World Series of Poker plans live, in-person 2021 tourney
The World Series of Poker plans to return to live, in-person play for a nearly eight-week tournament in Las Vegas later this year, parent company Caesars Entertainment Inc. said Thursday.
Organizers say they hope the event, held since 1970 in Las Vegas, will return to pre-pandemic form and draw as many entrants as the record 187,000 players it hosted in 2019 at Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. A year earlier, it drew nearly 124,000.
Ty Stewart, WSOP executive director, said the goal is for players to get COVID19 vaccines, travel to Las Vegas, “and bring this community of poker lovers back together.”
In 2020, the event adopted a hybrid online format due to COVID-19 restrictions. It had 1,379 entrants compete for a $13.2 million prize pool. The championship was in December.
Play this year is scheduled Sept. 30 to Nov. 23. The main event, a $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em World Championship, is expected to begin Nov. 4 and run through Nov. 17.
Caesars said it plans to post complete information April 15 on its website about a summer online tournament schedule.
— Associated Press
Comic drops suit in ongoing rape claim
Bryan Callen has abandoned his quest to sue the husband of a woman who says the comedian raped her.
On Monday, Callen’s attorney filed a request asking the Los Angeles Superior Court to dismiss Callen’s lawsuit against Gabriel Tigerman, whose wife, Katherine Fiore Tigerman, claims that Callen sexually assaulted her in 1999. Fiore Tigerman is one of four women who described Callen’s alleged misconduct in a July 2020 Los Angeles Times investigation; the stand-up comic adamantly denied all of their accounts.
Less than two months after the Los Angeles Times story was published, Callen launched a legal effort to seek unspecified damages from Gabriel Tigerman, who Callen claimed intended “to have Mr. Callen blacklisted, destitute, (and) never to work again,” according to his September 2020 complaint.
Callen argued that Tigerman had embarked on an “ongoing campaign to destroy (the comic’s) livelihood” by reaching out via email and Twitter to comedy clubs who planned to host Callen. On Sept. 14, Tigerman tweeted that any venue that booked Callen was “sending the very clear message that (they) support sexual abusers and don’t believe victims.”
In response to Callen’s lawsuit, in November 2020 Tigerman’s attorney filed an anti-SLAPP motion. Anti-SLAPP laws — SLAPP stands for “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation” — are designed to protect against meritless lawsuits that chill the exercise of First Amendment rights.
In California, antiSLAPP statutes allow the potential for early lawsuit dismissal and, if successful in this case, would have required Callen to pay Tigerman’s legal fees. (Tigerman raised $33,300 for such fees on GoFundMe.)
In January, Judge Monica Bachner issued a tentative ruling in Tigerman’s favor, stating that Callen “did not meet his burden of demonstrating a probability of prevailing on his claim.” Following last summer’s Times investigation, Callen was dropped by his talent representatives at the Creative Artists Agency and Innovative Artists in August. A Netflix prank show he was set to make with Chris D’Elia was scrapped a month prior, shortly after D’Elia himself was accused of sexual misconduct.
— Los Angeles Times