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On Tuesday’s Late Show with Craig Ferguson, actress turned poker player Jennifer Tilly made a startlingly admission to the late-night talk-show host, telling Ferguson that the stresses of the game make her want to quit: “Poker is an ongoing session of never-ending agony,” Tilly told Ferguson.

Despite a decent amount of success at the poker tables, Tilly has never managed to shake the stigma that so many Hollywood types turned poker players are tagged with, which is that the only reason they get on TV is because of their fame (which is for the most part true).

It was unclear if Tilly was stating how she feels at different times (I think we’ve all had thoughts of quitting the game after particularly bad runs), or if she is truly pondering giving up the poker lifestyle and maybe heading back to Hollywood –which would seem to present its own stresses.

Tilly won the World Series of Poker Ladies Championship back in 2005 after learning the game from her now long-time beau Phil Laak, and since then has appeared on a number of televised poker programs including the WPT, Poker After Dark, and PokerStars Big Game.

Despite all the grief she receives on the poker forums, Tilly is always in a pleasant mood, engaging, and enjoying herself at the poker tables, hopefully Jen puts a little more thought into her decision and doesn’t simply give up on poker.

PartyPoker.com recently teamed up with Matchroom Sport to announce the lineup for the PartyPoker.com Premier League Mixed Game Championship, an invitation-only event with a $25,000 buy-in. The event is scheduled to begin on November 13 at Mayfair’s Playboy Club London and last until November 17.

The event, which will be broadcast in the U.K. on Sky Sports before being distributed through international channels, includes two groups of six players each. All players will engage in PLO, PLHE and NLHE as they battle their way through the big-bet tournament.

The groups will be divided as such:

Group A

-Matt Giannetti
-James Dempsey
-Jennifer Tilly
-Tony G
-Luke Schwartz
-Max Pescatori

Group B

-Sorel Mizzi
-Andy Frankenberger
-Mike Sexton
-Yevgeniy Timoshenko
-Andrew Feldman
-Ben Carpenter

All of the players gained entry into the event by invitation except for Ben Carpenter, who won an online qualifier instead. Rumor has it that Carpenter is known for aggressive table talk in addition to aggressive play (Phil Hellmuth, anyone?), so he should make for an entertaining addition to the better-known pros.

Jennifer Tilly recently announced that she was losing interest in professional poker and possibly quitting, potentially making the Premier League Mixed Game Championship her last official poker appearance. Frankenberger, the WPT Player of the Year, needs little introduction, and neither does 4th-place WSOP Main Event contender Matt Giannetti.

Group A will play against Group B over the course of three heats, each heat representing either PLHE, PLO or NLHE. The best performing half of each team will face off against one another in the final, which will once again combine the three different game types. The top 6 finishers will receive money prizes and free invites to the 2012 edition of the WPT Premier League, with $100k reserved for 1st place.

This year ESPN took a pretty big gamble by switching to a “Live” feed for the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event final table coverage, considering the WSOP final table has been able to maintain good, steady, ratings over the years. But early indications are that the WSOP decision to broadcast the final table on a 15-minute delay was a success.

According to Wicked Chops Poker, the ratings for the 2011 WSOP final table (The Tuesday night broadcast of the final three players) drew a 1.01 average rating over the 6.5-hour period. In 2010, the 2-hour highlight reel production managed a 1.28 rating.

Even though a cursory glance shows that ratings were down, several factors need to be considered:

• The 2010 coverage aired in a primetime slot (from 9PM-11PM) while the 2011 coverage began at 9PM and ran until nearly 3:30AM –maintaining a 1 Rating during these hours is impressive to say the least.
• The 2010 coverage featured the entire final table, where as the 2011 version was simply the final three players.
• This was the first attempt at “Live” coverage, and with a little tinkering the ratings will likely go up.

Overall, the early ratings point to the “Live” feed being successful, which could mean that the future of televised poker lies in live coverage with hole-card reveals at the END of the hand –something that myself and other poker enthusiasts have been pining for.

Gary Loveman, CEO of Caesars Entertainment, recently revealed some new information regarding his company’s planned foray into U.S. online poker in a conference call with investors. According to Loveman, Caesars is “optimistic” about online poker being legalized and regulated in the United States in the near future. Loveman said that once online poker was legalized, Caesars would have an online poker site ready for real money play in “12 to 14 months.”

In this spring of 2011, Caesars and 888 Holdings LLC struck a deal in which they would market Caesars and WSOP brands to online gamblers in international markets. The Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) oversaw the deal and allowed Caesars to become the first U.S. gaming licensee to enter a legal partnership with an offshore online gambling establishment. It’s currently assumed that a Caesars-branded, U.S.-facing online poker site would be done in partnership with 888 Holdings, a veteran in the online poker industry, as well.

Caesars isn’t alone. A number of other major companies have already announced preemptive plans to prepare for online poker legalization in the United States, including Trump Entertainment Resorts, Fertitta Interactive and MGM Resorts, as well as others. Loveman mentioned that he’s excited to see other established gambling companies joining the battle for the return of legalized online poker to the U.S. Of course, these other companies would be his direct competition should legalization ever occur.

If Loveman’s prediction are correct, the online poker market in America could look very different in a few years in comparison to how it looked prior to Black Friday. PokerStars would undoubtedly return, and it seems likely that the restructured Full Tilt Poker, supported by Groupe Bernard Tapie, would attempt reentry as well.

The landscape would change, however, as these familiar online brands would face stiff competition from heavily established, brick and mortar Las Vegas staples. Such competition could only mean good things for players, including better promotions and VIP schemes, bigger tournament prize pools and more traffic in general.

Now that the 2011 World Series of Poker is wrapped up, it’s time to shift focus to the conclusion next major live poker tournament: the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event. Similar to the WSOP, the PPT Main Event played down to a nine-handed final table earlier in the year (September), and built anticipation by waiting until November to decide the winner.

The final table will play down to a winner starting on November 12 in Cannes, France. Famed poker pro Sam Trickett is the current chip leader, albeit by a relatively small margin.

Trickett’s resume is certainly worth the championship title, as he dominated two separate High Roller events back in January at the 2011 edition of the Aussie Millions. Those wins totaled over $3 million, and another victory at the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event would mean an additional $1.4 million. Earning over $4.5 million in a single year in professional is a feat typically only accomplished by the absolute top finishers in the WSOP Main Event.

Trickett will face some extremely stiff competition in his battle for PPT glory, however, with intimidating names like Alexander Dovzhenko, Roger Hairabedian and Alexandre Coussy joining him on the chip leaderboard.

A full look at the final table, including chip counts, is shown below:

1: Sam Trickett - 2,605,000 chips
2: Alexandre Coussy - 2,473,000
3: Salman Behbehani - 2,446,000
4: Mads Wissing - 2,144,000
5: Mustapha Kanit – 2,047,000
6: Roger Hairabedian – 1,890,000
7: Oleksii Kovalchuk – 1,626,000
8: Ilan Boujenah – 1,241,000
9: Alexander Dovzhenko – 944,000

Even the first player eliminated from the final table is guaranteed at least 100k Euro. A prize pool worth over 4 million Euro was offered through the tournament in total.