These cities include Vancouver, Canada, Tunica Mississippi, San Jose, Costa Rica, Cartagena, Columbia, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Quito, Ecuador.

Vega CEO Michael Herron says he is not concerned about the growing number of tournaments around the world and feels that his product will not only compete with other tournaments, but will stand out by featuring the largely unknown talent of South America.

“We’ve all seen the success that other tours like the World Poker Tour and European Poker Tour have enjoyed and we feel that we can produce a first class tournament,” Herron said.

“With the popularity that poker has achieved the past few years, this type of tour makes a lot of sense. There are some very good poker players in South America and we look forward to finding the next big name. Our timing couldn’t be better. Poker is exploding in South America and Canada and combined with the popularity in the U.S., we feel the PTA will be a hit from day one.”

These invitational events will welcome players from all over the world and offer the chance to win seats via online and live satellite tournaments. Herron is optimistic that the results will allow the tour to expand to eight events during its second season.

One of the ways the PTA’s business models differs from other major poker tours is that Vega is not going to attempt to sell the program rights of the events. Rather, they will rather maintain ownership in order to benefit from advertising opportunities. According to Herron this will allow for maximum profitability.

“We will own the programming and will contract for the necessary time slots to air the one-hour shows,” Herron said. “This will allow Vega to profit from the advertising, sponsorships, replays of the programming, and the tournament itself.”

Early word is that the PTA has Bob “the Butcher” Clark lined up to do on-air commentary of the events.

“We are very fortunate and excited to have Bob involved in the Tour. We’ve worked with Bob for quite awhile now and he was the obvious choice to provide commentary during the tournaments,” Herron said.

“Not only is he one of the most colorful poker personalities in the world, he’s a top-notch poker player himself and will add a very unique style of commentary. Bob also has many professional poker playing friends and plans to have a few of those friends make cameo appearances during the tournaments.”

Related Article: Vega LAPT rebranded Poker Tour of the Americas

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Scheduled as a two day event, Event 53 will wrap on Wednesday, giving players plenty of time before the start of the first Day 1 of the 2008 WSOP Main Event.

Last year this event drew in 720 players to create a $983,800 prize pool. The lion’s share of that money went to Ram Vaswani, giving him his first WSOP bracelet win.

The London pro has several final tables at events around the world on his poker resume, including European Poker Tour events and cashes in World Poker Tour events. However, the WSOP bracelet win was his first major tournament win.

Vaswani has also already made some waves at the 2008 WSOP by making the final table of the $10,000 World Championship Omaha Hi-Lo Split Eight or Better event. He ended up in seventh place and may be looking for redemption and another bracelet win in the Limit Hold’em Shootout.

The event may not draw as many participants this year, though. Last year the final event just before the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event only drew 78 players. It was, however, an event with less popularity than Hold’em, a 2-7 Draw Lowball World Championship.

One who might make the effort to play one last event before the Main Event because it is a Limit event is Daniel Negreanu.

Negreanu already won a bracelet in a Limit event this year, plus two of his other three bracelets are in Limit Hold’em events as well. He commented after his win this year that he’s found that Limit Hold’em is a strong game for him.

“My track record, historically, is incredible in Limit Hold’em. I don’t get to play them a lot because the other events outside of here are not Limit,” Negreanu said.

“There’s something special about Limit Hold’em tournaments in that people can’t move in on me. [Laughs.] They got to see a flop, even if they three-bet me, every hand I play there’s going to be a flop and that’s really going to play into my strengths. That’s basically what the whole small-ball concept is based on - Limit Hold’em principles. That’s the core of the way that I think about poker: Limit Hold’em.”

Stay tuned to the 2008 WSOP Live Tournaments section for all the action in this and other events that will be counting down to a winner before the Main Event gets started on Thursday.

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PGR 4 Time Trial Challenge

Carrying on from where Boozy left off…

Rules
Challenges run from Monday to Sunday and you have until midnight on the Sunday to post your time.
Post your Time , Your Name , Car Used and Transmission AT or MT (eg 1:35.89 - Meatball - Ford GT - AT)
You must use the car(s) or bike(s) specified
You must use the track and the weather specified
You can use Manual or Automatic gears
Be honest
Have fun.

PGR 4 Weekly Challenge 30/06/08 - 06/07/08

City - Macau
Track - Hotel Lisboa
Weather - Clear
Vehicle - Class D - Cobra 427 S/C

Eligible cars

One car only, the Class D Cobra 427 S/C, with no exceptions.

Current Standings

1. 2:15.05 - Meatball - AT

Previous Results
PGR Nations Leaderboards