Fox to broadcast final round live from
Turning Stone
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A game of No-limit Texas Holdem is
dealt Monday at the American Poker
Championship at Turning Stone Casino
Resort in Verona. Fox will broadcast
the tournament's final round live from
6 to 10 p.m. Wednesday.
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Phil
Ivey bites his nail Monday during the
American Poker Championship at Turning
Stone Casino Resort in Verona.
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VERONA -- Some of the
world's best
Texas Holdem
poker players anted up Monday to begin the
quest for a piece of a $1 million pot in
the Showroom of the Oneida Indian Nation's
Turning Stone Casino Resort.
Taped replays of high-stakes poker
tournaments have been competing with
sports for television viewers' loyalty for
several years, but Fox Sports Net's
American Championship Poker is taking the
phenomenon to the next level.
Fox will broadcast the first live
tournament final round from 6 to 10 p.m.
Wednesday from Turning Stone's Showroom.
It will be a true gamble for Fox, said
tournament promoter Rick Kulis of
Hollybrook Regency Inc.
The risk, he said, is that "a poker game
can go for one hour or 20 hours," while
Fox has blocked out four hours for the
final round.
The entire tournament is being video-taped
for broadcast later, too, he said. A quick
final round might result in an early
showing of the early rounds of play.
Kulis said most
Texas Holdem
tournaments are taped for later broadcast
and viewers get to see the preliminary
games first.
Fox Sports Net is reversing the process,
he said.
Wednesday's final round will be shown
live, and preliminary games will be shown
later in six segments.
The 112 players were winnowed to 36
Monday, and early round play continues
today at noon and is open to the public.
The 36 will be down to six for the final
games, which begin at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday
on a closed set in the Showroom. The
survivors will test their skills and nerve
at No Limit Texas HoldEm, a seven-card
poker game.
The entry fee, or buy-in, for the tourney
was $10,000.
The world's current top four poker
players, Daniel Negreanu, Barry Goldstein,
Hasan Habib and Howard Lederer, headed the
tourney roster Monday.
"It seems as though everyone has their own
favorite player, as they would in
football, baseball and basketball," said
Turning Stone Chief Operating Officer
Frank Riolo.
"Any sport is built on personality, and
Texas Holdem
poker has no lack of that," Kulis said.
But winning poker also demands skilled
card play, betting and psychology, not to
mention just plain luck.
Phil Ivey, sometimes -- to his chagrin --
called the "Tiger Woods" of poker, had the
biggest stack of chips at his table in
Tuesday's early going. He said he's
getting better, but his poker game can't
be compared to Woods's golf game -- yet.
On a 15-minute break after an hour and a
half of poker, Ivey said, "It's really
nice here. Yeah, I'd come back."
Jason DiBenedetto, Turning Stone's poker
room manager, said Ivey might have the
chance for a return engagement soon. He
said Turning Stone could host national
tourneys "possibly every few months, the
way poker has grown."
Antonio Esfandiari, originally from
Tehran, is a relative, but popular,
newcomer to the poker world.
A professional magician by trade, Tuesday
he made his $10,000 disappear in 90
minutes and bowed out with a very
unmagical hand gesture that probably won't
make it onto national television.
Ted Forrest is an aggressive player who
has won more than a million dollars in a
poker game, and lost just as much. Tuesday
he only lost $10,000. But it was the money
he spent to buy in to the tourney, and he
quickly followed Esfandiari out of the
Showroom.
The winner of the tournament pockets
$500,000, and the runner-up gets $250,000.
DiBenedetto said the tourney pays the top
nine finishers, rather than the usual six
top spots, with eighth- and ninth-place
finishers getting $12,000 each.
The presence of so many top players at
Turning Stone "takes us to the next level"
in the poker world, DiBenedetto said.
"I can't say how much this exposure means
to us."
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