Wait, didn't the 2009 WSOP just end? (photo courtesy of AP)

It may seem like only weeks since the finale of the 2009 World Series of Poker, but believe it or not, the schedule for next summer's 2010 WSOP has just been released. And along with the schedule come some fairly major tweaks to the event that should get the attention of both pros and amateurs.

Maybe the biggest change is an adjustment to what is often called the "player's championship". Since it started in 2006, this has been a $50,000 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. event, with the winner taking home not only a bracelet, but also the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy. It also tended to award the winner the respect of their peers, since this mixed event has traditionally been thought of as requiring the broadest amount of true poker skill to win. But starting in 2010, the trophy and bragging rights will go to the winner of a new $50,000 mixed games championship, which will feature eight different games: Limit Hold’em, Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better, Seven Card Razz, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better, No-Limit Hold’em, Pot-Limit Omaha, 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball and, finally, No Limit Hold'em.

The final table of the mixed event will be all No Limit Hold'em, a plan which the WSOP and the Players Advisory Council hatched in order to get more heat for the event. Last year's $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. championship suffered a big drop in attendance after ESPN announced they wouldn't be putting it on TV, since nobody seems to watch poker that isn't NLHE. After the WSOP decreed that the final table will be nothing but Hold'em, ESPN immediately announced they will be airing it.

Other changes to the 2010 WSOP include a new $25,000 6-handed NLHE event, and the addition of some lower buy-in games. The first five weekends of the event will now each feature a $1,000 buy-in NLHE event, all that are anticipated to be popular enough to require two Day 1's. Okay, so that's not a really low buy-in, but it's affordable to a whole lot more people than that $25,000 bad boy, or even the $10,000 Main Event.

At eight years' old, Jeff Sarwer was already a champion chess player. He won the Under 10 World Youth Chess Championships at an age when the rest of us could barely play with our GI Joes. A year later, he was travelling around North America, playing exhibition chess matches against up to forty players at once. He became a media darling, was pegged as a potential future world champion by his peers, and earned a lifetime membership in the Manhattan Chess Club.

And then his dad pulled him out of school, kept him from playing chess, and began living an "alternative lifestyle" that involved living out of their car. The authorities deemed his dad unfit, and took Sarwer away. But he ran away to re-join his dad, and together they dropped out of the public eye for twenty years.

Until Sarwer discovered poker. He bought a seat at last year's Prague stop on the European Poker Tour, and finished 54th, earning 7,000 Euros. A few months later, in February of this year, he again cashed, coming in third at a European Masters of Poker event in Taillinn.

Then a couple months ago in October, he rode his aggressive play to a 10th place finish at the EPT event in Warsaw. A couple weeks later and he got his first six-figure win, with a third place finish at EPT Vilamoura, good for more than a hundred and fifty thousand Euros.

His string of success didn't help him, as he busted out early at the EPT Prague event, but he's certainly proving to be a quick study. He's steadily improved from his first cash just over a year ago, and seems destined to be someone to watch in the future. Unsurprisingly, he attributes some of his early success to the analytical mind he developed playing his childhood game of choice. But he asserts that most chess players aren't aggressive enough for poker, a problem he certainly doesn't have.

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC – Day 1B got underway today with good sized field of 365 entrants, three of whom are Cake Poker qualifiers.

The sizable second part of Day 1 makes this the biggest poker tournament ever held in the Czech or Slovak Republics with a combined total of 584 players in the PokerStars.com EPT Prague, Season 6. This makes for a steadily growing tournament with 570 players last year and 555 in the inaugural tournament.

The prize pool amounts to €2,842,100 with top spot taking home €682,000.

Players of note in the field today included three-time Wimbledon champion, Boris Becker. Unfortunately for Becker, he busted in Level 4.

Cake Players in Day 1B:

GP18089 is from Athens and it’s already his 6th EPT attendance. He brought his wife and friends all the way from Athens to Prague, altogether they are 15 people, so it’s a combination of Poker and Vacation for GP18089.

It’s the second EPT for LuckyDuy and his journey wasn’t that long as he is from Prague. (Unfortunately LuckyDuy has just busted).

Fish16 is from UK and a very experienced live tournament player with nine significant cashes already this year, two of which came at the WSOP.

Your chance to join the team in Prague might have passed, but Aussie Millions qualifiers are in full swing. The final qualifiers run each Sunday night at 8pm ET. Check out the Aussie Millions qualifier schedule for more information.

Cake Poker qualifier Mementori at the 2009 Prague EPT.

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC - Day 1A of PokerStars.com EPT Prague is underway with a field of 219 players, one of which is Cake Poker qualifier, Mementori of Denmark.

Mementori has a rock solid online tournament record with hundreds of cashes in 2009 alone including a third place finish for $69,350, a second place finish for $47,500 and a first place finish for $18,250.

Mementori also has plenty of live tournament experience from this year with cashes in the EPT London, the European Short-Handed Poker Championship in Dublin, and the Maser Classics of Poker in Amsterdam.

Stay tuned to the Cake Blog as we continue to bring you live updates from Prague.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Mementori just busted after UTG + 1 raised to 900, he pushed all-in and the BB woke up with pocket kings and couldn't catch up.

Brandise held the chip lead heading into the final table of the 2009 United States Poker Championship and unlike Moon's WSOP Main Event performance, he didn't blow it.

Brandise eliminated Men "The Master" Nguyen heads-up to win the USPC and $261,800. Nguyen, who won the USPC in 2001, collected $138,600 for his runner-up performance this year. The $5,000 buy-in event attracted 132 players to put the total prize pool for the four day event at $770,000.

Some of the big name pros who made their way to the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City included Adam Junglen, Joe Udine, Allen Kessler and Liv Boeree. Brothers Michael and Nick Binger also played the events with Nick finishing 6th in the Main Event while Michael made the final table in the $2,500 Pot Limit Omaha tournament.

The 2009 USPC will be televised for the first time in two years when SPIKE TV airs the final table of both the No Limit Hold'em Main Event and the Pot Limit Omaha Event at a later date.

Previous USPC winners include Daniel Negreanu, John Hennigan, Toto Leonidas as well as Nguyen.

While 2009 WSOP Main Event champion Joe Cada has been on a publicity tear since his victory, not much has been heard from the other members of the November Nine. Well, Phil Ivey has been winning millions in high-stakes online poker action, but the other seven guys have been pretty quiet. Steven Begleiter, former Wall Streeter and sixth place finisher in the Main Event, recently came out of seclusion to discuss his poker future on Bloomberg.

Joining news hosts Mark Crumpton and Lori Rothman, Begleiter implied that he's not going to give up his day job to devote his life to poker any time soon. He said that during the break awaiting the November final table, he played quite a few poker tournaments to help prepare himself. But now that that's over, he's "probably back to being a one tournament a year guy." That, despite the fact that his final table appearance earned him approximately $1.6 million dollars for a few days work.

He also went on to say that many of the same traits that make a poker player great, would easy cross over to a job on Wall Street. He even said that if his former company Bear Stearns hadn't exploded during the banking collapse, he'd probably have been trying to hire some of the players that he met during his WSOP run.

During the interview, it was pretty clear that Bloomberg News was interested in Begleiter more for his background, than out of a greater interest in poker. At least that was the impression given when one of the hosts mistakenly stated that the WSOP Main Event was a $10 million buy-in tournament. It seems that kind of mis-information runs in the Bloomberg family.

The Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City probably had its best poker moment when it appeared in Rounders but hosting the US Poker Championship has become an annual tradition for the once-proud casino.

After three days of play at the 2009 USPC William Brindise holds an overwhelming chip lead over a star-studded final table. With 1,549,000 chips Brindise has more than double that of his nearest competitor, Men "the Master" Nguyen who has 754,000. Eric Ladny is right on Nguyen's heels with 753,000.

Brian Lemke, who won a World Series of Poker bracelet this past summer, sits in fifth with 579,000. Lemke is the cousin of former PokerRoad producer Justin Shronk who passed away shortly before the 2009 WSOP. Lemke dedicated his win in June to his late cousin.

Of the three players below Lemke at the seven-handed final table poker fans will only recognize that of Nick Binger. The younger brother of Michael Binger has nearly $1.5 million in lifetime winnings including a first place finish at a recent Venetian Deep Stacks event.

The 2009 USPC will be broadcast in early 2010 on SPIKE TV.

2009 United States Poker Championship Final Table Chip Counts

1. William Brindise - 1,549,000
2. Men "the Master" Nguyen - 754,000
3. Eric Ladny - 753,000
4. Brian Lemke - 579,000
5. Anton Smolyanskiy - 380,000
6. Nick Binger - 339,000
7. Gordon Eng - 337,000

Brandon Cantu, one of the top poker players in the world, apparently ain't quite as good at prop bets. Last year he attended the TASER Foundation Tournament and lost a prop bet to one Clonie Gowen. The tournament, by the way, raises money for a foundation that honors law enforcement officers lost in the line of duty. So the name kind of makes sense. But it got a lot more literal this year, when Cantu and Gowen met again, to settle the stakes of the prop bet.

By losing the bet, Cantu agreed to get tased. And luckily for all of us, Phil Helmuth happened to record the whole thing on video, for us all to enjoy. Watch Cantu get tased right here.

It's about three minutes long and the build-up is a little lengthy, especially since it's Helmuth narrating. But it's worth it to see whether a millionaire pro player can maintain his poker face when he's got 50,000 volts running through his body.

While the 2009 tournament may have just ended, the World Series of Poker already has plans to improve the event in 2010. Continuing a tradition set in place by the recently resigned commissioner Jeffrey Pollack WSOP officials have been quick to identify some of the issues with this year's event, and just as quickly figure out ways to fix those problems.

One of the big issues was that the main event in 2009 sold out on the last day of entry. That's not supposed to happen. Historically, it's been open to anyone who can pony up the $10,000 entry fee. The problem this last year was that one of the starting days fell on July 4th. Not a lot of players entered that day, leaving a glut of people wanting to get in on the action on the last day. But with limited numbers of seats and tables, hundreds of would-be entrants were turned away.

That issue has provoked two changes to next year's event. For one, action won't take place on July 4th next year. And they'll also be expanding the number of tables. The hope is that both those changes, combined with the increasing press coverage of the event, will result in even more entrants to the main event.

Even though main event entries were down in 2009 compared to 2008, the total number of players for the entire WSOP was up. 2009 saw 60,875 people register for the various events. That's 2,000 more than in 2008. And, amazingly, it's 57,000 more than competed in 2000.

That rise was sparked mainly by increased interest in the lower buy-in events, not surprising given the state of the world's economy. The $1,000 No-limit Hold 'Em event, for example, drew 6,000 players. WSOP officials say they'll reflect that trend when they schedule for 2010.

And if you're not planning on attending next year's event, you'll be able to take in the action on ESPN again. The sports network recently signed a contract that will have them covering the event through 2017, at least.

Ahhhhhh, the life of a WSOP Main Event champion. Just a few months ago, he was a mild-mannered, relatively obscure online poker player. And now, Joe Cada spends his days trying to decide what to do with his millions of dollars in winnings, and his nights making appearances on WWE Monday Night Raw and David Letterman.

Joe Cada showed up at Madison Square Gardens in New York City for last nights' episode of Raw, along with a fledgling entourage consisting of agent Dan Frank, and fellow pro Dennis Phillips. Unfortunately for those who bet on someone other than him to win the WSOP, he didn't actually get pummeled in the ring by any pro wrestlers. He stayed ringside, making only a brief appearance at the announcer's table with his posse.

Tonight, he'll be continuing his NYC tour of TV appearances with a slot on The Late Show With David Letterman. He's the first poker pro to get an invite from Dave, since Annie Duke sat on his couch way back in 2004. The fact that he's the only WSOP champ invited to appear on The Late Show seems like a clear sign of the growing popularity of the event, and the good job Cada has done promoting himself and the game.