Top Las Vegas Poker News From 2006

I’ve made a short list of news items I consider to be the biggest stories from the poker industry in 2006.

The top poker story of 2006 has to be the industry changing Frist anti-Intenet gambling bill. With a unanimous vote the US Senate passed the twelfth hour port security bill including the Frist attached parasite bill. Poker would never be the same and billboards such as the infamous “stolen cash” sportsbook.com sign above quickly disappeared. Second on the list is a good and bad news story. Jamie “Fools” Gold won a record jackpot of $12 million at the 2006 WSOP Main Event. He can’t collect $6 million of the purse that is legally frozen. You decide which one is the good news.

Third is the record setting 8773 players that plunked down $10,000 for a seat in the WSOP Main Event. Never confirmed numbers say more than half the entries came from a now defunct source, Internet poker rooms. The 2006 ‘biggest everything’ WSOP records may hold for a very long time.

Fourth on my list is Chip Reese grabbing poker’s best all around player distinction when he defeated an all-star field of poker professionals to take the $50K WSOP H.O.R.S.E. Championship. It proved something most of us already know; Chip Reese is the greatest poker player in the game today.

Fifth would be the sale of Harrah’s Entertainment to a group of private investors. The package includes the World Series of Poker brand, the most famous brand in all of poker. What the new owners will do with the Series is anyone’s guess.

Puggy Pearson

Finally, in 2006 the world wide poker community lost one of the most colorful characters to ever play the game, Puggy Pearson. You either loved or hated this guy and the ‘haters’ were usually in the majority. Puggy won the 1973 WSOP Main Event and could always be counted on for outrageous behavior, outlandish hats, a pocket full of cigars and countless poker stories. R.I.P Puggy and thanks for the tournament poker idea.

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