Caesars Entertainment Corporation released the official schedule for the 2012 World Series of Poker (WSOP) today, proudly listing a lineup of 61 bracelet events across 50 days. The festival kicks off Sunday, May 27th with the traditional opening tournament, the $500 Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em event, with the first open bracelet event, $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em, beginning the following day. Poker action will take place every day through July 16th, at which point the Main Event final table will be determined and the tournament will break until October.

That’s right, October. The WSOP tweeted yesterday that the November Nine was no more, but that was simply a case of them just messing with the minds of the poker community. The November Nine still exists; it is simply moved to October this year to make way for the U.S. Presidential Election in November. The final nine players will play down to two on Sunday, October 28th and the heads-up match will be contested on Tuesday, October 30th.

If you are going to win a World Poker Tour (WPT) event, you might as well do it on a whim.  Such was essentially the case for James “Flushy” Dempsey Sunday night, as he won the 2011 WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic.  The Brit was not in Las Vegas specifically to play in the prestigious tournament at the Bellagio, but rather to pick up some money as a favor to friend and fellow poker player Chris Moorman.  In the process, he picked up $821,612 of his own after beating one of the toughest final tables in recent memory.

While Dempsey was in good shape going into final table play with 3.86 million chips, he was staring up at 2010 November Niner Soi Nguyen, who was over a million chips ahead. Just behind Dempsey was online star Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger, who had already amassed around $1.4 million in live tournament earnings, including $500,000 from an 18th place finish in the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event. Next was Vanessa Selbst, holder of two North American Poker Tour (NAPT) titles, a Partouche Poker Tour crown, a WSOP final table, and a 3rd place finish in the 2007 WSOP $5,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em event. Then there was Antonio Esfandiari with 1.255 million chips. You know, a poker nobody. He only won this event last year to go along with another WPT title from 2004 and had won about $4.5 million in live tournaments worldwide. Bringing up the year was Vitor Coelho with 560,000 chips.  Coelho was coming off a 4th place finish at WPT Jacksonville.

We bet some of you out there have been jonesing for some scandalous UB news.  After all, since the vilified online poker room died in the fallout from Black Friday, the vast majority of the poker community’s hate has been focused on Full Tilt Poker, and rightfully so.  People likely already accepted the fact that UB was awful and just chalked up any funds on the site as lost.  But now, after months lacking in juicy UB news, the poker room is the center of yet another scandal.

It all came down to Tuesday night.  Three men – Germany’s Pius Heinz, America’s Ben Lamb, and the Czech Republic’s Martin Staszko – returned to the Rio to determine who would be the next poker legend, who would be the 2011 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champion.

It looked like Pius Heinz’s bracelet to lose, as he had more chips than the other two players combined, the aggressive internet pro was against to fantastic players.  Lamb was an established internet star in his own right and had already clinched the 2011 WSOP Player of Year title, while Martin Staszko was a chess expert and had no trouble remaining calm, cool, and collected no matter what the situation.  Here were the chip stacks to start play:

Pius Heinz: 107.8 million
Ben Lamb: 55.4 million
Martin Staszko: 42.7 million