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On Monday we received yet another negative story regarding poker players, this time having nothing to do with online poker sites, Black Friday, or even poker itself. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Team PokerStars Pro Leo Fernandez, and former Team PokerStars Pro Veronica Dabul were arrested and are being sued by the Wynn Casino for cheating at the craps tables.

According to the report the pair won some $700,000 at the Wynn craps pits, money the Wynn is alleging was won illegally as the duo allegedly were employing the tactic of “sliding” to tip the odds in their favor.

“Sliding” involves throwing the dice in a way that keeps one of the dice from tumbling, thus maintaining the point count the player wants. So instead of having to fight against the odds of two separate dice, a player manipulating one of the dice to always come up a certain number is only fighting against the 6-to-1 randomness of the other dice.

According to the report (remember this is but one side of the story) the pair, possibly working with other players at the craps pit, would distract the boxman at the precise moment the dice are supposed to hit against the back wall thereby insuring their randomness. To implement the “sliding” tactic a player must keep one of the dice from hitting the back wall –something against the rules of the game, but commonly overlooked by boxmen as a beginners error.

In this heightened era of publicity to anything poker, especially cheating, it will be interesting how PokerStars, and the major tournaments around the world handle the pair.

The European Poker Tour London Main Event, sponsored by PokerStars, hosted its second official day of action on Sunday. After five levels of play lasting 75 minutes each, online poker pro Benny Spindler led the field with nearly 470,000 chips.

Spindler made professional poker headlines just a couple of weeks ago when he won $502k in a single week, playing over 25,000 cash game hands at PokerStars.com against some of the best high stakes players in the world. His current lead at EPT London is no fluke, as he also led the event on Day 1b with 160,800 chips.

Day 1b was all about Team PokerStars, with a number of the site’s sponsored pros moving on to Day 2. The roster included names like Angel Guillen, Ville Wahlbeck, Vicky Coren, Ana Marquez, Noah Boeken, George Danzer, JP Kelly, Ivan Demidov, Barry Greenstein, Sebastian Ruthenberg, Matthias De Meulder, Victor Ramdin, Jason Mercier, Vanessa Rousso and Joe Hachem. Only Ruthenberg, Mercier and Marquez will return on Day 3, and Ruthenberg has the best chip positioning with 169,900.

David Vamplew, the outright winner of the 2010 EPT London Main Event, hit the rail during Day 2 and guaranteed that a new champion would be crowned in 2011. Other notables to hit the rail included Dominik Nitsche, Nick Binger, Soren Kongsgaard, Mickey Petersen, Sam Chartier, Surinder Sunar, Scott Selver, Jonathan Karamalikis, Justin Bonomo and Cornel Cimpan.

Spindler will face some tough and incredibly experienced competition on Day 3 however, in the form of the legendary Doyle Brunson. Although Brunson’s star presence diminished slightly on Day 2 after all players had gotten their pictures and autographs, his chip stack did not. Brunson built up a cool 200k before the day’s conclusion, giving him excellent positioning for Day 3.

With the World Championship of Online Poker wrapped up for 2011, the largest Sunday Majors have returned to PokerStars once again. The WCOOP obviously built some momentum in the high stakes online poker scene, as every single PokerStars Sunday event managed to easily bust its prize pool guarantee.

The biggest winner of the day was Marcel Bjerkmann, who earned over $200k for winning the PokerStars Sunday Million. Bjerkmann was victorious in the $2k buy-in WCOOP HORSE event barely a week ago, so there’s little doubt that he’s thrilled with his online performance for Fall 2011 so far. Despite playing with a quarter of his opponent’s chips when heads-up play began in the Sunday Million, Bjerkmann fought back and ultimately secured the victory with trip 10s. Runners-up I7AXA and GlitchHopper received scores of $148k and $105k, respectively, for their finishes.

A field of 1,057 paid $200 buy-ins to the Sunday 2nd Chance, creating a prize pool of $211k. Noted poker professional McLean Karr won the event for $38k, though a number of other big names dotted the final leaderboard as well, including Daniel Reijmer (7th, $6,342), Dave Sands (8th, $4,228) and Adam Levy (12th, $2,114).

Dave Sands was apparently hungry for more after getting a taste of Sunday Major final table action, as he went on to sign up for the Bigger $162. He was joined by 1,338 other runners, creating a prize pool of just under $201k. Sands’s decision turned out to be a wise one, as he ultimately won the tournament for well over $35k.

Other big scores on Sunday belonged to schweinix, who won the Sunday Warm-Up for $102k, and Veronica Dabul, who dominated the Sunday 500 to add almost $65k to her bankroll.

Last week PokerStars released the complete schedule for the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), where the 2012 running of the popular tournament destination will feature a massive 41 events, played out in just 10 days in early January.

The 2012 PokerStars PCA will once again feature a $10,000 championship event –which has become one of the most prestigious tournaments in poker—and will also play host to a $100,000 Super-High-Roller tournament for the second straight year, which will be played out over three days this time around; a very slow format that may attract a few extra players who voiced their unhappiness with the speed of the Super-High-Rollers tournaments that took place throughout 2011.

The $100k Super-High-Roller tournament will kick off the 2012 PCA on January 5^th, with the $10k Main Event getting started on January 7^th. With two Day 1 starting flights the PCA Main Event will likely attract virtually every big name in the poker world, especially considering there is plenty of time for exposure as the PCA Main Event will be telecast on PokerStars TV from Day 3 on.

Here is a look at the notable tournaments that will take place at the 2012 PCA:

• $100k Super-High-Roller
• $25k High-Roller NLHE 8-Max
• $10k High-Roller NLHE 6-Max Turbo
• $5k PokerStars PLO Championship
• $5k PokerStars 8-Game Championship
• $5k PokerStars heads-Up Championship
• $10k PCA Main Event
• Invitation-Only World Cup of Poker

For more details, or to look at the complete schedule for the 2012 PokerStars PCA tournament series you can head over to the PokerStars website at: PokerStars Caribbean Adventure

The final weeks of September were very eventful in the online poker world, and the final week was quite a week for Full Tilt Poker, as the site went on an absolute rollercoaster ride at the end of the month. The ride started with news of a possible sale, followed by the Department of Justice amending their case and dropping the bombshell allegations against the site and its owners, followed by the AGCC revoking the site’s license, and finally news that the possible deal –considered a long-shot after the AGCC decision—was not only still in the works, but close to completion!

Just before the weekend, the potential investors, the Groupe Bernard Tapie, announced they were in fact the unnamed investors interested in Full Tilt Poker –long rumored to be the case. Furthermore, Laurent Tapie (who is heading the group) stated that any deal would see players repaid in full, and that the major hurdle left to clear is a deal with the DOJ.

Speaking to iGamingFrance.com, Tapie’s hopes are that the DOJ will release most, if not all, of the seized funds (estimated to be over $300 million) which would aid the investment group in repaying close to $400 million to Full Tilt Poker players.

Tapie also told the online publication that he felt the Full Tilt Poker brand was definitely salvageable, and that the group had no plans to rebrand the ailing company.

Expect more developments on this front this week, now that all the principles involved have been named, and the ball is now in the DOJ’s court, in terms of whether or not a deal can get done at this point.