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The Epic Poker League of Federated Sports + Gaming and spearheaded by Annie Duke, formerly brand ambassador of UB.com, has finally arrived. The Tournament Series One of Season One kicked off at the Palms Casino Resort on August 5. The Series consists of three events – Pro/Am Event, Charity Tournament and League Main Event.

The Pro/Am Event is down to the final table of six. The starting field of 190 exceeded expectations. With a buy-in of $1,500 the prize pool is $259,350. The six are Micah Raskin, Cliff Waite, Steve O’Dwyer, Brandon Meyers, Jeremiah DeGreef and Andy Bloch. O’Dwyer is chip leader with a count of 590,000. Raskin is bringing up the rear with 150,000.

The beneficiary of the charity event is Operation USA and the amount collected will go to the residents of tornado torn Joplin in Missouri. Emmy award winning Brad Garrett of “Everybody Loves Raymond” was to host the event. The cash prizes were sponsored by Zappos. The winner would also get a Champion’s Bracelet custom made by Good Art Hollywood.

Ultimately the success or failure of the first tournament of Epic Poker league will be judged by the participation in the Main Event, both in terms of numbers and stature of participants. The expectation is that between 120 to 150 players will participate, most of them being the younger players on the circuit. Daniel Negreanu has confirmed that he will not be playing, and it has nothing to do with the ugly spat he had with Annie Duke a few months ago. Negreanu is a member of the league and is currently ranked 11th. Phil Ivey also will not be participating because he is presumably busy with the Full Tilt problem. Phil Hellmuth should make a last minute appearance because he has been with Annie at UB.com. The Main Event, with a buy-in of $20,000 will start on August 9 under the veteran tournament director Matt Savage.

Epic Poker has its own system of ranking poker professionals. It is called Global Poker Index or GPI. It ranks the top 300 live tournament players based on their performances over the previous 36 months. Bertrand Grospellier heads the list and the top ranked female player is Vanessa Selbst at #13. Phil Hellmuth is 37th.

Annie Duke leaving Absolute Poker was timed to perfection. It was just sufficiently before Black Friday for people not to link her with what followed. After leaving Absolute Poker, Annie has been playing a lead role in the newly formed Federated Sports + Gaming (FS+G). She is the Executive Vice President and League Commissioner.

FS+G was founded by Jeffery Pollack of WSOP fame. It is modeled along the lines of the Association of Tennis Professionals that takes care of the interests of the professional tennis players. FS+G aims to get for the professional poker players the respect they deserve. What is happening in the current scenario is that by and large the best poker players become just one in a crowd. FS+G will put in place systems that ensure that the best poker professionals compete against each other and these events are shown to the fans with adequate media highlighting.

In May 2011 FS+G had announced membership for 218 poker professionals based on criteria like lifetime earnings, single largest win, major titles won and cashes since January 1, 2008. They were ranked into four groups. These groups in decreasing order of merit are 5 Year Card, 3 Year Card, 2 Year Card Category A and 2 Year Card Category B. As would be expected, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Michael Mizrachi and Vanessa Selbst have a 5 Year Card. 3 Year Card holders include Gavin Smith, Annette Obrestad and Jason Mercier. Some prominent 2 Year Card Category A players are Patrik Antonius, Doyle Brunson and Gus Hachem. Sorel Mizzi, Tom Dwan and Ivan Demidov find themselves in 2 Year Card Category B. Notable absentees are Chris Moneymaker, Dennis Phillips, Tiffany Michelle and Liv Boeree. The Season 1 tournament schedule has also been announced. There will be four events from August 2011 to February 2012, with the Championship Event on February 13 and February 14.

Allegations of cheating and misbehavior at the poker tables have often taken center stage in major tournaments. League Commissioner Annie Duke said, “We realized really early on that we wanted to take standards and conduct very seriously. … Our first step was to find an outside ethics advisor. The next thing was to make sure we have player input.” While WSOP 2011 plays out the Standards and Conduct Committee of FS+G will be putting its norms and procedures in place.

Various institutions connected with poker track player performances all year as per their own defined marking systems. The leader board is continuously updated and the player who heads the leader board at the end of the year is designated Player of the Year or POY for short. The poker magazines Card Player and Bluff and WSOP Players of the Year carry weight.

Card Player has closed its accounts and announced its POY for 2010. The honor goes to the relatively unknown Tom “kingsofcards” Marchese. It took Marchese two titles and 11 final tables to accumulate the 6,378 POY Points that put him to the head of the leader board. In the process he earned more than $2.1 million in live tournament earnings. Marchese’s biggest win was the North American Poker Tour Venetian main event, which earned him $827,648. Second on the leader board was Dwyte Pilgrim, whose five titles and 13 final tables earned him 5,576 points and $1.07 million. His biggest win was the WPT Borgata Poker Open. The next three players on the Card Player POY list are all big names. In order of finishing they are poker professional Sorel Mizzi, poker babe Vanessa Selbst and 2010 WSOP Main Event runner-up John Racener. Marchese joins an elite band of poker players who have won the Card Player POY title. They include Michael Mizrachi, Men “The Master” Nguyen, T.J. Cloutier and Daniel Negreanu.

Though Bluff Magazine has not yet announced its winner, there is unlikely to be much change in the list. More or less the same players figure at the top, only the rankings are different. Mizzi is currently first and Marchese is second. Other well known names in the top ten include Selbst in fourth place, Pilgrim in sixth place, Mercier in eighth place and Michael Mizrachi in tenth place. Incidentally, Mercier was the Bluff Magazine POY for 2009.

WSOP also has not closed its rankings, but the players at the top are bound to be different because only WSOP events are considered. Card Player and Bluff take into account a wider range of events and therefore are better indicative of annual performance. However, the WSOP POY has a stature. The present leader is Frank Kassela followed by Michael Mizrachi.

That is not a piece of advice from yours truly but the name of the latest poker book. It the second book written by poker professional Dusty “Leatherass” Schmidt. Schmidt’s first book was Treat Your Poker Like A Business. As per the information put up at Schmidt’s web site Treat Your Poker Like A Business was published in December 2009, has sold ten thousand copies and has been translated in eight languages. Why is the grapevine then asking Dusty Who?

The complete name of the present book is Don’t Listen To Phil Hellmuth: Correcting The 50 Worst Pieces of Poker Advice You’ve Ever Heard. This book is co-authored by Paul Christopher Hoppe. The reason for selecting this title is explained in the web site as follows. “In the book, Schmidt and Hoppe systematically correct what they consider to be poker’s 50 greatest misconceptions, many of which were first put forth by some of the game’s luminaries. No one is spared, be they world champions, television commentators or other self-proclaimed experts.” There are no prizes for guessing into which of the three categories Phil “Poker Brat” Hellmuth fits. The write up at the web site does not state whether each of the misconceptions addressed in the book is linked to a poker luminary who is allegedly responsible for starting that misconception. But it hints as to why Phil Hellmuth was named in the title and not Daniel Negreanu or Johnny Chan. Schmidt says, “Phil was once a great player. But his game has stood completely still. His ego won’t let him accept change, and I feel he’s rested on his laurels. Even worse, he will tell you the game he was playing in 1988 is the best style ever, and how dare you question the champ?”

The real reason is perhaps deeper. Knowing the Poker Brat, the authors probably expected a vituperative backlash. They expected Hellmuth to denounce their book on Twitter and Facebook and everywhere. They were hoping to rake in free publicity by getting into a war of words with the Poker Brat. But Hellmuth is one smart guy. He has kept absolutely mum and given zero publicity to the book. All he had to say in his enigmatic style was, “If I do not know anything about poker, then Michael Jordan doesn’t know anything about basketball!!”

Jonathan Duhamel defeated John Racener in the heads-up of the 2010 WSOP Main Event to become the new champion of the poker world. Coming into the heads-up phase of the event it was apparent that the correct question was “when” and not “who”. Because Duhamel had such a massive chip lead that Racener was faced with an impossible task. Duhamel held almost 190 million chips compared to Racener’s 30 million. Racener had to yield to the inevitable, but took home a purse of $5.55 million. Duhamel took home the most coveted bracelet of 2010 and a cash prize of $8.94 million.

Duhamel is the first Canadian in the history of poker to win the WSOP Main Event. He was born in 1987 in Boucherville, Quebec. The beginning of his story is like that of so many professional poker players today. Duhamel was into serious online poker while pursuing an education in finance. Realizing that he would have to let one go he decided to ditch education. As soon as he was of legal age to play in live tournaments in Europe he participated in the European Poker Tour and finished 10th in the Main Event in Prague. This year was the first that he could play in WSOP and had two cashes before the Main Event. His first win in a major poker event was the WSOP 2010 Main Event win, which makes it all the sweeter. This is what Duhamel had to say after the victory. “It means so much to me. It is a dream come true. All my life I have dreamed of this. Now, to have the chance to be called the champion is so amazing. I still do not realize what has really happened. It’s so crazy. I’m the happiest guy on earth right now.”

Michael Mizrachi was the most known player of the final nine. At one stage he took the chip lead for a while but could not hold on. Ultimately he had to settle for the fifth place. Frank Kassela was named WSOP 2010 Player of the Year with 2 bracelets and 6 cashes. He was a fair bit ahead of Mizrachi who finished second.