The World Series of Poker is finally here for its 2010 instalment. As many Aussies prepare to set off to hopefully live out their poker dreams many of the less fortunate will be at home sweating the action from their homes across the nation. With a jam packed schedule 2010’s WSOP will hope to deliver an even better series than ever before.

Last week was the official start to the Asia Pacific Poker Tour Season 4. The first stop in the series of events has taken us to a lovely destination called Macau. Located just off the Chinese main land Macau is rapidly becoming the new ‘Las Vegas’ with casino’s such as the Wynn, MGM Grand, Hard Rock Casino and the Venetian to name just a few. However the kick off to APPT’s Season 4 was going to be at the wonderful Grand Lisboa casino. The poker room at the Grand Lisboa is sponsored by PokerStars and the room clearly states this fact with walls and tables adorned with the PokerStars logos.

As well as the various betting structures, there are also two distinct forms of poker. The first is the ring game (or cash game) in which a player’s chips represent the real money amount that they bought in for. Ring games vary in table stakes, from as low as 1c/2c blinds online or as small as $50 in real live poker rooms around the world today. Depending on the casino or online poker site the player is then usually given a stack of chips equalling the monetary value the player has bought in for.

Its been officially announced that PokerStars will be producing their own high stakes TV cash game. Confirmed that it will be called ‘The Big Game’ and will feature Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu the show will be a USD $100,000 buy in game with $200/$400 levels. The FOX network have announced that the show will appear on their network.

In the recent Joe Hachem Deep Stack series at Crown Casino we saw a few names from Team PokerStars Australia take the felt including WSOP Main Event ’05 champ and series host Joe Hachem, his brother Tony Hachem, Emad Tahtouh and ‘The PokerStar’ and reining Joe Hachem Deep Stack main event champion Amanda De Cesare all playing at some stage during the series.

The ANZPT made its 3^rd stop of the 2010 season at Sydney’s Star City Casino last week. 446 players descended on Sydney’s premier poker room at Star City Casino, all handing over the $2,200 buy-in main event entry. After 3 full days of play the final table was set and would resume the next day, leading the field was Michael O’Grady with a dominating chip lead with 2.3 million in chips with the second closest being Angelo Hanataj with 1.9 million with Ka Ming Fang rounding out the short stack with 288k.

2010 has got off to a fantastic start for Team PokerStars Australia and raining ANZPT player of the year Tony Hachem. Last year Hachem overcame a great a field to be crowned ANZPT player of the year with it going right down to the wire, however this year looks like he will just wrap it up early so he doesn’t have to sweat a last event finish. The first event in Adelaide saw Hachem eventually come second which gave him some valuable first event points towards the ANZPT player of the year.

The official rules of tournament poker have been in speculation for some time with different organisations having different sets of rules creating problems for players when playing in different countries and or different casinos.

APPT season 4 has kicked off with a pre season tournament in Manilla. The APPT Manilla: Pagcor Chairman’s Cup kicked off 2010 APPT season with a teaser to the rest of the season. With events planned for Macau, Auckland and Sydney, the Manilla event was a pre season opener with a guaranteed USD$1 Million.