Will the WSOP on ESPN be SOL?

The 2010 World Series of Poker had no shortage of compelling storylines, from the resurgence of the Brothers Mizrachi to insane bracelet bets by big-name pros like Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan. But apparently none of that is enough to get mainstream America to tune in en-masse to ESPN's coverage of the poker event.

It's six weeks into the sports network's coverage of the WSOP, and ratings are down compared to last year. They're not down a lot, but the numbers have taken a bit of a hit. Things started off well, with 15% more people tuning in to the Player's Championship compared to last year. But that's about it for the good news. The bad news is that overall ratings for the rest of the coverage is running about 16% lower than last year.

An average of 737,000 viewers have tuned in for each episode on ESPN. That compares to about 869,000 during the 2009 WSOP. The one demographic tuning in at a higher rate than last year? Men over the age of 55. Maybe the old guys just really like The Grinder?

There's lots of good WSOP action still to come, so there's definitely time for ESPN to see some better numbers. And with the ever-increasing amounts of mainstream media attention for the November Nine, their coverage could draw some higher ratings in November. Though with Phil Ivey noticeably absent from this year's final table, they may be hard-pressed to beat last year's numbers.

2008 WSOP Europe bracelet winner Sherkhan Farnood stands accused of serious misdealings at Afghanistan's biggest bank.

The Central Bank of Afghanistan moved to replace the management of the troubled Kabul Bank this week - and WSOP gold bracelet-winning poker player Sherkhan Farnood is at the center of some seriously scandalous goings-on.

Kabul Bank handles payments for soldiers, police and teachers in the troubled Central Asian nation. But its politically connected management, including Farnood, is accused of making up to $300 million worth of bad real estate deals in Dubai and disposing of hundreds of millions of dollars more in off-the-books loans, threatening the stability of the entire country at a crucial time. Farnood and several other key management figures stepped down after President Hamid Karzai threatened them with arrest earlier this week.

The move by Karzai is not entirely surprising; earlier this year, in an interview about the way his bank does business, Farnood was quoted saying, “What I'm doing is not proper, not exactly what I should do. But this is Afghanistan." Since resigning Farnood has pledged to hand over the titles to $160 million in Dubai property, all of it bought with Kabul Bank money but registered under his and his wife’s names.

Farnood has a total of eight tournament victories from festivals in Austria, Australia, France and England on his poker resume. By far the biggest of them came in 2008 when he triumphed in the £2,500 Limit HORSE event at WSOP Europe, making him only the second Afghan poker player (behind 2002 $5,000 Seven Card Stud winner Qushqar Morad) to win a WSOP bracelet. Among the competitors he bested at that final table were Howard Lederer, Jeffrey Lisandro and Phil Ivey. The win had a measure of redemption in it, as Farnood had narrowly missed winning a bracelet in 2006, finishing second in that year’s $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha with Rebuys event.

Coverage of The Grinder's amazing Main Event run begins tonight on ESPN.

After a preview show, the $50,000 Poker Players Championship and the Tournament of Champions, ESPN’s coverage of the 2010 WSOP moves on to the Main Event starting tonight.

Beginning at 8 p.m., the cable sports giant will begin broadcasting the first bits of coverage from this year’s WSOP Main Event. With 7,319 entrants, this year’s Main Event became the second-largest live poker tournament of all-time, behind only the 2006 WSOP Main Event won by Jamie Gold at the height of the poker boom. 

As usual, Norman Chad and the ever diss-proof Lon McEachern host the show. The first two hours of coverage will feature more than a few faces poker fans have come to know well over the last seven years, including 2003 WSOP Main Event winner Chris Moneymaker, 2004 WSOP Main Event champ Greg Raymer, 2008 WSOP Europe winner Annette Obrestad, 1995 WSOP Main Event winner Dan Harrington and 2008 WSOP Player of the Year Erick Lindgren. The star of the show, though, is undoubtedly Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi. Winner of the 2010 WSOP Poker Players Championship, which aired two weeks ago on ESPN, Mizrachi made an improbable run to the final table of the Main Event to become a member of the November Nine and keep himself in contention to tie Frank Kassela for 2010 WSOP Player of the Year.

Coverage of the 2010 WSOP Main Event begins on ESPN tonight at 8 p.m. ET with a one-hour episode. and continues with a second one-hour episode at 9 p.m. ET.

If Harrah's were the Jackson family, the Rio would be Tito.

It looks like the World Series of Poker will be moving to a new home next year - or maybe not, depending on whose word you take.

Popular poker blog Pokerati.com announced on Wednesday that the sale of the Rio, the Harrah’s property that has been home to the WSOP since it moved away from downtown Las Vegas back in 2006, was “almost 100 percent unofficially semi-confirmed” to “one of those name name and ampersand venture capital companies.” The Pokerati post also indicated that the WSOP would be moving to Planet Hollywood, which Harrah’s acquired last year, which seemed to confirm the rumors that have been flying around for months that the WSOP was finally making its way to the Las Vegas Strip.

But it didn’t take long for WSOP officials to react to the new tale of the Rio’s demise. Seth Palansky, director of communications for the WSOP, shot down the rumors yesterday, noting that planning was already underway for holding the 2011 WSOP at the Rio, including another installment of the November Nine at the Penn and Teller Theater. And the recently released Q2 2010 earnings statement for Harrah’s mentions nothing about the Rio being sold; in fact, the company lost more than $270 million last quarter, a number that would have been more than offset by the sale of such a big Las Vegas property.

So for now, it looks like the WSOP is staying put. Just don’t expect the rumors to die down; some of them have had the property being sold but Harrah’s continuing to host the venerable tournament series onsite as part of the sale, so the buzz will likely continue all the way through the next World Series of Poker at the Rio.

Huck Seed will get plenty of airtime on ESPN tonight.

After kicking off its coverage of the 2010 World Series of Poker last week with Michael Mizrachi’s victory in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, this week ESPN is bringing the Tournament of Champions to viewers around the world.

The field for this year’s Tournament of Champions - the first one held since 2006, when Mike Sexton defeated Daniel Negreanu heads-up for the title - was split between automatic qualifiers and players selected by the public. The three previous TOC winners (Mike Matusow, Annie Duke and Mike Sexton) and the reigning WSOP Main Event and WSOP Europe Main Event winners (Joe Cada and Barry Shulman) all got automatic invites; two seats were held back by the event’s sponsors, and the rest were selected by the public from the ranks of living players who had previously won a WSOP bracelet.

Former WSOP Main Event champion Huck Seed was among that last group, though he never expected to be there. But as he has done so often in the past, the 1996 world champion made the most of the opportunity presented to him. He jumped out to an early advantage and held on to it long enough to make the final table against a tough lineup that included Duke, Negreanu and Jennifer Harman. Then he outlasted Johnny Chan and Howard Lederer in three-handed play to win the $500,000 top prize - not bad for a guy who never thought he would get voted in to the tournament in the first place.

The two-hour coverage of Seed’s victory in the Tournament of Champions begins tonight at 8 p.m. on ESPN.

Some of this cash helped to open Jerry Yang's sushi bar.

When he took down the tournament in 2007, Jerry Yang was the most unlikely WSOP Main Event champion since Robert Varkonyi. A social worker with little poker tournament experience, Yang also entered the final table with one of the shortest chip stack. But he ramped up the aggression and, with some good fortune on his side, managed to win the tournament every poker player dreams of winning.

The champ has continued to play poker in the years since that big win. But unlike some big winners in poker, Yang has found other ways to invest the portion of his $8.3 million winner’s purse that the government didn’t take away in taxes. More than $2 million of that money has gone to social causes - no surprise since he was a social worker before becoming poker’s world champion - and the champ has raised nearly a million more for others by hosting charity tournaments.

Yang’s latest investment, the Pocket 8’s Sushi and Grill in Merced, Calif., is more connected to an earlier time in his life. As a Hmong refugee from the war in Laos during the 1970s, Yang often went hungry and watched several members of his extended family die from malnutrition before he was able to make his way to the United States. Even once he found himself in America, he was often hungry. 

Jerry Yang has dreamed of owning a restaurant since those days, and he finally made the dream a reality in September of last year when he opened his sushi bar on the back of a $540,000 investment. Nearly a year later things are going well despite the poor economy - and now the unlikely WSOP Main Event champ can eat whatever he wants.

The Grinder reacts to winning the $50,000 Poker Player Championship. (photo courtesy of WSOP)

ESPN just aired its first broadcast of the action from the 2010 World Series of Poker, and so far, the numbers are looking good. Viewership of the two hour broadcast of the $50,000 Poker Players Championship earned ratings 15% higher than ESPN's first WSOP coverage from last year.

The final table of this year's championship had no shortage of top pros and great poker action. Michael Mizrachi, his brother Robert, John Juanda, David Oppenheim, Vladimir Schmelev, David Baker, Michael Thuritz and Daniel Alaei all made the final nine as they vied for the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy and a top prize in excess of a million dollars.

The two hour broadcast, at 8pm and 9pm earned a combined 0.7 rating, up from last year's 0.6 rating. That's good news for poker and for the WSOP, especially considering ESPN only aired this year's championship after a change in the tournament's format. Up until the final table, the players compete in a rotation of eight different poker games: No Limit and Limit Hold'Em, Pot Limit Omaha, Limit Omaha Hi-Lo, Limit Stud, Stud Hi-Lo, Razz and Limit 2-7 Triple Draw. But once they got it down to nine players, the remaining poker was all played as NLHE. This was an effort to make it more accessible to TV audiences, and it seems to have worked.

In the end, Michael Mizrachi won the bracelet, his first WSOP hardware, and the top cash prize of $1,559,046. It was the first big sign that the 2010 WSOP would be a great one for Mizrachi, as he followed up his PPC win by earning a seat at the yet-to-be-played final table of the Main Event.

Ever wanted to play poker with no upside? Facebook has you covered.

Poker is big business on social networking sites these days. (Just ask Zynga!) Now Facebook is getting as official as a site can get without actually sitting down at the felt thanks to a new World Series of Poker play-money poker game.

The new WSOP experience online comes thanks to Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment’s new partnership with Playdom, owners of the Poker Palace social game. Poker Palace is being rebranded and updated to provide Facebook users with the feel of actually being at the WSOP, but without all the body odor and broke poker players hanging around the hall begging for stakes.

“We are very excited to bring the thrill and excitement of the World Series of Poker to the social gaming space with Playdom,” said WSOP Vice President Craig Abrahams. “We will immediately start to work on enhancing the game, bringing unique WSOP promotions and sweepstakes into the offering and ensuring that the battle for WSOP virtual championship bracelets can become a Facebook-friendly endeavor.”

There’s no real money to be won in the new WSOP game, since Facebook doesn’t let its users gamble. But according to Harrah’s, the game will allow players to win virtual WSOP bracelets, as well as offering up opportunities to enter sweepstakes that award prizes including trips to Las Vegas and seats to live WSOP events. Just remember when you lose that it’s because your virtual opponents can’t virtually spell virtual poker. If it weren’t for virtual luck, you’d virtually win every virtual time.

Party time! Excellent! Woo woo woo woooooooo!

It’s not often that you get a party to celebrate a task you haven’t actually completed yet, but that’s exactly what’s happening for November Niner Matt Jarvis tonight in Vancouver.

Jarvis, 25, will be the man of the hour at Edgewater Casino in Vancouver tonight - literally. The casino is setting aside an entire hour for a VIP function to honor Jarvis before opening the doors of the Matt Jarvis Poker Star Party & Silent Auction to the public at 8 p.m. The moment is also being used to further a good cause; the silent auction portion of the evening will benefit the British Columbia Cancer Agency in honor of Jarvis’ father, Norm Jarvis, who is currently battling cancer.

The younger Jarvis considered himself a poker hobbyist before outlasting the second-largest field in live poker tournament history to become on of this year’s November Nine. Now he’s decided to go pro, and who can blame him? He’s already guaranteed himself $811,823, and if he can work his fifth-place chip stack up to the top he’ll walk away with $8,944,138.

It might once have been considered poor form to celebrate before even making the final table, but with nearly four months to burn before getting down to business at the final table it’s a wonder that every single member of the November Nine isn’t getting a similar party thrown for them at some casino or another. Still, none of these guys have actually accomplished anything else yet…which sort of makes you wonder what Brandon Steven is up to!

Michael Mizrachi is the star of the show on tonight's WSOP coverage.

After a preview show last week to get the public’s appetite whetted, ESPN begins broadcasting its coverage of the 2010 World Series of Poker tonight - and November Niner Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi will be featured prominently. 

The first two episodes of 2010 WSOP coverage are devoted to the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, with the first hour documenting the first three days of the tournament and the second hour covering the final table. The tournament, which replaced the $50,000 HORSE tournament with an eight-game mix and a no-limit-only final table format, saw Mizrachi win his first WSOP gold bracelet and begin putting together an incredible string of results that earned him nearly $1.7 million. And even that impressive figure doesn’t include whatever money he ends up winning when the Main Event final table resumes in November - a Main Event win would boost his total take for the WSOP to nearly $10.7 million.

Joining the Grinder at the final eight on tonight’s ESPN coverage is his older brother Robert Mizrachi, making them only the second pair of brothers (after Ross and Barney Boatman) to make a final table together at the WSOP. The rest of the lineup includes a number of players who also had very good summers in Las Vegas, namely Vladimir Schemelev, John Juanda, David Baker and Daniel Alaei.

The first of a total of 31 ESPN episodes of the 2010 World Series of Poker with Lon McEachern and Norman Chad begins tonight at 8 p.m. ET. And if you miss it then - well, you can probably start watching your Michael Mizrachi reruns immediately on The Ocho.