Poker After Dark Season 6 Starts...

The incredibly successful NBC program known as Poker After Dark just kicked off its 6th season this week.  And what’s cool is that Poker After Dark had the announcers playing in this episode.  High Stakes Poker hosts Kara Scott and Gabe Kaplan, Ali Nejad, Mark Gregorich, and Joe Sebok were some of the players involved in this game which was entitled Commentators III. 

Nejad, who normally hosts Poker After Dark, took center stage in this episode with his many antics.  One of them included pulling out champagne glasses and toasting to Joe Sebok being on a televised poker table.  The joke was made because of Sebok’s habit of bubbling out right before the final table in several major live tournaments.  Some of the tourneys Sebok has bubbled out in before the final table include the WPT Fiest al Lago, the 2007 Legends of Poker, and the Bay 101 Shooting Star.

And while there were many jokes to be had during this special version of Poker After Dark, the action was anything but a joke with blinds set at $100/$200.  Sebok was able to make a move early after taking down a pot of 7,900 chips against Gabe Kaplan.  However, Sebok quickly became a target when Mark Gregorich held pocket aces.  Gregorich fired out a 3,000 chips bet on a weak board while holding pocket aces; this made Sebok fold and brought the action to a close.

But there will be much, much more action in Season 6 of Poker After Dark since there are 35 episodes left.  And there are 5 episodes left in the Commentators III segment so it will be fun to see who comes out the big winner among the announcers!

Gilbert Arenas pulls Gun Out over Poker!...

Those who pay any attention at all to basketball know Gilbert Arenas since he is consistently one of the NBA’s top players (when he’s not injured).  But what many basketball fans don’t know is that Arenas is a big-time gambler who spends a lot of time in the Washington Wizards locker room playing high stakes poker.  More recently, Arenas has been playing a lot with teammate Jaravis Crittenton.

Unfortunately for Gilbert, he racked up a $25,000 debt to Crittenton as the two have been playing.  According to sources, Arenas has been slow to pay his gambling debts which resulted in a huge feud between Jaravis and him.  Things boiled over on a team flight when the two started arguing with Crittenton screaming out, “I’m not your punk!”  A couple of days later, Arenas placed 3 guns by Crittenton’s locker and told him to pick one. 

But nothing even compares to what happened a few days ago when the two teammates pulled out guns on each other.  Luckily, things didn’t go any further than the two pulling out the guns, but it was definitely a bad experience for the entire Wizards organization.

Since the gun incident, Arenas has had to do some backpedaling in an attempt to save his 6-year, 111 million dollar contract.  He told reporters that him and Crittenton are still friends in addition to saying about the situation, “I can’t speak on that.  But if you know me, you’ve been here, I’ve never done anything (involving) violence.  Anything I do is funny…..well, it’s funny to me.”

He also said that the guns were in the locker room because he didn’t want his kids to get a hold of them.  He stated this by saying, “That’s bad judgement on my part to store them in here, and I take full responsibility for that.  I have to deal with the police investigation.”

2010 WSOP Schedule Released...

Harrah’s Entertainment isn’t wasting any time preparing for the 2010 WSOP since they have already released the schedule.  And this year’s schedule definitely includes some very big changes!  The biggest change is that the prestigious $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. tournament will no longer be offered in the WSOP.  This is really interesting because a lot of the top pro players like playing in this event since there were fewer people involved.  However, it is hard to justify keeping this tournament when the amount of entrants dropped from 148 to 95 in one year.

And Harrah’s is replacing this tournament with another $50k event so people probably won’t care too much.  The event that will be replacing the H.O.R.S.E. tourney is the $50,000 Mixed Event.  The Mixed Event includes all kinds of poker games like Seven Card Razz, Omaha Hi-Lo, Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo, Seven Card Stud, No Limit Hold’em, Limit Hold’em, Pot Limit Hold’em, and 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball.

Another huge change is that many of the mid-range buy-in Omaha and Stud events are gone with lots of $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em tourneys taking their place.  The most obvious reason for this move is because few people played in the mid-level Stud and Omaha tournaments so the decision was made to get rid of them.  Taking their place will be six $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em tourneys.  Harrah’s is trying to use the momentum of last year’s Stimulus Special, where 6,102 people signed up, to bring in more players.

One more move that is sure to be unpopular is Harrah’s decision to take a 10% rake instead of a 9% rake from the $1,000 and $1,500 tournaments.  Players definitely won’t like this since the money will be coming directly out of their prize pools.

Another Man wins a Ladies Only Poker Tou...

Many women in the poker community were outraged after Abraham Korotki took down a ladies-only poker tournament in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  After the event, Korotki had little to say in his defense besides that he wanted to find somewhere to practice for future poker tourneys.  But Korotki did more than practice in September as he was able to win the tournament and the money that went along with it. 

It hasn’t even been more than a few months now since Korotki’s win that we’re seeing another man win a female poker tourney.  This time it is Greg Sessler who was able to defeat 95 other players at a WSOP Circuit Event en route to his “big victory”.

Sessler entered a $340 “Lake Tahoe Ladies Championship” tourney, and was able to walk away with the win as well as $9,900 after everything was said and done.  And plenty was said during the tourney too since other men decided to enter this supposedly women’s-only event.  The crowd started cheering every time a male player was eliminated from the tournament - little did they know though that a man would be the one to win it.

After taking down the women’s championship in Lake Tahoe, Sessler commented afterwards by saying that he only wanted to find a place to play poker during his day off.  Conveniently, it just happened to be a ladies-only event that he decided to use as his place to play poker.

The WSOP wanted to clear themselves of the mess created by the win and issued a statement saying, “The WSOP isn’t a political organization and can’t be expected to get involved in debates about sexism, discrimination, or other polarizing issues which may be applicable to poker tournaments.”

Kara Scott will to be new High Stakes Po...

Those who are immersed in the world of poker hotties have no doubt heard of Kara Scott.  She has burst on to the poker scene in the last couple of years with her sexy looks and solid playing skills.  And speaking of the playing skills, Scott is one of the few people to make the final 250 players in the WSOP Main Event in the last two years.  She has over $500,000 in career winnings with about $450,000 of it coming within the last year.  This is not to mention the fact that she’s also done commentary work for the European Poker Tour.

Due to her impressive resume, and great looks, Kara Scott has now been named the new hostess of High Stakes Poker.  With this announcement, all the speculation of other people being named the host will finally come to an end.  At one point, rumors were swirling around that Vanessa Rouso would be the next person to host High Stakes Poker.  Most of these unfounded rumors came from poker forums, but still they took off in a big way.  Since Kara Scott has been named the host, we now know that there is no truth to these rumors.

With Scott taking over at HSP, she’ll be teaming up with Gabe Kaplan which should be very interesting.  Kaplan and A.J. Benza were a fantastic commentary team, but the Game Show Network decided to disband the team in favor of brining in a younger, female co-host.  Long-time fans of the show are still puzzled as to why they would break up this team, but one big reason could be that GSN is looking for a more general audience.  Kara Scott could certainly bring that bigger general audience.