If extradited, Marcus Bebb-Jones will face life in prison with no parole.

A champion poker player from England is currently fighting extradition to the United States on charges that he murdered his wife some 13 years ago.

Marcus Bebb-Jones once lived in Grand Junction, Colo., where he and his wife Sabrina Bebb-Jones owned and operated the Hotel Melrose. But after Sabrina disappeared mysteriously in 1997, Marcus fled for Las Vegas and attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head. He somehow failed in that attempt and subsequently returned to England.

There he raised the couple’s young daughter and became a noted poker player with multiple tournament wins and more than $240,000 in lifetime earnings. It wasn’t until years later that Sabrina’s body was found in a national park, leading to an investigation that culminated last year with the extradition process that is now being played out in English courts.

The defendant’s lawyer made a pretty extraordinary claim during his hearing at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court: he says that if Marcus Bebb-Jones were convicted of his wife’s murder and sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole, he would be facing a “grossly disproportionate” punishment that takes “no account of the gravity of the crime or the progress made toward rehabilitation” and violates his client’s human rights. American prosecutors, who elected late last year not to seek the death penalty in an attempt to speed up the extradition process, counter that their evidence demonstrates premeditation and an attempt to cover up the crime.

For the moment Bebb-Jones’ fate is in the hands of District Judge Howard Riddle, who will study the facts of the case and issue a decision on April 12. Even if the judge decides to approve his extradition to the United States, Bebb-Jones will still be able to appeal to a higher court.

The overnight chip leader in San Jose was none other than the Poker Brat

Ask Phil Hellmuth and he’ll tell you that he’s the world’s greatest tournament poker player. Ask anyone else and they’ll tell you that they root against him for no other reason than the fact that none of us will ever hear the end of it if he wins another poker tournament.

Those rooting against him at the World Poker Tour’s latest stop, the Bay 101 Shooting Star in San Jose, Calif., may end up being disappointed as the Poker Brat ended Day 2 in the tournament’s top spot. Stacked at 550,000 with just 27 players left, Bay Area resident Hellmuth seems to be taking the notion of a home-field advantage seriously and anyone who wants to claim the $5,000 bounty for knocking him out of the event - and possibly causing the greatest Hellmuth meltdown of all time - is going to have their work cut out for them.

A Hellmuth win at the Bay 101 Shooting Star, which would be his first on the WPT, is far from a guarantee. The field may be small at this point but it’s packed with accomplished tournament poker pros, including a number of Hellmuth’s fellow old schoolers. Other pros in the top ten chip counts include Hasan Habib (496,000), Andy “BKiCe” Seth (453,000), Dan O’Brien(439,000), Matt Keikoan (426,500), Nick Schulman (381,500), Faraz Jaka (332,500), Brian Rast (322,000), and Chau Giang (307,500). Meanwhile former WPT Player of the Year Jonathan Little, former world champ Scotty Nguyen, three-time WSOP bracelet winner “Miami” John Cernuto and NAPT Venetian main event champ Tom Marchese still lurk further back in the field.

The chase for the $878,500 first prize (and a Phil Hellmuth bounty) will resume today at 11 a.m. PT on six-handed tables with blinds at 1,500/3,000 with a 500 ante. You can catch the action live via the Bay 101 UStream channel.

Phil Galfond is $1.66 million richer after taking on Isildur1

You can’t really blame Isildur1 for wanting to press forward on the high stakes Pot Limit Omaha tables. After all, he wiped up Cole South and Brian Hastings earlier this week for a $2.2 million score and the notion of “playing your rush” goes back a long way. But the Swede’s decision to take on Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond last night in high stakes PLO ended up being a costly one as he lost it all back and then some.

First up was the man who played the role of Isildur1’s original benefactor from late last year, Tom Dwan. Though he claimed he didn’t really have time to play, Dwan still managed to sit down at six tables of $300/$600 PLO and book some 921 hands against Isildur1. That ended up being a solid last-minute decision, as Dwan claimed a $964,000 win before running off to his previous engagement.

Once Dwan hit the road, Isildur1 moved on to Phil Galfond and things went from bad to worse. The match started off on the $300/$600 PLO tables but quickly moved up to $500/$1,000, and the Swede’s tendency to chase his losses paid off big for Galfond. The former WSOP $5,000 PLO champ walked away from the his laptop some $1.66 million richer than when he sat down, leaving Isildur1 back at square one.

Luckily for Isildur1 he began the night by taking Cole South on again. In just 994 hands of $500/$1,000 PLO he managed to book a $463,000 win, giving him a bit of a cushion against the massive downswing he hit later.

As the legend of Isildur1 grows, it’s becoming more and more obvious that terms like “game selection” mean nothing to him. That willful charge into the world’s best competition is what makes him so fascinating to watch. With no indication that his resources are limited, it seems that even "going broke" wouldn’t be the end for this daring young online poker player.

Phil Ivey is still "The Nuts" on ESPN. (photo courtesy of ESPN)

In ESPN's latest monthly rankings of the top 10 poker players, Phil Ivey has maintained his position at the top of the heap. In the March installment of "The Nuts", the ESPN team rates the best players "of the moment". Yes, long-term legacy plays a factor, but just as important is recent results.

Phil Ivey is firmly in the #1 position, with his most recent success a second round result at the recent National Heads-Up Poker Championship. Jason Mercier is in the #2 position, having topped off a long run of recent success with a $141,780 cash for his third-place finish at the L.A. Poker Classic event. And #3 in this month's ranking goes to Tom "durrrr" Dwan, who's only won about $2.7 million in the last month or so playing online poker.

Rounding out the top 10 are:

#4 -  Daniel Negreanu
#5 -  Patrik Antonius
#6 -  Yevgeniy Timoshenko
#7 -  Daniel Alaei
#8 -  Eric Baldwin
#9 -  Cole South
#10 - Scott Seiver

Official trailer for Tron 2. (video courtesy of YouTube/Disney)

A mere twenty-eight years after the original Tron came out, the sequel, Tron Legacy, is set to hit the theaters in December of this year. And sure that's still quite some time away, but since we've waited almost three decades, what's another few months? But just to give the fans something to gnaw on, the Tron Legacy trailer just came out, and most people seem to think it looks kind of awesome. 

Obviously the original movie had a lot of fans, like Tron Guy for example, but that was a long time ago. Was anybody really clamoring for a sequel a generation later? Well, it's better not to ask those kinds of questions around Hollywood. After all, nobody was really marching in the street to demand a new Transformers movie, and that went on to make over $300 million bucks.

Based on the reaction to the Tron 2 trailer though, people seem to be excited. And why not? The teaser doesn't show much, but it does reveal that we'll get to see Light Cycles, those sweet flying discs and, most importantly, Olivia Wilde in glowing spandex.

Rohan Long's miracle comeback makes him the latest WSOPC winner.

The World Series of Poker Circuit schedule at Caesars Atlantic City is halfway finished now, and the latest gold ring winner there has a story he’ll be telling his friends for the rest of his life.

Rohan Long entered the final table of Event #6, $560 No Limit Hold’em, in the middle of the pack but holding just 11 big blinds in his stack. That was a long way back from chip leader Juan J. Lopez, whose stack was four times as big. But the old saw says you always have a chance in a tournament as long as you have a chip and a chair, and on this night it held true.

Long, a Jamaican-born real estate broker now living in Windsor, Conn., started off by winning a race with T-T against A-K to eliminate the shortest stack at the table, Howard Wolper, who also happened to be the only former World Series of Poker Circuit gold ring winner at the table. That helped to keep Long in the game until he tangled with college student Francis Sage, who held A-A to Long’s Q-Q. But once with Sage’s chips all in the middle the flop came Q-8-8 to give Long a full house and send Sage home in fifth place.

Long managed to squeak into the final heads-up battle with online poker player Alex Pawlyk, who eliminated Lopez to win a monster pot and set himself up with a 15-to-1 chip lead over Long. But a glimpse of victory in the distance was as close as Pawlyk would get; no matter how many times Pawlyk got Long all-in, the amateur managed to survive. In all, Long found himself up against the ropes on eight separate occasions during three-handed and heads-up play only to pull out a win each time.

“It’s crazy,” Long told WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla after his victory. “I had nothing to lose. I offered a chop six times and they turned me down. Coming from nowhere, with no chips, to be in the position where I am now is more than a blessing. ”

The seventh offer of a deal was accepted, so Long's official take of $32,592 was partially split with Pawlyk. The gold ring and the comeback story, though, belong only to Rohan Long.

Isildur1 has found a way to work PLO to his advantage.

In the world of online poker there are aggressive players, hyper-aggressive players - and then there’s Isildur1. The Swedish mystery man plays like a complete maniac in terms of both his hand selection and his game selection. He’ll play any hand against anybody at any stakes, and that’s what makes him so dangerous.

Of course, those tendencies are also what makes him such a popular opponent for online poker pros. Both have run pretty well against Isildur1 in the past, but in the last two days he’s gotten a measure of revenge against them by sweeping up more than $2.2 million in the highest-stakes Pot Limit Omaha games online. His best game in the past has been No Limit Hold'em, so the four-card run-good was a change of pace for the Swede. 

Isildur1 began his run by taking on Cole South at $100/$200 PLO. Unlike some other sessions between the two, Isildur1 never fell behind - which might account for the two moving up to $300/$600 before the match was through. The jump in stakes didn’t help South recoup his losses, though, and after nearly 2,400 hands and a $785,000 downswing he finally called it quits.

After crushing South, Isildur1 next moved on to his nemesis Brian Hastings - and he ran even better in that match than he did against South. The stakes also increased in this match, moving from $300/$600 to $500/$1,000, but that wasn’t enough to save Hastings from dropping a total of $556,000. Added to wins he booked against Ilari Sahamies and others, that puts Isildur1 up more than $2.2 million playing Pot Limit Omaha in the last few days.

One interesting note: it seems that Hastings may have damaged his mouse at one point during the massive downswing. While Isildur1 tried to get him to commit to a 10-hour session in the chat box and asked him why he was so slow, Hastings was apparently having some problems with the interface and typed, “im gonna try to find another mouse...brb.” Remember, kids: modern online poker tilt control means crushing your mouse instead of your laptop!

Kevin MacPhee talked to CBS about the EPT Berlin heist.

It’s not often that the mainstream American media pays much attention to a poker tournament outside of the World Series of Poker, but the recent EPT Berlin heist has all sorts of big media outlets abuzz. Major television network CBS is no exception, and earlier this week the tournament’s winner, Kevin MacPhee, joined The Early Show live via satellite from Berlin to talk about what happened during the raid.

“We heard some screaming and yelling and we weren’t sure what was really going on,” MacPhee told Early Show co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez. “There was a lot of panic and the TV stage started to collapse. When that started to happen, all of the players got up out of their seats to see what was happening.”

MacPhee said he knew the only thing he knew of that could cause the kind of commotion that broke out in the poker room was someone with a gun, so his first instinct was to seek cover. Luckily the bandits never entered the poker room and nobody was seriously injured during the incident, which saw the robbers make off with €242,000 ($339,000 US).

Rodriguez asked if it was safe to say this was the most exciting poker tournament MacPhee had ever been a part of, and he responded, “I would say it was definitely the most exciting poker tournament. It was one of the craziest days I’ve ever experienced.” With any luck at all he'll be able to stay away from that kind of excitement at future poker tournaments.

Police have not tracked down any of the suspects in the EPT Berlin robbery at this time but they remain confident they’ll get their men.

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 mostly 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.

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.

Who would your top picks be?

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.