Tiffany Michelle is currently the last women standing at the 2008 World Series of Poker main event. The final 27 players begin playing today with play ending when nine players are left. The WSOP will then go on hiatus untill November 9th when play will resume.

Tiffany Michelle is currently 7th with 6.5 million in chips at the 2008 WSOP. Tiffany started playing poker in 2005 when she began playing in celebrity poker tournaments. After playing in the events she decided to play in cash games in Los Angeles and elsewhere. On her website she states that she won her first tournament she entered in Las Vegas and was able to hold her own at the poker table.

Tiffany then started to enter and play in WSOP and WPT events. She has never had a major cash in either tournament series but this may change with the 2008 WSOP. The main event is the largest event in the poker world and could be a huge stepping stone for her career because of the media coverage and going so deep in a tournament so far won my men.

TIffany Michelle’s nickname is “Hot Chips” and does on camera hosting for pokernews and has been on several radio shows: Bluff Radio, Hold ‘Em Radio and Rounders Radio. She has also appeared on GSN World Series of Blackjack.

Looks like I will need to add a page for Tiffany at the Poker Girls section. If she does make the final nine players it will be interesting to see which poker site will pay the big bucks to sponsor her.

The World Series of Poker main event is underway with 6,844 players competing for the $64.3 million dollar prize pool. The winner of the 2008 WSOP main event will take home a cool $9.12 million. The tournament will be starting day 3 today with 1308 players left.  The current chip leader is Brian Schaedlich who has 801k in chips with second having 531k.

The World Series of Poker had 58,720 entries which is the most ever over the 55 event tournament. It increased by 8% from last year partly due to the increased international participation. The event attracted a number of international poker players with over 118 countries having at least one player participating which is an increase of 36%.

Source:

Review Journal

Online poker rooms have been offering 2008 WSOP Satellites for the last couple months and are pushing to send the next 2008 Main Event champion. Now that the WSOP is underway and the Main Event is a little more then a month away poker sites have re-created the WSOP and have begun to offer what is called “Mini” World Series of Poker Tournament Series.

They are mirroring all the events that are played at the 2008 WSOP only with smaller buy-ins.

FullTilt Poker.com - They are currently running their 2008 Mini Series of Poker , it started on May 30th and runs through July 5th. The buy-ins are 1/100th of the normal WSOP buy-ins. The winner of each tournament will get a Full Tilt Poker Championship along with the prize money. They

BodogPoker.com - They have their own Mini-Sop tournament that is running from May 30th to July 10th. Each buy-in is 1% the original cost. The top  players on the Mini-Sop leaderboard will receive entry into a final tournament where the top 3 finishers are 2009 WSOP Main Event seats.

Absolute Poker.net - Their tournament is called the World Series of Absolute Poker and will run from May 30th to July 3rd.  They have a leaderboard with the winner receiving a free entry to their Aruba Classic. Players that win 3 tournaments in a row also get a free entry into the Aruba Classic poker tournament. And finally the most final table finishes gets a 4 week pass to the $150k weekly tournament.

Ultimate Bet has just released a press release with findings of their investigation into allegations of unfair play on their site. Tokwiro Enterprises, the company that owns Ultimate Bet used Kahnawake Gaming Commission and independent third parties to investigate the cheating allegations.

The allegations proved to be correct and investigators were able to find evidence that their was a breach in their security. The unfair play happened between March 7, 2006 to December 3, 2007 during high limit games.  The cheating players were able to see players hole cards because of an auditing program that was not secure. The security hole has since been fixed but the damage has been done. Players from2+2 forums have been calling for an announcement from UB management ever since this was brought to their attention in January 08 because of the player “NioNio”.

Ultimate Bet has taken full responsibility for what happened and is planning to repay all players that were affected. Some players have reported (unverified) that 6 figures have shown up in their account since the announcement.

Sources:

Ultimate Bet Summary Thread 2+2

After Press Release 2+2 Forums UB Thread

The 2008 WSOP Main Event final table will be played on November 9-11th. They are officially delaying the final table which is usually played in July. ESPN has made the change to delay the final table so they will be able to show the final table after the previous episodes of the main event have aired.

Usually the World Series of Poker Main Event winner is known in July and it is no surprise when the broadcast is shown in the fall. This year will be different and players have mixed feelings on the delay of the table which will know coincide with the broadcast. Johnny Chan and Daniel Negreanu both support the idea and think this will bring more anticipation to the final table with more strategy and analysis.

Other professionals like Greg Raymer (2005 Main Event Winner) from Stars Poker.com has mixed feelings because of the potential coaching that will be involved. Players can train for months to get ready for the table which will definitely change the style of play.

It will be interesting to see if this changes the 2008 WSOP in any other unexpected ways. I know the players that are in the final table will have awhile to figure out which of the poker sites they will sign with so they can make the most money. I will definitely have more on the developments of the 2008 WSOP and more on the delay of the WSOP Final Table.

Source: USA Today

Earlier in the week, I wrote about the “Deal” a new poker movie which is being released this Friday.  Early reviews from top film critics have been very negative and one reviewer even said that this movie is worse then “Lucky You”!

When I watched the trailer my first thought was that the movie looked very formulaic and basically pretty lame and my guess was they made the movie to make a quick buck on the popularity of poker.  It seems like my first reaction was right…On rotten tomatoes the current score is 0/11, giving it a score of 0%. This means that 11 reviewers think this movie is rotten (in other terms, they wouldn’t recommend it) while no reviewers have thought it was worth seeing.

I went to the official “Deal” website which was hard to do because when you put “deal poker movie” in google it is no where to be found. Finally once I found the site I saw that there are quotes from professional poker players saying just how good the movie is and how authentic it is. Popular players such  as Phil Laak, Antonio Estafandi, Joseph Hachem…all give their praise with quotes from each of them. Funny though, when you check the credits for the movie all of the players are  actually in the movie….so can’t say they are the most trusted sources.

I haven’t actually seen any TV ads but have heard some radio ads and have also seen some banners on popular poker sites. It looks like the studio knows it has a bad movie on their hand and don’t want to waste money promoting it.

It will be interesting to see how well the movie does this weekend in terms of gross revenue. From the early reviewers it sounds like this should have been a straight to DVD release.

Professional poker players: Andy Bloch, Annie Duke, Chris Ferguson, Phil Gordon, Howard Lederer, Greg Raymer and Joe Hachem filed a suit in 2006 against the World Poker Tour for what they felt was an unfair release they had to sign when playing at a World Poker Tour Event.

News has been circulating that the lawsuit has come to a close after two years. No money will exchange hands but the World Poker Tour has agreed to change the terms and will no longer have the right to use players names, images and/or likeness in any type of WPT promotion without getting the players consent and also paying them. This was a problem for professional players that had agreements with poker sites and other player contracts signed that had clauses that players needed to represent them at tournaments.

The lawsuit stemmed from players feeling that the World Poker Tour had no competition and was able to write the release forms any way they wanted because players had no choice but to play in the large buy-in tournaments. This is now less of an issue because of the EPT and LAPT. The popular poker tours have really changed the tournament landscape and the WPT no longer has a monolopy.

Deal a new poker film is being released on April 25, 2008 and will star Burt Reynolds, Shannon Elizabeth and Bret Harrison.  The film is about Burt Reynolds a retired poker pro who decides to stake and mentor Bret Harisson (Young cocky poker player).

The movie looks to be pretty formulaic but I am sure will have a lot of poker professional cameos. Shannon Elizabeth plays Bret Harrison’s love interest. I haven’t seen the movie but from the long trailer at dealthemovie.com I was able to see that the final climax of the movie is a WPT event where Bret Harrison and Burt Reynolds are playing against each other.

Poker Professionals that are in the credits: Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari, Scott Lazar, Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer, Isabelle Mercier, Mike Sexton and Jennifer Tilly.

There aren’t any reviews on the movie and April 25th looks to be a limited theater release date.

ePassporte, a payment processor that was a popular alternative for players that wanted to deposit and withdraw from us poker sites has officially stopped transactions at online poker sites. This was effective as of 1pm PDT yesterday.

Players with ePassporte accounts can still withdraw their money from the payment processor to a US bank. Though, you will not be able to use ePassporte to deposit or withdraw at poker sites.

ePassporte became the payment processor of choice when the 2006 UIGEA was passed and Neteller left the US market. ePassporte only allowed poker websites to use the service and excluded other forms of gambling including casinos and sportsbooks. It looks like they have taken the additional step and stopped poker sites and with that all gambling transactions.