The pilot episode of Underground Poker airs on the Discovery Channel this Wednesday and features poker hosts Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak.

The classic team of poker pros search for the biggest Underground Poker games around the World with the hopes of playing high stakes poker home games.

The Underground Poker TV show will focus more on the characters they meet along the way, with no scripted or staged content. It won’t be the regular format that normally features many televised poker hands and statistics for poker enthusiasts.

Underground Poker on the Discovery Channel

Strip Magic Antonio Esfandiari Season 1 is now complete with six short episodes of Antonio Esfandiari performing street magic on Vegas Strip.

Esfandiari who now represents Ultimate Poker as a Pro on the legal USA poker site, shows us his love for magic and entertaining people.

Having already mastered the game of poker, Esfandiari currently is in first position on the Poker All Time Money list.

Antonio Esfandiari won the 2012 WSOP Big One for One Drop, winning more than $18 million in the million dollar buy-in event.

Strip Magic featuring Antonio Esfandiari

The New York Online Poker Bill was introduced last week by Senator John Bonacic and plans to regulate online poker in New York.

The bill is exclusively for online poker cash games and tournaments with 15% tax on players revenue. The New York Online Poker Bill will include a bad actor clause preventing poker sites that operated in the US after 31st December 2006 from qualifying for a license.

This is bad news for PokerStars and may affect their chances of getting into the Big Apple intrastate poker list of regulated poker rooms. Unregulated poker sites are will soon be liable for taxes and penalties

The population of New York is similar to New Jersey which is proving to be a success with several poker sites: PartyPoker, 888Poker, WSOP and Ultimate Poker.

More about the New York Online Poker Bill

Delaware Poker sites will soon join with Nevada to share player pools, this is expected to increase the amount of games available with more players at the tables.

The new partnership will be a step in the right direction as the current set-up of state-by-state separation was not attracting enough players.

Nevada and Delaware governors Brian Sandoval and Jack Markell signed the deal this week to form a partnership for online poker in the two states.

Both states will still have their separate gambling laws and will only share player pools at regulated and approved online poker sites.

Read More about the Nevada and Delaware partnership

A quick recap on the biggest poker news stories and highlights of 2013 which includes:

• Regulated online poker in three USA states
• Best poker operator of the Year
• WSOP & WSOPE
• Player of the Year
• Poker Hall of Fame 2013.

Certainly an interesting year for poker with a brighter outlook for 2014 especially for online poker in the USA.

Donkey of the Year award goes to Sheldon Adelson for his hypocritical anti-gambling campaign, the award is passed on from Howard Lederer who held the position for two consecutive years.

Player of the Year was none other than PokerStars legend Daniel Negreanu.

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