We are into the 2nd week of August, the WSOP is on hold until the November Nine return on 6th November to Las Vegas to battle it out for the $8,944,138 first prize and the title of WSOP Main Event Champion.

In the online world we have the FTOPS XVII taking place at Full Tilt Poker running through to the FTOPS Main Event on Sunday August 15th. Followed by the WCOOP with $50 million guaranteed at Pokerstars from 5th to 26th September.

The Live Poker Circuit switches its attention to London with the London Poker Festival starting 30th August with the WPT London sponsored by Partypoker.

Poker fans around the world won’t have to wait long to see the action from the seventh season of the World Poker Tour (WPT) unfold. On Sunday, January 4th, 2009, the first of 26 episodes of the WPT will air on Fox Sports Net. The show will occur during the network’s national time slot on Sunday nights.

WPT episodes to air on Fox Sports Net will be sponsored by FullTiltPoker.net, which will receive an on-felt presence as well as instructional segments during the show. Southwest Airlines returns as a presenting sponsor. In addition to WPT tournaments, ClubWPT events also air on Fox Sports Net on Sundays. There have been 10 six-man tournaments shown in total. On Christmas Day, a ClubWPT marathon will air. A Channel Finder is also planned in the New Year in order to help viewers locate the time and channel for WPT and ClubWPT programming.

WPT Founder, President, and CEO Steve Lipscomb commented in a press release distributed through Business Wire on Monday, “Not only are we excited to bring our seventh season to the airwaves, we’re ecstatic to be a part of one of the leading networks for sports, FSN. Together, WPT and FSN continue to bring the action into living rooms and put fans on the edge of their seats.” The first five seasons of the WPT aired on The Travel Channel. For the sixth season of the marquee poker tour, the action headed to GSN, The Network for Games. When GSN elected not to pick up its exclusive option for Season VII, WPT officials quickly forged a relationship with Fox Sports Net.

There are several milestones that will air as part of the seventh season of WPT programming. The $400 million mark for prize money is reached during Season VII, as is the crowning of the 100th WPT Poker Made Millionaire. The latter is an exclusive group which already includes Daniel Negreanu ($5.5 million in career WPT earnings), Carlos Mortensen ($5.2 million in career WPT earnings), and Tuan Le ($4.5 million in career WPT earnings). Each has banked over $1 million from WPT play.

Each of the 26 episodes will last one hour. Fox Sports Net is actually composed of regional networks, but shows a block of nationwide programming every Sunday night. WPT officials stated that a “two part” format will air. GSN will air High Stakes Poker Season V beginning on March 1st, which is also a Sunday. It will occupy the 9:00pm ET time slot and may go head to head with WPT Season VII episodes. GSN still owns the rights to Season VI of the WPT.

Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten will return to call the action for Season VII. Joining them will be Amanda Leatherman, who has been serving as the Live Updates Hostess on WPT’s website and will also take on the role of sideline reporter. Leatherman previously updated fans of the game for Pokerwire and brings a vast amount of experience to the table.

Online Poker Players will also be able to take part in some online poker action in LTDPoker's $200 Freeroll at Gala Poker on the 4th of January.

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ONLINE poker is quickly gaining popularity in the virtual casino gaming community. This is due in large part to the increasing popularity of the World Series of Poker Tournament events. The players that take a seat at that final gaming table are celebrities in the gaming world. They are the go-to players that everyone keeps an eye on as each hand is dealt and each poker game is played.

The online gaming community held its breath recently when a poker powerhouse made a shocking announcement. World Poker Tour officials decided to end a long standing relationship with software giant CryptoLogic. At the moment this news made headlines, poker enthusiasts from around the globe were left wondering how or even if they would be able to engage in online poker play again.

Not one to leave their faithful players abandoned, World Poker Tour officials quickly moved on to find another suitable option. A search began to find the right partner to join with the WPT so that players could continue the online poker play they have come to know and love.

Shortly after that shocking announcement, WPT announced a new partnership with online poker gaming great InterPoker.com. This rising online gaming website is part of the Inter Casino family. Inter Casino maintains a long standing history of giving players the red carpet celebrity treatment when visiting one of their many online gaming websites. That factor played a huge role in WPT deciding to make the family their new go-to online poker gaming destination point.

Interpoker.com stands ready to accept any and all poker players that the WPT organization can throw its way. Already in the works are several impressive start-up offers and promotional events. To further prove that they have poker players’ best interest at heart, WPT officials announced a partnership with Full Tilt Poker as well.

This sponsorship arrangement will ensure that poker players continue to receive full account benefits without interruption. An unimpressive statistical report of player interaction with the previous website is the reason given for the partnership end with CryptoLogic officials. In order to keep player interest at the top of the list, WPT officials ended that relationship and formulated a new one with the Inter Casino family.

This new partnership will allow WPT officials to rededicate their focus to the television program side of its entertaining business. With the online poker aspect taken care of, they are free to re-focus on this and several other ideas that are currently in the creative stages within the company.

The Asian Poker community is increasingly growing its numbers with the popularity of the Asian Poker Tour and now a the World Poker Tour has been named as the sponsor of the “first government sanctioned nationally-televised poker competition in China,”

Earlier this month, some Chinese television viewers noticed something a little bit different on their dials. Hitting the airwaves on Nanjing Entertainment Television in the Jiangsu province was the Traktor Poker Tour. A World Poker Tour sponsored tournament series, the Traktor Poker Tour became the  according to a press release distributed by WPT officials on Friday.

Nine programming hours of Season I of the Traktor Poker Tour Grand Finals will air in total. The tournament series is also already in high gear for its second season. Last year, World Poker Tour Enterprises, which is the parent company of the highly-successful American poker franchise, inked a 10 year agreement with the China Leisure Sports Administrative Center (CLSAC) to market poker in China. It was one of the first ventures by the California-based company to expand a variation of its product outside of the traditional Texas Hold’em poker markets.

In a press release from August of last year, World Poker Tour Founder, President, and CEO Steve Lipscomb commented, “Poker, especially Tuo La Ji Poker, requires a great amount of skill and passion, both key ingredients in creating dynamic and engaging sports television. We look forward to applying our expertise revolutionizing televised poker in the United States to help bring this exciting sport to Chinese television for the first time.”

Since then, the WPT has focused on building internet and mobile platforms for its hallmark Chinese game. Traktor Poker uses two decks of cards with jokers and is a team competition. Points are accrued for the cards contained in each “trick” won by teams and trump suits also mix the game up.

Gambling in China is centered in Macau, where two major Asian poker tours, the PokerStars-sponsored Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) and the Asian Poker Tour (APT) both recently conducted tournaments. Yevgeniy Timoshenko, also known as “atimos” online, took down the 2008 installment of the APT Macau tournament, pocketing $500,000. He defeated Joon Hee Yea heads-up. The APT lured some of poker’s biggest stars to Macau, including “Texas Dolly” Doyle Brunson, his son Todd, APT Philippines winner David Saab, 10 time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Johnny Chan, PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker Main Event winner J.C. Tran, and 2008 WSOP Europe Main Event winner John Juanda.

The APPT Macau event was held in September and was won by American Edward Sabat, who took home $453,000. There were 538 entrants and also finishing in the money were David Chiu, Carter Gill, Quinn Do, Juanda, and Aussie Millions winner Lee Nelson. In both the APT and APPT events, the name of the game was Texas Hold’em.

WPT Online, the online poker room owned by the parent company of the World Poker Tour, shut its virtual doors to rounders forever at the close of business last night. If you're much of an online poker player, chances are you didn't even notice.

WPT Enterprises, the parent company of both the World Poker Tour and WPT Online, cited "disappointing returns" when it announced earlier this month that it would be shuttering its online poker room, which had been a part of the Cryptologic network since Aug. 24, 2007.

Steve Lipscomb and company's reason for abandoning the operation is testament to the fact that the site never reached the kind of critical mass of players needed for long-term success.

In an industry that can become something like a license to print money for those who are successful, some might wonder how it is that such a well-known television brand couldn't get a foothold in the market.

In the United States, the World Poker Tour is gearing up for its Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic, which kicks off on December 13th from the Bellagio in Las Vegas. The $15,000 buy-in tournament will crown a champion six days later. Each player will start with 45,000 chips and blind levels will run for 90 minutes. Blinds start at 50-100 and antes kick in beginning in Level 3. In the WPT’s last tournament, Jonathan Little, who is known in the online poker world as “FieryJustice,” pocketed $1.1 million for his win in the Foxwoods World Poker Finals. Also at the final table were Jonathan Jaffe, Charles Marchese, David Pham, Jack Schanbacher, and Full Tilt Poker pro Mike Matusow.

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