Garcia is the one on the left.

Sergio Garcia‘s inspired run at the 2012 PCA Main Event came to an end on Wednesday.

The Spanish golfer–who was among the chip leaders at various stages of the tournament–was eliminated in 51st place for ,000–or approximately .001% of what he’s earned during his professional golf career.

This makes Garcia’s third ever career poker tournament cash, giving him three more than Rocco Mediate (at the WSOP here) or Paul Pierce (at the WSOP here).

While Garcia was KO’d, 24 still remain. Faraz Jaka reclaimed the chip lead with 4,114,000. He’s followed by Alex Fitzgerald with 2,709,000.

Xuan Liu, a woman, is also still alive with 1,082,000.

Get a full recap of the day here.

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PIUS HEINZ surprisingly helped carry a strong WSOP live rating on Tuesday evening.

Live poker raked in strong ratings for ESPN.

The overnights for the 2011 WSOP Main Event final broadcast on Tuesday were strong, holding an average 1.01 rating during the 6.5 hours of live broadcast.

While that’s down from last year’s 1.28 produced primetime 2-hour comparable, the 1.01 rating stretches over six hours, bringing significantly more eyeballs and exposure overall. This despite losing arguably the most well-known and marketable (and American) of the bunch–Ben Lamb–on the fourth hand.

In all, that’s a major win for the WSOP and the viability of live poker programming in general.

We expect to see the broadcast finals out sometime by end of day Wednesday.

We’ll have our take on this year’s overall WSOP ratings–for both produced shows (down) and live shows (solid)–and the future of poker on TV in general–on Wicked Chops Insider by Thursday.

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Pius Heinz is the 2011 WSOP Main Event champion.

Pius Heinz has won the 2011 WSOP Main Event.

The 22 year-old German defeated 42 35 year-old Czechoslovakian Martn Staszko heads-up for the title.

WSOP POY Ben Lamb went out early in third place.

For the win, Heinz captures his first bracelet and banks ,715,638. Staszko takes home ,433,086 for second. Ben Lamb adds another ,021,138 to his 2011 WSOP haul for third.

It was an action packed final three. Ben Lamb pushed all in twice early and was eliminated on the fourth hand. And Martin Staszko and Pius Heinz changed chip leadership eight times heads-up.

Heinz becomes the first ever German Main Event winner.

* Photo: Bluff Magazine

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Leean Tweeden bares all for the December issue of Playboy.

Former NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship and Poker After Dark hostess Leean Tweeden is featured in the December issue of Playboy.

Tweeden–who at 38 years-old looks absolutely fantastic–bares all in a multi-page spread.

By our count, Tweeden is the third poker hottie to pose for the mag, as Shana Hiatt (here) and Jennifer Leigh (here) have done past pictorials.

See the obviously NSFW pictorial pics here.

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Pius Heinz, Ben Lamb, and that other guy will come back to compete for the 2011 WSOP Main Event title on Tuesday.

The 2011 WSOP Main Event final table played out like most episodes of The Walking Dead: really slow at first, then picking up with a bang at the end.

While Sunday’s final table didn’t match 2009′s ridiculousness of swings, bad beats, and storylines, the near-live feed on ESPN2 showcased a level of skill among the participants that’s likely been unmatched in previous years.

In the end, you can make the case that the three guys who played the best ultimately survived for Tuesday’s championship battle. Taking the chip lead when the final three return is German PIUS HEINZ with 107,800,000. He’s followed by U.S. American and reigning WSOP POY Ben Lamb with 55,400,000. And in third overall is the man who started play as chip leader, Martin Staszko, with 42,700,000.

Follow the final three on Tuesday on ESPN.

Get 4-9 payouts after the jump. Get a full live blog recap from Dr. Pauly here.

* Photo courtesy Jon Boncek/2011 WSOP

4th – Matt Giannetti: ,011,661
5th – Phil Collins: ,268,909
6th – Eoghan O’Dea: ,720,396
7th – Badih Bounahra: ,313,851
8th – Anton Makiievskyi: ,009,910
9th – Sam Holden: 2,115

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Matt Giannetti denied yet another woman from becoming the first to win a WPT open event.

Every year, one or two people who make the November Nine go on a heater and grab another big score before the final table plays out.

In 2008, it was Ivan Demidov, who final table’d the WSOP Europe Main Event (finishing third for over 0,000). In 2009, Kevin Schaffel (!) finished second at the WPT Legends of Poker for nearly half a million. Antoine Sauot and James Akenhead also both final table’d the WSOPE Main Event. Last year, Matthew Jarvis and Joseph Cheong captured Festa al Lago prelim titles a month before the N9 final table.

This year’s apparent hot streaker is Matt Giannetti, who won the 2011 WPT Malta.

For the win, Giannetti banks 3,200. He defeated Cecilia Pescaglini, a woman (9,412), heads-up for the title.

Giannetti kept Pescaglini (pictured here) from becoming the first open event WPT winner.

Other notable finishers in the event include Isaac Haxton (12th – ,881), Tony G (25th – ,401) and Justin Bonomo (26th – ,401).

Get full results here.

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It's going to take a lot of money to pull Full Tilt out of its current mess.

It’s well documented that the Entities Who Comprise Wicked Chops Poker are no math math math majors, but we typically can at least manage simple addition and to a lesser degree, subtraction.

With all of the information that’s come to light recently regarding Full Tilt Poker‘s financial situation–we decided to figure out how much money the (alleged) French investment team that (allegedly) includes Laurent Tapie needs to save buy the company.

After tallying the figures, the mathematical term for our estimated final number is an “assload.”

Or more specifically, around 0-800M.

Here’s why (recap a full summary of the Tilt civil amendment figures here):

So there’s approximately 0M owed to players, a low-end 0-400M DoJ pay-off, and then an additional operational capital investment. That’s 0-800M out the door before you’d see a penny back in return. Ouch.

It’s reasonable to assume the French investors (who, as of Monday, are reportedly getting closer to a deal) try work out a payment arrangement with the DoJ. Whether or not that’s accepted would likely be based on negotiated conditions, including whether or not any seized assets by the Fed effectively count as a “down payment” on the total settlement. So potentially that 0-800M isn’t 100% needed up-front on Day 1, or could be reduced some based on what’s already be seized.

But then again–maybe not.

Considering that Full Tilt lost around 50% of its market on 4/15, and that consumer confidence in Europe will erode some more of its base–hopefully the French team looking to drop this potential 0-800M has a Winston Wolf (or a Bob) in their back pocket to make that money back.

So there are still a lot of “ifs” for this deal to happen. But our hope for the poker community’s sake is that the French team has the war chest, gets the DoJ on board, pays players back, and brings Tilt (or whatever it’ll be called in the future) back to prominence. If they can do that, we’ll never make another joke about French capitulation again. We’ll cease all the WWII French jokes in general, in fact.

Publicly at least.

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'You got anything to say?' 'Nope. I got nothing.'

Full Tilt Poker had a hearing on Tuesday with the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) about reinstating its license.

The end result: a whole lotta nothing.

The Full Tilt legal team began the proceedings by requesting that no media be present and that all discussions happen behind closed doors. According to FlopTurnRiver, Tilt attorney Martin Heslop said, “It is not in the interest of justice that this should be aired in public. There is a real risk that it may be detrimental to these interests and highly prejudicial to this decision,” and that “highly commercially sensitive information” needed to be discussed that could have a “highly damaging effect” on the company if the hearings were done publicly (read in full here).

The meeting went behind closed doors temporarily, then returned again publicly, with the AGCC determining that it was “in [the] best interests of FTP customers” to give Tilt until “no later than September 15th [2011]” to get their potential deal in order. So proceedings were suspended until when/if that happens.

Our quick analysis: every day that Tilt doesn’t have a license is another day it loses revenue. Every day that it loses revenue, the value of the company (and its brand, and consumer confidence in its brand) drops. While with so little information we can’t necessarily say that today was a “disaster” for the company, nothing happened today that can really be classified as “positive” either.

There have been fewer leaks coming from our Full Tilt sources over the past few weeks, which either means that, A) a deal is getting really close and everyone is in lockdown, or B) this. While we hope it’s A and that A involves a plan to pay U.S players back, we’re not betting against B at this stage.

Sadly, had Ray Bitar and team just accepted the first Ivey White KnightTM deal in May, there’s a pretty good chance U.S. players would have their money back by now (or, at a minimum, a plan would be in place to do so).

Instead, in every possible way, we’re still just getting a whole lotta nothing from the company.

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Bodog pulled out of the U.S. market to avoid being taken to the mattresses by the DoJ.

While everyone is focused on the Full Tilt Poker hearings in Alderney, Bodog drops a bomb: they’re pulling their brand from the U.S. market.

From the official announcement:

“Following recent news that Bodog UK has been granted a gambling license by the UK Gambling Commission, we are pleased to announce further developments to the Bodog brand going forward.

As highlighted last week, Bodog UK’s CEO, Patrik Selin believes the trust and credibility that having a UK license brings to the brand will benefit customers and allow him to attract the best talent in the industry to work with him.

However, in order to ensure the brand’s expansion is not affected by negative perceptions, both in the UK and elsewhere in emerging markets such as Asia, where Bodog88 is already successful, a decision has been made to withdraw the Bodog brand from the US market at the end of 2011. As a result, the Morris Mohawk Gaming Group’s (MMGG) brand licensing agreement will be allowed to expire on 31 December, following which US residents will no longer be able to access bodog.eu or any other Bodog branded website. We understand that MMGG will launch under its own brand in 2012, licensed by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. All Bodog.eu clients’ funds will remain safe and they will have the option to switch to a new MMGG brand should they wish but MMGG confirms it’s business as usual…”

In reality, the announcement is only surprising in how steadfastly Bodog has believed over the years that it can successfully operate in the U.S. market. However, with increasing payment processing difficulties since The Events of 4/15TM and continued DoJ crackdown, we’ve anticipated the gradual departure of all U.S. facing sites over the course of the next year-plus. Just bound to happen.

Read more about the withdrawal on CalvinAyre.com here.

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