t won't be long before the Heartland Poker Tour reaches two milestones, in the world of both poker and television. First, an upcoming HPT even will put HPT prize pools over the $10 million mark. Then, sometime in the fall, the 100th episode of the HPT will be filmed.

Tom Dwan is better known to the poker community by his online moniker, "Durrr." The 21-year-old pro recently began to travel the tournament trail, but high-stakes cash games on the Internet are his bread and butter. A few years ago, Dwan deposited $50 on Paradise Poker, and he has parlayed that into a seven-figure bankroll. Dwan recalls, and analyzes, every hand he plays, and that enables him to profit when he plays in the biggest games around.

This hand came up while I was flying from Las Vegas to San Jose, sitting next to Layne Flack on the way to Bay 101 for this year's Shooting Star event. We were discussing hands that we had played together over the past few months, and he told me about a hand that he lost to Daniel Negreanu at the final table of the main event at The Plaza in 2004, which, although it took place four years ago, I found very interesting, and hope that you will, as well. The players were Daniel Negreanu, Freddy Deeb, Gavin Smith, Layne Flack, Ted Forrest, and Dan Alspach, a pretty motley crew, if I do say so myself.

At only 27 years old, Gavin Griffin already holds one of the most impressive collections of poker's most prestigious titles: World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour, and World Poker Tour championships. Now, Card Player is giving its readers a chance to send questions directly to the poker prodigy.

And Chan has him … Those are the words that would haunt anyone who just so happened to be immortalized in poker's most popular movie, yet Erik Seidel takes it in stride, shrugging off any misconception that his depiction in Rounders bothers him. Despite eight World Series of Poker bracelets and more than $8.7 million in lifetime tournament earnings, Seidel is still perhaps best known for his second-place finish to Johnny Chan in the 1988 WSOP main event. Seidel is highly respected by his peers, and perhaps after his victory in the 2008 World Poker Tour Foxwoods Poker Classic airs later this year on the Game Show Network, even the most casual poker fan will, also.

What Michael Craig says about the celebrated match between Johnny Moss and Nick "The Greek" Dandalos can serve as the epigraph to nearly any account of a card game, whether it took place in 1827, 1951, or last weekend. The leveraged uncertainty at the heart of good poker extends to most reports of how the long money changed hands. Unless he was an eyewitness, and sometimes not even then, all a historian can do is sift through what's been written and said about a game, trying to get a feel for which version of the lore sounds the least out of tune or, if he's lucky, has the actual ring of truth.

It was an accomplishment just to be one of the final six players in the 2008 World Poker Tour World Poker Challenge at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, Nevada. To get down to the final table of 10, the players had to fight through a field of 261 players over three days of poker just to have a chance at the $468,315 first-place prize. Once they had accomplished that feat, the final 10 found themselves at one of the strongest final tables in the history of the WPT. Three players who were lost along the way to the final six have won at least two World Series of Poker gold bracelets (Phil Ivey - 10th place, Pat Poels - ninth place, and Chau Giang - eighth place), while another was the Card Player Player of the Year in 2006 (Michael Mizrachi - seventh place). "The final 10 were probably as tough as any final 10 ever, I would guess," said Lee Markholt.

If you have a Las Vegas poker expedition planned for this summer, listen up. Even though last summer was chock-full of tournaments for just about anyone's budget, amazingly, the biggest poker rooms in town are offering even more tournament choices for you in 2008.

The World Poker Tour came to the Bay Area in early March, and I was fired up! First, the host casino -- Bay 101 in San Jose -- is in my backyard. And second, I had just made the final table of the WPT event in L.A. 10 days earlier. So, I was feeling like I was at the peak of my powers, and I had the added bonus of being able to sleep in my own bed.