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WPT's Royal Flush Girl Melanie Iglesias from New York has won Maxim's 2010 Hometown Hotties contest. The hot young model beat more than 7,000 contestants from all over the US, including all the 9 finalists to win the title. From now on, she will also be a spokesperson for Maxim, not "just" a Royal Flush Girl.

Royal Flush Girls

I personally congratulate Melanie, and wish her all the best, she was really the hottest out there, but WPT must also be mentioned here, their sense for business is awesome: now that one of the Royal Flush Girls is even more famous, hopefully much more eyes will be drawn to the screen when the 9th season of WPT starts airing in February. In case you aren't familiar with her, here are a few pictures and a video of her. Enjoy!

Oh, and by the way, she is single at the moment, so if you feel like you could make her happy, go ahead and try, life is short! A hint: she's a fan of Orlando Magic, and loves "Dontcha" by the Pussycat Dolls.

When Isildur1 was signed by PokerStars, the site immediately announced a challenge for players to take on their newest prot at he Superstar Showdown. The first challenger is already here: Isaac 'philivey2694' Haxton.

Isaac Haxton

Haxton, a pro grinder, who had very great results through his carreer (a runner-up finish at PCA for $861,789 and at the $40,000 No Limit Hold’em event at the 2009 World Series of Poker) is to first to take on Isildur1 at the virtual $50/$100 No Limit Hold’em heads-up table. They will play until 2,500 hands or until one of them goes busto, whichever comes first. They will take $150,000 to the table, and the winner will be the one with more profit. The deep structure will allow them to do some interesting and tricky stuff, so if you don't already have a PokerStars account go ahead and register one, and be sure to watch the game's tables (under "Hold'em" tab, then "No Limit/Pot Limit.") this Sunday, December 19th at 6:00pm ET.

Unlike HP7, this is not the title of a current fairy tale: following the rumors of Full Tilt Poker banning its pros from the show High Stakes Poker Season 7, a couple of other top players have cancelled their participation, too.

Daniel Negreanu

The blow to the GSN show HSP that FTP considers not to let its pros participate being only the beginning, two of the remaining “draw” names, Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth now also either are uncertain to show up before the cameras or have already called it off for good. The former has just finished 9th in the APPT Sydney main event and has posted the following statement on his Twitter recently: "Sad news: at airport headed home which means the trip is over have a commercial shoot when I land which means no HSP for me this year."

A gunman wearing a motorcycle helmet and jacket robbed the Bellagio (Las Vegas) early Tuesday. Police stated he took about $1.5 to $2 million in chips.

Around 3:50 a.m. on 14th December a man wearing a motorcycle helmet and armed with a handgun entered the Bellagio and went straight to the Craps table cashier, where he seized around $1.5 to $2 million in chips. He then escaped on his motorbike, riding towards Flamingo Road. The festive 10th heist in Las Vegas in 2010, the action was “a very quick, in-and-out type of job,” nobody got hurt.

PokerTableRatings is one of the best known poker databases, and sometimes buggy and problematic, they are still among the best around. They recently annunced voting for for this year's best players on all stakes. You can now vote for your favourites now at PokerTableRatings.com.

The voting is only on until the last day of the year, Dec 31, 2010. Everyone is eligible to vote for an unlimited number of players. The winners in each categories (basically stake levels) will win cool prizes such as an own custom themed PTR page, a BLUFF Magazine feature or mention, and DragTheBar coaching video subscription. Get out there, and vote for your favourites, or, if you registered 10,000 played hands on PTR, even for yourself.
N.b.: You will need a Facebook account (which I doubt you don't have) to be able to vote.

I have been looking forward to hearing Phil ‘Poker Brat’ Hellmuth responding to Dusty ‘Leatherass’ Schmidt’s recently released book, “Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth: Correcting the 50 Worst Pieces of Poker Advice You’ve Ever Heard.” Gambling911.com finally made sure I actually am.

Phil 'Poker Brat' Hellmuth

Poker pro and instructor Leatherass’s book was expected to cause some controversy from the first moment, but the Poker Brat had not taken notice of it for almost two weeks. Gambling911.com, however, questioned him via his Facebook page: "Phil, what is your reaction to Dusty Schmidt's new book claiming you don't know anything about poker?""If I do not know anything about poker, then Michael Jordan doesn't know anything about basketball," he replied.

Full Tilt Poker tries to make life hard for PokerStars: they are considering not letting their sponsored pros participate in the upcoming season of High Stakes Poker. They do not want to send their pros into a a PokerStars sponsored show (PokerStars bought the show and its archives recently) without their badges on. Lame. Of course, it's money again. However, PokerStars do not intend to have their logo in the table felt, Full Tilt is still "on tilt".

Barry Greenstein talked about the issue with FTP owner Howard Lederer and posted it on 2+2:

"Full Tilt has two major concerns. First is they don't like their players playing when PokerStars is the sponsor of the show. (I assume Full Tilt can buy ad time but I didn't check this out with GSN or PokerStars.) Secondly, they were unhappy that PokerStars bought the HSP archives. In the early seasons of HSP, the players didn't wear logos, so FTP is concerned that viewers will be able to go to pokerstars.tv and see the FTP players without logos and be confused by their affiliation."

140 characters is not a lot, but some of the poker players manage to be very funny in such a short message, it seems. The 6th Annual BLUFF Magazine Reader’s Choice Awards presented the top 5 funniest poker twitters recently. If you are in for some fun, and I know you are, here's the list with 1-1 quote from the person, just so can get a feel for what is going on about them.

Erik Seidel
@Erik_Seidel

Why is it ok for people to applaud when the plane lands but everyone gives me a look when I do it on the shuttle bus?

The crazy genious, Isildur1 (aka grolongo, aka Viktor Blom?) started out his PokerStars carreer being totally himself. He won $287,500 in a 14-hour  session yesterday, but today he almost lost all of it to Phil Galfond.

Isildur1 played against 75 players including Scott 'urnotindangr' Palmer, Ashton 'theASHMAN103' Griffin and Brian '$tinger88' Hastings during his SuperStar Showdown.

Antonio Esfandiari won the $10,300 Main Event of the World Poker Tour Five Diamond Classic. Beating Andrew Robl heads-up, Esfandiari earned $870,000 together with his second WPT title.

The unusually strong 6-handed final table presented Vanessa Rousso, Andrew ‘good2cu’ Robl, Antonio Esfandiari, John Racener, Ted Lawson and Kirk ‘Captain Kirk’ Morrison. See stacks below.

Dan Harrington was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame alongside Erik Seidel in November. If you missed out their speeches because you didn't have the time, the opportunity or the need, I strongly suggest you watch them, for me it's really interesting to see such great men giving their acceptance speeches. Dan Harrington and Erik Seidel both did a lot for poker, and it's good to see they managed to stay this humble and honest. Check them out!

Durrrr and jungleman12 resumed their Challenge. The short session was won by Jungleman, who added $110,000 to his profit, making it $755,000 in total.

Daniel 'jungleman12' Cates vs. Tom 'durrrr' Dwan

The shorter sessions of Durrrr Challenge 2 of late slightly favoured Tom ’durrrr’ Dwan, although not enough to get him significantly closer to jungleman. Even this slight compensation is now neutralised, as in 45 minutes and 346 hands, he lost $110,037 to Daniel Cates.

Isildur1 has really signed up with a major poker room as rumors predicted, but not just any site, but the largest, PokerStars. The man's identity remains unknown.

The mysterious online player emerging from nothing, owned the high stakes cash game tables for a few years and had many great moments, being ultra-aggressive and fearless, he generated pots way above $1 million. Now he has signed with PokerStars, and seems to be very happy about it:

"I chose to join PokerStars because it's the biggest site and it will be an exciting challenge," Isildur1 says. "It means a great deal to be playing in a team alongside players such as Daniel Negreanu, Dario Minieri and Johnny Lodden."

It is quite well-known that Phil Hellmuth likes to show off and be in the spotlight. Once a legendary poker player, Hellmuth only gets on the news because of some humongously stupid act these days. This time, he is trying to market his brand new High Stakes Hold'em game with a quite amateur video and an improvised rap performance. This might sound funny at first, but it is in fact totally awkward.

You can view the ad below, but be warned: you will never get back the time you waste by watching this! :) 

Poker is not really considered a sport nowadays, but rather a "dangerous" and "harmful" gambling game. This seems to change now, as this year's WSOP Main Event winner Jonathan Duhamel has been nominated for the 2010 Canadian Athlete of the Year. In the first round he competes with Olympic champion ice dance couple Tesse Virtue/Scott Moir for the top 8.