Bouquet of poker tournaments

The coming year offers a bounty of poker tournaments as the popularity of poker increases steadily.

For poker lovers there are tons of exciting tournaments happening in 2009. Poker after Dark offers a very full program on NBC kicking off on January 5th with "Speak your mind" featuring poker professionals Phil Hellmuth, Phil Gordon and Gabe Kaplan. You may also want to check out the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure which runs January 5 - 10th taking place at the Atlantis Resort and Casino on Paradise Island, Bahamas. The buy-in for this event is $10,000. Poker Campers will receive 3 days instruction from Team PokerStars Pros Greg Raymer, Daniel Negreanu, Greg Moenymaker and Venssa Rousso, this comes on top of a four night stay at the Atlantis, some excellent cuisine and loads of fun. The event will be broadcast on or around May 31 by the Game Show Network. If you cannot attend live, that would be a date to mark on your calendar.

The rest of January on Poker after Dark will consist of reruns of popular episodes aired in 2008. February opens with more "encore" shows but some new material which will be aired in the week of February 9th is sure to keep poker lovers glued to the screen. Brilliant Minds Week features Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, William Chen and David Sklansky showing off their prowess at the poker table. Following that it is Nets vs Vets, in other words internet pros against the veterans of the poker world such as Doyle Brunson and Eli Elezra.

The top tournament to be aired during the week of March 9th has a buy-in of $50,000 and promises to be a nail biter. Poker stars like David Benyamine, Barry Greenstein, Phil Ivey and Allen Cunningham all make an appearance on the show. The week of March 30th sees the International Game, David Benyamine will be up against 2008 Player of the Year John Phan and World Series of Poker runner-up, Ivan Demidov. The month of May sees a special cash game called the “Hellmuth Bash Cash Game”. The show runs over two weeks, starting May 4th. Poker notables like Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari, Kenny Tran and Tom Dwan will be featured on the show as well. Book your seat early, it is going to be a terrific show.