second place finisher was fellow Team Full Tilt member Erick Lindgren, but the human cybernetic organism that is Erik Seidel walked away with another score of over $1 million, bringing his total for the year to over $5.4 million. Nice life.

Freitez Wins EPT Season 7 Finale; Mercier Wins PokerStars Sponsored zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
EPT Grand Final, Madrid, Spain

C/O PokerStars

The EPT Grand Final, a €10,000 event to conclude an interesting season for the crown jewel of the PokerStars tours featured a “live” broadcast with hole cards on a two-hour delay, sequestering players until their eliminations had “happened” on TV. It’s interesting to see the lengths that they had to go to to broadcast this table on a delay, while the WSOP was able to negotiate just a 30 minute delay between play and broadcast, with no sequestering, but that’s another story for another day.

Two members of Team PokerStars made the EPT Grand Final final table, with Brazilian Alex Gomes chasing a triple crown and Juan Maceiras trying to become the first Spanish-born EPT champion. Both players found the rail early on in Final Table play. Venezuelan player Ivan Freitez was the last man standing, claiming €1,500,000 (about $2.2 million) in the swan song for the EPT’s seventh (!) season.

The following day’s action saw winners from the EPT’s first seven seasons compete for a first place prize of €50,000 in buy-ins to the next season of the EPT. In what should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, Jason Mercier was the champion.

Chris Porter Tops Station Event With for $60K
Sunset Station Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada

C/O Station Casinos

The Station Casinos have created an interesting series of poker tournaments at their various Las Vegas properties. They’re running four separate $1,100 events at four different casinos, each with a $200,000 guarantee, and the top 25 finishers at each casino will compete in a championship event with a $200,000 guarantee of its own, to create a prizepool totaling $1 million for the five events. The most recent event, taking place at Sunset Station, brought in over 200 players, with FullTilt player representative Chris Porter taking down the top prize of $60,000, and a chance at some more in the championship event.

Matt Legard “Positions” Himself For Big Win in New Game at Bellagio
Bellagio Prelim Event, Las Vegas, Nevada

C/O Position Poker

As much as the popularity of poker continues to flourish, there are some innovative minds thinking of “the next step” in the evolution of the game. Most of the time it’s an innovation in bringing in more players or changing the pace of the game, but certain developments, including Rush Poker, have completely changed the way poker can be played. An exciting new version of live poker made its debut during the preliminary events at Bellagio a few weeks ago, and this one is called Position Poker. The key variation of the game is that the player winning a pot gets to act after the button on the following hand. There are a few other intricacies, which you can check out at their website here. The winner of the first ever event was Matt Legard, who won $18,000 for his efforts.

NOLA Wraps the WSOPC With Scramble For Points(+2 rings +Team Pokerati Update +National Championship update)
WSOPC Harrahs New Orleans, Louisiana

C/O WSOP

With the conclusion of the WPT Championship, all eyes in the poker world have turned towards New Orleans, where the last few entries to the $1 million WSOPC National Championship have been grinded out over the last week and a half. There are three methods by which players earned their seats in this event; the grinders who have followed the circuit around all year tried to accumulate enough points for one of the at large spots (including Team Pokerati member Dave Clark, who seems to have squeezed his way in with a few key points at this final stop).

Another option was to be the “Casino Champion” by accumulating the most points at this stop. That spot was snatched up by an impressive performance by Brian Walsingham, who locked up two rings inside of a week. In Event 4, a $355 No Limit Hold’em event was the first ring he won, and in Event #8 he really cashed in. The $1,085 tournament generated a prize pool of over $340,000 and Walsingham took the lion’s share of over $78,000. He also gave himself a chance at $300,000, the top prize in a field of less than 100 that will take place in Las Vegas in the coming week.

The third method? Outlasting 75 players and make the final table of the $10,000 Southern Regional Championship, ensuring yourself of one of the last nine seats in a $1 million freeroll. At the time of publication, there are 12 players left, including Allen Kessler, Allie Prescott and Shannon Shorr. Once the final nine is finalized, we’ll throw a quick update your way.

UPDATE: The Final Nine was just set. The unlucky bubble boy was Shannon Shorr, who ran pocket kings into the pocket aces of Allie Prescott to go out in tenth. Prescott punches his ticket to the National Championship, as do Harry Cullen, Allen Kessler, Jeremy Gaubert, Gary Friedlander, Kunal Patel, Matt Waxman, AJ Jejelowo and Scott Lipshutz. The overall field for the freeroll is unofficially set, but you can look here to see who has “officially” qualified and here to check out how the National leaderboard for at-large qualifiers shook out.

The problem with the WSOP creeping up on us is that sometimes we tend to ignore the run up to the biggest tournament series of the year. March is a big month for poker tournaments, and it shows in the people that came out on top in this month’s winners. From Erik Seidel proving he needs to be in a $20k+ buy-in to win anything to a couple pros making back-to-back final tables, this was a big month for the tournament pro. And its not even June yet. As for the losers, well, I’ll admit I had to nit-pick this month for a couple of them, but others were just too easy. Lets see who was noteworthy this month.

Winners

• Erik Seidel (4): Seriously Erik, only play the Players’ Championship and the HU High Roller in this year’s WSOP. You’ll lock up two bracelets and you can sit out the main event knowing you may very well still win Player of the Year because you are winning damn near everything else. Erik impressed again in March by winning the NBC Heads-up Championship, a gimmicky made-for-TV tournament sure but its still against some of the best in the business. It’s funny that he is having this kind of sick run just a couple months removed from being inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. It is almost as if he felt like he needed to prove he earned it. (Writers Note: Which admittedly in my head he did. In my series on the Hall of Fame voting, he made the cut but got the least number of votes from me.)

• Vivek Rajkumar (1): A LAPC 2nd place finish and a Bay 101 4th place finish makes for back-to-back final tables in WPT events. Pretty impressive considering these two tournaments are probably amongst the toughest the WPT can provide. Also, the fact the guy has a Computer Engineering degree on top of his millions of tournament earning is just icing on the cake for why he’s a winner this month. Yea, I’m bias, so what?

• Tim West (1): Not to be outdone, Tim West actually won the Wynn Poker Classic main event and then came runner-up in the WSOP-C Regional Championship in Rincon (aka San Diego). Now, he’s not huge on the radar (unless he’s an internet player and I don’t know it….paging @jesswelman) but that might change at the pace he is running.

• The Pokerstars (1)/Wynn Partnership: What Pokerstars put into Steve Wynn’s drink to get him to agree to this we will never know. But this is a complete 180 from his prior stance on the issue of online gambling, and the fact that Pokerstars “landed” this partnership could be nothing short of amazing. Will this mean anything in the short term? Don’t know, there is a Nevada bill out that legalizes online gambling, but it has about as much of a chance as New Jersey’s in this writer’s opinion. Still, Stars is probably looking for a way to get into the US market by getting all buddy-buddy with the brick-and-mortars, and this was one hell of a way to show it.

Losers

• The Full Tilt (-1) /Station Casino Owner Partnership: Conversely, however, Full Tilt’s partnership with Fertitta Interactive looks like a “oh crap that site we pretend doesn’t exist signed a deal…SCRAMBLE!” Yea, deals like this are usually talked about way in advance, but having the second announcement with a less flashy alternative is not impressive. In fact, I’d say it looks a little sloppy. Its worth mentioning that Fertitta and Station Casinos are completely separate, and while the UFC brand might help Full Tilt get new customers, it just doesn’t feel as good as the Stars/Wynn deal.

• Daniel Negreanu (-1): I am sorry Daniel, but you lost the Superstar Showdown, you did not tie no matter what the official tally may say. My co-host on my podcast “Rabbit Hunt” beat me to the punch but I can say it in far fewer words. Even if 5000 roughly 4000 hands is not enough to determine who is better and he ran woefully under EV, its still a pretty good indication he was outclassed…at least this time. I’ll give Daniel credit for his comeback in the second week, but this was in no way a “Clash of the Titans”. Daniel was not in the same realm as isildur1 and he might have wanted to have some more practice before trying to take him on.

• Joe Sebok (-2)/Prahlad Friedman (-2)/Jon Aguiar (-1): Yea this wasnt going to miss my crosshairs in a million years. This whole saga was a mess from top to bottom, and I’m lumping the three of them together because all three of them failed miserably. Prahlad should have never played the John Racener card (“oh no I lost a lot of money against a known cheater time to call bullshit!”). Joe shouldn’t have sent a thinly veiled statement saying he had shit on Aguiar’s girl, then pseudo-apologize only to definitely suggest he has some real dirt on her. And finally, Jon shouldn’t have flown off the handle, posted the DM attempting to crowdsource some sympathy and justice, and then constantly bring up his girlfriend almost as if to call a bluff. The whole thing was a mess, and nobody looked particularly good at the end of the day.

• Mason Malmuth (-1): I’m totally content with getting personally blackballed from 2+2 for saying this: there is not a chance in hell that 2+2 is the poker community. Its like the people that aren’t members of 2+2 are suddenly alienated from existence. If that forum is the only poker community, then I’m glad to be an outsider…because the wise helpful 2+2 poster seems to be the exception rather than the rule. All Mason did was prove how big of an ego he has, and given the backlash regarding his statements…its unlikely too many people outside of “the poker community” approve of him being the mayor.

Coinflips

• Norm MacDonald (0): This has been a point of contention for some. Gabe Kaplan losing AJ Benza as someone to bounce his jokes off of made season 6’s commentary fall a little flat. Gabe’s replacement is either making people happy or disgusted, with very little room in between. Personally I don’t mind Norm taking Gabe’s place on the show, but I still think it would be a lot better if there was someone else in the book, and High Stakes Poker hasn’t seemed to figure that out yet.

• Anyone that played an April Fool’s Poker Media Gag (0): You wanna know why this didn’t come out on the 1st? Because I was going to originally write a WLC where UB was the Entity of the Month, isildur1 was the “Eff You” winner for beating down Daniel so hard, and whatever else I could have come up with. But instead I looked at the gags that were played rather than get creative and write my own. We were Fricke-rolled by The Micros (awesome), Pokerstars had its weird-as-fuck tournaments (not as fresh but still good), WSOP had “Strip Poker” introduced as an event (lame, plus my eyes will be glad that’s not true), and Pokernews tried telling us they were hiring a chip counter for every table (didn’t you read the media rules? gonna need 6 per table).

• 2+2 Posters (0): Nothing showed the signal-to-noise ratio more on 2+2 then the whole Sebok-Prahlad-Aguiar affair. While some people kept things civil, you know damn well people like Kevmath were working overtime to make sure the site didnt collapse under the weight of some of their poster’s shittiness. So props to the moderators and the intelligent posters, but not so much to the trolls.

The “Eff You, Sir/Madam” Award

• Mason Malmuth (-3): You thought I was going to go for the low-hanging fruit huh? Thought Sebok was an easy target for this months award for being an abject failure in the community? Well, here’s the thing, Sebok at least tried to come on and be reasonable. It wasn’t successful, although I don’t think anyone could have reasonably expected Joe to have any impact, but at least he tried. Mason, if he tried anything, it was to be a dick. In a very short time span, he proclaimed 2+2 as “the poker community”, which we’ve already touched on a little bit before. I get it, its Mason being Mason, but being a dick just because you happen to have a popular forum within the poker community does not make you God. Openly stating to Sebok that short of getting Paul on a moderated thread he’s got no reason to even be in the forum is…well…idiotic at best. At worst, well, it earns you the Fuck You award for March. Your forum isn’t the entire poker community Mason, because otherwise this post wouldn’t have passed moderation.

Entity of the Month

I don’t think anyone should be surprised by this but…

• Erik Seidel (2-time champ: 7): Yep, giving this one to Erik again because he’s really starting to show how much he can’t lose. He won the NBC heads up and for the most part won the Number 1 spot in ESPN’s Nuts segment, because Ivey was, is, and always will be a permanent fixture in the top spot for better or for worse. The guy is just playing absolutely amazing poker and his sense of humor (and guest appearances on shows like The Micros) keep him high on other people’s lists. If he can keep this up…well…there is no telling where he’ll end up. That said, he’s won “Entity of the Month” for two months out of the three…so there is a good chance we have a runaway winner for any potential “1st Annual WLC Awards”.

The format that seemed to work so well in describing the action at the 2010 WSOP November Nine is going to get the full treatment now (and because I think the daggers that Dan has been sending me with his eyes have finally worked and I need to write something.)

A word about the “scoring system”: This year I want to keep track of how well (or poorly) a player is doing in a given year. +1 point for being a winner, -1 for being a loser, -3 if you have the misfortunate of winning my Screw You award, +3 for being my Player of the Month, and nothing for getting a coinflip. That’s what happens when you have a 50/50 chance. In the long run you just break even.

Winners

• Daniel Negreanu (1): My feelings about the All-time Money List aside, Daniel has hit the ground running in 2011 with his second place finish in the $100k Super High Roller 6-table SnG at the PCA. Pocketing a cool million a few days into the year has got to make you feel good.
• Erik Seidel (1): Sure, it’s aided by a $2.5 million score in an obscene $250,000 buy-in event, but Seidel won even more money than Daniel, $3.4 million for the month of January.
• Hendon Mob (1): For acknowledging the All-Time Money List is kind of turning into a farce and doing something about it by having options to remove Super High Roller SnGs and restricted tournaments.

Losers

• Viktor Blom (-1): If this guy actually owes $149 MILLION dollars to Swedish tax authorities, it will be safe to say that signing with Pokerstars was the worst thing to happen in his life. Going 2-1 in his Superstar Showdowns isn’t gonna be enough to cover that bill.
• Prahlad Friedman (-1): A man has got to pay the bills, I’m not going to get into a “is he a sellout?” conversation. That said, the fact that the forums and media are ablaze about his decision to join UB is probably not a good sign for him. His “brand” is likely to have taken a hit and his words about not joining the man have certainly come back to haunt him.
• The All-Time Money List (-1): Pretty much everyone has been dumping on this lately with the increase in buy-ins reaching astronomically stupid levels. Hendon Mob addressed this and that’s why they are one of the winners, but the list itself still seems like a wasted statistic.

Coinflips

• Annie Duke/Jeffery Pollack: I like the idea of a new Professional Poker League, but I am soooooo skeptical as to whether they can even pull it off. Also, not letting online play count in your formula looks to me more like laziness than anything else, and removes any player that is in the current generation of contenders.
• Phil Hellmuth: For someone that’s got to be the biggest free agent in poker by a country mile, his lack of a sponsorship had better be a calculated decision. Or its just that Phil isn’t as marketable as people thought? OK…that’s a stretch.
• Results from the Bluff Reader’s Choice Awards: Congratulations are in order for The Poker Beat winning its second consecutive RCA, this time in the “Best Web Based Poker Show” category. Still, would be nice to have Pokerati win Best Poker Blog and Cardrunners win Best Poker Resource. Ah well, there is always next year.

The “Eff You, Sir/Madam” Award

Every month there is bound to be at least one player/entity/whatever that deserves special mention for being an idiot for a particular month. It doesn’t have to be rational, its likely to get some flak, and is going to definitely almost always be a mindless rant. So without further adieu, the winner (loser?) is:

• Russ Hamilton (-3…not including negative karma): This month, I’m going for the low hanging fruit and giving this to Russ Hamilton. In fact, I’m tempted to name the award after him. He made the news earlier this month for flying off the handle at a Florida poker room as he was getting jeered about how bad he was when he couldn’t see the hole cards. He then proceeded to call his opponents “fucking dicks” and that “You do not know what you are talking about; you were not there. You just read about it and think you know.” No, Russ, they do know what they are talking about, because everyone from UB to the poker media to 60 FUCKING MINUTES said that you did it. And you did. So the fact that you grace us with your presence at a poker table anywhere on this Earth should come with the caveat that you are going to get verbally abused. And you should just take it or quit. No one remembers you for your WSOP win, they remember you for being the “fucking dick” who screwed people out of $20 million, and just maybe also for receiving the inaugural Pokerati “Fuck You” award. Maybe.

Player of the Month
The Player of the Month is taken straight from the winners list, and is given a coveted 3 points instead of 1 toward becoming the 2011 Pokerati Winners, Losers, Coinflips player of the year. I suppose. We haven’t really worked out all the details yet.

• Erik Seidel (3): Anyone that manages to wade through shark infested high roller waters not once but three times and cashes every single time more than deserves to be named Player of the Month. It was a nice progression too, from going 4th in the PCA SHR to 3rd in the Aussie Millions SHR to winning the “Full Tilt proving they can have a bigger buy-in than Stars” event. Very well deserved, and we’ll see if Erik can keep up the momentum in the coming months. If he is not ranking in ESPN’s “The Nuts segment I’d be pretty shocked. (EDIT: He has, just barely. Erik is ranked 10th this month.)

Wicked Chops Podcast:

With no TWIP this week the entities over at Wicked Chops come together to discuss all things that are not the Reid Bill. Possible Rounders 2 story-lines were discussed followed by Chops admitting to trying to pick up the ladies years ago by impersonating Ben Folds (judge on The Sing-Off). After a lengthy discussion on their love of American Idol they move onto The Walking Dead. Listen to the show on the Wicked Chops site or download it on iTunes.

The Poker Edge:

Phil Gordon and Andrew Feldman break down the top stories of 2010 and take a look into 2011 after they discuss the possibility of Phil Helmuth on Dancing with the Stars. 2010 was the year of the Mizrachi’s will 2011 be the year of Durrr? You can listen to the entire podcast on ESPN.com, or download it directly via iTunes.

The Hardcore Poker Show:

The guys come together for their last show of the year and start off discussing the battle between Full Tilt and PokerStars on High Stakes Poker. After a brief discussion on Rounders 2 Pokerati’s own Scarlet_LV comes on to discuss the Reid bill and where thing with poker legislation go from here. Fresh off his final table at APPT Sydney Daniel Negreanu joins the show discussing the High Stakes Poker feud. You can listen weekly on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 98 every Wednesday from 8-9pm ET or you can download it via iTunes.

The Micros – Holiday Special:

Following up on the Pilot episode The Micros come with their Holiday Special with a special cameo from Erik Seidel.

Just a quick post in case you haven’t already heard, but the WSOP has announced the Poker Hall of Fame Class of 2010. The winners, Dan Harrington and Erik Seidel, are almost exactly at least pretty close to the choices that this non-voting member made in a series on the subject last month, but is actually exactly how the Pokerati non-scientific poll voted this time around.

Both these players boost incredibly long resumes and seem very deserving of the honor. Dan Harrington is the 1995 Main Event champion and has made the final table of said Main Event a staggering 4 times, including back-to-back appearances in 2003 and 2004. His books are probably what he’s most known for by many that have entered the poker world post-boom, and has helped many players get through their first few tournaments knowing the basics. Erik Seidel doesnt have the books to go for, but he can point to his bracelets instead to show why he is being inducted. 8 WSOP bracelets, helping launch Full Tilt, and his impact for being in “Rounders” all gave the voters good reason to vote him in. He may have taken some heat in some circles for being a vocal critic of hole card cams, but if his tournament record post-boom is any indication it doesn’t seem to have affected him that much.

Congratulations to both Harrington and Seidel for their induction into the Poker Hall of Fame! Two very deserving individuals get in, and the countdown to electing Phil Ivey at age 40 goes down another year.

Voting is closed. Your votes never really counted anyway, nor probably should they, because they don’t match up very closely with how my blue-ribbon 10/330 went. Frankly, I have a feeling the Pokerati masses can be asses will come much closer to how the real 2010 Hall of Fame inductions go. As for now, around these parts, Harrington and Seidel are clear frontrunners:

(In the real voting top two get in.)

Dan Harrington – 157
Erik Seidel – 97
Linda Johnson – 56
Phil Ivey – 54
Barry Greenstein – 49
Tom McEvoy – 25
Chris Moneymaker (write-in) – 20
Scotty Nguyen – 20
Chris Ferguson – 16
Daniel Negreanu -12
Jennifer Harman – 4

In the last article we looked at the last four candidates for Poker Hall of Fame. So now its time to break down the votes that each player would get depending on the criteria of the hall, as well as some other fairly easy to determine metrics. What I will do is look at each criteria and metric and see who has the “edge”, similar to how its done in sports matchup previews.

The Hall of Fame’s criteria are:

• Player must have played against known top competition
• Played for high stakes
• Played consistently well, gaining respect of peers
• Stood the test of time
• Contributed to the overall growth and success of the game (this normally applies to non-players, but I think players should help in this aspect as well)

Some additional criteria to consider include:

• Tournament Success
• Cash Game Success
• Depth of Poker Knowledge (NLHE specialist vs. mixed game master)
• And..finally…public perception (because this is really important these days)

But, of course, there is a little battle to settle. While Dan Harrington and Erik Seidel cleared the hurdle, Barry Greenstein and Scotty Nguyen are neck-and-neck, so before we can do anything we have to settle a simple question, who (in my mind) is worthy of a vote?

More…

In this third part of the series, its time we go through the last four pros that are up for the Poker Hall of Fame. There haven’t really been any misses in this group thus far, sure, a couple people that have no chance given the current roster of nominees, but no complete misses. That said, we haven’t completed the list yet, and parts one and two are available if you need a refresher of what has been said so far. Here are the top three thus far:

• Dan Harrington: 9
• Barry Greenstein: 7
• Phil Ivey: 6

But with 4 more people to go, none of these players are safe (well, three people need to get 10s in order to knock our Harrington, but you get the idea.) The last four are Tom McEvoy, Daniel Negreanu, Scotty Nguyen, and Erik Siedel.

More…

A review of Sunday afternoon’s action, starting with the first day of the WSOP Tournament of Champions:

Seidel leads after four levels of TOC

With several players in the WSOP Tournament of Champions involved with other bracelet events, it was decided to play four one-hour levels today, another four levels on Monday, then the remainder of the field returning on July 4th to determine a winner. When play resumes at 12pm, it’ll be Erik Seidel holding the lead with 72,075 in chips with 22 players remaining. In the random table draw, Daniel Negreanu and Annie Duke were seated next to each other at the feature table as both spent the day avoiding to look at each other, even when involved in hands together. Johnny Chan will start tomorrow second in chips with 71,325, followed by Mike Matusow in third with 70,575. The full list of chip counts is available over at wsop.com.

Odell leads 1500 NL final table

Kevin Odell (4,300,000) will hold a commanding chip lead at the $1,500 No-Limit Holdem final table when play resumes momentarily. In second is Brazilian Thiago Nishijima (1,775,000), with Ray Coburn (850,000) the most notable name remaining. Updates available at PokerNews.

Shak sharp in 5k Omaha 8

The start of day three of the $5,000 Omaha 8 or Better tournament was delayed as Erik Seidel was still involved in the Tournament of Champions, with play eventually underway after 4:30pm. Seidel started the day 20th out of 21 players, but he’s still in the field, although currently 9th with 10 players remaining. Dan Shak has moved into the chip lead with 815,000, followed by Leif Force (725,000), Perry Green (400,000), and Seidel (280,000) among the notables. Follow the action at PokerNews.

Seiver surges into lead in 2500 8-game

Another tournament that experienced a delay because of the TOC was the $2,500 Mixed Event as Daniel Negreanu, Jennifer Harman and Chris Ferguson still playing in that event. Approximately 70 players remain with their dinner break coming shortly. Scott Seiver holds the lead with 122,000 in chips. Other notables include David Steicke (86,000), Bill Chen (85,000), Michael Mizrachi (66,000), Steve Sung (54,000), Dario Minieri (45,000), Harman (41,000), Frank Kassela (39,000) and Ferguson (31,000). Team Pokerati’s Julie Schneider was one of the day 2 eliminations. Further updates and chip counts can be found at wsop.com.

Klier leading day 1b of 1k NL

Day 1b of the $1,000 No-Limit Holdem brought 1,369 players to the Rio this afternoon, around 400 remain as the field returns from their dinner break. The report chip leader appears to be Ben Klier with 54,000, followed by Mike Beasley (32,000), Faraz Jaka (28,000), Chris Moneymaker (23,000) and Jeff Madsen (13,200). A little over three levels of play are scheduled, unless the field falls under 200 before that point. More updates and chip counts at wsop.com.