Maxim Magazine thinks Shannon Elizabeth is hot, and who are we to argue?

We here at Cake Poker would never go so far as to make a gratuitous blog post about the hottest female celebrities to play poker. That would be sexist and wrong. But, since Maxim Magazine went to all the work of choosing their top 20 Celebrity Poker Aces (who are, coincidentally, all female, and all hot) we felt the least we could do was mention it here. 

Many of the names, and faces, will be familiar to those who watch celebrity poker tournaments, Yes, Shannon Elizabeth is there as you would expect, and so is Jennifer Tilly. And they've definitely earned their spot on any list of female celebs who also play poker. And there are a couple other well-deserving women who have become famous through poker, like Vanessa Rousso and Tiffany Michelle. Okay, so far no big surprises on Maxim's list.or m

But then the questions arise. Jennifer Love-Hewitt? She seems nice enough, but I don't remember her grinding it out for charity at any celeb tournaments. And Sarah Silverman? She's funny and all, but is she a poker ace? Supermodel Joanna Krupa? Actually I have no problem with her inclusion on any list of hot women, no matter what other requirements she might or might not be lacking.

Greg Mueller was the top poker pro on Day 1A at Bay 101.

The Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament in San Jose, Calif., is one of the most unique events on the World Poker Tour thanks to the $5,000 bounties it places on the heads of well-known pro players. That extra incentive for the amateurs in the field usually spells doom for the Shooting Stars, and Day 1A of this year’s event was no exception for most of the top professionals with metaphorical targets on their heads.

Of all the 17 poker pros with Shooting Star bounties on their heads, only six survived. Among the fallen were TJ Cloutier, Jason Mercier, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Gavin Smith, and Jennifer Harman. Meanwhile Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Daniel Negreanu, Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, Freddy Deeb and defending Bay 101 champ Steve Brecher all managed to make it through the day. Two of them - Mueller (132,800 chips) and Timoshenko (97,600) - even finished in the top five chip counts as the day concluded.

But the person at the top of the heap as Day 1A finished up wasn’t a familiar one. Instead the curiously named Vanna Tea, a tournament regular from California who finished with 143,900 chips, who snapped up the $10,000 reward for having the biggest stack at the end of the day. More impressive than the chip lead itself was the fact that Tea built it up at a table that included the likes of Tom Dwan, former November Niner Scott Montgomery, and 2009 WSOP double bracelet winner Mueller.

The Bay 101 Shooting Star event continues today with Day 1B. That means a whole new starting field and some 30 pro players with bounties on their heads, including NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship winner Annie Duke and runner-up Erik Seidel. There’s also another $10,000 reward on the line for finishing with the biggest chip stack, so the action should be in no danger of dying down. Play in this unique World Poker Tour event is scheduled to get back underway at 10:45 a.m. PT.

Police say the EPT Berlin robbers were "stupid amateurs."

The winners at EPT Berlin have been crowned and millions of euros’ worth of prize money has been handed out, even though a fair chunk of that money was stolen by armed bandits last Saturday. Police in Berlin are still searching for the perpetrators of the crime and have no suspects in custody as of this time, but they appear confident that they’ll get their men.

Police say they believe the armed gang had an inside man working at the EPT Berlin, because the heist was timed to take the money and run at exactly the moment that it was being prepared for transport to the hotel’s main safe. That means they’re now looking for a fifth suspect in addition to the four masked men who carried out the robbery.

After a whirlwind of initial reports that had the robbers armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and grenades, police now say the bandits actually had handguns and machetes. Their total take was €242,000, the equivalent of about $339,000 US.

Investigators are sure that this bunch of robbers was an amateur crew due to the methods used in carrying out the plan. “The way they were armed and behaved, as well as the mountain of evidence they left behind, already indicates that the police will quickly identify them," German police union chief Rainer Wendt told Agence France-Presse today, adding that the thieves dipped to "new depths of stupidity to carry out such a raid in front of running surveillance cameras."

Though this crew was amateur, German police are worried about what the attack might mean for future poker robberies. “When such semi-professionals land a coup like this, then the desire for a piece of the pie grows among the real big guys in the underworld,” a police spokesman told the Berliner Zeitung.

Negreanu says the WSOP is tougher than even his video game Stacked.

Professional poker player Daniel Negreanu is known both for his skill at the poker table and his willingness to put all his opinions out there for the world to see. Yesterday he combined both of those traits into a single poker blog, giving his fans some insight into what it takes to win the toughest tournaments in the world.

Negreanu’s choice for the world’s toughest poker tournament is the $50,000 Players Championship at the World Series of Poker. Formerly known as the $50,000 HORSE event, this year’s Players Championship will retain the HORSE games - Hold’em, Omaha/8, Razz, Stud, and Stud/8 - but add 2-7 Triple Draw, Pot Limit Omaha, and No Limit Hold’em to the mix in order to offer the ultimate test of poker ability. Add in the return of ESPN coverage after an off-year and Negreanu thinks that this event should draw 150 players despite the steep price tag.

Another four events on Negreanu’s list are also WSOP events: the $25,000 Six-Handed No Limit Hold’em event (#2), which will run for the first time in 2010; the WSOP Europe Main Event (#3); the $10,000 No Limit Hold’em Heads-Up World Championship (#8); and the grandaddy of them all, the WSOP Main Event (#6). The first three get the nod due to the strength of the fields, while the last one is, well, the WSOP Main Event.

Other tournaments on Negreanu’s list include the NAPT High Roller Shootout, the WPT Championship, the EPT Grand Final, the PCA main event, and the LA Poker Classic. But left off the list were made-for-TV events like the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship and Poker After Dark, which he says “boast strong starting fields” but “have such fast paced structures that there is little room for high level poker to be played.” Also missing were big online events, since Negreanu says that online poker is a completely different game.

There’s bound to be plenty of discussion of Daniel Negreanu’s picks. What do you think are the toughest poker tournaments out there today?

Tom "durrrr" Dwan has a whole lot of chips.

Well, that's 33,242 hands down, only 16,758 to go.... Last night Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Patrik Antonius sat down to continue their durrrr Challenge marathon. They only played 368 hands, but Dwan was able to make them count. By the end of the night he was up $343,157 for the session, leaving him with a running total of $1,755,708 over Antonius so far.

That's not an impossible lead for Antonius to overcome, but it's definitely looking like Dwan is in the driver's seat. What that means is that if they should ever actually finish the last 16,000+ hands, and Dwan is still ahead, Antonius will fork over an extra $500,000. According to the rules of durrrr's namesake challenge, if Antonius is up after the 50,000 hands, Dwan will owe him an additional $1,500,000 above and beyond any winnings earned by the end of the challenge.

Last night's solid showing continues a trend for Tom in 2010. He ended last year on a low note, losing a whole lot of dough to Isildur1 in high-stakes online poker play. But it's been all gravy for the young American player since the calendar flipped to this year. He's up more than $2 million in online play so far, and that's not even counting anything he might take home at the conclusion of the challenge.

Kevin MacPhee was all smiles last night in Berlin.

Kevin MacPhee is the latest American to conquer a stop on the European Poker Tour after winning the EPT Berlin main event.

MacPhee, 29, of Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, entered the final table with the chip lead. Known in the online poker world as “ImaLuckSac,” the serial satellite winner put his advantage to work from the opening hand in a mad dash for the €1 million top prize. 

After Germany's Nico Behling (8th place, €72,000) was eliminated on the second hand of the final table by Marcel Koller, MacPhee and his eventual heads-up opponent took over. He busted the table’s other German, Marko Neumann (7th, €120,000), with a set of sevens against A-K. Finland’s Ilari Tahkokallio intervened by taking out Koller (6th, €165,000) with pocket queens against A-Q before MacPhee got back to work, eliminating Ketul Nathwani (5th, €210,000) with A-9 versus A-6.

Artur Wasek (4th, €280,000) was next to go when he ran into a major cooler against Marc Inizan, getting his money in as a 4-to-1 dog with pocket queens versus pocket kings. But Inizan (3rd, €350,000) had a cooler of his own when he flopped top pair on the same board that gave MacPhee the nut straight.

Unlike a lot of major tournament heads-up finales, this one actually had some history behind it: MacPhee and Tahkokallio had actually met each other in the ultimate duel of last year’s EPT London £1,000 Pot Limit Hold’em/Omaha event. Tahkokallio came out the winner there, but after three hours of back-and-forth battle in Berlin he found himself all-in with just a 26% chance to win. That chance disappeared when the river card made a straight, sending Tahkokallio (2nd, €600,000) home and giving Kevin MacPhee a satisfying €1,000,000 EPT Berlin win.

Watch Dario Minieri get creative at the 4:00 mark

After three episodes that cast doubt on whether High Stakes Poker still had its mojo in Season 6, Episode 4 finally brought the series back to form thanks to highly creative play from some of the world’s top poker pros and a memorable side bet.

Dario Minieri was at the forefront of the action during Episode 4, taking on the role of preflop re-raiser on a number of occasions to grab more than his fair share of the $2.6 million in play. The young Italian pro was aggressive, but he wasn’t reckless. Instead he trusted his reads, and that strategy paid off; he was able to lay down his hand when Daniel Negreanu had pocket aces, but he also knocked Negreanu out of the pot when Kid Poker came in for a four-bet bluff on a later hand.

But Minieri’s most impressive play came against Gus Hansen in one of the episode’s biggest pots. Hansen opened for $3,500 holding A-8 offsuit in third position and when the action got to Minieri on the button the Italian decided to make the bet $11,500 with A-9 offsuit. Never one to back off easily, Hansen thought for a while before raising the bet further to $35,500. After about fifteen seconds Minieri then announced himself all-in for $213,100, putting the pressure back on Hansen. Eventually the Great Dane made the right move and ceded the pot.

There was plenty more interesting action throughout the episode, but the one thing everyone will be talking about today is the Phil Ivey vegetarian side bet. Ivey tried to get $2 million in action, even goading Dwan by telling him “I’ll be begging you to settle in four days,” but the two eventually settled on the price of $1 million for Ivey not to eat “anything that moves” for a year starting after the Aussie Millions. 

In the most interesting interviews yet for new co-host Kara Scott, Ivey told her he’d been thinking of going vegetarian for a while anyway while Dwan said he wouldn’t take Ivey’s side of the bet unless there were at least $3 million on the line.

Aside from the interviews, Gabe Kaplan’s jokes also seem to flow better than they have throughout the rest of the season. That’s probably a function of the fact that there’s a lot more action during Episode 4. If so, next week’s episode of High Stakes Poker should feature the best Kaplan commentary yet - the producers have let it slip that no fewer than four players will go busto in the next episode, and that Dwan and Ivey will play out an epic pot worth as much or more than the vegetarian side bet.

Made-for-television poker tournaments have been good to Annie Duke.

Annie Duke, who has become known more in the past few years for promoting poker on television than for playing it, is the 2010 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Champion. 

The quarterfinal brackets in this year’s NHUPC saw eight-time WSOP gold bracelet winner Erik Seidel defeat former WSOP Main Event champ Peter Eastgate; former WSOP Main Event champ Scotty Nguyen beat 2009 Bluff Magazine Player of the Year Jason Mercier; former WSOP Main Event runner-up Dennis Phillips beat two-time world champ Doyle Brunson; and Duke beat former world champ Jerry Yang.

In the semifinals Seidel had the tougher of the two matches but still emerged victorious over Nguyen. Duke had the slightly easier, though still unenviable, task of vanquishing Phillips - and once she did so she set herself up to play the role of underdog in the best-of-three finals against one of poker's all-time greats.

The final matchup proved to be as dramatic as NBC’s producers had hoped. Duke won the first match after winning two big pots with a straight and a flush before getting into a confrontation on the flop with A-K against Seidel’s spade flush draw. Big Slick held and Duke was up 1-0. But the second match went to Seidel, who was already in the lead when he hit trip deuces to cripple Duke before finishing her off with 8-7 against her K-5.

In the ultimate round Seidel once again chipped up and had Duke’s back to the wall, grabbing a 3-to-1 lead that looked as if it would be enough to seal the win. But Duke got in with Q-9 against Seidel’s A-K and hit two pair to double up into the chip lead. Short-stacked, Seidel shoved with A-2 not too long afterward and Duke called with pocket nines, which became the championship hand when they were still ahead once the river card was dealt.

The $500,000 score in this year's version of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship is Annie Duke’s first win since 2004, when she took down the made-for-TV WSOP Tournament of Champions by defeating Phil Hellmuth in a now-classic heads-up battle. (That was the same year she won her only WSOP bracelet.) Seidel, meanwhile, grabbed $250,000 for finishing in second place.

Hurt Locker blows up big at the Oscars. (photo courtesy of AP/Summit Entertainment)

It wasn't the most popular movie of all time and it didn't make a whole lot of money at the box office, but it certainly won the respect of critics and the Hollywood in-crowd. And at tonight's 82nd Academy Awards, The Hurt Locker won the Best Picture Oscar.

Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq War drama, about a bomb-defusing soldier who thrives on the excitement of life on the razor's edge, was the dark horse pick for the award. Most of those in the know had James Cameron's Avatar as the front-runner. But though it recently became the highest grossing movie of all time, it was unable to keep The Hurt Locker from winning.

So did all the thousands of members of the Academy actually watch, and love, the movie? Or did they just vote for The Hurt Locker in order to prevent James Cameron from having another embarassing "Titanic" moment. For those who don't remember, back in 1998 Cameron's Titanic won pretty much every Academy Award, including Best Picture. This led to him taking the stage and, borrowing a line from his own script, stating his now-famous line: "I'm the king of the world!" And we can all be thankful he didn't get a chance to do something similar this year.

Footage recorded from the live event feed. (video courtesy of YouTube)

In a scene the was seemingly right out of a movie, six men stormed into the European Poker Tour - Berlin tournament at a luxury hotel in Germany earlier today, and stole upwards of $1.1 million dollars. The gunmen, reportedly armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and hand-grenades, sent players and staff rushing for cover as they grabbed the tournament's grand prize and escaped.

Several people were hurt in the raid, but nobody was killed or seriously injured, despite some gunfire and the fact that the assailants threatened to set off grenades. There were a number of armed security guards working at the hotel, and reports say that at least one was menaced and disarmed by the gang.

The tournament had 1,000 participants and was scheduled for five days of play at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Berlin. It was also being broadcast live, with the tournament's feed providing the dramatic footage shown in the YouTube video.

According to reports, the tournament continued play several hours after the heist.