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WSOP 2011 will kick off this weekend. There will be some notable events on the way, but ultimately the focus will be the Main Event starting on July 7. After the final table is set for the Main Event, there will be a break. Then the final table will resume in November.

The sports betting site Bet365 is among the first to release the odds for the winner of the Main Event. Right at the top is the popular favorite Phil Ivey with odds of 66/1. Next are three players with odds of 80/1. They are Gus Hansen, Patrik Antonius and Daniel Negreanu. Negreanu will be thrilled to be placed ahead of rival poker professional Phil Hellmuth who has odds of 150/1. How the female poker players will fare has always been of interest. The woman with the shortest odds is not surprisingly Vanessa Selbst. She has odds of 200/1.

Other markets for the WSOP 2011 Main Event have been opened by Bet365. One of the more interesting ones is for the last woman standing. Selbst tops this with odds of 10/1. Next are Annette Obrestad, Kathy Liebert, Vanessa Rousso and Annie Duke with odds of 12/1. Poker babe Maria Ho who has been last woman standing before has odds of 20/1. Another related market is whether a female player will make the top 20 in the WSOP 2011 Main Event. The odds for this are 9/4, whereas the odds against this are 1/3.

Whereas the Main Event is the focus of the poker world, it is certainly not everything. The sports book Bodog has some interesting markets that cover the wider WSOP tournament. Both Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan are tied at 10 bracelets, just one behind the record holder Phil Hellmuth of 11 bracelets. The odds of either of Brunson and Chan winning the 11th bracelet are 5/1.

Another feature of interest is whether WSOP 2011 will throw up multiple bracelet winners. According to the odds it is likely that a player will win two bracelets but unlikely that a player will win three bracelets. At Bodog the odds that a player will win 2 or more bracelets are 1/3, whereas the odds that a player will win three or more bracelets are 5/1.

Just a month after Black Friday the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has seized ten additional US online poker sites on Monday May 23. What is significant is that these seizures were the result of a meticulously planned two year long sting operation. This time the indictment has been filed out of the US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Maryland. The domain names belong to the companies that operate the poker sites Bookmaker and BetED. These sites offer other forms of online gambling services as well.

BMX, the owner of Bookmaker, is in the center of the storm. It has been charged because some of its online poker sites engaged with a fake payment processing company set up in Atlantic City two years ago by federal agents. The Baltimore Sun revealed the details of this sting operation. The federal investigators set up a payment processing company called Linwood Payment Solutions Inc. The objective was to understand how the system operated by establishing contact with and working for online gambling sites.

This fake company processed gambling transactions for the ten domains that have been indicted. They used banks in Portugal, Malta, Panama, The Netherlands and the United States and processed more than 300,000 transactions worth more than $33 million. One of the federal agents working on the case has filed a sworn affidavit stating, “There are numerous individuals in Maryland who have authorized payments to these businesses.”

The entities charged in the indictments are ThrillX Systems Ltd. with owners Darren Wright and David Parchomchuk, both from Canada and K23 Financial Services (known as BMX Entertainment) operated by Ann Marie Puig of Costa Rica. The charges include running an illegal gambling business and money laundering through various web sites seized. Some of these websites are Truepoker and Funtimebingo.

The Northern District of Maryland has been active against online gambling in the past. But this is the first time actual operators of poker and other sites have been indicted. Previous indictments were against payment processors only. Also this is the first time that the US Attorney’s office has released explicit details regarding the undercover investigation.

The aftershocks of Black Friday continue to be felt. Not all the news is bad. There is some that is good and some that borders on funny.

The good news is that PokerStars has returned more than $100 million to American players who had deposits with the indicted online poker room when it closed down. The statement from PokerStars states that it is continuing to service payout requests and is committed to returning every cent. PokerStars has global interests. It operates worldwide under license from the Isle of Man Government. It also holds specific licenses in France, Italy and Estonia and has applied for license in many other jurisdictions. Clearly PokerStars does not want any adverse fallout from its American operations to affect its global ones.

The list of bad news is longer. For a start the other two indicted US poker sites are nowhere near paying off their customers. Full Tilt Poker had reached an agreement with the Department of Justice soon after Black Friday but has not reported any progress in this matter since. Absolute Poker reached its agreement just two days back.

In an exclusive given to Jenny Woo, Doyle Brunson said, “Reluctantly, I have decided to terminate my endorsement contract with Doyles Room. It pains me to leave at this time. I have aspirations of reentering the online poker business when the United States Government passes legislation, that officially legalize online poker sites.” The Doyles Room management has decided to continue to serve U.S. customers. Brunson has asked them to refrain from using his name and image, but they continue to do so. Watch this space for developments.

The organizers of WSOP have expressed a concerned that many players will not be able to pay the buy-ins this year. A large number of American players at WSOP are regulars at online poker sites and with funds blocked at the indicted poker rooms they may find themselves out of cash. Also these poker rooms ran satellites offering free WSOP seats, which is now not open to American players.

On the funny side there are posts at online poker forums of Absolute Poker having sent a debt collector to recover $700 from an unnamed player. The player claims never to have played at Absolute Poker or UB.com.

The American poker site UB.com has disbanded is team of illustrious poker professionals known as Team UB. This team consisted of some of the top notch poker players and some of the best poker babes in the business. The full Team UB comprised Joe Sebok, Prahlad Friedman, Eric “Basebaldy” Baldwin, Maria Ho, Brandon Cantu, Tiffany Michelle, Scott Ian, “Hollywood” Dave Stann, Adam “Roothlus” Levy, Bryan Devonshire and Trishelle Cannatella. Sister online poker site Absolute Poker has also let go of its solitary brand ambassador.

The disbanding of Team UB is a direct consequence of Black Friday. The statement released from St. John’s Antigua by Blanca Games, the operator of UB.com, read, “Recently, Absolute Poker and UB ceased their U.S.-facing operations due to legal developments in the United States. To ensure the on-going viability of the business, it has been necessary to downsize certain aspects of Absolute Poker’s and UB’s operations. These efficiency measures have been taken to enable the brands to continue to operate their non-U.S.-facing business.” Each of the ten Team UB professionals was served personal notification that his or her sponsorship arrangement has been terminated in accordance with the provisions of their agreements. The statement thanked the poker players for their time and loyalty to UB.com.

After the parting of the ways the lead member of Team UB, Joe Sebok, released a statement of his own. At the outset he apologized to those UB players who had contacted him personally for not responding to them. He said that legal reasons prevented him from making any comment. He was aware that one wrong word from him could prevent American players from getting back their money. Besides, he did not have answers to the questions being asked and did not want to add to the panic and confusion. Though Sebok praised UB.com he also distanced himself from the decision making at the online poker room. He said, “I was never privy to the deep inner workings of the business. How money was moved around … was nothing I ever worked on.” He added that at the end of the day he was a consultant for the company and not actually calling the shots.

It seems something from a bygone era, but one of the best sponsorship events at UB.com was Win a Date with Tiffany Michelle (in picture).

It has now been three weeks since Black Friday, but the ripples continue to be felt practically on a daily basis. The contribution of American online poker to the global industry is immense and the closure of the three biggest American poker sites is bound to have an impact.

PokerStars had announced the schedule and prizes for its SCOOP mega tournament before Black Friday. The tournament will go ahead on May 8 as planned, but the prize pool has been cut to almost 50%. The absence of American players will reduce the collections that PokerStars would make through buy-ins and the online poker room has thus been forced to cut down on what it will give away. The total prize pool over all events has been reduced from $45 million to $25 million. The flagship event of the tournament is the high buy-in No Limit Hold’em Main Event. The prize pool of this event has been reduced from $5 million to $2.5 million.

Absolute Poker seems to be the worst hit of the trio of American online poker sites. It has failed to come to an agreement with the Department of Justice for securing the release of its domain name in order to refund the balances of its American players. This delay is fuelling rumors that Absolute Poker and its sister online poker room UB.com could file for bankruptcy. Bianca Gaming, which is a subsidiary of these American poker sites, has shut shop and issued the statement that it is currently unable to make any payments toward its debt obligations and that it has no cash on hand and no prospects for any cash flow for the foreseeable future. Absolute Poker has refuted these rumors. There are other problems being faced by Absolute Poker. The downsizing of operations in Costa Rica has left employees in a disgruntled mood and they are threatening to leak information to the Department of Justice.

Chad Elie was one of persons arrested by the Federal authorities following Black Friday. He had recently married Playboy Magazine’s Miss January 2005, Destiny Davis. The Feds have moved to seize the Las Vegas mansion that Destiny was living in, because it had been purchased by Elie for a sum of $1.5 million.