The Week Ahead in Poker: August 30th

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Here’s what to watch for across the pokerverse for the week starting August 30th, 2010.

Poker On TV

The World Series of Poker main event will play down to one large field on ESPN’s coverage on Tuesday, starting at 9 p.m. Eastern. The two hours of coverage will detail day 2B, the second and final “day two.” At the featured table you’ll see on TV? Jeff Shulman, Dan Harrington and Josh Arieh. Chris Ferguson, Phil Ivey and Doyle Brunson were all playing on day 2B as well. Here’s a preview of the first episode:

Away from the Tables

California casinos vs. big-time poker players started as a minor spat, it seemed. The Commerce Casino in L.A. earlier had said it opposes H.R. 2267, a bill in the U.S. Congress that would legalize and regulate online poker. Fast forward to last week, when the Poker Players Alliance and dozens of poker’s biggest stars co-signed a letter in which they took exception to Commerce’s stance. You can read that letter here on a website to deal with the issue called playersbeforeprofits.com. That letter actually had little effect, as Commerce stood by its original position, and more California casinos would join them in their public opposition of the bill, in a letter here. The casinos say they are in favor of poker-only legislation, but that appears to be in reference to a possible California effort to legalize intrastate online poker, not a federal-level bill.

Anyway, the situation has ramped up a lot in the past week, and it will be interesting to see what happens next. The next logical step for the PPA/poker players would be a boycott of the California casinos, and that seems like a very real possibility. The California casinos — or at least Commerce and the Bike — put on some big poker tournaments that require poker’s royalty to attend to make them work. If you take them out of the mix, you have to imagine that would hurt the bottom line a bit. Enough to make Commerce et al change their stance? Probably not. But the big-name pros have events they can play all over the world, they can survive without California. The question, is California OK with losing them, and is that potential loss enough to make them reconsider their stance on online gambling? We might find out this week.

At CardRunners

A pretty stacked week at the official training site of PTP. Look forward to videos covering NL cash, SNGs, PLO8 and more from Predator006, Kush, iRock, theBryce, Dr. Razz and ChipsAHoya along with Skjervoy (!) and sippin_criss + Augie.

Get started on your free CardRunners membership today.

Live Tournaments

There’s lots of big events this week, including World Poker Tour and European Poker Tour main events. The WPT London Poker Classic kicks off its centerpiece event Monday. The London event is a £5,300 buy-in and is a six-day tournament. If you want to follow the action, you can get live updates here. The EPT event in Vilamoura, Portugal, is already underway and will wrap up later this week. PokerStars’ Macau Poker Cup starts on Wednesday, with the main event on Friday. And the Commerce Hold’em Series starts Wednesday in L.A., and will run through Sept. 19. This week features mostly small events, with larger events in weeks two and three.

On the Virtual Felt

The World Championship of Online Poker starts Sunday at PokerStars. The tournament series runs through Sept. 26 and $50 million will be guaranteed over the course of 62 events. It starts off with a big Sunday and more than $5 million guaranteed prize money. Here’s the lineup for Sunday (times Eastern):
13:00, $215 buy-in NL Hold’em [6-Max], $1,250,000 guaranteed
15:00, $10,300 buy-in NL Hold’em [High Roller], $2,000,000 guaranteed
17:00, $215 buy-in NL Hold’em, $2,000,000 guaranteed

For more on the WCOOP and the entire schedule of events, visit PokerStars’ website.

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