Yang Takes Main Event Title --  Jerry Yang, the modest Laos-born Californian, captured the 2007 WSOP Main Event in a protracted final table, finally putting away his last challenger, Tuan Lam, for the win.  Yang, who won his entry into the Main Event as a winner’s prize for good performance in a local lead, came to the final table among the lowest chip stacks but surged to the top early, moving into a commanding lead in the first hour of play.

Among Yang’s early victims were Sweden’s Philip Hilm, who came to the final table with a narrow chip lead and was pegged by many to win it all, and Full Tilt pro Lee Watkinson, the favorite of many of the non-Hilm bettors.  Five of the nine final-table players departed early in the action, with a lengthy four-way battle between Yang, the Canadian Lam, South Africa’s Raymond Rayme and emerging Russian star Alex Kravchenko stretching into the wee hours.  Yang was never headed once he took the lead, though double-throughs at one point by each of his challengers made the final interesting; at one point, it looked like this would be one of the shortest finals on record.  Kravchenko finished fourth and Rahme third.  Yang’s victory, as with Jamie Gold’s last year, is his first major title.

Rounders Consultant Nabbed in Crooked Atlantic City Poker Game --  As one famous poker writer mentioned to me in discussing this story, it’s amazing how stupid smart people can be.  The comment is about the arrest of Steve Forte in connection with a high-stakes poker scam at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, one of that city’s most recognized poker destinations.  Forte and three accomplices were arrested in June for running crooked games in private hotel rooms at the Borgata, including hidden cameras, marked cards, and other high-tech devices.  The kicker? Forte, 51, is one of the casino’s most widely known independent security experts, having worked with most major casino chains, running the successful business Independent Gaming Specialists.  He has also produced books and videos exploring the intracacies of casino and card-cheating setups, and even consulting on TV and movies, including Rounders and specials on Dateline NBC and the Discovery Channel.  Forte’s own website lists four paragraphs of major corporate customers -- now all gone if the charges have merit.

NETeller Returns to Active AIM Status, Reaffirms Commitment to Announce U.S. Repayment Plan --  NETeller finally managed to have its stock-trading suspension lifted on London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM), despite exceeding the six-month limit set by that board for suspension-related matters.  NETeller was unable to be returned to active trading until it had resolved its outstanding dispute with the United States government, which it did by accepting $136 million in fines and forfeitures, some $60 million of which are actually seized customer funds that those U.S. account holders will now have to sue the U.S. government for themselves if they ever hope to claim their monies, a fact studiously non-reported by most media outlets.  NETeller did, however, reaffirm that it will -- any day now -- announce its repayment plan for the additional $94 million in frozen U.S. funds it still holds.  We’re not holding our breath, or are we?

‘Dem Damn Bots Can’t Beat Us at Poker Quite Yet, Anyway --  The first annual "Man-Machine Poker Championship" at the University of Alberta pitted the skills of pros Phil "Unabomber" Laak and Ali Eslami against the U. of A’s latest poker-bot creation, Polaris, before an enthralled crowd of hundreds of computer scientists and artificial intelligence (AI) specialists.  Well, maybe not quite enthralled, but the match was the centerpiece of the university’s annual AI symposium.  The school and the original developers of an earlier bot named Loki have long been interested in the nuances of poker as a way of testing the development of true computer "intelligence." The new program, Polaris, isn’t quite there yet, although it did give Laak and Eslami a serious run for the prize money, winning one of the four matches and drawing another before the humans won the final two to pull out the overall win.  To be fair, the bot is proficient only at limit holdem, and is still not a serious threat at more dynamic versions of the game, such as no-limit.

EU Threatens to Sue France over Online Gaming --  What’s good for online gambling’s openness and availability is good for the recreation worldwide, including in the U.S.  That’s why it’s good to see the European Union backing up its recent complaint against France with a threat to take that country before the European Court.  At issue is a French law preventing non-French online-gambling companies from marketing their services to French citizens.  While France seeks to protect the revenues from its state-run gambling monopolies, the law in question violates EU code, and that organization has given France one month to comply.