Russ Hamilton

By: Poker Shrink – July 21, 2008

pokaTime to sort through all of those non-WSOP notes and see what has been happening outside of Las Vegas for the past two months.

The most recent Ultimate Bet cheating scandal is still apparently not fully investigated and the results are

"expected to take an additional two to three months."

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You can read a semi-complete account of the current state of the affair based on a conversation between Barry Greenstein and Russ Hamilton, former principle in UB.

There is a documentary based on the final table of the 2005 WSOP about to be released. It's called "Pass the Sugar", yes 2005 when Joe Hachem won the Main Event. Not surprisingly this is an Australian production and Tony Hachem, Joe's brother is a co-producer.

The fact that the press noise around this release says that "Pass the Sugar also will feature interviews with Jennifer Tilly, Jose Canseco and other celeb cardplayers", makes me want to repeat that Jose Canseco is not a celebrity but a old baseball player who thinks it's appropriate to play in Ladies Only events and impose his own warped view of the world on others because he once took steroids and could hit a baseball.

Sticking with show business, the Venetian is going to open a show next month based on poker. The Real Deal will apparently be audience interactive and will include in its cast on a rotating basis, many name poker professionals including: Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Jr., Antonio Esfandiari, Gavin Smith, Eli Elezra, Jennifer Harman, Phil Laak, Scotty Nguyen, and Todd Brunson. The pros will participate in shows each month, taking on the Las Vegas audience members in interactive games. More on The Real Deal can be found here.

The Game Show Network, after deciding not to renew the World Poker Tour and subsequently seeing the WPT move to Fox Sport Network, well GSN decided not to remove poker completely from its lineup and has renewed Poker After Dark for another year.