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Once again the European Union and the United States are meeting to discuss the challenges and issues the come with online gaming, especially in the wake of UGIEA in the States. Officials in Europe are still concerned that the United States might be violating treaty rights and WTO regulations by wrongfully enforcing laws against European businesses.

The United States has already been found guilty of violating several rules and regulations in regard to the World Trade Organization.

The United States basically has a set of commitments and responsibilities that it must uphold in regards to the World Trade Organization and their “don’t care” attitude towards European gambling interests does not sit well with members of the EU.

 Rightfully so, the European Union is taking the proper steps to ensure that the United States is fair and law abiding in regards to their trade policies. Members for both parties will be meeting in Washington DC on Monday September 15th.

This is just one in a rash of events and occurrences that have clouded the water in terms of online gambling since the United States passed UGIEA in October of 2006. Many EU businesses lost billions of dollars by no longer accepting American business to be in compliance with UGIEA.

The problem however is the United States DOJ is still seeking to press charges and enforce laws against some companies and their executives who willfully withdrew from the market after the passing of the law.

The prestigious World Poker Tour once again returns to the Borgata in famed Atlantic City New Jersey. Each year the Borgata hosts the half month long Borgata Poker Open. This major tournament features seventeen different live events and a $9,600 buy in main event that is part of the World Poker Tour.

The main event got underway Sunday September 14th and currently has about two hundred players remaining going into day two. The field began with a staggering 516 players which will guarantee a prize pool of nearly five million dollars.

The first day of action saw big names like Erik Seidel and David Singer along with some other big name players getting penalized for being mouthy! Mark Seif was penalized ten minutes when he disagreed with a call by the floorman. Seif didn’t realize his opponent had announced “raise” rather than just “call” to Seif’s six thousand dollar bet. His opponent actually raised him thirty thousand more chips and Seif wasn’t too happy with the call. He decided rather than to lose his whole stack and be penalized, just to fold and take his time out!

Going into day two, here are the chip counts for the top twenty players:

Each week every online poker room has what they would consider their granddaddy of weekly tournaments. The game is always no limit Texas Hold’em and the claim to fame is usually an ungodly huge guaranteed prize pool and a reasonable entry fee. One of the most popular weekly tournaments is definitely Full Tilt’s $750,000 guaranteed tournament. This monster is held every Sunday at 6 pm eastern time and pays out over $130,000 to the lucky player who takes first place.

These large guaranteed poker tournaments are a risky proposition for the poker rooms each week in that if a certain amount of entrants is not hit, then the poker room has to pony up extra money to reach the guaranteed amount. This is called overlay and the poker rooms obviously don’t like to do this if they don’t have to. This weeks tournament was a bit short so Full Tilt had to pay in about an extra twenty thousand dollars to hit the prize pool.

Here is a list of the top ten finishers in the tournament and the prize money that they took home:

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Event number twenty at the World Championship of Online Poker got started on Sunday with an amazing 3,467 entrants. This event, which is scheduled for two days of action has a prize pool of  $3,467,000 and pays out a cool $468,000 to the first place finisher. The tournament is none other than no limit Texas Hold’em and like usual, the big prize pool has attracted some big name players as well.

Humberto Brenes, a sponsored Poker Stars player, is currently in third place going into day two. Barry Greenstein, another very skilled pro and member of the Poker Stars team went out on day one when he ran into a pair of aces. The real exciting story to event number twenty is the amount of players dropping out during the first day of action.

Going into day two there are just 46 of the original 3,467 entrants remaining. The remaining players will get going on Monday the 15th at 4:30 pm eastern time. Each of the remaining players has already made it to the money and will take home a minimum of $6,240.

Here are the top chip leaders going into the final day of action, and the average player chip count is about 1.2 million:

1. I’am_Sound 3,073,340
2. BJKing 2,851,329
3. QuasiFiction 2,839,907
4. diatty 2,494,279
5. Humberto "Humberto B." Brenes 2,285,850
6. VuaXiTo 2,217,819
7. Ryan45 2,020,589
8. JSchnett 1,971,915
9. Numbass 1,914,718
10. golfsoc 1,826,196

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The feature guest this week on Pokercast is well know tournament player Paul "uclabruinz" Smith. Paul talked about several topics including his win at the Five Star World Poker Classic, his cashes at the WSOP and his recent 4th place finish at the WPT Legends of Poker. CEO/Executive Producer of the European Poker Tour John Duthie is also featured on the program discussing the impressive growth of the EPT and his plans going forward. Mike and Adam also talk some tournament news, forum static and of course give away the password for the September 21st Poker Stars VIP Club freeroll.

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