As a consequence of the recent ruling by Russian sports officials that poker should not be considered a “sport”, organizers for the European Poker Tour were forced to make arrangements to relocate the event. They found a welcome host site at the Palace of Sports in Kiev, Ukraine, more than four hundred and fifty miles away from their original site.

In contrast to the ruling by Russian leaders, their Ukrainian counterparts resolved to make poker a sport back in June of this year. Instead of holding the event in a traditional casino setting, tournament organizers are using the same building that has been used for athletic competitions and major touring concert acts. The EPT Kiev Sports Poker Championship is the first major poker tournament ever held in Ukraine.

The recent poker boom in Russia, due in large part to the previous approval of poker as a sport in 2007, has seen a great well of poker talent rise up from the former Communist empire. At the Kiev event, Russian players made up more than forty percent of the player pool in the EUR5,000 (US$7,000) buy-in event. Seven of the top ten chip leaders are either Russian or Ukrainian.

The chip leader after Day 1A is Ukrainian Mihaylo Demidenko with over one hundred forty-five thousand chips, followed by his countryman Oleksandr Ziv with over ninety-eight thousand. 2007 World Series of Poker bracelet winner and Main Event finalist Alex Kravchenko is also in contention. Last year’s winner of the Moscow event, Luca Pagano, was eliminated early on Day 1A.

Out of the one hundred and twenty-nine players that started the day, only ninety-three will go on to Day 2 of the competition. Day 1A is slated for noon (local time) on 19 August, with an expected field of over one hundred seventy players. The remaining players from the first two days will come together for Day 2 on 20 August

Poker-themed movies have a long history in American and European cinema; heck even James Bond is a bit of a card shark. To date though poker hasn’t gotten much love on the silver screens of Asia. According to AsianLogic—the company that owns and operates the Asian World Tour—that’s about to change.

The Macau leg of the Asian Poker Tour will run from August 12-23 this year at the new five-star StarWorld Hotel and Casino. While the tournament is expected to bring many of Asia’s top poker pros to the forefront, it will also serve as a backdrop for another exciting poker-related event: China’s first poker-focused movie. Everyone that attends the festival now has the potential not only to win millions but to be seen by millions in the new film which will be shooting footage off and on for both weeks and which is still casting extras.

The actors aren’t the only international stars you’ll see in the film. Some poker pros have already been hand-picked to make appearances. A few names you might recognize include: two-time WSOP bracelet winner JC Tran, WPT and WSOP event winner Quinn Do, and returning APPT Macau champion Nam Le,

China’s previous cinematic efforts in the gambling genre have yielded such national classics as the dramedy “God of Gamblers” with Chow Yun-Fat. The latest project is tentatively titled “Poker King” and is being helmed by famed writer, producer and director Chan Hing-Ka whose earlier films earned him a Hong Kong Film Award and several nominations.

Well folks with all the excitement of the first days of the Main Event we let another important WSOP event slip under our writing radar. Last week the pro-founded poker charity Ante Up for Africa held its third annual WSOP event. The charity’s founders Norman Epstein, Annie Duke and Don Cheadle often lament that our less fortunate African friends are frequently overlooked in favor of more trendy causes, but in this case the slight was completely unintentional. With the huge celebrity turnout at least it’s safe to say they didn’t miss us.

The ever-present pro wannabes Matt Damon and Ben Affleck made an appearance, as did Nelly, Charles Barkley, Cedric the Entertainer, and Sarah Silverman. (Naturally there was also an abundance of C-list stars hoping to use the event to boost their own PR, but we’ll let someone else talk about them.) Even Duke’s former Celebrity Apprentice opponent Herschel Walker anted up. Joan Rivers, naturally, was absent but the poker pros she openly disparaged earlier this year made a point of proving her “trashy” accusations wrong by coming out in big numbers to support the charity.

Daniel Negreanu, Greg Mueller, Phil Hellmuth, Jason Mercier, Jennifer Harman and a whole slew of other big-name players put the heat on their celebrity contemporaries. In the end, the pros came out on top proving yet again that it’s easy to look like a poker player but much harder to actually win. Event champion Alex Bolotin did both and true to the nature of the event donated half of his $176,449 earnings back to the charity.

Of the 138 players that paid the $5,000 buy-in 18 cashed, and they must have been feeling generous because over $360,000 was donated back to Ante Up for Africa.

Heads-up legend and notorious trash talker Phil Hellmuth got a taste of his own medicine on the second day of WSOP Event 38 on Saturday. Hellmuth, famously nicknamed “the Poker Brat,” immediately started Day 2 with some of his signature slurs but after hours of back-and-forth the 11-time WSOP bracelet winner had had enough of his own game. While Hellmuth never got to test his heads-up card skills, he did get to match wits with Mike Thorpe at his first table and Alex Keating at his second. Rumor has it that Hellmuth started the beef with Keating but couldn’t finish it—eventually calling the floorman and then demanding to speak to Jack Effel, WSOP Tournament Director.

The playground antics continued into the Top 20, with both Keating and Hellmuth fueling the flame and then complaining of favoritism. While the feud got the duo plenty of crowd attention, the floor simply advised that they “act like grown ups” and play the game. The antics proved too much for several other players at the table, and when they took a break from the action Mike Thorpe stepped in with a quick snipe. Ultimately troublemaker Thorpe went out first followed quickly by his new nemesis Phil Hellmuth. Much to Hellmuth’s chagrin, he was taken out by none other than Keating who despite the sideshow still kept his focus on the game.

Proving that nice guys don’t always finish last, it was the quiet Dutch pro Marc Naalden that finally took Keating out of the event on Sunday and later claimed the Limit Hold’em bracelet and a cash prize of $190,770. This was Naalden’s fourth WSOP tournament and first WSOP bracelet win since going pro in 2005.

Australia’s notoriously strict Office of Film and Literature Classification Board has denied yet another new game title.

Gameloft’s racy Sexy Poker game is slated for release on the Wii platform later this year, but poker fans may never legally see a copy of the game down under. The concept of the game is nothing new; a stripping-incentive format has been used in fun-only arcade and poker games for years. So what’s the hold up?

The OFLC’s highest rating is MA15+, and the Board cites a longstanding anti-nudity rule from the official Guidelines for the Classification of Films and Computer Games as the basis for the ban. This rule prohibits the use of reward-based nudity in approved games—a concept that’s central to Sexy Poker.

As anyone that has played strip poker knows, clothes are the only betting currency. The same is true in Sexy Poker where players are pitted against six increasingly less clothed female opponents over several rounds of draw poker.

Because “nudity as an incentive” is Sexy Poker’s main selling point, it seems unlikely that Gameloft will be able to alter the game enough to meet the OFLC’s MA15+ standards. Fortunately for gamers eager to try the skin-to-win title, the game has already received the thumbs up for distribution in parts of Europe, and North America’s classification board is expected to follow suit.

Full Tilt Poker has already had a big month with the addition to its brand of an Oscar-nominated friend in the form of film star and poker aficionado Don Cheadle. Don Cheadle has been a very successful celebrity player, but more importantly he’s a co-founder of the poker-related charity Ante Up for Africa.

Cheadle and fellow co-founders Norman Epstein and Annie Duke will be promoting the charity heavily during this year’s World Series of Poker where Ante Up for Africa has its own tournament event and television coverage and where charity supporters will be pushing competitors to donate 50% of their WSOP winnings.

Full Tilt is welcoming their new Friend by hosting a private $5+$5 tournament with proceeds to benefit Ante Up for Africa. This tournament is expected to take place prior to the WSOP and offers players a more reasonable opportunity to support the charity than the $5000 buy-in event.

Also new on Full Tilt’s roster of special events is the addition of two qualifying tournaments for the popular poker-centered shows Late Night Poker and Poker Million. Players interested in competing for a Poker Million appearance will have six opportunities to win via direct qualifiers held throughout the months of August and September. Qualifying tournament winners will earn a $20,000 buy-in to the main event plus a $2000 travel budget.

If Late Night Poker is more along your lines, then Full Tilt is offering four qualifying tournaments through June and July. Winners of these tournaments will take home a $10,000 buy-in plus $2000 extra in petty cash.

Competitors in both tournaments will have a shot at prize money in excess of $1 million and regardless of their placings will receive some airtime courtesy of Britain’s Channel 4 (Late Night Poker) and Sky Sports (Poker Million).

Now that Democrat Senator and Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, has publicly released the legislation he and countless other pro-online gambling activists hope will repeal the UIGEA and foster online gambling regulation, the prospects of just how likely the legislation stands a chance of passing, not to mention the support or lack thereof needed for it to pass, is becoming more clear.

Senator Frank is no stranger to controversy and opposition. Before even finishing his latest draft, opponents and naysayers were voicing their opinions. Just last month in the D.C. politics news site, “The Hill”, an article expressed pessimism that Frank’s legislation would not see the light of day. Not going so far to argue that Frank’s legislation is flawed or unenforceable, the article said the legislation faced a “tough course to passage” because it is being introduced as a stadalone bill, rather than an attachment to a greater bill.

And while this argument may have some merit, perhaps Senator Frank wants to take a much higher road than his nemesis colleagues who were able to get the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act passed as an attachment to a Port Security bill back in 2005. Or, perhaps Frank knows he has the support, even from conservatives, needed to get the bill passed.

This is indeed what some insiders and analysts believe, such as former U.S. Senator, Alfonse D’Amato. Although he is the Chairman of the Poker Players Alliance (one of the largest and strongest lobbying forces for the legalization of online poker), thus giving him good reason to be biasly optimistic, D’Amato has some good points to make. He recently chimed in his own two cents on “The Hill”, stating that Frank’s legislation will draw support from both sides of the camp who are equally disappointed with the failings of the UIGEA.

Because the UIGEA is costing taxpayers billions of unearned revenue, and is driving off billions more in capital and jobs by chasing off online gambling operators, and all the while does nothing to effectively enforce an online gambling ban, some politicians are comparing it to the failings of prohibition in the 1920’s. Furthermore, the UIGEA does not effectively protect the underage and potentially problematic online gamblers. Frank’s legislation, however, offers viable solutions to protecting children. In similar fashion to how the UK is currently successfully regulating online gambling, Frank’s legislation sets forth strict guidelines that hold betting operators accountable.

Online casino gamblers shouldn’t get too excited just yet. Even if the bill does receive Congressional approval, individual State’s will have the choice of regulating or not. In other words, the U.S. facing online gambling landscape may soon become a virtual extension of Las Vegas. Depending on one’s residence, the act of internet betting may become an increasingly difficult thing to do.