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It is not only the female of the species that has the right to change their minds. Even the males can do so. This has been demonstrated by the 2008 WSOP Main Event winner Peter Eastgate. In July last year he stunned the poker fraternity by announcing a premature retirement. And then to prove that he meant it, Eastgate sold his gold and diamond WSOP bracelet on eBay. Though to be fair to him he did this for charity. Now, Eastgate has stunned the poker fraternity a second time by announcing that he is coming back from retirement.

On his PokerStars blog Eastgate wrote last week, “Last summer I decided that I wanted to stop playing poker and catch my breath and find out who I am and what I want to do with my life. Over the last 8 months I have had a chance to reconnect with my friends and most important, my family. I have spent quality time with my family and really had an opportunity to figure out who I am and what I want to do with the rest of my life.”

And according the Eastgate that something is playing poker. It took Eastgate all of eight months to find out how much he loves playing poker. He said that he enjoys the competitive element and the mental challenges of tournament poker. Earlier he felt that he was not growing as a person while playing poker, but now he feels that he will be able to both play poker and lead a healthy life outside of poker. In the blog Eastgate wrote that does not consider this as a comeback. In his heart he always knew that he would be back. It was only a question of when.

He also thanked PokerStars who continued to support him while he was not playing. Eastgate has announced his comeback events and both are sponsored by that online poker room. The first event will be the PokerStars EPT Copenhagen. This means a lot to him as it is his home ground. Then he will play the NBC Heads Up Championship. And Eastgate will get back in tournament shape by playing online at PokerStars.

Caesars Interactive Entertainment (formerly Harrah’s), who are the owners of WSOP, had launched WSOPE in 2007. WSOPE is a series of live poker tournaments along the lines of WSOP in Las Vegas but on a much smaller scale. WSPOE was launched to cater to the growing popularity of poker tournaments in Europe as evidenced by the increasing number of European players on the American poker circuits. London was the epicenter of European poker and till 2010 the annual WSOPE tournament was held there.

Caesars Interactive Entertainment has now announced that WSOPE 2011 will be held in Cannes in France. The tournament will start on October 7, 2011 and will end on October 21. The announcement does not speak of a permanent shift in location but pertains to this year only. Cannes is a popular tourist destination on the French Riviera in southern France and is known for the annual international film festival held there. It is very close to the gambling paradise of Monte Carlo.

The reason for the change appears to be the increasing number of participants in WSOPE. In London the WSOPE events were spread over three casinos. In Cannes they will be held at two casinos, which are the Casino Barriere de Cannes and Hotel Majestic Barriere. These two casinos have two times the space of the three London casinos and hence WSPOE 2011 can play host to double the number of participants. That WSOPE will be a major focus of Caesars Interactive Entertainment can be seen from the fact that the number of bracelet events for WSOPE 2011 has been increased to seven. This though is far short of the number of events in the Las Vegas WSOP. With increasing prize money as well the WSOPE 2011 will be the biggest WSOPE till date.

The Main Event will be the place of pride as usual. Annette Obrestad won the inaugural Main Event in 2007, at an age when she would not be allowed to play in Las Vegas. The subsequent winners were John Juanda in 2008, Barry Shulman in 2009 and James Bord in 2010. The most prominent loser in the heads up was Daniel Negreanu in 2009.

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.

The bracelet that Peter Eastgate won for taking the 2008 WSOP Main Event has finally been sold on the Internet auction site eBay. After hectic bidding for 10 days, in which 42 bidders made 116 bids, the WSOP trophy was sold for $147,500. This was way above the starting price of $16,000. At one time the bidding seemed stuck around $60,000 and 24 hours before closure was at $100,000. As expected the strongest rally came at the end. The real identity of the new owner of Eastgate’s WSOP bracelet is not known, at the time of writing. On eBay the buyer participated in the bidding using the name “7***l”.

At one time during the bidding process Australian poker professional Tony G had stated through his blogs that he was in the race. Tony G is the equivalent of Phil Hellmuth Down Under, only brattier. Often described as a ‘provocateur’, Tony confirmed that he wanted the bling for his dog. He said, “…the plan is to get it adapted into a special collar for my trusted German Shepherd Zasko. The ultimate dog bling – as my gladiator and protector he deserves to be kitted out in such style.”

The purists of poker have criticized Eastgate for showing disrespect to the institution of WSOP, which was already a hallowed one before Eastgate was born. But Eastgate disagrees. He is not doing this for a lark. Nor is he strapped for cash. With the $9 million won alongside the bracelet Eastgate is pretty much on easy street. Eastgate is parting with the bracelet for a cause. He has gone on record saying that he is not really a big jewelry guy and that the WSOP bracelet was gathering dust at his home. So he put it up for auction and will give the proceeds to UNICEF. Eastgate is currently taking a sabbatical from poker.

What Tony wanted to do with the bracelet was a mockery, though, but that is Tony’s style. Fortunately the winner in the auction is not likely to be Tony. 7***l entered the auction when the bidding was at $80,000, whereas Tony was already making his noises when the bids were at a far lower amount. Who the mystery winner is only time will tell.

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.