While the two men left standing punch back-and-forth, it’s a good time to catch up on some of the other action that led up to this point … such as the entire careers of Linda Johnson and Barry Greenstein, who got inducted today, shortly before cards went in the air.

Pauly and I were there to bring it to you … or at least Pauly was, to tell me what I needed to know:

Nov. Nine – Poker Hall of Fame Ceremony (Ep 7) by taopokerati

Dan and Dr. Pauly chat about the 2011 Poker Hall of Fame induction ceremony honoring the new class — Lind Johnson and Barry Greenstein. They also revealed who exactly was on their ballots.

This license plate might make a nice inclusion in a more-real Poker “Hall” of Fame some day; for now we get Linda Johnson but not her car.

Congrats are in order for Linda Johnson and Barry Greenstein, as WSOP officials announced earlier today that they won the ballot race this year — and will be inducted into the Caesars-owned Poker Hall of Fame during the November Nine.

I still haven’t been able to find the actual “hall” anywhere on Google maps, but hey, at least there’s a list … which is included in the announcement below. Fwiw, whether right or wrong or historically consistent or not, a 2011 nomination (and subsequent induction) does seem to come with an extra stamp of approval for poker careers run on a clean path.

Barry seems incredibly deserving for his accomplishments mostly on the felt, with a little bit of important poker work off of it. He got 3 of my 10 votes.

Linda got 5 from me. Only the second women bestowed with the PHOF honor, she put up admirable numbers back in the day and still plays winning poker in medium-big mixed games during the WSOP … but really helped shape the direction of poker off the table as publisher of CardPlayer Magazine through the ’90s, a founding member of the TDA and PokerGives.org, and an instrumental force in the World Poker Tour, the PartyPoker Million, the general concept of “poker cruises”, and the Women in Poker Hall of Fame (which doesn’t have a hall either, but does have a fancy dinner with speeches, food, and booze; I do miss the grander fete for PHOF induction way-back in 2009 when Mike Sexton got in). Extra-charming to know the job she quit to pursue a career in poker was at the post office.

Scotty Nguyen got my remaining 2 votes, but did not get in.

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In the good-for-poker category … Poker Gives is in the midst of its second annual National Poker Month. Not to be confused with the PPA’s National Poker Week, PG’s September declaration is about a nationwide series of charity tournaments “that unites the poker world to generate goodwill through ‘giving back’ and supporting worthwhile charities.” (Emphasis theirs, not mine.)

There have already been events in Arizona and yesterday here in Vegas at the Venetian. Coming up are an event Monday at the Golden Nugget and another at the new Tropicana Poker Room (which fyi, few know, had its opening day on Black Friday) on Saturday. More than 15 events — in the $60 to $125 range — in 15 different venues in seven states.

Click here for the complete schedule.

Our goal is to disperse the highest percentage of funds possible to the charities. While some fundraising operators are actually businesses for profit, Poker Gives is designed to give back and we do so in every way possible. Board members and founding members of Poker Gives receive no salary whatsoever. All expenses and administrative costs are minimized so that the maximum is directed to our charities.

— Poker Gives

Charity tournaments can be a dime a dozen … or more appropriately for poker, probably closer to 5 dimes a dozen. And some are better than others as an event and/or as a fundraiser. But apparently some big-timers in the poker biz (Mike Sexton, Linda Johnson, et al) saw too many such tourneys used as fronts for shady activities I mean not necessarily distributing funds appropriately, and thus back in 2008 created Poker Gives. It’s an effort designed to cultivate the collective giving of poker players and poker rooms around the country to make more notable donations to more mainstream 501c’s (Paralyzed Veterans of America, Make a Wish, Special Olympics, the USO, the Shriners, among others). It also becomes, imho, part of what some say is becoming a “movement” to clean up poker and make it more, er … presentable?

Also this week, as in today, is an Epic Poker charity event at Pokerati’s home room, the Palms. It’s a $240 with $100 rebuys event — hosted by Kevin Pollak, with all sorts of extra goodies overlayed — and the top three winning seats to the upcoming $1,500 Epic Pro-Am.

While this isn’t officially part of National Poker Month (I’m curious why not, too) tonight’s tournament at the Palms does benefit Fallen Heroes USA, a PG thumbs-up charity partner. Should be good times for a good cause; and who knows, maybe a Pokerati Game will break out with extra players in the mood to just be giving money away?

Lots of talk this week about the Annie/Phil UB departure in the podcast world. Here is the best of the best for your downloading pleasure.

Two Plus Two Pokercast:

The guys from 2+2 open up their 6th year of their 154th episode. Tony G joins the crew to discuss his recent SuperStar Show down match against isildur1. Other topics on with Tony G were his attempt at purchasing Peter Eastgate’s WSOP Main Event bracelet and the amount of trash talking that he does on the tables. After the Tony G interview the recent UB shakeup became the focus of discussion. The potential sellout of Prahlad Friedman occupied the majority of discussion as they discussed the reason why he would join the site the essentially ruined his career. Listen to the show at the Two Plus Two Pokercast site or download it on iTunes.

The Hardcore Poker Show:

The Phil and Annie departure is the only topic on task this week on the show. Joe Seebok comes on to discuss what the recent departures mean for UB and how the new UB team is going to look. Prahlad Friedman is also discussed along with whether someone like Daniel Negreanu should be publically calling Prahlad out for selling out. You can listen weekly on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 98 every Wednesday from 8-9pm ET or you can download it via iTunes.

Final Table Poker Radio Show:

This week’s show gets kicked off with an unplanned interview from Annie Duke where she attempts to clear up some of the speculation surrounding her recent departure from UB and what her plans are for her future. WSOP bracelet winner Linda Johnson follows Annie Duke to the show to discuss changes in tournaments since she first came onto the poker scene and what the TDA can do about the influx of deep stack tournaments. If you want to listen to the entire show or catch up on previous show you can either visit The Final Table site or check it out on iTunes.

The Poker Hall of Fame voting is upon us, and with only two weeks until voting closes, its time to look at three more nominees for induction. Last time Chris Ferguson, Barry Greenstein, and Jennifer Harman were analyzed and picked apart, ultimately resulting in a single number signifying my personal feeling toward that player’s admission to the hall. Overall, the three players received the following scores:

• Chris Ferguson: 4
• Barry Greenstein: 7
• Jennifer Harman-Traniello: 2

This time around we look at Dan Harrington, Phil Ivey, and Linda Johnson, and you can see how they stack up after the jump.

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I just voted for the Maven Awards. Not usually my bag to give out all my confirming email data (in a time-consuming way) that lets someone else plausibly sell or profit from my internet ID. In fact, many know I consciously chose not to vote for the WSOP-TOC because I couldn’t help but see that as an email harvesting operation for WSOP.com, done in a way that trivializes the value of sites like Pokerati when it comes to someday sending players to the WSOP for online poker play.

(Also, by standing on such principles, I didn’t have to tell Tom he had a more promising future in selling pants than trying to qualify for the TOC.)

However, because the Maven Awards presumably isn’t looking to open an online poker room in the near future, and because, frankly, I was feeling bad for women in poker after the punk-bitch episodes in this year’s WSOP-Ladies event … I decided to give up my IP address to support the cause … somebody’s cause … in a way that seems like a good step toward someday negating the need for a separate Women in Poker Hall of Fame.

Much to my plausibly noble delight, it turns out The Maven Awards has an anonymous voting option that still does a decent job of preventing blatant ballot stuffing. (I tried; would require too much work for me to vote twice.)

I’m not sure when their voting deadline is, but it’s gotta be soon … so I encourage you to get your votes in, too, by voting here. Below are whom I voted for in each of the 14 categories and why:

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She theoretically has my vote:

The Rumble at the Rio had its press conference/weigh-in ceremony today in the Rio Pavilion hallway to introduce Liv Boeree (representing UltimateBet) and Melissa Castello (representing PokerNews), who will be fighting each other on July 1 for publicity charity. ESPN filmed it, and the poker media was out in force to cover it. Almost every poker media outlet was there to take photos or gather notes to publicize the event.

It is significant to note that only about 25% of those reporters were anywhere near the Poker Players Alliance press conference yesterday. PPA Chairman and former NY Senator Alfonse D’Amato spoke, along with NV Rep. Shelley Berkley and PPA board members Greg Raymer and Linda Johnson, to announce National Poker Week.

Who says the poker media doesn’t have integrity/priorities?

As we all know, there’s far more to the World Series than just bracelet events. One of the alt-poker activities going on today and tomorrow and yesterday (Tuesday and Wednesday) is the TDA Summit. That’s where tourney directors from card rooms around the country get together with Matt Savage, Linda Johnson, Jan Fisher, and the other honchos in tournament operations to discuss, debate, and vote on various technicalities of poker rules — as well as to discuss handling new and old situations that inevitably arise.

They also had a specialty non-bracelet tourney today — a $125 buy-in with 60something players (Warren Karp was the “known” name who made the final table) — and I happened to stumble upon the semi-funny sitch captured above … where at a table full of floormen, someone called floor. Ha ha.

Though you can imagine the pressure on the floorguy should he make the wrong ruling, it frankly wasn’t that hard of a decision … But there were a lot of people interested in how it would turn out, particularly because these players, while being trained in TDA rules, where in a tourney being run by WSOP staff, which has its own rules, which are slightly different from the TDA’s.

Click below for a breakdown of the situation, and see for yourself if you woulda made the same decision.

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They report, you decide:

Watch CBS Videos Online

As has been discussed earlier, Mike Sexton, Greg Raymer and Linda Johnson were also interviewed for the story. In this web exclusive, Steve Kroft discusses tells with them, which seems silly to talk about in reference to online poker.

Watch CBS Videos Online

What’s happening today at the WSOP:

The $2,500 NL Holdem final table is already at heads-up, after a whirlwind of eliminations. Steve Merrifield currently has had a commanding lead over Duncan Bell. Bell then doubled up off of Merrifield with A9 v 55. The final hand was a cooler for Merrifield, on a flop of 8-6-2, Bell went allin, Merrifield would call with 10-10. Unfortunately for him, Bell had AA, Steve couldn’t catch another 10 and Bell gets to take home $666,777, Merrifield will have the consolation of taking $428,948 for 2nd.

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BREAKING NEWS: GSN does not exercise Season 7 option for GSN. Talks ongoing with GSN to possibly air “parts” of season 7. Press release from WPTE

Happenings from yesterday at the WSOP:

The other final table of yesterday concluded earlier this morning, as Jimmy Shultz took down Event #12 ($1,500 Limit Holdem), eventually beating Zac Flowers in a heads-up battle to win a bracelet along with just over $250,000. Upon his victory, he announced he was donating 25% of his win to the Charleston, SC Fire Department , who lost nine firefighters June 18, 2007. Vinny Vinh, along with his “associates” railing him, finished 3rd.

More info after the jump:
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The BTT crew: Poker talk fused with gay jokes and fat commentary was all the rage in 2007.

Some of you have been wondering, why no new episodes of Beyond the Table? Tom, Karridy, and I have been wondering the same thing. It’s been a good run, and with drinks in the air, three guys who clearly love/hate the sounds of their own voices are calling it podcast quits.

Back when we started, our show about poker but not really about poker stood out as revolutionary in a sea of lame poker interviewcasts with questionable audio quality. Soon after iPod sales were booming as more and more of the world got hooked on downloading poker audio with funny intros and Angry Julie cameos. But Tom couldn’t handle the celebrity and Karridy developed a crack addiction lives got busy and producers for Beyond the Table fared about as well as drummers for Spinal Tap. The show hired Shamus at a fraction of a Cambodian farmer’s wage to pump up our numbers — did he ever get his T-shirt? — but with a new generation of poker podcasts getting better and stronger (Lou Kreiger, Gary Wise, 2+2, Pocket Fives, Ante Up, Poker Road, et al) old-school payola wasn’t enough to save us from going out on the podcast bubble.

Listen below to a heretofore unpublished episode (recorded on 2-27, my dream flop) as your favorite semi-amateur yammerers phone it in for the last and final-ish time:

Beyond the Table: Fin

Thanks for listening via RSS, iTunes, play-in-popup, and direct download … we already miss ourselves.

You can still prank call Karridy on the Beyond the Table listener line at 888-820-8091.

Curious … we all know the regular hubbub over ladies events — are-they-discriminatory-or-not-and-who-cares-oh-look-there’s-a boy-in-a-dress-ok-cards-in-the-air. But am wondering if the ladies honored in this article about their forthcoming induction into the new Women in Poker Hall of Fame might find the CardPlayer hedline offensive. Because you know, Binion’s isn’t even like on the Strip, let alone a place you should expect to see Linda Johnson topless, right?