The World Poker Exchange has teamed up with US Airways in a business deal that will help further expand the game of poker. They recently announced that US Airways will begin broadcasting poker tutorial programs during flights.

US Airways has an in flight television network called Overture and it will run 90 second spots about poker on it. This programming will only be available on video equipped flights that last longer than two hours.

The organizer of an online football gambling site has been sentenced to prison for two and a half years in China. Ouch! The guy's name is Gu Lianbao and he is 43 years old. The announcement of his conviction was recently made known.

The Beijing Intermediate People's Court made the decision to convict this guy for breaking the law. This poor guy was also fined an amount that converts to approximately $3,700 US Dollars.

According to CardPlayer, Gibralter-based company 888 Holdings has now gone public. 888 Holdings runs the sites 888.com, ReefClubCasino.com and PacificPoker.com. 

      

Israeli brothers Avi and Aaron Shaked sold approximately 25% of the company’s stock, making a reported $94 million dollars in the sale. The brothers retained 51.2 percent of the company’s stock.

       

Had they gone public a month prior, they may have been able to sell the stocks for a higher amount. The price for online gaming stocks has dropped considerably since an independent auditor in Party Gaming’s quarterly report predicted online poker growth would slow down considerably over the next few months.

I was looking over some World Series of Poker statistics and information and came across something that mentioned Yevgeny Kafelnikov. He played in the 2005 World Series of Poker and did pretty well. This guy used to be a world class tennis player and now he’s trying to make a living as a professional poker player.

I remember reading an article on espn.com late last year discussing Kafelnikov’s career change. The tennis world was a little bummed the day he quit. At one point, he was even the # 1 ranked men’s tennis player. He won numerous titles including the 1996 French Open and 1999 Australian Open.

Before Kafelnikov was able to tackle the biggest poker event in the world, he needed a poker coach. His mentor is a fellow Russian named Kirill Gerasimov. Kirill has made several finals tables and even won the World’s Heads Up Championship in 2002. Kafelnikov made a good decision going with Kirill. Kafelnikov cashed in 3 WSOP events this year including a 9th place finish in 7 Card Stud. Check out the below link for the other events he cashed in.

When action started today, Gus Hansen was one of the chip leaders with over 200,000 Euros. The European Poker Tour was expecting to pay out prizes to the Top 27 places. When the dust cleared, Jan Boubli won the event and took home 416,000 Euros for his efforts. Carlos Mortensen bubbled out in this event at 28th place. Gus made the final table but busted out in fifth place. Gus took home 78,000 Euros.

Check out Dr. Pauly’s blog for more details on what happened during this event. Dr. Pauly was working hard and performing multiple tasks. He was live blogging the event and taking turns announcing and emceeing the final table. How awesome is that!  

PartyGaming is one of the many online gambling sites that have changed the poker world. During this revolution and boom, they made a ton of money with online poker. Unfortunately, they recently fell down on their faces when their IPO flopped on the London Stock Exchange. This hasn’t stopped them from moving forward. PartyGaming is set to become the first web based firm to join the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 Index since the dotcom explosion.

Even though PartyGaming didn’t do so hot in London, their closing value Tuesday of £4.2 billion is stronger than the more established businesses on the FTSE like British Airways. PartyGaming is moving to the FTSE even though many analysts think that online poker is losing its popularity. Check out the below article for more details on the move.

The World Poker Tour is airing an infamous repeat tonight on the Travel Channel. Check your local listings. It's on at 9PM EST where I live. Tonight is the Tony G episode. The WPT made their annual trek to the Aviation Club in France and last year, Tony G made some noise. Check it out if you want a good laugh. Tony has defended his behavior many times. It's pretty rude but I think it's rather comical. Surrinder Sunar wins this event and takes Tony G down. Sunar is one of the best poker players in Europe and Tony G gives him a run for his money but eventually falls short.

The World Poker Tour is going global with a new regional tour in Canada and the Philippines. Steve Lipscomb is taking the tour international. On Monday, World Poker Tour Enterprises announced they're expanding by creating a national tour in both of these countries. Looking to grow the game and the WPT company, Steve created this regional tour with hopes of adding more countries to the mix. Popularity is obviously high right now so they want to capitalize on the growing worldwide fan base. Each regional tour will feature between four to six tournaments in their respective country. The start of this new tour will be 2006. The tournaments will be in the usual WPT format of No Limit Texas Hold 'Em.

Neteller is a popular way for online poker players to fund their real money accounts. They allow Internet users to transfer money between web sites very quickly. There is no need to go to Western Union when you use Neteller. Neteller recently took a step toward expanding its business by entering some new markets. They mostly handle a large U.S. customer base and have recorded a nice profit doing so. Neteller re-launched its site for the European market and signed two major online gaming clients along the way. They are now looking at the Asian market and hope to work with companies in Japan and China. Check out the below article for more details.

As I mentioned last week, the European Poker Tour is back. Season Two will kick off in Spain with the Barcelona Open. This event will be held at the Casino de Barcelona. Pokerstars is the official sponsor for the EPT. They should be posting tournament updates on their blog. My brother, Dr. Pauly, is covering this event as well. He's flying off to Europe to see the Casino de Barcelona for the first time. I wish I was going with him. I hear the casino is in a pretty nice venue and it's located near the Olympic Village on the beach front overlooking the Mediterranean. Sounds awesome to me!

This event is scheduled to run from September 16th to 17th and the buy-in fee is  €4,000 Euros. Last year, the buy-in was only €1,000 Euros. There were 229 entries last year so the prize pool was much smaller than this year's will be. The results from last year's event is as follows:

1st - Alexander Stevic (Sweden) €80,000
2nd - David O'Callaghan (Ireland) €41,000
3rd - Luca Pagano (Italy) €20,000

Check out the EPT blog for more details.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist died last week leaving two vacancies on the highest court in America. While bettors and political pundits are scrambling to figure out who is going to be nominated, several newspapers have been running obituaries on William Rehnquist. One in particular caught my eye. It was from the Seattle Times and the title was, A preference for poker, not pomp. The one odd tidbit to his life that everyone seems to be talking about was his passion for poker and bridge. He ran a low-stakes game for the last three decades. Even during the Bill Clinton impeachment trial, he would play poker during breaks with his law clerks in a Senate cloakroom. That almost reminds me of that scene from "Rounders" when Mike McD walks into the Judge's Game.

Aharon Shaked visited Monte Carlo for the first time in 1996. He had never been to a casino before and was overwhelmed. When the dentist from Israel returned home, he had a vision and a business idea. He founded 888 Holdings which runs Pacific Poker and other online casinos. Well, it looks like Shaked's business idea is about to receive a major windfall. He announced that 888 Holdings will sell shares on the London Stock Exchange. Its worth is estimated at over 500 million British Pounds and his family owns roughly 70 percent of all the shares which will make him a very very wealthy man. Last month, Party Gaming, which owns Party Poker, went public and its net worth jumped from 4.6 billion Pounds to 6.3 billion. Any ideas on how I can get Aharon to adopt me?? I could use a cut of that windfall!

Two years ago I went to the casino in my home city of Calgary and was disappointed to only see slot machines and blackjack tables, but no poker. Last year I returned to find half the casino torn apart. Construction crews were everywhere, tables were moved around, even one of the restaurants was closed. I asked the pit boss what was going on and he explained that they were building a new poker room. 

    

Nowadays when you walk in, the blackjack dealers are standing around looking hopeful as you pass by, willing you to throw some money down on their table. Rows of slot machines sit idle, highly polished, the volume turned up in hopes of enticing you to pull the handle a few times. No suck luck. It seems everyone is making a beeline to the hold ‘em tables. The wait lists are usually four or five players deep, but players hang around for hours, waiting for the chance to shuffle chips endlessly as they post their blinds and play their hands. The rooms are filled with men and women, young guns and grandparents. Race, age, and nationality know no bounds here.      

If you've been watching the news, you know that Hurricane Katrina has been extremely devastating for so many people. To see so many Americans suffering is pretty tough to handle. People are homeless, hungry and dehydrated. New Orleans is looking pretty bad, so bad that it reminds me of a third world country right now. People are dying, there's no civil order and the economy is in shambles. It will take a long time before any of the people in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama will be able to fully recover. Wil Wheaton and PokerStars are doing a good thing by trying to pitch in and help out the devastated Hurricane Katrina survivors. Check out their sites for more details. Full Tilt Poker is also doing something to help out as well. It's really great to see. Thanks guys!

How big is poker you ask? It’s gotten so big that the explosion is spilling over into China. The Chinese government is now willing to allow poker inside their borders. There is a lot of attention surrounding the new market and profit possibilities. Dragon Ventures, which is a high-tech holding company, is one of first groups to get a chance to enter the untapped poker market in China. The poker world is looking to expand and tap a new source of revenue and what better place to go then to the world‘s most populated country.  Dragon Ventures acquired the exclusive marketing rights for Cardroom.net. This will give the company advertising rights throughout China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Click on the below link for more details.