UNbelieveable: If you love France (and playing poker), as I do…  this might be the time to consider a trip to Cannes.

The end of August will see one of France’s largest live poker events being played, as the Partouche Poker Tour (PPT) takes place on the French Riviera.

The event will be held at the Palm Beach resort in Cannes, between the 28th of August and 6th of September.

If you would like to participate, please be advised that bwin is already running qualifiers since earlier this month.

Now, a lot of you might be wondering, what is bwin. [you can google it, of course, as I did.]

bwin (formerly betandwin) was founded in 1997 and is one of Europe’s biggest sport betting agencies.

The company is based in Vienna, Austria.

The Ongame network is the world’s 5th largest with an average of 3,000 cash game players online. As many as 6,000 players can be found in the evening hours. No Limit players can find a table day or night in anything from micro to mid to high stake games. The micro to mid limits ($5/$10) are particularly appealing to Fixed Limit players. There are also plenty of SnGs in the low to mid limits ($50).

bwin is considered to be a very profitable place to play, mostly because many gamblers (and poor poker players) make their way to the tables.

The guaranteed prize pool for this event is €3,000,000 (euros), and the first place finisher will be cashing €1,000,000. There are two ways in which you can gain entry to the Partouche Poker Tour Final:

$15,000 Partouche Final: every Sunday at 19:00 GMT until the 15th of August, bwin will host a $300+$20 tournament, where the winner will get a $15,000 tournament package. Satellites for these tournaments are running more than 20 times a day, starting from $2.

$160,000 Partouche Final: on the 15th of August, 18:00 GMT, bwin will host a $93+$7 tournament where 10 of these tournament packages will be up for grabs. On top of that, the runner-ups will get a share of an additional $10,000 in prize money. Qualifiers are already running around the clock and they go as low as $1.

Good luck.

I hope to be there to report on the action.

And watch the girls on the beach.

The $15,000 Partouche Poker Tour package consists of the following:

$10,500 entry buy-in

$1,300 for travel and spending

Accommodation at hotel 3.14 from 28.08. to 06.09.2010

bwin Team hospitality & activities

It’s pretty awesome to think that Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama’s nominee for Supreme Court Justice is known not just for her intellect (OK, she’s one of the Harvard crowd), but her poker playing and the fact that she smokes cigars.

So what?

I think it’s pretty cool.

It seems to be a big story in the media that she is not only smart, but can “play with the boys.”

And then some.

Yeah. Turns out Kagan is known amongst her posse as something of a poker player. The news about her poker playing always seems to be part of what commentators say about her.

CBS’s insisted “her interests reflect her openness. She loves softball and poker” (poker reflects “openness”?).

NBC’s Pete Williams hailed her as an “accomplished poker player, opera lover.”Kagan also plays poker and drinks beer, according to another news source, who described her as “someone who from early on has focused on the law’s impact on people’s lives.”

Well, I would hope so.

Welcome to the big time, Elena.

When she appears before Congress do you think Senators will ask her when it is proper to go “all in?”

Should be interesting.

Every once in a while I am asked, “who are these guys I see on TV winning all that money? Who are these players, where do they live? What are their backgrounds?”

So I thought I would take a quick look at one of the best up-and-comers (some say he is already there), Erik Lindgren.

Yeah, he is young. But at the table, he is also feared. Cos he wins so damned much.

Before he was 35, he won two World Poker Tour Championships, the $600,000 FullTilePoker.net Poker Pro Showdown at the Red Rock Casino, the World Poker Tour Party Poker Million III and was named the Player of the Year at the 2004 World Poker Tour.

Is that enough for you?

No?

OK, he netted $5.5 million by 2007 in live tournament winnings.

Erik is a Californian, of Swedish descent (as if you couldn’t tell) and lives in Las Vegas.

He began as a blackjack dealer then moved to a card room prop player in California. At 26 he won his first major poker tournament in Las Vegas at the Bellagio.

He went on in ten months to win his first World Poker Tour title and then six months later the Poker Million.

In 2007 he won $800,000 in the Aussie Millions at the $100,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em tournament.

Yeah, well, he has never won a bracelet at a World Series of Poker event, some would say.

But, he does have 13 in-the-money finishes. In World Poker Tours he has won two titles and sat at five final tables.

So what else do you have to say?

Lindgren. A young gun to watch out for.

Here’s a good news story.

Country superstar LeAnn Rimes and boyfriend Eddie Cibrian hit a charity poker tournament this past weekend.

It wasn’t highly publicized, but it should have been.

$100,000 was raised for a good cause. Helping the homeless.

It was the eighth annual World Poker Tour Invitational, which benefits a group called Chrysalis. This, at the Commerce Casino.

Kudos to LeAnn for not wanting to make a big deal of this.

Rimes, it should be noted, never left Cibrian’s side, standing by her man as he played in the tournament.

She wasn’t the only celebrity there.

Others were Eric Dane, Teri (Desperate Housewives) Hatcher, Jenny McCarthy, and Balthazar Getty.

A good time was had, apparently, by all.

And for a good cause.

Ain’t it nice to see something like this?

Our congratulations to Russian professional player Vitaly Lunkin, name on Friday as the European Poker Player of the Year.

The award came at the European Poker Awards in Paris.

This is an annual affair at Paris’s famous Aviation Club.  Like most award shows there are various categories, but player of the year is obviously the leading one.

Lunkin joins a heady group of  former winners, which includes 2001 Marcel Lüske, 2002 Garry Bush, 2003 Dave Colclough, 2004 Marcel Lüske, 2005 Rob Hollink, 2006 Roland De Wolfe, 2007 Alexander Kravchenko, and 2008 Bertrand Grospellier.

Vitaly Lunkin was originally a backgammon and Renju player who made the switch to poker and made his first tournament cash at the Moscow Open in 2003.

By 2008, he was killing opponents at the poker table. Estimates are that he has won more than $3 million as a pro.

Lunkin’s incredible 2009 saw him cash six times at the WSOP, winning the WSOP $40,000 NLHE 40th Anniversary event for $1,891,012, finishing 2nd in the WSOP $10,000 World Championship PLO event for $419,832 and coming 4th in the WSOP $50,000 World Championship H.O.R.S.E. for $368,812.

Pretty good numbers.

Congratulations Vitaly.