NBC Axes Heads-Up Championship, DoylesRoom Acquired, and WSOP Main Event Prop Bets

There’s been a lot of news in poker recently, from tournament play at the WSOPE to online poker happenings to other poker industry developments. Since we endeavor to keep you all up to date on everything happening in the poker world, we’ll be covering a few topics in this post, as the title indicates.

Bye Bye NBC Heads-Up Championship

The powers that be at NBC have decided not to renew the Heads-Up Poker Championship (HUPC) for an 8th season. Over the years, the HUPC has become a “poker major”, routinely featuring some of the biggest names in the game and offering top prizes ranging into the high six figures. A 64-person invitational event that often included celebrities along with poker greats, the HUPC was always a ratings winner, at least as far as poker fans were concerned. Unfortunately, the main reason for the cancellation is the pullout of former top sponsors PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, for obvious reasons.

Sadly, the end of this event, along with the recent cancellations of Poker After Dark and the PokerStars Big Game, means far less mainstream exposure for the game we all know and love. Just as in the game of poker itself, however, momentum tends to swing from time to time; so this poker blogger feels that despite the current “bad run” poker is experiencing as far as broadcast TV coverage, hopefully things will bounce back soon.

DoylesRoom Acquired

Though it wasn’t one of the larger online poker rooms, DoylesRoom was well known in the United States (and worldwide) for being branded by poker legend Doyle Brunson. DoylesRoom was shut down by the Department of Justice in the wake of Black Friday, but this occurred after Brunson had severed ties with the online poker room. Now, 5 months later, DoylesRoom has been acquired by Americas Cardroom, one of the original online poker rooms. Notably, they’re still accepting U.S. players.

Place Your Bets on the 2011 WSOP Main Event

Think you know who will be this year’s WSOP Main Event Champion? Will it be current chip leader Martin Staszko, Player of the Year contender Ben Lamb, or one of the other November Niners? Nevada sports books are now accepting wagers on this and other proposition bets like: “Which player will bust out first?” and “How many hands will be dealt at the final table?”. So, in principle, plenty of people could walk away winners when all is said and done at the Main Event final table…

The Cardplayer Lifestyle poker blog will bring you plenty of WSOP Main Event final table news as it happens, once the cards hit the air in just over 2 weeks.