PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Airs Sunday

GSN will air 8 hours of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure on Sunday nights at 7 PM, starting next weekend. There will be two World Cup of Poker shows, two from the high rollers' event, and four from the main event. Daniel Negreanu and Ali Nejad provide commentary.

This week's WPT event is the Celebrity Invitational. Freddy Deeb, Scott Clements, and Nick Gonzalez are the most well known players at the TV table.

High Stakes Poker season 5 is over. Poker After Dark is in rerun till June 15.

I expect to be too busy to do another update for a while, so be aware of our list of upcoming poker TV shows, e.g. the WSOP live streams starting on June 2. I'll trust our more-knowledgeable readers to post any necessary updates in the comments of the WSOP streaming video schedule, e.g. better feed addresses, and you can subscribe to the comments of that post if you want.

Check our poker on TV schedule for the list of shows regularly running new episodes.

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Sam Simon Talks About Sam's Game and Playing High Stakes Poker

On the latest Wise Hand Poker podcast Sam Simon talked about his new show Sam's Game and being a player on High Stakes Poker. Some highlights:

• He said they stake the players on Sam's Game.
  
• He said playing on HSP wasn't a good experience: being the fish at the table and having his play ridiculed later on the message boards.
  
• Sam related how he was upbraided by Phil Laak for getting Jennifer Tilly (Simon's ex-wife) to play a negative-EV game, slots.
• Simon heard a producer say "that is great TV" when Antonio did the pushups.
  

It's an interesting and fun interview. Simon's is the first interview on the podcast.

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2 Months, $2 Million: Online Poker Reality Show Coming in August

2 Months, $2 Million, a reality show about online poker, will premiere on G4 in August. Four well-known online poker players, Jay “KRANTZ/pr1nnyraid” Rosenkrantz, Brian “flawless_victory” Roberts, Emil “whitelime” Patel, and Dani “Ansky” Stern, will attempt to make two million dollars over the course of two months while sharing a house in Las Vegas (and living the high life as well, we're promised). Filming starts this week, and the two months of the title are June and July. 10 half-hour episodes will air.

See also:

• The press release on Krantz's blog;
  
• our article about the filming of the pilot;
  
• Poker News Daily's article; and
  
• the DeucesCracked video training site, where founder KRANTZ will be running videos of his play during the show.

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WSOP Streaming Video Schedule

24 WSOP final tables will be streamed live over the internet, via ESPN360.com (for those of you whose ISPs provide access) or Bluffmagazine.com. We hope to be able to access the European feed at WSOP.PKR.com as well (the site is not yet accessible as I write this). Please post any updates on the streams in the comments below.

Event	Date	Outlet
Event 4: $1,000 no-limit hold 'em	June 2	ESPN360.com
Event 5: $1,500 pot-limit Omaha	June 3	Bluffmagazine.com
Event 7: $1,500 no-limit hold 'em	June 4	Bluffmagazine.com
Event 10: $2,500 pot-limit Omaha/pot-limit hold 'em	June 5	Bluffmagazine.com
Event 11: $2,000 no-limit hold 'em	June 6	ESPN360.com
Event 15: $5,000 no-limit hold 'em six-handed	June 8	ESPN360.com
Event 17: $1,000 no-limit ladies hold 'em	June 9	Bluffmagazine.com
Event 19: $2,500 no-limit hold 'em six-handed	June 10	ESPN360.com
Event 20: $1,500 pot-limit hold 'em	June 11	Bluffmagazine.com
Event 22: $1,500 no-limit hold 'em shootout	June 12	ESPN360.com
Event 24: $1,500 no-limit hold 'em	June 13	Bluffmagazine.com
Event 29: $10,000 no-limit heads-up	June 15	ESPN360.com
Event 30: $2,500 pot-limit Omaha	June 16	Bluffmagazine.com
Event 33: $10,000 limit hold 'em	June 17	ESPN360.com
Event 34: $1,500 no-limit hold 'em	June 18	Bluffmagazine.com
Event 35: $5,000 pot-limit hold 'em	June 19	ESPN360.com
Event 36: $2,000 no-limit hold 'em	June 20	Bluffmagazine.com
Event 40: $10,000 pot-limit Omaha	June 22	ESPN360.com
Event 41: $5,000 no-limit hold 'em shootout	June 23	ESPN360.com
Event 45: $10,000 pot-limit hold 'em	June 25	Bluffmagazine.com
Event 47: $2,500 mixed hold 'em	June 26	ESPN360.com
Event 51: $1,500 no-limit hold 'em	June 29	Bluffmagazine.com
Event 49: $50,000 HORSE	June 30	ESPN360.com
Event 54: $1,500 no-limit hold 'em	July 1	Bluffmagazine.com

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Sam's Game: New Poker Show on Playboy TV

Sam's Game premieres June 11 at 9 PM on Playboy TV. It's a cash game stacked with celebrities, including Sam Simon, Jennicide, Brande Roderick, Norm MacDonald, Artie Lange, Phil Laak, and Jennifer Tilly.

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Poker on TV Update

Poker After Dark is now in rerun till June 15. The National Heads-Up Poker Championship plays down to a winner over 3 hours Sunday.

This week's newsbites:

• PKR.com will be doing the European WSOP streams this year. Last year the European streams were available worldwide, and hopefully they will be this year too. ESPN360 has the streams as well, but most US residents don't have access to that site.
  
• Some comments on High Stakes Poker season five, from Poker King and me, have been added to our season 4 review.

Check our poker on TV schedule for the list of shows regularly running new episodes.

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WPT Makes a Profit, Gets PokerStars Sponsorship, and Continues to Lose Ground to EPT

WPT Enterprises actually made a profit in the first quarter of 2009... if you exclude the writedown of an investment and losses from a discontinued operation. The company does expect a small loss in the second quarter, however. They've substantially lowered their expenses, WPT China (the discontinued operation) was shut down in March, and they bought out the contract of spokesperson Antonio Esfandiari. Club WPT, their free online poker site, is growing, though they won't create any more branded TV shows to promote it. Discussions about a possible sale of WPT Enterprises continue.

PokerStars will pay $2.1 million to sponsor season 7 of the World Poker Tour in Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and parts of Latin America. Full Tilt Poker is the WPT's sponsor for season 7 in the US and Mexico. WPT Enterprises believes they'll be able to generate non-US revenues that are at least twice the size of the US ones (Full Tilt Poker paid $3.25 million for their sponsorship).

Attendance at WPT events has continued to decline, however (see Poker King's analysis and our previous article), and the PokerStars-sponsored European Poker Tour has clearly surpassed it as the world's leading poker tour (the WSOP seems undecided if they want to be a tour/league or a championship). PokerStars already dominates the tournament poker world outside the US (read about their other tours). If they gained control of the WPT they would control most of the world's major tournaments other than the WSOP. WPT season 8 doesn't have a sponsor yet.

WPT Enterprises also inked another deal for a non-televised European tournament with an online poker room sponsor, this one in Slovakia (we've previously mentioned Morocco, Cyprus, Barcelona, and Venice).

For further information see the earnings press release, earnings call transcript, PokerStars sponsorship press release, quarterly financial statement, and our recent WPT articles.

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WPT Venice Live Stream

The WPT Venice is streaming live over the web Sunday morning starting at 5:30 AM Eastern. Mike "Timex" McDonald and Dario Minieri are among the final 7 players as I write this.

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New WPT; Will Annie Duke Win Celebrity Apprentice?

We're back to new World Poker Tour episodes with the LA Poker Classic. Chris Ferguson is among the players.

Will Annie Duke win Celebrity Apprentice? Tune it to the live, 3-hour finale Sunday night at 8 PM on NBC to find out.

High Stakes Poker has a new lineup this weekend: Doyle Brunson, Dario Minieri, Phil Laak, Tom "durrrr" Dwan, Eli Elezra, Mike Baxter, Alan Meltzer, and David Peat played day one of the taping, which is the last one to air.

Some Fox Sports Net affiliates have been airing a WPT clip show: Best Damn Top 20 - Bad Beats, Bluffs and Blunders. You'll need to check a programming guide to see if/when it's airing on your local affiliate.

Check our poker on TV schedule for the list of shows regularly running new episodes.

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Poker After Dark Cash Game; EPT Grand Final

A new Poker After Dark cash game will air over the next two weeks. It features two of the best players in the world, Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Kenny Tran, as well as Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Laak, and Bob Safai attempting to beat up on a tourney specialist, Phil Hellmuth.

The second-biggest tournament in the world by prize pool, the EPT Grand Final from Monte Carlo, is webcasting this weekend. It pays $3.1 million to the winner (compare that with $2.1 million for the recent WPT Championship). The schedule is:

• Saturday, May 2 at 6:00 AM Eastern: TV Table
• Sunday, May 3 at 7:00 AM Eastern: Final Table

The WPT is in rerun for another week, and High Stakes Poker and Heads-Up continue as usual. Check the schedule if you're unfamiliar with the details.

This week's newsbites:

• Variety reports: "Poker After Dark continues to perform well for NBC, especially given its timeslot: 2:05 a.m. on weeknights and 1 a.m. on Saturdays. Show is averaging a 0.3 rating with adults 18-49 and is up 4% with viewers this season, averaging an audience of 881,000."
  
• ESPN will air 10 hours of the WSOP Europe, which plays in September, up from 8 hours for the 2008 tournament.
  
• The World Series of Golf, which features poker-style betting, moves from CBS to WGN America, where they got a 13-episode deal.
• The comments on our WSOP TV Schedule and Analysis posts are worth reading.
• I recently discovered that we've had a technical problem since moving to our new address on March 17: some people who didn't type the "www" in front of FifthStreetJournal.com weren't reaching the site. It's been corrected now. If you ever notice problems with the site, you can always email me or leave a comment on one of our posts.
  

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