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Poker News Round-up: Week #20 Layla Kayleigh & Kimberly Lansing The so called World Poker Tour kicks off season seven next week with its only excursion outside of North America for the whole year as Barcelona is the setting for the curtain raiser to the new season. Once again there has been a change in personnel as hostess for season six Layla Kayleigh will not be continuing in that role this year. For the fourth consecutive year the WPT will be conducting interviews to find a replacement hostess, although according to Kayleigh the decision to part company was hers and not the WPT’s. Her MySpace page claims that she was asked back to appear in season seven but decided against it due to personal reasons, including not wanting to spend so much time on the road. Apparently interviewer Kimberly Lansing is the hot favourite to replace her. Even if it’s not Kimberly Lansing there is no shortage in the world of good looking girls who know little about poker, but what if the one person who really personifies the WPT broadcasts were to leave as well? Mike Sexton’s contract is up and he is due to become a father for the first time (at the age of 60 the old stud muffin) leading to suggestions that he will also be hanging up his microphone. In fact, there are rumours that the future of WPT broadcasts could be in jeopardy altogether. Having moved from the Travel Channel to the smaller Game Show Network viewing figures were already in decline, and now a new chief executive has taken over at GSN who is alleged to want to ditch the gambling related shows. The network’s other big poker show High Stakes Poker is rumoured to have been cancelled this week having not been asked back to record more episodes despite being regarded by many as being the best poker show on television. With the possible departure of the figure head of the WPT shows and the host network not keen to promote poker could the WPT be left to find a new home again, or even disappear from the airwaves completely? With the state of televised poker suddenly looking much bleaker, should we be looking at the decision to move the WSOP final table to November in a different light? If executives at Harrah’s and ESPN knew about this before they made the decision to go for the televised spectacular final table, perhaps they should actually be given a bit more credit for what they have done. Of course there is money in it for them and they are protecting their own product, but they may actually be doing a lot of good for the future of keeping major poker events on television. Online poker however seems to be still going strong. Full Tilt have just announced that they will be hosting a tournament later this month with a buy in that will by far exceed the previous largest for an online event – a massive $25,000. This buy in is actually bigger than any live heads up event has ever been, so you can expect to see plenty of well known pros doing battle in this one. The field will be capped at 64 which would be the ideal number but if they are a few short then some entrants would have to be unregistered so as to have a manageable number for a knockout competition i.e. 32 would be the next lowest amount that could then play out five rounds. .jpg) Jon Kalmar There hasn’t been much in the way of tournament action to bring you this week, but the GUKPT event in Newcastle is now underway and beyond that the action really starts to hot up. As previously mentioned, the WPT starts up again in Barcelona soon then all eyes will be on Las Vegas for the World Series Of Poker 2008. It’s just two weeks until the $10,000 pot limit hold’em event starts, then the action comes thick and fast until 14th July when the main event will have played down to the final nine. Hopefully someone will have brought a bracelet back to the UK by then, and with a bit of luck one of us might even be following in Jon Kalmar’s footsteps and making the return trip to Vegas in November for the final table.
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