Marseille will be the next and almost final stop of the 2011 France Poker Tour. The action will kick off during Easter Weekend. Poker pros and poker players will gather for the event, hoping to win a seat to the sixth grand final of the poker championship of France. The final event will take place at the Aviation Club de Paris, a popular destination venue for poker tours. The grand final of the France Poker Tour will have a prize pool of € 1 million.

Some of the greatest battles in WSOP poker took place at the main event final table, and the WSOP is recreating those matches for the fans. Poker pros will meet up to see if the results will be the same as in the classic battles. The poker games are called Main Event Rematches, and the first features Sammy Farha, who lost to Chris Moneymaker in the 2003 World Series of Poker. The poker game will be played in a best two out of three match up. The second match will be between Phil Hellmuth and Johnny Chan, who faced off in 1989.

A number of big time poker pros have been selected to pay a visit to American troops overseas. The five poker players, including online poker star Tom Dwan, will travel as part of the USO. They will play poker with the soldiers and sign autographs. Along with Dwan, Howard Lederer, Annie Duke, Huck Seed and Phil Hellmuth will make the trip to the Middle East. Their goal is to entertain but also to bring a touch of home to a stressful situation. The trip was organized in part by the Poker Players Alliance

The poker TV show Poker After Dark will feature Doyle Brunson next week. While Brunson has been on the show before, this time he is the main event. He will face five other poker pros who are young players, mainly those who have come up playing online poker. The poker game will have a $50,000 buy in, much greater than the normal $20,000. Instead of a $120,000 purse for the winner take all format there will be a $300,000 purse. The five other players will be Andrew Lichtenberger, Eric Baldwin, Melanie Weisner, Annette Obrestad, and Tom Dwan.

The Durrr Challenge is going against the titular player. The latest battle has poker pros Tom “Durrr” Dwan facing Dan “jungleman12” Cates and Cates is ahead. The challenge is set in the online poker room Full Tilt Poker, and has players with a deep enough bankroll take on Dwan in super high stakes cash games with millions on the line. Cates so far is up around $1.2 million, on his way to beating the super poker prodigy Dwan, a sponsored pro on the online poker room.

The poker TV show High Stakes Poker recently added Johnny Chan to its mix. Johnny Chan is a the winner of the 1987 and 1988 World Series of Poker main events. He nearly made a third victory in a row but he lost the 1989 World Series of Poker main event to fellow poker pro Eric Siedel. Chan joined a number of successful poker pros such as Deavid Peat, Andrew Robl, and Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari. High Stakes Poker is a high buy in cash game.

The Irish Poker Open will start soon and a number of poker pros have announced they will be attending. First among the pros to attend is Dan Harrington. He will be joined by fellow poker pro veterans like Dave Ulliot, better known as Devilfish. The PaddyPowerPoker.com Irish Open 2011 will have a €3,200 + €300 buy-in main event, at which previous champions Marty Smyth and Neil Channing will be found playing for a chance at a comeback. Some pros have qualified online for the poker game, which means they are eligible for the Paddy Power Sole Survivor bonus should they win.

While many where hoping for Mike Sexton to win it was Alan Sternberg who claimed the victory at the latest WPT event. The Bay 101 Shooting Star poker game wrapped with Sternberg picking up just over one million dollars as the first place finisher. The poker pros at the table included another Mike, Mike Matusow, another favorite. Matusow was the one to eliminated Sexton, who still had a bounty on his head, putting a bonus $5,000 in Matusow’s pocket. Sexton entered as the short stack and he left first, winning $148k.

The man who has been the voice of the WPT for years will be at the TV table of one of the WPT events for the first time ever. Mike Sexton managed to final table at the Bay 101 Shooting Star event. The poker pros at the table will have their work cut out for them – Sexton is not called the Ambassador of Poker for no reason. While Sexton won’t have an easy time of it during the poker game as he is starting as the lowest chip stack, he is an experienced poker pro and has a good shot at bringing home a win.

A new court ruling is good news for poker players who play for a living. Poker pros can now deduct business expenses when they file taxes in the US. Before this ruling online poker pros could not deduct expenses related to playing poker except up to the limit of what they have won, but after a ten year old court case the law has been established to give them a little tax relief. Now the tax law will allow poker pros to deduct business expenses even if they did not make an income from playing poker.