Los Angeles Lakers star Ron Artest has legally changed his name to Metta World Peace. To quote WWE Superstar The Miz, really? At least his intentions are good. He is trying to inspire and bring youth together as a result of his name change. Naturally, this got me thinking about poker players that might consider legally changing their names.

Poker, as in life, is all about change. Trends come and go. Games get popular, die out, and sometimes even get revived. Strategies change and evolve, as does the game's players.

The WPT Hollywood Poker Open was destined to be a nearly forgotten stop on the WPT this year. The event only drew 97 players and early on the talk was about how poorly this event drew. That's all changed now that Erik Seidel has made the final table. As anyone not living under that rock in the Geico commercial knows, Seidel has won over $4 million this year including the NBC National Heads-Up Championship.

The WSOP announced today that they're creating a "made for TV" event for the 2011 WSOP featuring heads-up rematches from previous Main Events. The main attraction is Sam Farha against Chris Moneymaker in a replay of the match that started the poker boom in 2003. Other matches on the schedule are a rematch between Phil Hellmuth and Johnny Chan from the 1989 WSOP and a match that is to be determined by the fans. You can choose Chan vs.

Erik Seidel has had an epic 2011. Since the beginning of the year, he has taken down two major high-roller events and the NBC National Heads-Up Championship to take over the all-time money list lead. However, there are now allegations arising that are beginning to cast doubt as to whether these wins were indeed legitimate. It all started with a post on the TwoPlusTwo forums a couple of weeks ago when poster "CrownWatchdog186" posted that the fix was in for both the $100,000 Challenge match and the $250,000 buy-in Super High Roller event.

Yesterday Full Tilt Poker announced the creation of the Onyx Cup. It is a series of live high. stakes tournaments with buy-ins from $100,000 to $300,000. In a nutshell, the top 3 players in each event get points toward the Onyx Cup.

The folks on another "poker news" website posted an article debating who had the tougher road to the NBC National Heads-Up Final. For those of you that don't know or don't care, Erik Seidel faced Chris Moneymaker in the finals. I figured I would give my opinions on who had the tougher route to the finals. These were Moneymaker's opponents: Round 1 - John Racener Round 2 - Daniel Cates Round 3 - Doyle Brunson Quarters - David Oppenheim Semis -  Jonathan Duhamel   These were Seidel's opponents: Round 1 - Allen Cunningham Round 2 - Jen Harman Round 3 - Phil Gordon Quarters - Vanessa Selbst Semis - Andrew Robl Let's look at Seidel's opponents first.

The 2011 NBC National Heads-Up Championship has now concluded and I figured I would take a few moments to comment on the weekend. First, I realize that I got my initial overall pick wrong. Ivey disappointed me with an early first round exit, but my back-up pick of Erik Seidel came through. So apparently this wasn't the year Mizrachi had a deep run in the bracket.

Things were going pretty well for me until the last bracket last night. The first three brackets saw 5 out of 6 of my picks for the elite 8 advance. Then disaster struck during the spades bracket. Phil Ivey fell to Dan Cates.

On Saturday, I wrote a blog on the five reasons that the Poker All-Time Money List is outdated[http://www. pokerjunkie. com/poker-blog/las-vegas/five-reasons-the-all-time-money-list-is-outdated]. I was going to follow-up with a blog that would spell out some changes.