News, Reviews And Interviews From Around The Poker World

2010 World Series of Poker Europe Schedule Features Five Bracelet Events
Main Event Will Begin Sept. 23

Harrah’s recently announced that the World Series of Poker Europe will run Sept. 14-28, with its £10,000 main event beginning on Sept. 23.

The Series will feature five events, and if history is any indication, nearly all of the big-name pros will be in attendance. The number of bracelet events is a slight increase over last year, when four were held. This marks the most bracelet events ever held outside of Las Vegas in a single year.

The 2010 WSOPE will feature a £2,500 six-max event, a £5,000 pot-limit Omaha event, a £1,000 no-limit hold’em event, and a £10,000 high-roller heads-up event, which should attract another star-studded field.

Card Player CEO and Publisher Barry Shulman will look to become the WSOPE’s first-ever repeat winner of the main event. Last year, Shulman outlasted a talented field of 334 players and a stacked final table that included six WSOP bracelet winners.

Never having competed in the WSOPE before, Shulman traveled to London last year for the event on account of his son, Jeff Shulman, who had just made the final table of the WSOP main event.

“Jeff final-tabling the main event had a huge impact on me,” said Shulman. “I said to Jeff, ‘I want to go to Europe and make the final table, also.’ I was focused like I’ve never been focused in my life.”

After a couple of marathon days — 17 hours of poker on the second-to-last day, and then another 15 hours of poker at the final table — Shulman was crowned the champion when he defeated Daniel Negreanu in heads-up play.

The 2010 WSOPE will be held once again at the Casino at the Empire at Leicester Square in London.

The complete schedule follows:

Wyoming Considers Revising Poker Laws
Legislators Seek to Clarify Social Poker Exemption

“Bona fide” is a phrase that has been causing a lot of legal controversy in the poker world.

In 2008, five Colorado poker players had their cases dropped without prejudice when the district attorney failed to convince a jury that poker wasn’t a “bona fide contest of skill,” which state law exempts from its gambling clauses.

Now, in Wyoming, state legislators are analyzing their poker legislation and are wondering if they really need to require that all members in a card game have a “bona fide social relationship,” as mandated under state law.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s anybody who has a real grasp as to what ‘bona fide social relationship’ means,” said Tom Montoya, the chief of enforcement at the Wyoming Liquor Division.

In Wyoming, it is legal for bars and restaurants to hold poker games, as long as the house doesn’t directly profit from them, and as long as they meet the “bona fide social relationship” requirement. But state legislators are acknowledging that the term is so vague that it is almost impossible to enforce, and now they are considering scrapping the language altogether.

The result of this dialogue is unlikely to usher in any dramatic changes to the poker scene in the state, as legislators still want to make sure that any new law doesn’t allow for the creation of additional for-profit poker rooms across the state. However, it could mean that Wyoming poker players no longer need to be afraid that they’re breaking the law if a person they don’t know that well sits down at their table.

CardPlayer.com Launches CPsocial Poker Community
Users’ Ability to Write Blogs is Biggest Feature in New Release

CardPlayer.com recently launched CPsocial, which enables users to connect with each other and the poker community in a completely new way.

Here’s what you can do with CPsocial:

1. Create a Profile: You can add a profile photo and list your age, hometown, online-poker screen names, and Twitter account info in your own personal profile on CardPlayer.com. Your profile also displays your activity feed.

2. Blog: You now can blog on CardPlayer.com. If we like your blog enough, we’ll recommend it to other readers by putting it in a special “Recommended User Blogs” section. What’s more, if you post quality blogs often enough, we may even give you a promotion to our featured bloggers section with the likes of Daniel Negreanu, Doyle Brunson, and Phil Hellmuth. (No, we’re not kidding!)

3. Post Your Poker Stats Tracker Results: Now you can share individual Poker Stats Tracker results with the poker community.

4. Comments: Everyone’s username is clickable to his/her profile across the site, which means that you now can click through to see all of the comments that someone has left, along with any other information that he/she cares to provide in his/her profile. And, of course, you can do this yourself to more easily follow conversations that you’re having with other users in comment strings.

5. Connect to Facebook and Twitter: You now can connect your CardPlayer.com account to both Facebook and Twitter, making it super simple to both sign in and share content (including your new blog!).

Aria Opens the Ivey Room
Phil Ivey Joins Bobby Baldwin in Having a High-Stakes Room Named in His Honor

The Aria Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas recently opened “The Ivey Room,” in honor of poker professional Phil Ivey. The high-stakes room features one poker table, multiple 42-inch flat-screen televisions, and direct private access to a cashier’s cage that holds 480 safe-deposit boxes. The room also features complimentary beverage service and around-the-clock table-side dining. The room is an addition to the 24-table poker room that Aria debuted when it opened in December 2009.

“We were thrilled that Phil agreed when we asked if he would consider putting his name on the room,” said Aria President Phil McBeath in an article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He continued, “Phil is a great guy, a longtime friend both of the MGM Mirage family and mine personally, and remains a fan favorite in the world of poker.”

Ivey now joins Bobby Baldwin, a former world champion, as a player to be honored with a high-stakes poker room namesake. Bobby’s Room is in Bellagio, and is the current home of the “Big Game.” It remains to be seen if the Big Game will move to the Aria, but the game has migrated before. Considering that CityCenter and Bellagio are both owned by MGM Mirage, the new room isn’t a competitor as much as it is the next step in Las Vegas poker offerings.