The decision to leave the site that bears his name obviously calls into question the future of the site. Brunson apparently did not want to be affiliated with a U.S.-facing site after Black Friday, in which PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and UB.com came under fire from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Here’s what Doyle Brunson told gambling911.com (read the entire story here):

Reluctantly, I have decided to terminate my endorsement contract with Doylesroom.com. It pains me to leave at this time. I have aspirations of reentering the online poker business when the United States Government passes legislation, that officially legalize online poker sites. Doylesroom management has decided to continue to serve U.S. customers. Although they believe they have the right to market the name Doylesroom and to use my name and likeness for a period of time, I have asked them not to. Good luck-Shuffle up and deal.

After that news was broken, Card Player caught up with the 10-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner at the World Poker Tour Championship. Brunson, however, had no comment. Read their report here. The 77-year-old legend was wearing DoylesRoom.com clothing at the tournament.

The departure comes just a few days after DoylesRoom.com rolled out a new software client (more on that here). The site had recently changed to a new network, Yatahay.

Known for his tweets and blog posts, Brunson has been quiet on the matter of leaving the site. On Twitter just two days ago, he posted the following, with no sense that his departure was imminent: “Doyle Gets Facelift: Upgrades DoylesRoom Software.RT He has needed a facelift for quite some time, but we haven’t had heart to tell him.” His tweets on Saturday only dealt with the WPT Championship. You can read his Twitter feed here.

His blog is still hosted by DoylesRoom.com here.

Stay tuned for more information, as it’s available.

Brit’s start into the poker realm came from, of all things, an ex boyfriend. In 2005, Brit got her start playing, of all things, limit cash games, full ring. Her run up the limit stakes was impressive, getting as high as $200/$400 by 2008. 2007, however, was the first of many big online scores for Brit on PS, when she came in second in a $215 rebuy in June, coming runner up to none other than Bryn “BrynKenney” Kenney. The $33,320 score was the start of a new direction in her poker playing career, as she then began to study tournament poker and migrate to the online tournament circuit, leaving the cash games mostly in the dust.

The next two years saw Brit begin to make a name for herself in the online poker realm, notching big cashes in some of the most prestigious events the PS circuit has to offer. This includes final tabling the 2009 WCOOP Main Event, finishing 9th for $96,480 and playing at a final table including the likes of Dan “djk123” Kelly and eventual winner Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko. She also began taking down tournaments entirely, posting 14 victories in major tournaments between 2008-2010, including the $200 rebuy and the nightly $109’s and $162’s. This made her one of the top online tournament players in the world, ranking in the top 500 in each of the last 2 years, according to Official Poker Rankings.

Brit wasn’t a one site pony, however, and took her tournament expertise to FTP as well, posting a win in the $1k Monday in October of 2008 for a cool $86,000, and a final table in a $322 FTOPS Event in 2009. The accolades and winnings kept pouring into Brit’s accounts, and finally, when PS searched for its next crop of online specialists in 2011, one of the names they came up with was none other than PeachyMer, joining the likes of Shane “shaniac” Schleger and Andrew “Focault” Brokos as classmates for 2011. But, even with the few unknown names on the list, the drawing point to Mer, aside from her poker playing expertise, had to be the quirky personality that has come alive in the forums and interviews she’s posted, as well as her online blogs and accounts that show a more in depth view of the poker player’s life outside of poker than we’re accustomed to seeing from our pros.

“Peachy”, as Brit is known as on the 2+2 forums, is an avid poster and devoted forum fiend, with over 5,000 posts on the forum since joining in October of 2004. Not only is she big posting strategy and analysis, she’s also completely accessible to her fans, offering them a chance to interview her immediately after her signing with PokerStars as a online pro. This led to some pretty interesting comments from some pros, including a Shaun Deeb jab about her status as a female poker player, and Johnny Bax asking if she had any plans to come out to a live tournament to “make it official” that Brit was indeed who she said she was, and not a well known player’s second account on PS, as had been rumored for some time prior to her promotion to pro. This statement stems from the fact that Brit has no live tournament records to show for her scores of online cashes, even though she’s been legal in casinos for a number of years now.

Brit did little to quell the rumors about her aversion to live play, however, by stating that it’s a “coin toss” as to whether or not she’ll be playing in live tournaments by the end of the year, although she did state that she does play live cash games. It seems as if the decision to promote her to a PS online pro was made with the understanding that, unlike a lot of the PS players that begin making a name in the live realm as well, like Jose “Nacho” Barbero, Brit would not be making a similar transition to live game pro anytime soon, which is curious, given that PokerStars always likes their tournament specialists to attempt to play at least some of their branded tournaments in the location they’re from. Brit stated that previous plans are what is keeping her from accomplishing the live tournament circuit, and her time frame for coming into live tourney play (late in the year) makes it unlikely we’ll see Brit breaking out at the WSOP this year.

The funny thing about “peachymer”, and the reason for the suspicion surrounding her account, is her devotion to remaining about as anonymous as humanly possible, even with her constant 2+2 posts and volume of online play. There are few, if any pictures of her available online, and, as stated previously, she has exactly zero live cashes to her name, meaning the expression “online pro” means double for Brit, especially when everyone actually knows her name and has seen her speak before on forums, unlike some of the other enigmas to grace the online felt as of late. She has a twitter account and even has a poker blog up that seemingly focuses little on poker and more on her life and her hobbies outside of poker, including being an avid Georgia Bulldogs fan and a semi-professional photographer. Her life does not seem to be completely wrapped up in poker, like many of the other PS online stable seem to be, which is a big change of pace from the 20 tabling, 14 hour a day poker geeks we’re used to seeing PS sign as of late.

The final curiosity about Brit’s signing is the significant reduction in volume she’s put in since her signing this year. Her stats show only 240 tournaments played so far in the year, an average of a little more than 3 tournaments per day, and she’s actually showing a ROI of -39% for the year in this section of tournaments. While it’s true that every poker player has swings, the volume reduction and sudden drastic drop in ROI is a bit of a surprise to many, considering the public eye is now squarely on her any time she chooses to play online; all you have to do is click “Find A Team PokerStars Pro” and you’ll find her on any of the tables she’s playing in, meaning she’s always under pressure to perform not only as a PS pro, but as a female pro, with such stellar stars like Selbst and others carrying the Women brand high on site.

So, what are we supposed to think about the rookie PS pro? I sincerely doubt that the pressures of being a minted online pro are what’s getting to her; after all, she has a large amount of hobbies and other activities to keep her calm and relaxed when grinding out sessions. I think, in reality, Brit is simple acclimating herself to what may be a life changing road for her; with dual degrees in psychology and biology, this certainly wasn’t the career path she had originally intended, and her volunteer work with children and battered women understandably takes up a chunk of her time as well. I expect her to align her life to really accept the challenge of being a full time poker professional, and we’ll be seeing and hearing from her a lot more towards the end of the year, possibly in NAPT events or some of the local WPT events in the southeast. The problem is, the unwillingness to play live (including Jason Potter reportedly offering her $25,000 to play the WSOP Main Event last year) and some inconsistencies with those blog/twitter accounts and her actual play schedule have people wondering just who exactly “Mer Brit” really is, be they male or female. There’s even an admission by PS that, on occasion, Brit’s account was handled by other people, including a 2nd place in a WCOOP event. So, the real question is, who exactly IS Mer Brit? Whoever she is, she’s sparked the curiosity of thousands of online poker fans; for good or bad.

For more information on Mer Brit, you can check out her Interview Q&A on 2+2 here;  or read the Cliffs Notes about the controversy here.

This month, we’ve seen quite a few poker players finally lose their cool and snap at each other, either through twitter bashing, forum posting, or good ol’ fashioned brawling. We’ll take a look at some of the more prolific battles, and what, if any relevance they have toward future endeavours with these players.

Kathy Liebert vs. Howard Lederer- Along with being one of the top women in poker today, Kathy Liebert is also known for being a very opinionated and witty twitter user, frequently posting tournament updates and other neat facets of being a leading female poker player. It also gives her an additional avenue to vent, after mouthing off about a certain professor of poker on a rival site of her brand, PokerStars. After going on “Live At The Bike” and making a few choice comments about Howard Lederer on the webcast, Liebert took to her twitter to back up everything she stated on the show in a few choice tweets.

Many “famous” poker players are busted. Can’t believe everything you see on tv. #notme. #moneymanagement needed

@fatsteve6 boring nit acts like big shot but was busted poker player. unfriendly pompous. Arrogant. Too bad only 140 characters allowed

The passing of Lederer’s mother, as posted on his twitter on the 12th, may be a major reason why we’ve heard little back from Lederer, along with the fact that, simply put, Lederer is not the type of guy to rebuke the statements that he’s a nit; even he seems pretty convinced that he’s borderline absurdly tight. And as for the “busted” comments? A quick scan of Lederer’s tournament winnings since 2007 (http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-players/1291-howard-lederer) show that he’s still raking in significant earning year after year; with the downturn in 2005-2006 attributed to helping run the show at FTP as it rose from nothing to the 2nd biggest poker site in the world. This fight screams a bit like a bad run in between the two recently that Liebert took a bit too personally; sure, Lederer is a bit cold and dull, but calling him broke? Seems a bit baseless.

Shawn Sheikhan vs…everybody? - Everyone who has ever interacted with Todd Brunson knows he can either be a laid back, congenial sort of a guy, or a bit of a prick, as evidenced by this T-shirt he signed when being knocked out of the Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament yesterday. (http://plixi.com/p/84340995) But he, like his dad, tends to have some pretty interesting twitter posts, and a few of his latest from this month revolves around the legendary mouth of one Shawn ‘Sheiky” Sheikhan and what he was getting himself into at the Aria.

“Wow. Another fight at the aria.. Sheepy and viffer. Security came and the threats were flying.. Yet another card player article” (March 8th)

“And yet another fight.. This time Sheepy and every player at the table. I finally had him thrown out like the little bitch he is” (March 11th)

“I knew it was too good to be true. Sheepy showed up… Estimated time til blow up?????” .. “Sheepy already thrown out. He didn’t make it 20 minutes” .. “He got in a fist fight with John monet. Well kinda. I called security first” (March 12th)

It seems that “Sheepy” is quite the unpopular dude around the Aria playing room. David “Viffer” Peat is well known for antagonizing players into meltdowns, sure, but going after every single player at the table has to be some sort of record for the man that attempted to out talk the “Mouth” at the WSOP. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGpHCOQ6DPw) Sheikhan hasn’t been heard from much since the WSOP and a brief stint on an early season of HSP; maybe incidents like these are the reason why?

Prahlad Friedman vs Justin Bonomo and Issac Haxton- The really big fight, however, is being waged between three players and goes beyond simple name calling and head thumping; these claims are about straight up cheating, allegedly by Bonomo/Haxton.  These claims are especially treacherous for a player like Bonomo, who does not exactly have a sterling record with the poker playing public on the subject of cheating. (http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/zeejustin-unbanned-on-pokerstars-1800/)

Friedman has always been a bit picky as to who he plays in the nosebleed stakes online, and had requested that Haxton not play him at heads up tables. Apparently, however, Friedman thought Haxton took over for Bonomo at one of the tables they were playing, because when Friedman got crushed during that session, he took to twitter to tell the whole world about what he felt transpired during that session in a 30+ tweet rant, including some accusations such as;

Isaac Haxton and Justin Bonomo share and switch accounts often. Was playing random guy and looked up his stats. Identical to Hax

@PeterJetten His eyes lit up and he said “hmmmm ok”. Then shortly after I’m playing a random guy who played like Justin Bonomo. I killed him

@PeterJetten Then the next day, style completely changes and I get killed. I look up stats and its identical to Haxton. Theydidthistomeonftp

Unlike the other arguments we’ve seen, in which the other party has been mostly silent in responding to the fight or allegations before them, Bonomo was only more than happy to respond to the tweets from Friedman, first with a quick tweet;

“@PrahladFriedman Your accusations are completely baseless. Twitter is not the place to discuss this.”

Then, he took to 2+2 to write a full response to Friedman. In it, he outlined a few things pertaining to how he and Ike play that make Friedman’s accusations of cheating “baseless” according to Haxton.

For me personally, ever since my second chance I have been extremely paranoid about making any kind of mistake. I won’t even let friends fold for me while I’m in the bathroom. Those that know me IRL will attest that I have not done anything remotely shady in 5+ years. I hold myself to a very high ethical standard. I am unbelievably lucky to have been given a second chance, and I’m not going to squander that. Needless to say, I don’t take these accusations Prah has been throwing around lightly.

The thread included a full fledged challenge to one of the best online heads up players of all time.

“To Prah I issue a live battleship style heads up challenge. 3+ tables, minimum stakes 25/50. If you agree to play 10,000+ hands of 50/100, I will personally fly to LA to play you in person. If that number is too large, I offer you a few other options. You are welcome to stay in my apartment in Las Vegas (guest master bedroom, all yours) if it means you will play me HU. Naturally that is a lot to ask, so instead you could have a mutually trusted friend sweat the match from my apartment . . . Prahlad must either accept this challenge, or give both of us a public apology.”

So, what’s this all mean, in summary? The first two fights, between Sheiky and the world and between Liebert and Lederer, seem destined to simply die a quiet death beneath a mountain of tweets and minor jail sentences, for Sheik. But the Bonomo/Haxton vs Friedman case is an interesting one, indeed. It seems as though Bonomo is really stepping up for his reputation by refusing to simply let Friedman off the hook for his allegations, choosing instead to literally put his money where his mouth is and challenge him to a big heads up match. The real question is; will Friedman back it up and actually accept the challenge from Bonomo? According to him on his twitter, Friedman crushes Bonomo at the high stakes tables, so long as Haxton isn’t the one piloting the controls.

Personally, I think Friedman might have opened his mouth a bit too early on this one, especially given the public exposure Bonomo has gotten in recent years via WSOP and a stellar showing on The Big Game. Bonomo has absolutely no reason to risk blowing his second (and likely last) chance to be a poker professional that can be respected and publicised, and for Friedman to make the accusations after a losing session seems especially reckless. Stay tuned to see whether or not we see an apology or heads up match between the two; no response from Friedman may escalate things further in weeks to come.

The story has been building since late December of 2010, when subscribers to popular tracking service PokerTableRatings began voicing complaints regarding PTR’s coverage of Full Tilt Poker games.

For the unfamiliar, PTR collects and repackages data regarding the play and results of real-money cash games on a variety of online poker sites. That data is then sold to PTR members via a variety of channels, including charts, graphs and raw hand histories, to name a few.

Obviously the value of such data is in no small part reliant on the comprehensiveness of the data. PTR didn’t have much of a problem there, offering members access to a staggering amount of the total hands played on Full Tilt, until recently.

The true scope of the issue for PTR, along with exactly what Full Tilt may or may not have done to cause the problem for PTR, isn’t clear at this point – right now, all of the evidence is strictly anecdotal. Judging from the temperature of the discussions on various forums, however, PTR’s coverage rate of hands played on Full Tilt seems to have dipped significantly.

It’s tough to say at this point whether Full Tilt is acting specifically against PTR, or if this move is simply the first in a wider battle against sites that rely on data from Full Tilt to operate

Full Tilt hasn’t made an official statement on the issue, but a FTP rep on the Two Plus Two forums did suggest, albeit indirectly, that the company had put measures in place to prohibit PTR from accessing the data. PTR has acknowledged the issue in their forums, but has not provided an official statement or a timeline for when they expect to resume full coverage of play on Full Tilt Poker.

This news comes on the heels of Bodog’s far more public declaration of war on datamining and scraping sites, and raises some interesting questions about the direction of the online poker industry.

For years, most poker sites – major and minor – have turned what appears to many to be a blind eye toward datamining sites. The sites and services are massively popular with many regular players, as they provide you with a significant edge – at least in theory – over your opponents. There’s also the inherent appeal of the 3rd party score keeping that sites such as Sharkscope and PTR provide – everyone likes to claim they’re a winner, but everyone who actually is a winner likes to be able to point to proof of the claim even more.

The sites are also a critical part of many peripheral services in the online poker industry such as coaching and staking.

Despite the semi-entrenched nature and popularity of the services, there is a substantial part of the online poker industry and community that are forcefully opposed to the basic premise of datamining. Opponents generally argue that datamining sites foster a skill and information gap between hardcore players and casual players, a gap that threatens the long-term sustainability of an industry that relies largely on casual players to grow.

Will PokerStars follow FTP’s lead on this issue? Is this a position Full Tilt will be able to maintain for any real length of time? Do confrontations such as this point to the inherent unsustainability of the status quo in the online poker industry? We’ll likely see the answers to those questions present themselves (at least in part) as this particular story continues to develop.

Don’t sign up for Full Tilt until you read this.

For those unfamiliar: Doyle’s Room, the online poker room that bears the name of poker legend Doyle Brunson, isn’t actually a stand-alone poker room. Instead, it’s a door (also referred to as a skin) into a larger poker network comprised of several online poker rooms, a common arrangement in online poker.

In this case, Doyle’s Room is part of the Cake Poker Network, and has been since January 2009. It appears, however, that a third anniversary isn’t in the cards for the partners.

Rumors of the split first started swirling last month, as players and affiliates raised public complaints about the rake races at Doyle’s. Players reported delayed or non-existent payments for the promotions, and affiliates (in threads such as this over at PAL) complained not only about the rake races, but about discrepancies and irregularities in the payment and reporting system for affiliates as well.

That, and the download button on the site hasn’t worked for about two weeks now.

Doyle’s support seemed to generally respond by blaming Cake for the issues – until today. That’s when an affiliate (remaining anonymous) was told via email by Doyle’s support that the problems were due to the fact that Doyle’s was leaving Cake for another network.

Since then we’ve had it confirmed by several involved sources that Doyle’s exit from Cake is a done deal.

Neither Cake nor Doyle’s had an official comment as of the time of this story.

So is Doyle’s out the door? And if so, where will they end up? A possible clue: On January 10th, Doyle (via Twitter) announced that he was heading down to Costa Rica, which would put him in the neighborhood of several online poker operations, most notably the CEREUS Network.

With Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke both out the door, could UB be looking to reload with Doyle? Not likely – they seem dedicated to a younger team, ala Sebok and Friedman. If not CEREUS, then where? The Merge Network makes some sense, and they’ve been aggressively expanding over the last couple years (generally at Cake’s expense). Bodog never shied away from a publicity stunt, and nabbing one of the most famous players in the world would certainly qualify.

Also, it’s hard not to note the odd coincidence that the two most famous poker players in the world (arguably) are without a home. Could Hellmuth and Brunson be planning some sort of joint initiative?

Should be interesting to watch. Updates as events warrant.

What they’re talking about is, of course, another matter entirely.

There’s been a lot of speculation surrounding where Hellmuth would land after both he and Annie Duke announced their departures from long-term online home UB Poker (formerly Ultimate Bet).

Don’t feel too bad for UB; they somehow managed to snag Prahlad Friedman, arguably one of the top free agents available and a uniquely excellent signing given his connection to the cheating scandal that’s dogged the room (Friedman was one of the primary victims of the UB superuser scheme).

Anyhow, back where Hellmuth will end up. We said then, and still believe now, that the best bet is some sort of affiliation between Hellmuth and WSOP.com. However, it appears that Hellmuth is considering other options, at least according to his Twitter:

NOW meeting w Full Tilt Poker!! At “SW Steakhouse” bar at Wynn…Made my biggest bet of last 2 years on LSU (-2)!!!!!!!!

Hellmuth also seemed to favor PokerStars or Full Tilt (or Bodog? Dark horse for sure) as a possible home in a recent interview with CardPlayer, where he downplayed the notion that he would have to be top dog at his eventual home. Excerpt:

JR: How important is it for you to be the primary face of an online poker site?

PH: That’s not important. It’s nice, and it’s kind of fun, but it’s not a requirement. Certainly I’ll be talking to a lot sites, whether it’s PokerStars, Full Tilt, Bodog, whatever, and there’s going to be a deal out there that makes the most sense to me. I’m not just speaking financially, because it’s really important that I also have a good fit with the brand as well. As I continue my discussions with the various sites, I think it will be really interesting to see where I fit in.

Read the whole thing.

How would Phil fit in with Full Tilt? We just can’t imagine he’d be interested in being the “other” Phil at Full Tilt (shoot, he might even be the third Phil to hardcore “Little Green Book” fans), and it seems odd that he’d shift from one room operating in a legal gray area to another just as regulation seems to be gaining momentum in the US.

That said, a check’s a check – and Caesar’s might not be willing to cut Phil the kind of check he’s looking for without a real-money poker room in the US to benefit from the exposure. Phil might also figure that keeping his name front-and-center is a task that’s better suited to the marketing teams at Full Tilt and PokerStars than the less-seasoned crew at Caesar’s Interactive – at least for now. Put plainly, Hellmuth might be planning a short-term stop at FTP or Stars simply as a way to maintain his media standing and hedge his bets while the regulatory picture in the US shakes out.

Or he could just be tossing things like that out on Twitter just so we’ll write articles like this.

A masked man rides up to one of the premier casino properties on the Las Vegas Strip, hops off his motorcycle, full gear obscuring his person from head to toe, and walks in to the casino. The masked rider then waves around a gun, nabs $1.5 million in casino chips, and leaves the way he came, disappearing into the Vegas night on his bike.

But wait! Following that robbery, another anonymous citizen of Vegas places a bounty on the head of the masked robber – $50,000 large for the return of the chips and the arrest / conviction of the crotch-rocket riding thief.

Sounds like the text from the back of a straight-to-DVD release, but it’s actually straight from the headlines of The Las Vegas Sun, which reported today that an anonymous high-stakes gambler identified only as Robin Hood 702 has issued a $50k bounty on the Bellagio bandit. As he told the Sun:

“I’m just trying to find this guy and stop any copycats,” Robin Hood said during an interview this week with the Sun. “If the Bellagio was hit, the Palazzo could be hit, the Venetian, the MGM Grand … it could be every casino. This guy has to be apprehended quickly.

“These are desperate times. People are going to say, ‘Why don’t I take a shot?’”

Full article from the Sun

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the security camera footage of the robber exiting the Bellagio:

… and here’s the LVPD press conference re: the robbery:

Anyhow, is the bounty just a publicity stunt? Probably/absolutely. But it adds an irresistible twist to a plot that was already pretty surreal.

This isn’t the first time Robin Hood 702 has been in the news; he’s been profiled in the past for his “charity via high stakes blackjack” program (only in Vegas, right?). Fox News video on that below:

If you haven’t been keeping score in the sponsorship arms race, that would leave High Stakes Poker with empty chairs previously filled by Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, Mike Matusow and other notables.

That’s according to a post on 2+2, confirmed by Barry Greenstein.

Neither Full Tilt or High Stakes Poker had commented at the time of this article.

The basic issue: PokerStars is the primary sponsor the upcoming season of High Stakes Poker. Additionally, PokerStars reportedly recently acquired the rights to the High Stakes Poker archives.

Apparently, this level of involvement and ownership by their major rival caused a bit of apprehension on the part of Full Tilt Poker concerning whether FTP’s largest asset – their roster of pros – was being unfairly leveraged by Stars via HSP.

In Greenstein’s words:

However, Full Tilt has two major concerns. First is they don’t like their players playing when PokerStars is the sponsor of the show. (I assume Full Tilt can buy ad time but I didn’t check this out with GSN or PokerStars.) Secondly, they were unhappy that PokerStars bought the HSP archives. In the early seasons of HSP, the players didn’t wear logos, so FTP is concerned that viewers will be able to go to pokerstars.tv and see the FTP players without logos and be confused by their affiliation. (2+2)

With FTP stars on the way out, one begins to wonder if PokerStars hasn’t arranged for a newly minted pro to slip into the show: Isidulr1, who they signed only weeks ago.

Barring that, HSP will need to do something radical, and quick. The PokerStars Big Game and FTP’s Poker After Dark (to name but a few) have eroded the show’s once-unassailable position as the king of live cash game shows.

Many long-time fans of the show were a bit off-put last season by the injection of Kara Scott and the decision to have Gabe Kaplan go it alone, further weakening the show’s reputation appeal.

We’re pulling for the show to not only survive, but thrive after the departure of Dwan and Ivey. High Stakes Poker has provided so many memorable moments for fans of poker that it would be sad to see it fade into the great TV hereafter simply due to a dispute between the online poker rooms that serve as home to so many of the High Stakes Poker alums.

However, fans of Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Phil Ivey don’t have to worry about going through withdrawal – the upcoming season of Poker After Dark, already in the can, features those big names and more. Read about PAD’s new season here.

The LVRJ quizzed Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon on his feelings regarding regulation for an article published today.

Before lobbing bombs at the Reid Bill, the TV legend and High Stakes Poker alum Simon dropped a different sort of bomb – a story about a high-stakes pro being cheated out of over $4 million online.

When you see “cheating” and “million”, your mind might go to the CEREUS scandals, right? Well, this cheating may have happened on CEREUS – who knows – but wherever it happened (if it actually happened), it wasn’t the fault of the room.

Read the whole article here.

Anyone have any idea who this story involves? Or if it’s the slightest bit true?

On the first count: We don’t, but the number of people who have lost $4 million playing high stakes online isn’t exactly a long one. Given poker the company Simon keeps, you might expect the list could be even further winnowed to live pros.

On the second count: Sounds like a “friend-of-a-friend-of-a-business-partner” story, no?

A 2+2 thread on the issue has a variety of reactions. The most common: Simon is just repeating an inflated rumor / pokerurban legend involving PokerStars pro Johnny Lodden (as the victim, not the perpetrator).

The big question is: Who?

The eBay auction for Peter Eastgate’s 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event Bracelet (pictured below) resulted in a fierce bidding war that resulted in nearly $150,000 going toward the charity organization UNICEF.

Not too many people expressed interest in the bracelet publicly besides Tony G, who mostly entirely did so for the free publicity (not to knock him, smart move), and due to eBay’s policies the winner of the bidding is known only as “7***l”.

This being the internet, you’d expect the secret of who won the bracelet to be a tough one to keep. After all, there’s a fairly limited market for an item like this:

… especially when the price is in the six-figure range.

You certainly can’t discount the possibility that someone followed the path that Cake Poker took with T.J. Cloutier’s eBay’ed bracelet, spending a couple grand for the publicity. Maybe an online poker room trying to make a splash? However, if that’s the case, said buyer is doing a very poor job of cashing in on the publicity, as the auction has been done for a good day now and still no word on the bracelet’s buyer.

Also, don’t forget: you can still own a piece of WSOP history via eBay, albeit a relatively chincy one when compared to Eastgate’s: Eskimo Clarke’s 1999 Razz Champsionship bracelet still has a couple of days left before its auction draws to a close:

View that listing here. Said auction is not for charity, as least not as far as we’re aware.