Who says there is no good television in Canada? It has been reported that HeadsUp Entertainment International will launch an internet television poker network this year on Canadian television. Yes, that’s right. There will be a channel dedicated to televising online poker tournaments, casino poker tournaments, and documentaries about – you guessed it – poker tournaments. In related news, Canadian citizens have identified a new channel that they will never watch. It will be kind of like MSNBC in America. The channel exists, though no one knows why.

My esteemed colleague Ricky Bauer has written extensively on the terribleness of poker on television and he’s right. Poker is an activity where the players, in order to be good, have to show a complete lack of emotion, so televising it would be like watching Keanu Reeves in The Day the Earth Stood Still. I’ll be honest here. I would rather watch a cooking show on Food Network than watch poker, because at least that way I can pick out a few recipes to try, ruin, and then complain that it looked so much better on TV. Also, after years of watching Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live, I have been conditioned to expect at any moment for the host to slice his or her finger and start spraying blood everywhere. If poker carried the risk of injury, maybe it would be more interesting, but I think the biggest risk is getting a paper cut from the cards.

Someone disagrees with me, though. Kelly Kellner, president of HeadsUp, says that “players and fans will have a means to pursue their interest in the sport and we couldn’t be more excited.” Couldn’t be more excited? Quick, somebody introduce Kellner to exciting things! There are so many things you need to learn about, from sporting events to concerts to roller coasters to secret trysts in the Gambling Review break room during lunch break. Mr. Kellner, you need to get out of your office and experience life outside of poker!

Maybe the network will be a success, but I doubt it. I’m going to give Canadians the benefit of the doubt and believe that, despite their love of hockey, socialized medicine, and ice fishing, deep down the Canucks actually have good taste. After all, they did bring us Jim Carrey. Therefore, I’m predicting that soon I will be writing another article on the subject, which may be titled “Cadadian TV Poker Network Fails Miserably, as Expected.”

Next month, Titan poker will give their players a chance to win a cut of one million dollars. The first in a new online poker tournament series is set for launch starting next month on September 13. The online poker tournament guarantees prizes totaling one million dollars with a buy-in of $535.

Times being what they are, you might be hanging your head in disappointment, believing there is no way that you can scrape that kind of cash together. Well hope is not lost. Titan Poker is offering less affluent online poker players the opportunity to win a seat in the online tournament via qualifier satellites featuring buy-ins as low as $1.10!

In June, the main event of its European Championship of Online Poker IV series (which might be the longest and worst title ever for a tournament series) Titanpoker.com held a $1.5 million tournament while continuing its Sunday evening tournaments with guaranteed prizes of $250,000.

Titan Poker is the biggest online poker room in the iPoker network and so they tend to do things a little bigger than your average online poker site. Players are already said to be signing up and there is a cap of 6,000 players so this could be a pretty sweet tournament.

Barack Obama is a polarizing figure to say the least. When he showed up on the scene seemingly out of nowhere, he became all the rage. This despite the fact that he only beat Blair Hull in the Illinois Senate Democratic Primary by having David Axelrod get Hull’s divorce records unsealed and then using that information to spread a lie that he hit his ex-wife, and the fact that he only won the Senate because Republican Jack Ryan withdrew from the race after, you guessed it, his divorce records were unsealed and the lie was spread that he tried to have sex with his own wife at a nightclub (Yes, folks, that was the scandal that destroyed Ryan’s career). Despite all of that, when Obama announced his candidacy for president, the media, college students and professors, and other people who listen to the media and college professors believed that he can walk on water. If Obama is The Chosen One, surely he would be a great poker player, right?

If there is one thing Obama has it is charisma. His public persona is that of a cool, confident leader, in spite of his weak grasp of politics and economics. His cool demeanor would serve him well at a poker table. Obama is also used to convincingly lying to the people, which would serve him well when bluffing. On the downside, Obama is not nearly as convincing or charismatic when he doesn’t have a teleprompter and planted questions, so he would be wise to pick a strategy ahead of time and stick to it. No going off script.

As Ricky pointed out in his Sarah Palin article, having a good nickname is important for poker players. President Obama has gone by a few different names. Back when he was hanging out with communists and drug dealers, he went by Barry. Some people call him by his middle name, Hussein, but his supporters are always quick to call those people racists for trying to make him sound like a Muslim, as if Barack and Obama are names as American as apple pie. Other names that he goes by, though unofficially, are The Messiah and The Anti-Christ, depending on who you talk to.

Good poker players are great at math, and with the way the national debt is rising and the amount of money being spent, Obama should certainly be good with numbers. A good poker player is also secretive, which certainly applies to Obama, who blocked virtually every document about his personal and professional life from being released to the public. Good poker players are also very disciplined, and I can only commend Obama’s restraint for never strangling Joe Biden after any of his attacks of verbal diarrhea. Good poker players have to be accepting of the fact that sometimes they will lose, and I’m not sure how Obama would handle that, because he doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with adversity. Hopefully, his opponents won’t get too annoyed at him gloating “I won” every time he scoops the chips toward him.

Most of the above skills seem to be in his favor, but the number one reason Barack Obama would be good at poker is because he is very good at taking other people’s money.