MGM Resorts International will spend $100 million to transform land along the Strip and surrounding the New York-New York and Monte Carlo resorts into an outdoor plaza and pedestrian mall with trendy shops, restaurants and a public park.

The plaza will serve as a gateway into a 20,000-seat sports arena, which the company will build behind the two resorts with national arena developer AEG.

The facades of New York-New York and Monte Carlo will be renovated as part of the retail, dining and entertainment district. The development will include several eateries, nightlife venues and entertainment attractions new to Las Vegas.

MGM Resorts announced the development today . Some initial construction has begun, and the company expects the retail and restaurant complex to open by early 2014.

“Our vision is to dramatically change the sidewalk along the Las Vegas Strip, creating an area that will greatly enhance the area and create an energy that you find in the world’s great cities,” MGM Resorts Chairman Jim Murren said in an interview.

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Super Bowl Sunday is arguably one of the best days of the year for a Vegas grinder. In this town, the game is one big gamble, as evidenced by the pages and pages of prop bets offered exclusively on the NFL championship.

Super Bowl gamblers often spill into the poker rooms, and it’s hard to go wrong picking a place to play. But if you’re looking to pad your stack or you lost a bundle on your coin flip bet, there are a few places in town offering special promotions during the big game. (Kickoff is set for 3:30p PT.)

If you’re playing at Mirage, you’ll be hoping that there’s as much action on the felt as inside the Superdome. They’ll draw a seat number after just about every big play. An interception is worth $50, a fumble is worth $75, a play of 76 yards or more is worth $100. Field goals are worth $25-$100, depending on the distance and touchdowns are worth $100. There are also four pre-game drawings for the four hours before kickoff: $125, $100, $75 and $50.

Players at Excalibur earn can earn raffle tickets before and during the game. They’re paying $50 for field goals, $100 for touchdowns, and $400 for safeties, along with a drawing for $100 at the end of the first three quarters, and another for $200 at the end of the fourth quarter.

The Monte Carlo promo could end up costing you money if you play favorites. They’re giving away raffle tickets for full houses, and players must place their tickets in either a 49ers bin or a Ravens bin. When either team scores, they’ll pull a ticket for $50 for field goals, $100 for touchdowns and $200 for safeties.

The Luxor is giving out raffle tickets every hour for the first four hours before the game and every quarter during the game. Then there’s a drawing after each field goal for $25 and after each touchdown for $50.

At Mandalay Bay, they plan to give away $500 for the high hand of each quarter. The minimum qualifying hand is 10s full, and if no one hits, the prize jumps $250 more for the next quarter.

The oft-overlooked Circus Circus (because they rarely have much more than a 3/6 limit game) is offering $100 to the high hand every quarter, and $100 for the high hand of the hour from  8 p.m. to midnight.

Instead of cash, the Flamingo will splash pots with hats, T-shirts, hoodies, and polo shirts after each score and after each quarter.

In a time where buy-ins are dropping to accommodate a slumping economy, leave it to Monaco to make people feel poor again. Not content with the highest buy-in tournament to date being the $100,000 Aussie Millions High Rollers event, Casino Monte Carlo in junction with the IPPA (International Poker Player’s Association) is hosting a $250,000 buy-in shootout in late November. Before you ask, “who could afford this nonsense?”; evidently 14 pros have already signed up, with names ranging from Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan all the way to Robert and Michael Mizrachi. There are a few things with this tournament that help it stand out beyond the absurd high buy-in:

• It will be “limited” to 48 players total and played out in a shootout format, with $5 million guaranteed to first place. Which means that if this is a true guarantee and not just a projected prize if all 48 slots fill, mean that you would need 20 players minimum just to break even (sans rake, and only if it’s a winner-take-all tournament).
• The IPPA is not…well known, at least certainly not in the US. Their website is equally sparse in terms of action information, but they may be trying to put themselves on the map with a tournament of this size.
• There are satellites running in at least two confirmed places, Monte Carlo (naturally) and The Bicycle Casino in beautiful Bell Gardens, CA. How does one even satellite into this tournament? Think the step tournaments online, except the stakes are much, much higher. The Bike already ran $100, $1k and $9k satellites during the Legends of Poker tournament series, but their site does not have any results for the $1k and $9k satellites so its unknown how many takers they got.
• It will be a televised event, but with the field the way it is so far the IPPA and/or Monte Carlo hopefully will be pushing hard to get some whales in the game, or it may deter other pros from throwing their hat in the ring.

Still, the organizers have to cover their “overlay” first, which will be no small feat when pros are being asked to drop $250,000 in one go into a shark-filled tank. If this tournament happens it certainly will be an interesting sight, not just for the prize pool but the revival of a lingering question regarding how we keep score in poker. Already there has been talk of what “counts” on the all-time money list, so if someone like Ivey did win the $5 million for what amounts to a 48-person (or less) SnG it could lead to some gripping from a few pros (quite possibly including the #2 man on that list…who could become a distant #2 or 3 after this tournament).

The EPT Grand Final final table (in Monte Carlo) is under way. The contenders, their age, their countries, and their chip counts:

Dag Martin Mikkelsen (age 22, Norway) – 7,360,000
Matthew Woodward (age 26, United States) – 4,920,000
Peter Traply (age 21, Hungary) – 4,250,000
Mikhail Tulchinsky (age 43, Russia) – 3,605,000
Daniel Zink (age 24, Germany) – 2,570,000
Eric Qu (age 47, France) – 2,550,000
Alem Shah (age 51, Germany) – 1,520,000
Pieter de Korver (age 26, Netherlands) – 1,390,000

The 5-day, €10,000 main event drew 935 players (compared to 842 last year) and is paying €2.3 million to the winner. Click here to follow the action.

UPDATE: You can also watch live coverage at EPTLive.com, which I’m listening to in French to hear Benjo do the broadcast, who I gotta say is as funny in French (which I don’t speak) as he is in English.

Meanwhile, they’re concurrently playing the final table of the €25,000 “high rollers” event (a 3-day affair) — where the winner gets €720,000 … €434,000 to 2nd place. It’s apparently been quite the action game. They lost four players in the first level. Those remaining:

Randy Dorfman (age ??, United States) – 1,200,000 2,000,000
Tony G (age 35, Lithuania) – 900,000
Vanessa Rousso (age 26, United States) – 810,000 790,000 880,000
x- 4th place – Florian Langmann (age 26, Germany) – 1,180,000 220,000

Rousso actually started the day as the chip leader. I’m following her on Twitter, actually, where she has quite the hardbody avatar with a fake shark. Semi-interesting that both Americans remaining are both from Florida.

BTW, the current exchange rate:
€1 = $1.33
$1 = €.75

So that means the main event win pays: $3.05 million
The high rollers win pays: $956,000

Ack … I hate that I wrote a hedline that sounds like something out of a PokerStars press release, but not sure how else it could turn out when Italian soccer star Christian Vieri announced his intention to play in the upcoming EPT Championship at Monte Carlo.

The deeper he goes, the better I gotta think it is for (European) poker.

Thanks, Craig, for the link!

… even though the dudes from PokerListings think so when they drink. If competitive eating were to become the next poker, though, it would probably be fun to see the field whittled down to a “final table”.

For those interested in seeing a real competitive eater at work, I interviewed Rich LeFevre, aka “The Locust”, as he successfully gulped down The Ultimate Steak at Brand (nice, fancy-ish steakhouse at the Monte Carlo) — a 120oz porterhouse (with sides) that usually feeds six, but is free if it feeds one and you clean your plate.

It took LeFevre 40 minutes, and that was with me peppering him with questions all the while:

As far as life on the competitive eating circuit goes, LeFevre looks back to the golden days of 2005, when he competed in 26 events and won $35,000. Clearly this dude could make way more money via prop bets as a competitive-eating hustler … but considering that he asked for ice cream after he finished devouring 8 pounds of steak, a pound of potatoes, and an similar volume of creamed spinach, you can tell he does it just for the love of the “sport”.

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Found this vid, shot at the EPT Championship last month in Monte Carlo … where Daniel Negreanu pwns a Scandi reporter (new word for me!), or maybe it’s the other way around:

There’s question whether or not it was staged. In Las Vegas I am pretty sure his shove would be considered assault, but maybe not so in Monaco? Either way, my experience at the tables tells me that 2 in 12 to 14 Scandis are slowrollers … so that suggests it’s statistically possible it was an authentic provocation.

The European Poker Tour (EPT) Grand Final just concluded its fourth day of action, and out of an amazing 842 players, only 10 remain.

Glen Chorny – 3,370,000
Isaac ‘westmenloAA’ Baron – 2,365,000
Michael Martin – 1,579,000
Maxime Villemure – 1,220,000
Denes Kalo – 957,000
Antonio Esfandiari – 735,000
Luca Pagano – 705,000
Valeriy Ilikyan – 650,000
Stig Top Rasmussen – 590,000
Henrik Gwinner – 466,000

Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari is doing quite well, and this comes on the heels of his recent sponsorship deal with the World Poker Tour. The WPT Poker-Made Millionaire is representin’ over in Europe!

Isaac Baron is reportedly one of the most respected online players in the game and has been doing relatively well on the live tournament circuit.

The only other name I recognize is Luca Pagano – PokerStars player and Italian guy. Be still my part-Italian heart.

First place will get nearly $3.2 million. Wheee! (Note to the eventual winner: Can I borrow a few bucks?) Live updates can be found at PokerNews and PokerListings.

Not sure what Monte Carlo has to do with President’s Day, but I suppose it’s coincidental that that holiday falls on the soonest possible day MGM/Mirage could re-open their gaming tables and other cash-revenue generators at the Strip casino that briefly looked like it might burn to the ground three weeks ago.

Click below to read the full release.

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Semi-live video of the fire. (From earlier this morning.)

TV news report on the blaze, what may have caused it, immediate impact on the Strip and surrounding areas.

That was the word on the street at the Starbuck’s drive-thru … and sure enough, a look out the window at Pokerati headquarters semi-confirms that indeed, the Monte Carlo is on fire. A little follow-up confirms this is not just a little fire … the MC is burning down. To the ground remains to be seen.

UPDATE: Reportedly the fire started on the roof and worked its way down a few floors. But it is now under control. Traffic is a whole ‘nother story, however. Travel time from the airport to the convention center is two hours.