2006 September 23 Poker News, Events and Happenings

THEY call themselves a pair of aces but Crispin and Jules Leyser, an ambitious British husband-and-wife team of professional poker players, have been at least temporarily trumped in their bid for a share of the richest prize awarded at a US poker tournament.

When the World Poker Tour hit the airwaves a few years ago, it blew the doors wide open on Poker TV, and at least part of the credit for its phenomenal success falls at the feet of Shana Hiatt, former Playboy model and World Poker Tour host. After a three year stint, Hiatt left the WPT, which has since gone through two replacement hosts. Hiatt recently looked at taking two jobs with NBC to host two different poker shows, and was all set to move forward, when WPT Enterprises, the owner of the WPT, tried to block her legally, citing a non-compete contract Hiatt signed when she went to work for the organization…

One of the biggest appeals of Texas Holdem, especially the No Limit variety, is that anyone with a chip and a chair can take a shot at winning an event. A basic understanding of the rules and some luck, and even someone who has only been playing for weeks can have a great deal of success at the game, as is evidenced by the record of Pam Brown, a mother of two in her fifties who, on a lark, entered an online event and took second place. Her husband Alan is the real poker player in the family, and he convinced her to give it a shot…

Shana Hiatt, the woman who served as hostess for seasons one through three of the World Poker Tour broadcasts filed a lawsuit against her former employer in Los Angeles on Friday….

Is limit hold’em the forgotten step-sister of the no-limit game, the dominant poker version of recent years? Don’t tell it to the masses who showed up for Event #7 at Poker Stars’ fifth annual World Championship of Online Poker…

There are all kinds of ploys you can use at the poker table. Stop-and-go play is a little trick that’s very effective in No Limit Hold’em tournaments.You’re in a tournament and are sitting on a short stack in relation to the other players. The blinds are 200 and 400 with a 50 ante, and you have 3,200 in chips remaining. Everyone folds to the button player, whose big stack of 82,000 dominates. He raises the pot to 1,200.The small blind folds, and you in the big blind hold A-Q. You feel it’s the b

It is no surprise that highly skilled chess players quickly excel at poker. In an essay titled “Killer Instinct,” grandmaster Genna Sosonko writes: “Losers (in chess) are branded failures. . . . In the best case, they must be pitied.”