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I think I might have mentioned something last week about having had plans to interview Kara Scott, the poker player who has appeared as a host or presenter on numerous poker shows, including currently on “High Stakes Poker.” We did get a chance to talk this week, and the interview can now be read over on Betfair.

I asked her about various topics, including how she got into poker and poker TV, “High Stakes Poker,” the recent PartyPoker Big Game IV in London, her joining up with team PartyPoker, and her own play, in particular those two deep runs in the WSOP Main Event she has had over the last couple of years (finishing 104th and 238th).

As was the case last week with Matthew Hilger, I had a lot of fun talking with Kara, especially regarding her experience at the 2008 WSOP. I was also surprised a little about the story of her having trained as a Thai boxer (and that being an avenue to television for her). I guess I had heard that about her at some point along the way, but had forgotten.

There was one question I didn’t ask her which didn’t occur to me until later on, a question having to do with her new affiliation with PartyPoker. She mentioned how there would be some television work there for her with Party — the Big Game IV was an example. I remembered afterwards that PartyGaming had purchased the World Poker Tour last year, so I might’ve asked if she knew anything about the future of that relationship (including the TV side of things).

We also talked a bit about interviewing players, generally speaking — something with which Kara has a lot of experience. Speaking of, I mentioned last week I was thinking of compiling a list of poker-related interviews I’ve done, so here that is:

Dennis Phillips (October 2008)
Barry Greenstein (April 2009) — Part 1 & Part 2
Andy Bloch (May 2009)
James McManus (November 2009)
Victoria Coren (January 2010)
Kevin Mathers (February 2010)
Lou Krieger (February 2010)
Ilya Gorodetsky (March 2010)
Matthew Hilger (April 2010)
Kara Scott (April 2010)

Have other fun stuff coming up over on Betfair Poker in the near future, including involving contributions from some of your favorite poker bloggers regarding the good-gawd-is-it-less-than-five-weeks-away-that-can’t-be-right-I-guess-it-is 2010 WSOP. (Stay tuned!)

Meanwhile, enjoy the weekend, all! Don’t forget the BBT5 continues over on Full Tilt Poker (details here).

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The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino is hosting the first annual Trash Talk Championship of the World, a special and highly unique event benefiting the Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and giving poker players the chance to put their money where their mouth is.

The $1,000 +$70 no-limit Hold’em tournament will take place at the Hard Rock Hotel’s Poker Lounge on Saturday, February 6th, 2010. Half of the prize pool will go to philanthropic causes. The other half will be distributed to winners. In addition to the cash prize, the Trash Talk Champion will win a 20-pound custom designed crystal trophy, and a World Poker Tour Celebrity Invitational seat in Los Angeles, sponsored by Commerce Casino and ClubWPT.com.

The Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the supported charity of modern artist Michael Godard, who has dedicated himself to philanthropic causes through his art.

“The funds I help raise save lives. At the end of the day, it’s the most important thing I do.” said Godard.

The event will be attended by several celebrities and poker players, including Playboy Playmate Sara Underwood, artist Michael Godard, photographer Michael Vincent, FBI “tells” specialist Joe Navarro, professional poker players Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiary, Lee Markholt, Dan “Blitz” Bilzerian, High Stakes Poker guest Andrew Robl,  Keith Gipson, “Who’s Your Daddy” CEO Dan Fleyshman, World Series of Poker Champion Paul Wasicka, professional backgammon and poker player Sander Lyloff, “The Maven VT” David Chicotsky, Brian Rast, Alec Torelli, and more.

A red carpet walk and cocktail reception sponsored by VictoryPoker.net starts at 2:00 PM. The tournament starts at 3:00 PM. Event highlights will include a $100-$200 high-stakes Trash Talk cash game, a silent auction, and a Team Victory after party at 10:00 PM.

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Had all sorts of busy dreams last night, where I was constantly running around, having to be in two (or three or four) places at once. Probably because there’s a damn lot going on these days, poker-wise.

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure — the first leg on the new North American Poker Tour — is finally winding down in Nassau, Bahamas. Harrison Gimbel (aged 19) took down the Main Event, earning a head-spinning $2.2 million. And last night another youngster, William Reynolds (aged 21), took down the High Rollers event, winning $526,240.

Meanwhile, the Aussie Millions has gotten underway down in Melbourne and will be running for the rest of the month, with the Main Event happening Jan. 24-30. Follow the action at the Aussie Millions over at PokerNews’ live reporting page.

Another bit of news came out yesterday, via Daniel Negreanu’s blog. The presence of 441 Productions at the PCA — the crew ESPN uses for its WSOP coverage — had suggested the possibility that ESPN would be carrying the NAPT, and according to Negreanu that indeed is going to be the case. Stephen A. Murphy gives us a good summary of that story over on the Card Player site.

The news that ESPN will be there at the Venetian for the next NAPT event — the main event of the Deep Stack Extravaganza series (Feb. 20-24) — certainly will attract a lot of folks to the Venetian who might not have been there otherwise. Will be interesting, too, to see whether this next NAPT event will affect the numbers at the World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic, also going on in February, although if I am reading the schedule correctly the Main Event over there doesn’t begin until Feb. 26. Many will play both events, I imagine, although a large number of players may only have the bankroll to choose one. (Links to schedules: NAPT Venetian; WPT L.A. Poker Classic.)

So it’ll be the NAPT vs. the WPT. The Venetian vs. the Commerce. ESPN vs. Fox Sports. And PokerStars vs. PartyPoker (sort of, as Peerless Media, Ltd., a division of PartyGaming, acquired World Poker Tour Enterprises late last summer). And, er, Vanessa Rousso versus Kara Scott? (Scott signed this week as a PartyPoker pro.)

Speaking of conflicts, while we’re all distracted by these other stories, most of us have taken our eyes off of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 after the deadline for the implementation of the law’s final regulations was delayed for six months to June 1, 2010. In what appears a bit of petulant politicking, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), one of those involved in authoring versions of the bill that would eventually become the UIGEA, has discovered a way to respond to the delay. He’s currently blocking the appointment of nominees to fill various Treasury Department posts, apparently as a kind of payback for the decision to delay the UIGEA’s enforcement.

Maria Del Mar gives a good summary of the situation over at Poker News Daily, including some references to comments by various observers, such as Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who are marveling at how Kyl can find it worthwhile to delay the filling of key positions in the Treasury Department while the U.S. continues to try and find its way out of financial crisis. Specifically, Kyl is preventing the appointment of six key officials, all of whom would help manage tax policies and international finance, posts which, as Del Mar points out, “even for the most hardcore poker fans, it should be clear that they ought to have a much higher priority than the UIGEA’s implementation or repeal.”

Among other folks, Del Mar points us to the political blogger Matthew Yglesias for more commentary. Seems more than a little unreasonable for Kyl to hold up the functioning of the Treasury this way in order to make known his grievance over the UIGEA delay.

But then, every single step of the legislative history of the UIGEA has been characterized by such self-serving, dysfunctional applesauce by its authors and backers.

A bill punted around in various forms for nearly a decade gets attached to another and passed into law without debate. Regulations get drafted, failing to clarify even the most rudimentary aspects of the bill (e.g., what constitutes “unlawful internet gambling”). A lame-duck administration finalizes the regulations, scheduling the sucker to go into effect on its last full day of its government. Banks and financial institutions, charged with enforcing the law, continue to plead they don’t know how to do so other than by “overblocking” all suspect transactions, and so a further delay is granted to revisit the issue, and perhaps entertain other legislation related to online gambling in the U.S.

Of course, all of these stories are connected pretty closely, as the fate of the UIGEA will directly affect that of the NAPT, the WPT, the online sites connected with those tours, and more. So, as I say, it will be interesting to see what happens in February in L.V. and L.A. And after that in D.C.

Meanwhile, go check out my interview with Victoria Coren over on Betfair about her book For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair with Poker. Coren was nice enough to take a little time out from her PokerStars Caribbean Adventure to answer my questions.

Have a good weekend!

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Am following with interest the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure play out down in Nassau. Checking in on PokerNews’ live reporting as well as the PokerStars blog for all the latest.

Sounds like over 1,500 runners sat down for the two Day Ones, a new record for the PCA. Of course, yesterday the big news coming out of the Bahamas was how the PCA is in fact the first event of the new North American Poker Tour (NAPT). The tour’s next stop will be in Las Vegas in February at the Venetian, then over to the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut in April. Oh, and it sounds like ESPN might be shooting these NAPT final tables for broadcast, a not-insignificant part of the story.

Our buddy B.J. Nemeth has written some about the new NAPT and its challenge to the World Poker Tour (for which Nemeth does live reporting). Check out Nemeth’s post “NAPT vs. WPT: The Battle for North America” for some of his thoughts on the subject. As Nemeth notes, that next NAPT event at the Venetian will directly compete with the WPT’s L.A. Poker Classic in February, so we’ll see right away how the first round of this here fight will go.

Nemeth also alludes in his post to the purchase of World Poker Tour Enterprises by PartyGaming from last year, which reminds me that I had wanted to write a little something on that story again here.

I wrote a couple of those “top ten” lists at the end of 2009 — one compiling the top stories of the year and another listing the top moments of the decade. Such lists are more difficult to pull together than they appear, especially if one is trying to rank the items against one another in some fashion. They’re certainly fun, though, as debate starters. Hell, I immediately felt like challenging my own choices as soon as I made them.

There were at least a couple of stories from 2009 I had considered including in my “Top Poker Stories of 2009” list but ended up leaving out. One was Daniel Negreanu having passed Jamie Gold as the all-time tournament money winner, thanks to the Canadian’s runner-up finish at the 2009 WSOPE Main Event. (Phil Ivey would pass Gold as well following his seventh-place finish at the WSOP.)

Another story I had in the list for a while but then ultimately dropped was the one regarding the purchase of World Poker Tour Enterprises by PartyGaming back in late August 2009. I know several others kept this one in their top ten stories lists for 2009, but I ended up deciding that for the average poker player or fan it hadn’t really registered all that much. I could certainly see, though, how some might view this “insider”-type story as having real some importance down the road.

The news of Party’s purchase of WPTE came not long after we’d heard a story that WPTE had been sold to a group called Gamynia Limited (for $9.075 million). Then Peerless Media Ltd., a division of PartyGaming, came along with a better offer and was able to buy the WPT for $12.3 million. Steve Lipscomb, WPTE’s President and CEO, noted at the time how he looked forward to PartyGaming being able “to provide a strong vehicle for the WPT brand to continue its global expansion and return to online gaming.”

I did write a little something about the purchase here at the time, noting both the relatively small price tag and how it seemed kind of interesting how the fate of poker no longer seemed all that closely tied to the livelihood of the WPT. Such wouldn’t have been the case just a couple of years before, but in 2009, with the European Poker Tour and a host of other tours thriving all over the globe, the fortunes of the fading WPT just didn’t seem as crucial, big picture-wise.

The reason why the purchase — which includes Party getting the WPT branding rights — is viewed by some as a potentially big story is tied to the possibility that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 could get either overturned or pushed out by new legislation to license and regulate online gambling in the United States. It is thought that by purchasing the WPT brand, PartyPoker will have themselves a handy “vehicle” with which to reenter the U.S. market.

Seems like a lot has to happen, though, for that sequence ever to play out in quite that way. Someone who knows a lot more about these things than I do, Bill Rini, offered some thoughts on the story as well back in August. Rini outlines some of the difficulties Party might face when it comes to returning to the U.S., with or without the WPT brand as a kind of protective shield. Not at all a sure thing, it seems, but perhaps we’ll see.

Going back to Nemeth’s post, the new NAPT — sponsored by PokerStars — now means we have kind of a “PartyPoker-vs.-PokerStars” thing happening again here in the U.S. in the form of these competing tours. Kind of recalls what our little world of online poker was like when I first started this blog in the spring of 2006, back when Party & Stars were the big dogs in the U.S. (with Full Tilt just starting to yap at their heels). Will be very interesting to watch how it all plays out, and, of course, what effect the UIGEA getting overturned and/or bumped by new legislation could have on the competition.

If you’re interested in more on this “insider”-type stuff, I’d suggest listening to some of our fave industry insiders over on The Poker Beat, who return this afternoon (I believe) with a new episode.

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World Poker Tour (WPT) Season VII will be back on Fox Sports Net (FSN) with 26 new episodes featuring the best moments from its US based tour. WPT Season VIII will make its national HD premier on Sunday, January 24th at 11:00 pm. The 26 episodes airing on FSN will be sponsored by FullTiltPoker.net, one of the leading websites in poker instruction.

WPT regular hosts, Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten will be back to call the action for 13 final tables. Viewers will see each final table unfold over two one-hour episodes aired nationally every Sunday night.

World Poker Tour SeasonVIII will kick off with the $15,000 Bellagio Cup final table, followed by events at venues around the US, including Bay 101 in San Jose, Californi; Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles; Beau Rivage in Biloxi; Borgata Hotel, Casino & Spa in Atlantic City; Commerce Casino in Los Angeles; Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut; and new stop on the tour—Hollywood Casino in Lawrenceburg, Indiana.

“We’re excited to bring a new season of WPT events to our regional sports networks. The drama of high-stakes poker continues to connect with our audience of sports fans.” said David Sussin, Vice President of Programming for FSN.

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