Lets meet the Royal Flush Girls on their big day out as they join in on the fun at the WPT here in Venice. A quick tour around the canals of Venice and a hop, skip and a jump later we find them on their way to the world famous Murano glass works, now press play.

Join in the fun as we ask a few friends on the poker circuit, What’s your favorite WPT stop?

We’re very excited about the upcoming Season X on the World Poker Tour. (You should be too as the Royal Flush girls are coming back.) We’re televising several European events back in the U.S. this year, and I think that’s great.

We’re going back to Paris and are televising our WPT event in Vienna in the U.S. as well. The entire entourage including myself, Vince Van Patten, anchor Kimberly Lansing, Tony Dundst, the Royal Flush girls and the crew will be going overseas.

We’ll all be there throughout the championship events and I expect a good number of entries in these tournies as well as a number of top American players to come overseas and play.

The WPT had an impressive 35% increase in viewers in Season IX, and I look for things to be even better in Season X. The WPT is an expanding brand and growing globally with numerous non-televised WPT events scheduled in the U.S. as well as Europe.

Check out the schedule and follow the action all season long at worldpokertour.com I hope to see you at a WPT final table in Season X.

Watch the WPT Spanish Championship final table. Jesse May is joined by Marvin Rettenmaier, Mclean Karr, Martin Jacobson and Dominik Nitsche for co-commentaries.

Next time you could be the star of a WPT final table! Qualify to the upcoming events on PartyPoker now!

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

I flew in a couple of days ago to play the event and after getting stuck in the enormously long lines to buy in, I finally sat down on a couple of minutes late to play. I seem to have a knack of always picking the worst line in any group of queues.

Thankfully, the long wait was tempered by being able to have a chat with Frank Kassela and his son. Frank was (I’m sure you know this) the Player of the Year for the 2010 World Series and it was a really well-deserved honour.

Not only is he a poker star but his two sons are both tearing up the felt as well with his older son final tabling EPT London.

Chatting with him definitely taught me that I need to be careful what I blog/tweet about though. We played together briefly during the Series this summer and at one point I tweeted something about how I had taken an instant dislike to someone, just based on how he put his chips in the middle.

Poor Frank read this (at the table) and then wondered if I meant him! I didn’t of course. It was a young guy in a hoody who did this big swooping gesture when he threw his chips in, getting as much height on it as possible.

WPT Five Diamond didn’t go terribly well for me

Sadly, the WPT Five Diamond didn’t go terribly well for me. I actually had a ROUGH day and found it difficult to win almost any pots at all. My table wasn’t even all that bad for a WPT but sadly my seat draw didn’t help. I had the strongest players on my left and Faraz Jaka (last year’s WPT Player of the Year) made it his purpose to play in every single pot I opened.

Hitting flops eluded me so a fair number of my chips floated his way. He’s a fun guy to play with, although he does use that to his advantage by being distractingly entertaining! I played with Scott Clements again as well, only a week after sitting with him at the BCPC. He’s a fantastic player and a really well-spoken, all around good guy.

In the end, I ended up in a pot with the Club WPT Qualifier, blind on blind. My  in the small blind (raised preflop) came up second best to his  in the big blind on a flop of . Sigh. Sometimes poker just does that to you.

I’m here for the rest of the week so that I can help out by doing some interviews on the final table. It’s great to be working with the crew here again and I have to say, the new season of the WPT looks like it’s going to be exciting. They showed a preview of the new series and damn, it’s a sexy new show. Tune in!

David Benyamine is complaining about his luck. He’s got a big smile on his face and a towering stack of 5k Moroccan Dirham chips, but he’s still complaining.

“You want my luck buddy?” he asks of a blonde Scandinavian in jeans and a t-shirt who has an impressive pile of chips himself.

“Take every big pot you’ve won in the last month. Take all of those pots and imagine that you’ve won none of them. Now how would you be doing, buddy? Good luck with that!”

It’s noon in Morocco and the game at the Casino de Marrakech has clearly been going all night. They are bedraggled and unshaven, with red rimmed eyes, and the game is played in French except when Benyamine and the Scandinavian converse. No matter where you go, if there’s a poker tournament going on, a big cash game will be close at hand.

Arena where million dollar bets only swelled the pot on the turn

The Casino de Marrakech is made for poker. A welcoming staff, a five star hotel, warm weather, and the best tournament director in the world. I sat down with Matt Savage to talk about tournament poker today and his recent trip to Asia.

Matt is the guy who convinced the higher ups in Macau that it would be good for poker to let the world in on what was going down. And besides the APT tournament, there were also quite possibly the biggest cash games that had ever been played.

Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey entered an arena where million dollar bets only swelled the pot on the turn, and Chinese gamblers were as enthused about Hold’em as a pair of numbered plaques. There’s a real theme in poker these days, that the travellers are the ones who get the gold, and like Dwan and Ivey jetting it out to Asia, those who braved Europe’s snow to fly to the north of Africa found value wherever they looked.

Late one evening, we stared out with drunken eyes at rows of eggplant salads, lamb tagines, wine, and saffron rice. Belly dancers shimmied around the table, while local couples shared fruit juices and apple flavoured shisha pipes. The music was nineties standards updated to African hip hop beats. You don’t get this down London’s Victoria club. The World Poker Tour is on the move.

Show 21 (December 6) with Matt Savage is online now! Click the play button to listen:

Prefer to download? Right click here and Save As.

WPT Texas Hold ‘Em Poker is FREE to play on Facebook. Get a $20K chip package when you join the game and play with your friends and poker buddies on Facebook.

You can create your own poker persona by using the Avatar Shop and play any range of table stakes.

With nearly 2 million WPT fans already playing the game, it is a great place to practice your poker skills and have some fun.

For tournament lovers we offer a 3-round Shootout Tournament where 2,000 chips can get you 500,000!

Come check it out and have some fun…for free. Visit and LIKE the official application fan page here or go directly to the game here.

As I type this, I’m enroute to Vegas via Memphis from Orlando where I spent one day after a single day back in Santa Barbara, preceded by a week in New York. Phew!! It’s been go go go lately so apologies for not being more regular with blog updates. Hopefully this WPT stop will provide a good story or two!

It’s my first WPT event as a player and just like everyone else, the idea of Vince and Mike possibly commentating on my play at a final table… well, it would just be a real dream. I’m hoping that my sleepiness won’t get in the way and that I don’t make any silly mistakes!

Yesterday, I spent the day in Orlando representing GSN and High Stakes Poker at a Games Night. It was a lot of fun getting to chat with people, play poker and give away my chips. I even got to see the Goo Goo Dolls perform.

Only 3 hours of sleep though and I was up at 5am to catch my flight. I’m just about to catch the final leg to Vegas and am hoping not to show up too late as the event kicks off at noon. I really hate being late for poker tournaments, even ones as deep stacked and with as good as a structure as the WPTs have.

Day 1

Day 1 went surprisingly well for me. I registered during level one but there was some trouble finding the money I’d wired to the cage at the Bellagio for my buy in, so I didn’t manage to sit down at a table until the start of level two.

Unfortunately, that meant I’d be sitting in the poker room (instead of the main tournament area in the Fontana) with other players who were registering late. I sat down with my friend David “Bakes” Baker who is a ridiculously good player and was in heavy contention for WSOP POY this year.

Also John “Johnny World” Hannigan who you really don’t want sitting at your table unless it’s for entertainment value, because he’s a very funny guy. Isaac “westmenloAA” Baron sat down for a bit before mercifully being moved. Chino Rheem played with us for a while and livened up the table too. Thankfully, I had the best spot at the table and had position on most of them so I didn’t get into too much trouble.

I changed tables twice at the end of the day and finally ended up playing in the main room. I love the structure of the WPTs and particularly the way they don’t have a dinner break. It’s easy enough to grab a bit during the 15 min breaks and it means for a much shorter day – always a good thing!

I start day 2 with above average chips (76500) as second in chips at my table, after Men Nguyen who has over 100k. There are some good online guys at my table today but I don’t think i’ve played any of them before so it’ll be interesting to see how it goes. Blinds start at 300/600/75 so wish me luck!

Day 2

Well, it’s not good news folks. I’m afraid that I busted from the WPT main event today, near the end of day 2. I started out with a good table and was making chips but once I was moved to the Main Room… well, it was all down hill from there.

I could give you all the usual reasons like, I only had 3 pairs all day (deuces, fours and jacks) and didn’t seen much besides a string of J2 and 83. Or I could tell you about the fantastic players I was up against. Michael Binger, Brandon Adams, Matt Affleck etc, etc. The truth is though, that it just wasn’t my day. Tournaments can be like that and that is why they’re awesome and awful, all at the same time.

I had a great time though and really enjoyed playing my first WPT event. It was pretty intimidating to be sitting down at tables with such great players everywhere. It was definitely the strongest field that I’ve ever played in, by far!

The structure was pretty damned amazing too. There was so much play and the fact that we did 5 90 minute levels with no dinner break was genius. Shorter days are much better than having a long dinner break in the middle which interrupts the flow of the game. I’m looking forward to playing my next WPT and hopefully, it goes better!

Good luck to Matt Affleck who took my last chips. I had top pair vs his set on the flop. He was one of the chipleaders for the whole tournament when I left so hopefully he goes right to the final. He was a cool guy and a very, very good player. It was a lot of fun to watch him and some of the other guys at the table making hero calls and fantastic plays. Maybe next time, it’ll be me.

Kara Scott also blogs at Cardrunners.

What a Final Table for the WPT World Championship!

Player after player commented to me about what a strong field this event attracts. The $25k buy in certainly makes it difficult for players who might generally ‘take a shot’ at a tournament, and the strength of the field was born out in the strength of the final.

It was an incredible setting with the magical Bellagio Fountains bursting into life behind the table as the players battled it out for a hefty$1.5 million payday. I love how the WPT draws large crowds to watch the taping. It really adds to the atmosphere in the room when you can hear them oohing and ahhing and cheering on their favorite players.

Now that the Championship is over and Season 8 is in the bag, I’ll really miss working with the WPT team. Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten are such pros and have made me feel incredibly welcome and the TV crew are stellar. I can’t wait to see the episodes when they air and hopefully we’ll all be together again when season 9 kicks off.

I’m heading back home to California tomorrow but tonight, it’s time to go out and have a cocktail. Well, it would be rude not too. After all, it’s Saturday night in Las Vegas!

It is still not too late to win the Pick Your Own WPT package promotion. We are running the satellites every Sunday until May 30th.

One of the recent winners is TomSigmond and here is what he had to say about his $15,000 WPT package win.

What route did you take to the final WPT Satellite?

I bought three times into the subqualifier of $88, and the third time I won a ticket for the big satellite of $800. There I won the main package (one of three).

Tell me how the final WPT Satellite went. What were the key moments?

The most exiting part was when we were down to four players and there where three packages to win. There was a big stack who was a very good player and was bullying the other three.

One of the three had come up with the best strategy against him and that was going all-in preflop when he raised. By going all-in, it would cost the big stack too much of his stack if he called, about 30%.

He was almost certain of a package so it wouldn’t be smart to make a preflop call unless he had kings or aces (which come by very sparingly).

I adapted that strategy with cards as low as unsuited connectors like 87o. It was all preflop game. Of course there was risk to it if the big stack did wake up with kings or aces but I had to take that risk because there was no time to wait for the other two to go out the tournament. The blinds where too high and I needed to keep folding equity so I took this approach which worked.

The final hand was my hand 44 in the sb against JJ in the bb. I knew if I completed the sb or would raise it up, the bb would probably go all-in. A raise did cost too much of my stack so the best choice was to go all-in.

I didn’t expect the bb to wake up with the JJ’s! Fortunately for me I turned a 4 and the BB was eliminated and I (together with the other two) won the package. This last hand turned out to be lucky for me but sometimes you just need a little bit of luck. I did play the whole tournament very well and had my far share of bad beats so I guess when you get lucky sometimes, you deserve it.

Tell me about your PartyPoker story. How did you get started playing with us?

I started playing at Party almost three years ago. I had no online experience and wanted to try it. Actually, a girl who I was in love with was playing there and I tried to look her up, playing against her and try to get conversation and who knows something more.

I deposited $300 and started playing but I couldn’t find her. I didn’t know here nickname. As my bankroll slowly decreased a pop up for a satellite appeared in my screen. It would cost $23 to participate in a satellite to win a ticket for the 300 gtd.

I had only about $27 left so I took the change. I did win the ticket of $215 and that same day, I came in third in the big tournament taking down a price of $20.700. Now if I didn’t fall in love with that girl…

What do you think about WPT?

I think the WPT is, along the EPT, the most important tournament circuit of the world. Big names, big money, television and maybe big sponsors; it’s all there. I have never played a WPT event (I did play EPT) so I’m looking forward to it. I also like to watch the WPT on television if I get the chance.

Which WPT tournament will you choose to play and why?

I choose the WPT in Romania. The reason for that is because its relatively nearby (I live in The Netherlands) for me and I want to play as much WPT’s as possible this year so I start with this one and hope to win some more packages for future WPT’s this year.

Any poker players you would love to meet and play against on at WPT? And why?

Not particularly. I’m not someone who is fan of somebody. I also don’t have the need to compete against other pros and see who is best.

You need a lot more than one tournament to be able to make a statement like that. For me the most important thing is to play the best I can against (well known) pros and amateurs.

Will you be the next one to win a package to upcoming WPT’s in Paris and Barcelona? See all promo details at WPT package page.