We were sayin’ … William Hill is making moves into the Vegas poker scene with a live presence and a rinky-dink off-strip casino … now eGamingReview reports that the soon-to-be Nevada sportsbook owner apparently wants whatever it was that Epic had. (sub. req.)

They’re apparently one of five registered bidders on the assets of Federated Sports+Gaming, parent company of the befallen Epic Poker League and filer of Chapter 11 bankruptcy some four months ago.

Yuuup … sounds to me like poker’s version of Storage Wars. I’d like to open up the bidding at $200 … do we hear three?

URL-envy? FS+G apparently wanted to own all things epic, wicked and otherwise on the web.

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 Federated-Sports-plus-Gaming-and-Semi-Nebulous-Professional-Poker-League-now-with-more-Heartland-Poker-Tour got itself a Twitter-friendly name today — the Epic Poker League … just in time for their upcoming $1,500 Pro-Am at the Palms (no longer a Maloof Casino Resort).

EpicPoker.com … and @EpicPokerLeague.

OK … Epic.

Dude, where’s my card? The Pokerati in chief wins a satellite into Epic’s $1,500 pro-am. “It was easy. Now I’m a pro.”

I happen to get a near-front row seat, as everything leading up to their first event — a 3-day $1,500 pro-am, August 5-8 — takes place at the Palms, a place where the Pokerati Game, you all know, has found a delightfully raucous, if not cozy home for our brand of “high-stakes action for low-stakes players” in the form of 1/2 NLH/PLO.

It should be an up-close look at one of the more interesting side stories of the 2011 WSOP — the birthing of Jeffrey Pollack and Annie Duke’s poker lovechild emergence of a new professional poker league … a difficult labor to be sure!

Meanwhile, in my initial exploration of Epic (before I even understood how “Epic” it would be) … I happened to win a satellite this weekend into the first $1,500 event. So now I’m a pro, obv! I’ll get an even closer look — behind the rails with actual chips in play — at how this league is really taking shape, what it means for players looking at it as a vehicle for future poker success, and even though I never wanted to be a real poker pro … a chance to more legitimately claim status as a card-carrying pro at stake.

Annie Duke wants to remind you:

The Palms is running satellites starting 6/4 for Federated Pro/Am events. Details on the Federated Facebook page. http://tinyurl.com/3lsmept

Deets below:

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The Federated Pro Poker League had taken a decidedly neutral stance on online poker. They weren’t gonna let online powerhouses Tilt and Stars muck up their game, it seemed, but at the same time they weren’t ready — at least prior to April 15 — to kick the online sites to the curb. Now it seems clear the FPPL will be moving forward with the indicted online poker operations — whatever that may or may not mean. Regardless, @JeffreyPollack is apparently committed, as he confirmed his recent resignation as Executive Chairman of PBR to focus on Federated Sports+Gaming, which has its first pro poker event in just barely 90 days.

The plan for seating players involves a complex algorithm awarding 2-, 3-, and 5-year cards based on some sorta formula that takes into account tournament wins and possibly shoe size? 218 mad the cut for 2011. Click here to see who gets to play in their non-open overlay events at the Palms … which, btw, now happens to be home of the Pokerati Game. The pro league’s schedule of exclusive, not-yet-televised events is below, along with the details on what it takes to get your card.

(Pokerati’s version of 1/2 NLH/PLO, of course, is open to all players seeking a good time for a $100-min $400 max, and will be playing again this Thursday, starting at 7p. No card necessary — though you do need a players card to qualify for comps or collect any bonuses.)

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Former WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack, who oversaw the WSOP through the boomtime poker era, plans to make professional poker something more akin to the PGA.

He’s founded a new California company — Federated Sports+Gaming — with Annie Duke on the executive team and serving as commissioner of the poker league, which promises to be a professionals-only set-up. Duke resigned from the WSOP’s event-steering Players Advisory Committee two months ago and last month renounced her relationship with UB, the most notoriously beleaguered online poker site in history.

According to @OskarGarcia from the Associated Press:

The yet-to-be-named league is planning four televised regular-season events plus a $1 million championship freeroll at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas this year, league executives said.

“This is incredibly pro-centric,” Duke told The Associated Press. “This is the one piece that’s kind of missing from the poker landscape right now, which is something for the best players in the world to compete against the best players in the world.”

Should be interesting to see who, by Federated’ new definition, qualify as pros … with one obvious litmus test being will @donkeybomber be able to secure his card?

Corporately, Duke is an executive vice president of Federated Sports+Gaming’s, though not a member of its board of directors. The others on Pollack’s team come from YouBet.com, the biggest legal online gaming company based in the US, which was recently acquired by Churchill Downs, the publicly traded online gaming outpost for Kentucky’s horse-race industry. Others on Pollack’s executive team share varying degrees from Northwestern University, to which I say, um … Go Cats!

Pollack, serving as chairman of Federated, maintains his position as executive chairman of PBR, which real cowboys will tell you is very different from traditional “rodeo”. Read below for his full statement announcing his reburstage onto the poker scene:

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