In particular, outstanding debts to the company from former pros including Phil Ivey, Mike Matusow and David Benyamine could be problematic.

Said Dayanim:

"GBT doesn't want to acquire assets which will need to be litigated over later. In total, the sum owed to the company is between $10 and $20 million.

"Several of the players who owe money and have not yet expressed a willingness to pay their debts include Phil Ivey, Layne Flack, David Benyamine, and Erik Lindgren. Barry Greenstein, Mike Matusow, and others owe a smaller but still significant amount."If the money doesn't come in, it creates a serious obstacle to completion of the deal.

"This isn't the only issue with the takeover, and the deal won't end on any one issue - but this is a substantial item."

A signed agreement is in place between GBT and the US Department of Justice to purchase the assets of the former Full Tilt for $80 million, although the working through of several necessary conditions has taken more time than expected.

As recently as this past week however, Groupe Director Laurent Tapie has said he expects the deal to be completed by the end of February.

Things kicks off in earnest on May 28th with a $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event, that’s one day after the series officially starts with a non-bracelet $500 Casino Employees event.

The first bracelet event is one of 21 tournaments available to players at the $1,500 buy-in level.

New Bracelet Events for 2012

New events for 2012 include the aforementioned $1 million Big One, a $3,000 Mixed NLHE/PLO Heads-Up event, a $5,000 event following the same “Mix-Max” format we saw at the WSOP Europe in Cannes, a $2,500 four-handed No-Limit Hold’em event and a $1,500 Ante Only tournament.

The $50k Players Championship will play out over five days beginning on June 24th and will use the same eight-game mix from last year. The Big One, the only event that outdoes the Players Championship in terms of buy-in, will begin on July 1.

There will be a total of five open $1,000 tournaments, plus the $1,000 Seniors and Ladies events, comprising the summer's lowest buy-in bracelet events.

There will be seven $10k Championship events, including the Main Event.

New October Nine Delayed Final Table for Main Event

The WSOP has also announced expanded playing space in the Rio Hotel Convention Center. 470 poker tables are expected to be in use throughout the series. That’s 92 more than 2011, an increase of almost 25%.

The Main Event has undergone the most visible changes. The traditional four Day 1 heats have been cut to three, but a third Day 2 flight has been added. There will be no day off before the Day 2 flights as we saw in 2011.

The November Nine delayed final table has been moved up roughly a week to the end of October, but with the exception of now being an October Nine, it looks much the same as last year.

Click through to WSOP.com for the full 2012 WSOP schedule.

PokerListings.com will be in Las Vegas for the entire 2012 World Series of Poker so follow along with us right here, or on Twitter and Facebook for an up-close look at all the action.

That means a signifcant number of people are getting their first taste of real live tournament poker at a Heartland event, but it also points to a huge opportunity for US poker pros cut off from online poker.

And with its recent acquisition by Federated Sports and Gaming, owners of the Epic Poker League, the Heartland Poker Tour is only getting bigger.

Televised Poker for Recreational Players

From day one the Heartland Poker Tour has taken a grassroots approach to running poker tournaments.

The HPT has partnered with smaller regional casinos to offer recreational players an affordable chance to play poker for big money, on television.

“At the time the only thing on TV really was the WSOP Main Event and the World Poker Tour," Anderson told PokerListings.com, "and it just seemed impossible for regular players to get into a $10,000 event.

"So we were just kicking around the idea of creating our own show and that was the genesis of it.”

Todd Anderson, co-founder of the Heartland Poker Tour.

 

Heartland’s first season saw seven events across Minnesota and Wisconsin.

In 2011 the tour grew to 15 main events, a charity event and a Pro-Am Qualifier to a $20,000 Epic Poker League event, all spread over nine states.

Using a unique television syndication model that allows networks and stations to pick up the show virtually for free, Anderson and co-founder Greg Lang have run more than 90 events, awarded over $30 million in prizes and produced roughly 170 hours of content.

“I think a big part of why it’s working is because we really try to foster an environment where people get together to have fun, and poker is the thing that’s bringing them together,” said Anderson.

“It’s a great way to get out and play live comfortably and not get overwhelmed and make sure you have a great experience.

“It’s different than the big buy-in events where you really feel that pressure, because it’s a lot of money and people have so much riding on it,” he said.

That open-arms attitude and reach into the mainstream is what made HPT so attractive to Federated Sports + Gaming.

FS+G Chairman and former Commissioner of the World Series of Poker, Jeffrey Pollack, said he’d always admired what the HPT has been able to accomplish.

“I’ve long thought Heartland was one of the great success stories of the modern poker industry,” Pollack told PokerListings.com.

“Poker is America’s most popular card game and there are all sorts of ways to enjoy it, and HPT is a great way for the weekend warriors to enjoy the game in a context that Greg and Todd have really custom-designed for fun and affordability,” Pollack continued.

Untapped Value for Low to Mid-Level US Pros

Online legend Dan "KingDan" Smith won six figures on the HPT in 2008.

 

While the HPT has done everything it can to attract recreational players to its events, it still seems like profesional grinders have by and large given the tour a pass.

But it’s only a matter of time before US pros cut off from most online poker sites take notice.

“Let me put it this way: a pro in our field is going to have an advantage,” quipped Todd Anderson.

“I’m sort of surprised our events haven’t been targeted more by the sort of low- to mid-stakes grinders because they do offer such great value,” he said.

Dan Smith, recent $100k Challenge winner at the Aussie Millions, won a Heartland event in 2008 and there are usually a few notable names peppered into the results, but the pro contingent certainly feels underrepresented.

Location has a lot to do with that since in the tour’s early years events were hosted in just a few Mid-Western states.

Since then the HPT has expanded beyond the actual Heartland to locations like Las Vegas and Florida, and it’s safe to expect to see more familiar faces at HPT final tables.

In the short term, HPT attendance may see a spike during the Black Friday era but in the bigger picture predictions for continued growth have more to do simply with the popularity of live tournament poker.

And the HPT seems to have struck a balance between buy-in, field size and prize pool that seriously appeals to the recreational player.

“HPT has had some ups and some downs and that’s par for the course, but over time we think poker will not only maintain its popularity but continue to grow,” said Pollack.

Anderson echoes that prediction.

"Every day we’re exposing new people to this brand and our merger with Epic Poker has opened up a lot of new doors for us in that department,” he said.

“As long as we’re putting on fair tournaments and as long as we’re putting on a good quality TV show I don’t see any end in sight for the Heartland Poker Tour.”

To read more from Todd Anderson click through to the full interview transcript.

Haughey, who hails from Scotland, is the founder and Chairman of City Refrigeration, a company with turnover of £400 million.  His great success in business has allowed him to spend significant time and money on charitable endeavors, including the establishment of the City Charitable Trust. According to Haughey’s website, the Trust has donated over £5 million to various charities since its creation, including over £1.3 million in 2010. Most of the charities the Trust supports are local to Glasgow and Scotland, but Haughey helped organizations and people worldwide. For example, Haughey had his company’s engineers actually travel to West Africa to build water wells for a charity, rather than simply cut a check. The wells have helped supply 47,000 people with fresh water.

In his interview with PokerNews, Haughey said that the charity aspect of Peter Eastgate’s WSOP bracelet sale was the reason he bid. “That was the only reason why I bought the bracelet,” Haughey said. “I paid $150,000 for the bracelet, but if the money wasn’t going to charity I wouldn’t have even paid $50,000 for it. Some of the younger players said that the integrity of the bracelet was lost, and there was no respect, but the kids in Africa will be cheering Peter Eastgate today and not worrying about what the poker blogs are saying.”

Now, however, Haughey wants to give the bracelet back. Not to Eastgate, necessarily, but to the poker community in general. In a sense, he would like to resell the bracelet for charity. But rather than simply put it up for bids again, he would like the WSOP to possibly have a special tournament with Eastgate’s bracelet as the prize and proceeds going to charity. He is open to the idea of an online event, as well.

Part of Haughey’s inspiration, he said, was the One Drop $1 million buy-in charity event scheduled for the 2012 WSOP. “I would say I will make a special offer: If the WSOP can come up with a good idea about how we can potentially raise $1,000,000 for charity, I will match it. Whatever they raise, if they have a bracelet event, I will match [the buy-in] up to $1,000,000. Half of the money can go to a WSOP charity, and the other half will go a cancer hospital that’s going to be built in the U.K.,” he told PokerNews.

$142,915.50 from Peter Eastgate’s auction went to UNICEF, while the remaining $4,587.50, or 3%, was taken by MissionFish, eBay’s non-profit beneficiary. When questioned as to why he would sell an award that most poker players would consider priceless, Eastgate said, “Of course, I still have great pride in my title, but I will never use the bracelet.  I thought they (UNICEF) could better benefit from the bracelet.  Hopefully it will do a lot of people good.”

William Haughey has also given to UNICEF directly, donating 100,000 to the organization a year ago to aid children affected by flooding in Pakistan.

The entire PokerNews.com interview with William Haughey can be read here.

Today in the 3-Bet we explain Aussie Millions $100k winner Dan Smith's famous "nub," find Lacey Jones doing her part to globalize poker and watch Daniel Negreanu and Jason Mercier getting tipsy and betting on tennis.

1) Dan Smith’s Nub

We don't know the full lineage of the now famous "nub," but we know Dan Smith, newly crowned $100k Challenge winner at the 2012 Aussie Millions, is a central figure.

We're pretty sure he invented it, but at the very least he's a strong proponent of it.

The elusive Kevmath nub.

 

What's a nub?

According to Dansmithnubs.com:

"Nub: elbow to elbow contact, typically to express joy.

"e.g. Dude comes out of the bathroom (after probably pissing all over his hands). Now you don’t have to touch his hands to greet him."

According to the Nubs for Noobs section, there are also several types of Nubs:

The Nub to confirm, the Spin Nub, the Unnamed Super Nubs, the Nub solo, etc.

Basically, there’s a lot of different nubs. And importantly they're all more hygienic than the high five.

Cue Czech poker boom.

 

2) Poker Set to Explode in Czech Republic

There are a few places where we expect the next poker “boom” to happen.

Germany, Japan, China, India. Possibly Brazil.

One country, however, is going to jump to the head of the pack next month when the latest issue of their local FHM comes out.

The country: Czech Republic. The reason? Lacey Jones is on the cover.

Sure, Martin Staszko brought the game to the public's attention with his 2011 WSOP runner-up finish.

But nothing takes a sport to another level in a country like pictures of its pros in lingerie.

Check the pic to the right and follow Jones on Twitter here for more pics.

More on the photos and make-up from model and stylist Katarina Van Derham here.

3) Negreanu, Mercier Annoy Old Couple at Australian Open

As poker pros do when they’re at the Aussie Millions, Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier, Maria Ho and Daniel Alaei (plus significant others) used a day off yesterday to catch some tennis action at the Australian Open.

Also as poker pros tend to do, they drank a little, made a bit of excess noise and made a lucrative prop bet on a half-finished match.

Video below explains.

Note: no line has been set for when Negreanu will learn to use landscape mode on his phone.

Despite earnings hundreds of thousands of dollars online, Wakeman is modest about making it into the PocketFive top 10 global ratings.

“It’s a nice achievement but at the same time it’s a bit embarrassing,” he said. “My biggest score is like $30k whereas everyone in the top 100 has six-figure scores pretty much. I don’t know if I’m actually as good as my ranking suggests.”

Surprisingly Wakeman has only been playing MTTs for eight months and previously concentrated primarily on heads-up Sit & Goes.

The story of Wakeman’s introduction to poker should be familiar to 90% of poker players. He started playing home games with friends and then started watching the game on TV.

“We used to find it really entertaining watching late night WPT episodes,” he said. “We used to laugh at how serious Mike Sexton took everything on the show.”

From there one thing led to another and in 2008 he started taking the game seriously.

“I’m a really competitive person so I really wanted to crush all my friends,” he laughed. “I got online and started researching. I visited a few training sites and it just developed from there.”

Eventually Wakeman started to crush heads-up Sit & Goes and he was content to earn his cash in those games for two years. Last year he decided to switch things up and start playing MTTs.

The transition has gone well and although Wakeman has yet to land that huge score, he’s been very consistent.

“I was always happy to play under the radar but since going to MTTs you get a lot more opportunities to do shameless self-promotion,” joked Wakeman.

Hardly a recluse Wakeman is an active participant in social media and contributes to TwoPlusTwo, Tweets and blogs on Poker.org and HUSNG.com.

“I enjoy writing,” he said. “Some players do it as a form of stress relief and while I’m sure it helps me with that in some regard, I just like putting myself out there. It’s really important to me.” 

Thanks to his online poker success, Wakeman has started to dip his toes in live tournaments. Despite some APPT and ANZPT events, this is the first year Wakeman has played Australia’s flagship tournament – the Aussie Millions.

It’s been a learning experience for Wakeman as he attempts to adapt his online game to the physical felt.

“My live experience is basically spewing chips in every main event I’ve entered,” joked Wakeman. “I only made it to Day 2 in one of the eight events I entered last year. I basically think I can get old men to fold hands every time.”

Despite the lack of success, Wakeman can’t ignore the value that exists in live tournaments.

“It’s really soft,” he said. “That’s the appeal of it. Plus it’s nice to get away from the computer and actually meet some of the people I talk to on the Internet.”

Interestingly Wakeman has a two-year-old son and makes an effort to balance poker and family.

“It hasn’t been that bad yet,” he said. “My fiancée has been a full-time mom for the first two years. She’s just now starting to go back to work so once she goes back to work we’ll have to sort out child care, which is hard in Australia.

Wakeman mentioned it’s important for players who make their living from poker to treat it as an actual job.

“At the end of the day poker is work for me and when I need to work she takes care of him,” he said. “He also seems to know not to bug me when I’m at my grind station.”

Wakeman’s luck in live tournaments may be changing. He bagged up 25,000 chips on Day 1a of the Aussie Millions and while that’s below average he can finally add another Day 2 to his poker résumé.

The Newcastle pro is optimistic he will play APPT Seoul in March and some other APPTs and ANZTs as long as his campaign here at the 2012 Aussie Millions goes reasonably well.

Despite earnings hundreds of thousands of dollars online, Wakeman is modest about making it into the PocketFive top 10 global ratings.

“It’s a nice achievement but at the same time it’s a bit embarrassing,” he said. “My biggest score is like $30k whereas everyone in the top 100 has six-figure scores pretty much. I don’t know if I’m actually as good as my ranking suggests.”

Surprisingly Wakeman has only been playing MTTs for eight months and previously concentrated primarily on heads-up Sit & Goes.

The story of Wakeman’s introduction to poker should be familiar to 90% of poker players. He started playing home games with friends and then started watching the game on TV.

“We used to find it really entertaining watching late night WPT episodes,” he said. “We used to laugh at how serious Mike Sexton took everything on the show.”

From there one thing led to another and in 2008 he started taking the game seriously.

“I’m a really competitive person so I really wanted to crush all my friends,” he laughed. “I got online and started researching. I visited a few training sites and it just developed from there.”

Eventually Wakeman started to crush heads-up Sit & Goes and he was content to earn his cash in those games for two years. Last year he decided to switch things up and start playing MTTs.

The transition has gone well and although Wakeman has yet to land that huge score, he’s been very consistent.

“I was always happy to play under the radar but since going to MTTs you get a lot more opportunities to do shameless self-promotion,” joked Wakeman.

Hardly a recluse Wakeman is an active participant in social media and contributes to TwoPlusTwo, Tweets and blogs on Poker.org and HUSNG.com.

“I enjoy writing,” he said. “Some players do it as a form of stress relief and while I’m sure it helps me with that in some regard, I just like putting myself out there. It’s really important to me.” 

Thanks to his online poker success, Wakeman has started to dip his toes in live tournaments. Despite some APPT and ANZPT events, this is the first year Wakeman has played Australia’s flagship tournament – the Aussie Millions.

It’s been a learning experience for Wakeman as he attempts to adapt his online game to the physical felt.

“My live experience is basically spewing chips in every main event I’ve entered,” joked Wakeman. “I only made it to Day 2 in one of the eight events I entered last year. I basically think I can get old men to fold hands every time.”

Despite the lack of success, Wakeman can’t ignore the value that exists in live tournaments.

“It’s really soft,” he said. “That’s the appeal of it. Plus it’s nice to get away from the computer and actually meet some of the people I talk to on the Internet.”

Interestingly Wakeman has a two-year-old son and makes an effort to balance poker and family.

“It hasn’t been that bad yet,” he said. “My fiancée has been a full-time mom for the first two years. She’s just now starting to go back to work so once she goes back to work we’ll have to sort out child care, which is hard in Australia.

Wakeman mentioned it’s important for players who make their living from poker to treat it as an actual job.

“At the end of the day poker is work for me and when I need to work she takes care of him,” he said. “He also seems to know not to bug me when I’m at my grind station.”

Wakeman’s luck in live tournaments may be changing. He bagged up 25,000 chips on Day 1a of the Aussie Millions and while that’s below average he can finally add another Day 2 to his poker résumé.

The Newcastle pro is optimistic he will play APPT Seoul in March and some other APPTs and ANZTs as long as his campaign here at the 2012 Aussie Millions goes reasonably well.