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It seems the players who missed out WSOPE for some reason are attending  WPT Borgata Poker Open, which boasts of the largest player pool ever in WPT history, a total of 1,042 players. FYI, last year’s record was 1,018 players attending.

I have been paying close attention to Miss Lauren Kling, the talented blonde beauty who’s becoming more and more successful in poker. I already wrote about her in July, when she was participating in the WSOP Main Event and again in August, if you missed that out. Now she’s into tournaments, at the moment she takes part in PokerStars’ WCOOP events and a few smaller tournaments. In this video she was caught by Kristy Arnett in her 5 minute break, so now you all can get an insight to what a poker pro lady does between tournaments.

The World Series of Poker continues, the second event has already ended, which was all about Pot Limit Omaha, in which Jeffrey Lisandro finished first. I wrote about Event #1 not so long ago, which was won by the 'Unabomber' Phil Laak, scoring his first WSOP victory.

Jeff Lisandro at WSOPE

At the Ł5,000 Pot Limit Omaha tournament, huge sums of money were won by the finalists, but a total of 18 players finished in the money. Lisandro, known to be one of the best Seven Card Stud players have won his first non-Stud title, and earned a total of £159,000 with his victory.

Eponymus’ Photoshop comic strip ‘The Godfather of Online Poker’ continues with Part V, in which Patrik Corleone makes a pass at Maria Ho, we get to meet Don Tonygi and the XOR encryption is as a piece of cake to crack as ever.

A new variation of Texas Hold’em is now available only on PartyPoker’s tables, the Double Hold’em. For the most part, it is played the same way as normal Hold’em, except you are dealt three hole cards, not two.

The Double Hold'em in action

This is how it works: upon receiving your cards, you have to choose one of the three to be your point (or common) card after the flop but before the betting round. Once you picked yours, it moves to the centre and it cannot be altered. There is only a limited time to choose your point card, however; in case you fail to do so, the system automatically picks the one with the greatest value. If you have two high cards that are of the same face value, the one that has a suited match with the third card will be chosen. Should there be no suited match at all, both face and suit values are considered.

Michael Mizrachi is a very lucky man. Or he just might be very good with the small letters in contracts. Last time I reported that he was sued by his previous sponsor, Deliverance Poker because of contract breach. The poker firm demanded a Temporary Restraining Order on Mizrachi by the Jurors.

The Judge (by the name of James Nowlin) denied their request however, because at first they did not include a "relevant contract" and when they did, the judge was still not convinced: “Even with the additional support attached to the Plaintiff’s amended pleadings, this Court is still not convinced there is ‘substantial likelihood’ that Plaintiff will prevail on the merits.”

There was also a problem with the Deliverance Poker contract's 'Effective Date'. Judge ruled that "There is no indication anywhere in Plaintiff’s pleadings that the ‘Effective Date’ has taken place.” Hence, Mizrachi’s contract also has a clause stating that the contract automatically terminates if the Effective Date has not occurred by August 24th, 2009, nearly one year before he progressed to the later stages of the WSOP Main Event dressed in Full Tilt Poker gear.

The first event came to its end at the WSOPE at the third day, where Phil Laak (the one that recently broke a few bones at a horrific ATV accident I informed you about) have won his first WSOP bracelet.

Laak is one of the poker players who are talked about as the most talented, who do not yet possess a bracelet. He is now out of the league, Phil Laak now has his first WSOP bracelet, which he won on his girlfriend's, Jennifer Tilly's birthday, which, as he comments "just makes it that much more sweet! Holla!”

Phil  Laak enjoying WSOPE finals

He went heads-up against Andrew Pantling a few times during the game, and they also met at the final table, where they fought the final heads-up. It took Laak 3 hours to finish him, winning Ł170,802 and the gold WSOPE bracelet.

FOX TV has aired the second “Best of” instalment of the PokerStars high stakes show The Big Game. The clash between the three loose cannons (Troy Howard, Aaron Jensen and Andre Capella) from the past weeks with some of the biggest names of poker (like Daniel Negreanu, Doyle Brunson, Tony G, Phil Hellmuth and Barry Greenstein) provided quite a number of memorable moments; these are revisited here. 

The inaugural British Poker Awards took place earlier this week at the Kensington Close Hotel in London. Hosted by Michael Caselli and Antonio Esfandiari, eleven awards went to poker players, contributors, providers and forums, according to a public online voting as well as the decision of fellow poker pros and editors.

The nominees for each category were selected by poker journalists and around 3,000 people voted for the eight that were Reader’s Choice. These are as follows: Best Cash Player, Best Tournament Player, Best Online Player, Best International Player, Best Poker League, Best UK Card Room, Best Contribution to Poker and Best UK Poker Forum.

Noted Poker Authority is one of the most popular poker blogs today. Ed Miller, authors the blog, which, in itself is a guarantee of quality. Ed is a professional poker player and author/co-author of numerous poker books.

Small Stakes Hold'em

He authored ’Small Stakes Hold’em: Winning Big With Expert Play’ with David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth, co-authored ’No Limit Hold’em: Theory and Practice’ with David Sklansky and has recently published a new paperback version of ’Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em’ with Sunny Mehta and Matt Flynn.

Ed is the one that created Noted Poker Authority, a news and strategy portal, full of content and updated regularly. It covers all kinds of poker-related topics, including poker news, strategy, reviews, gossip and fun stuff too. Ed is also in a close relationship with the twoplustwo team; his books have been published by them.

The fourth European instalment of the World Series of Poker kicked off in London at the Casino at the Empire yesterday. The tournament lasts from 14th to 28th September and consists of five events: a £2,500+£150 6-max NLHE (14th-16th Sept), a £5,000+£250 PLO (16th-18th Sept), a £1,000+£75 NLHE (17th-21st Sept), a £10,000+£350 NLHE High Roller Heads-Up (21st-23rd Sept) and the £10,000+£350 NLHE Main Event (23rd-28th Sept).

The first event began yesterday with 244 entrants, 31 of whom return today to make it to the 6-handed final table (the first 24 places pay). Those still in the event include Chris Moorman (94,200), Phil Laak (63,600) and Liv Boeree (27,700); the field is currently led by Andrew Pantling (106,100). Poker pros like Vanessa Rousso, Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, Michael Mizrachi and Tom 'durrrr' Dwan also paid the buy-in for this first event but they have already been eliminated.

The whistle has been blown and the NFL Season took a start. A lot of poker players seem to have an interest for football, and Daniel Negreanu is not an exception here. He has been betting on the outcome of the past two matches, not with a hundred percent success.

 “Bet one early NFL game CIN +5 hoping Palmer has a big game against an inexperienced NE secondary,” said Daniel on Twitter. The Bengals eventually lost to the Patriots.

Negreanu tried to make up for this with yet another bet: “Looks like I’m dead on my Cincy bet down 21 ugh. Hoping SF -3 will get me even at Seattle.” Unfortunately for ’Kid Poker’, San Francisco lost against Seattle.

Daniel is also participating in the Poker Royalty Fantasy Football League, and talks about his own fantasy football team in the video below:

As it was popular in the news recently, and as I informed you about, a group of China-based players colluded against players at PokerStars tables. One of the victims of the conspiracy, Tom Broadbent was not happy with his refund, $16,90, he thinks PokerStars owes him much more. He decided to travel to Beijing to report the incident personally to the local police.

The scandal was big news, and PokerStars closed 38 accounts involved in the illegal activities rather quickly, in which the conspirators earned a total of about $494,000 and PokerStars paid $2,100,000 in compensation to the victims. It turned out in Beijing to Mr. Broadbent that Chinese authorities have little power on such cases, hence foreign gangs know they can easily get away with crimes like these.

Such collusion is not very common, but not unprecedented. PokerStars, the largest online poker room have previously refunded $80,000 to players who unwittingly went up against poker "bots" - automated card-playing software programs that were mixed with real-life players at online tables.

Full Tilt Poker has announced that they will sponsor the Bellator Fighting Championships, which is a series of mixed martial arts (MMA) events, televised by FOX Sports and also broadcasted by NBC in their Saturday night highlight shows.

This is the third season of the Bellator series, one of the most popular fighting championships in the world. Bellator 28, this year’s first event was organized on the 9th September in the Mahalia Jackson Theatre in New Orleans, and this event already had Full Tilt logos everywhere.

Full Tilt Poker Makes its Debut in the Fighting Industry

Bellator 29 will be organized at the Rave Eagle Ballroom in Milwaukee on the 16th September.

You must remember the PartyPoker World Open VI. I wrote about a week ago, the $10,000 elvent that took pace at the Palm Beach Casino in London featuring 48 poker pros.

Sam Trickett

Well, we already have a winner. Former pro soccer player Sam Trickett have won the 2010 World Open VI. The player has had a very good year in his blossoming tournament poker career, but this result is the best so far.

The tournament was played in a shootout format, meaning players had to finish everybody off at their tables to advance to the final table. Trickett had to defeat the lineup of James Akenhead, Neil Channing, Lee Atherton, Ian Frazer, Peter Jetten, Dan Fleyshman and World Open IV. champion Marty Smyth in order to play at the final table. He succeeded, and with very good play eliminated Yevgeniy Timoshenko. He earned $200,000 for the win, boosting his total earnings for 2010 to more than $1 million.