July 29 2011, Elaine Chaivarlis

We’re happy the weekend is finally here and we can relax in a hammock and unwind. If you’re going to be grinding at the tables this weekend, keep reading for some of the top poker news stories of the day that you’re obviously going to use as ice breakers to talk to that cute girl or guy in the eight seat. The World Poker Tour has released numbers for its coverage on FSN that are not too shabby. Also, if you want a sweat in November, then you should check out some Las Vegas sportbooks for betting odds on the November Nine.

In Case You Missed It

Season five of the PokerStars Asia Pacific Poker Tour kicked off at Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia on Friday. Everyone in the 260-player field was vying for the $300,000 first-place prize.

The online high-stakes tables are seeing more and more action now that players are returning from their summer in Las Vegas. Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom was one of the biggest winners of the week, but top honors go to Davin “mTw-DaviN” Georgi.

You’re Watching, We’re Watching…

A lot of people are watching the World Poker Tour on FSN. According to numbers released by the World Poker Tour, the Hollywood Poker Open final table, that aired two weeks ago, was a huge success. Maybe folks were tuning in to see if Erik Seidel could add another win to his already impressive 2011. Maybe they were tuning in to get a look at William Reynolds’ flowing, golden locks. Or maybe they just wanted a glimpse of Royal Flush Girl Melanie Iglesias.

Either way, it was the first time that a WPT broadcast had a Nielsen rating of over 1.0 and an audience of over 1 million viewers. The official numbers, according to Nielsen, were 1.01 HH and 1.054 million viewers.

With numbers like this, and the fact that the past three months have seen a 50 percent increase in ratings, it’s likely that when final season numbers come out this fall, this television season could be the WPT’s most successful.

If you want to know where Season X of the WPT is headed or which Season IX stop is up next on FSN head on over to WorldPokerTour.com.

Have a Sweat in November

We know we’ve already told you where you can bet on the 2011 World Series of Poker November Nine. It was online. What about those of you that can’t bet online? Just head on out to Las Vegas, because now that the Nevada Gaming Control Board approved event wagering, casinos are offering up odds on who will take down poker’s biggest prize.

Jason McCormick, director of race and sports operations for Station Casinos said: “It’s a no-brainer that this was the first one to be approved. It’s a poker tournament that is already governed by the Nevada Gaming Control Board. So I think from an approval standpoint, all the regulations and things that had to be followed were right there.”

Caesars Entertainment properties are also trying to get in on the action, but the company has more regulatory issues to sort out because it also runs the World Series of Poker. WSOP communications director Seth Palansky told the Las Vegas Sun that he expects Caesars will be approved and says that Caesars could offer a myriad of betting options like “color of the first flop” or “how many players will the chip leader eliminate?”

“Ultimately, this is just another tool to drive interest and anticipation for the event,” Palansky told the Las Vegas Sun. “We think it’s great.”

Find out more at LasVegasSun.com.

#Mashing

The latest installment of ESPN’s The Nuts is back. The monthly blog post ranks the best players in poker at the moment. The Panel this month included PokerNews’ Managing Editor Elaine Chaivarlis, PokerNews’ Tournament Reporting Manager Don Peters, ESPN’s Andrew Feldman, Gary Wise, and Bernard Lee, among others.

Jason Mercier is sitting comfortably in the top spot again this month. In fact, the top three didn’t change this month, with Erik Seidel and John Juanda back in the second and third spots respectively.

Ben Lamb and Jake Cody are two newcomers to the list this month, and you can be sure that Phil Hellmuth advanced his position on the list after his stunning WSOP.

If you want to find out where those guys are on the list and whether or not Phil Ivey is still lurking in the top 10, you’re going to have to check out The Nuts on ESPN.com.

There’s Always Next Year

If you’re looking for the final installment of Colson Whitehead’s Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia, this is it. Well, this is a quick summary. If you want the TL;DR version, you can find it on Grantland.com.

The fourth installment of Whitehead’s time at the World Series of Poker chronicles his Day 2 and his bust out, which came just before dinner when his aces failed to hold against his opponent’s kings.

He closes by saying, “If I forget again, there’s always next year, right? What the heck, I’ll play the circuit, win some tournaments and come back. Palm Beach. New Orleans. Tunica. Never heard of Tunica, and maybe that’s a good thing. Return to Vegas. Make it to Day 3 this time, make it into the money, it will all work out. Maybe I’ll win, and they’ll play the national anthem of the Republic of Anhedonia in the Pavilion. I’ll stand on the stage in my hoodie, which is now decked out in rhinestones and flapping Vegas Gold fringes, place my hand over my heart (it would take some time to find it) and the speakers in the great hall will broadcast my homeland’s song, loud and clear so that everyone can hear it: ‘NYUH-GUH-UH! UH-GUUHH! NYUH-UGH UGH OH GOD NO NOT AGAIN SSSIIIGGGHHH …’”

Read the whole thing at Grantland.com. You know you want to.

G’Day Mate

The PokerStars Asia Pacific Poker Tour kicked off its fifth season in Melbourne, Australia. PokerNews hostess Nicki Pickering welcomes you to her home town and takes you on a tour of her favorite spots.

Follow us on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news.

July 25 2011, Elaine Chaivarlis

The weekend is over which means you’re back to the workweek grind and so are we. What do you need to know for that watercooler chit chat on Tuesday? Well, PokerStars dealt its 65 billionth hand on Sunday. How much did the winner of the hand get? We’ll tell you that, along with when the WSOP will air on ESPN, and more.

In Case You Missed It

Part two of the World Poker Tour Seminole Hard Rock Showdown aired on FSN Sunday night. All six final tablists made part two of the broadcast, and someone walked away with $1,122,340.

Another Sunday is in the books, which means another round of Sunday Majors crowned winners. The Sunday Briefing has all the results from the biggest online poker tournaments including the PokerStars Sunday Million and more.

The 2011 World Series of Poker November Nine is finally set. Now that we’ve had some time to digest what happened last week, Rich Ryan brings you his Five Thoughts on how the 2011 WSOP Main Event Final Table stacks up.

Congratulations!

On Sunday, PokerStars dealt its 65 billionth hand. If you’re a frequent reader of the Nightly Turbo, you probably know there was some big money in it for the table dealt the Mega Milestone hand and for the winner of that hand.

Christopher Small, from Christchurch, New Zealand, was the lucky winner. He was playing at a $.10/$.25 six-max no-limit hold’em table, one of 24 tables he was playing at the time.

“I was 24-tabling and saw the popup telling me I was involved in the 65 billionth hand,” Small told the PokerStars Blog. “I had ace-king when I looked at the table. My reaction was one of this must be a dream. I couldn’t believe it.”

The six players at the table had moved all-in and the board ran out giving Small the big win. He pocketed $68,420 and the other five players won at least $1,710.

As for what Small will do with his newly found windfall, “It’s still sinking in,” he said.

According to a press release we received Monday morning, the 65 Billion Hand promotion ran for a week and saw $770,588.88 given out to more that 1,600 PokerStars players over 301 Milestone Hands.

Find out more about Christopher Small and his win at PokerStarsBlog.com.

Set Your DVRs

We’re sure you got your fill of 2011 World Series of Poker coverage through the PokerNews Live Reporting Blog and the live feed on ESPN3.com and WSOP.com. If you’re anything like us, you need time to wean yourself of your dependance for WSOP updates, so ESPN is here to help. Coverage of the 2011 World Series of Poker begins on Tuesday night on ESPN and runs for the next 16 weeks, all leading up to the November Nine.

It all kicks off on ESPN Tuesday, July 26 at 8 p.m. EDT with two hours of coverage of the promotional Grudge Matches that were played earlier this summer. The $25,000 Heads-Up Championship and the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship will take up the next two weeks of coverage on ESPN.

On August 16, Main Event coverage begins, and that’s all you’ll get until a winner is crowned. For those of you wondering who will be in the booth, the old standard of Norman Chad and Lon McEachern will be back calling the action and giving us an update on how many wives Chad has had.

Be sure and check your local listings for times and set your DVR. This is your one and only reminder – maybe.

On the Outside Looking In

Colson Whitehead is back with another installment of Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia on Grantland.com. If you don’t know what this series is, then you probably don’t read the Nightly Turbo that much, so you should change that.

In Part 3, Whitehead details his visits to City Center and The Cosmopolitan. He then gets into the stuff we all want to hear — his time at the table of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event and who showed up in the eight seat.

“Eventually Seat 8 showed up. The dealer looked at his ID and said, ‘Oh, shit!’ One thing you do not want to hear is a dealer say, ‘Oh, sh*t!’ when a player joins your table. He was wearing a red World Poker Tour jacket with … was that his name embroidered on the left breast? This motherf***er was so bad, he had a goddamned monogrammed World Poker Tour jacket! Floor managers and players from other tables moseyed over to say hello. Fortunately, he was on my right, and if he went crazy with six-betting or nine-betting or who knew what, I could make a quick muck.”

We know when you head over to Grantland.com for the remainder of this story, you’re going to think we’re crazy for sending you to read a 5,000-word essay, but who knows, you might enjoy it. And you know you want to find out if he made it to Day 2.

A New Event Rolls into Town

HeadsUp Entertainment International, the folks that run the Canadian Poker Tour, Canadian Poker Player Magazine, and the Canadian Poker Player Television Network (pretty much anything that has to do with Canada and poker) announced the SIGA Poker Championship in a press release on Monday.

SIGA, the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority operates six First Nation casinos in Saskatchewan and each one will be holding satellites for the event. The SIGA Poker Championship will take place October 1 and 2 at the Dakota Dunes Casino in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

“We are extremely pleased to be working with SIGA,” said CPT President Dan Forigo. “We look forward to building a long and profitable relationship with them and are confident that the events we are working on for 2012 will continue to grow.”

Check out the press release for more.

Ladies of Luck

In the second episode of In the Tank on PokerPhenoms.com, host Adam Johnson spoke with poker pro Matt Vengrin about his new project called Ladies of Luck. For his new project, he cast a group of women and will train them to play poker.

In the video, Vengrin introduces us to two finalists. The two discuss how they got into poker and how the training process is going.

We would have embedded the video here, but we can’t figure out how to, so head on over to PokerPhenoms.com to check it out.

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