Bwin.Party shares have increased by 30%, Playtech which provides the iPoker Network have seen shares increase 8% and 888 Holdings has received a massive 19% increase in share price; which is just the credibility injection they needed. These three online gambling and poker companies are bearing the fruits of the fact that investors are banking on them landing some high value poker business from the US. This includes affiliates, payment processors and high rollers as well as other business, as players swap allegiance from PokerStars, Full Tilt, Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, following US DOJ action against these American poker sites.

Will PokerStars be able to pull through from the loss of business - we don't see how they can't? I personally haven't seen less than 90 000 players simultaneously on this site since the shutdown. As I look at the site right this very moment - there are 188 338 player online simultaneously and 5 717 tournaments playing. One wonders have investors actually taken the time to have a close look at what is happening at this site for one? The shut-down and reopening seems to barely have touched sides! Are there really big wins happening for European companies which do not operate in the US, or is this pure investor speculation - a market overshoot?

Geetanjali Sharma - analyst from Execution Noble has said that US-facing online poker operators have drained profitability from European operators and their liquidity also drew non-US poker players. But again nothing seems to have changed very much with regards to the numbers at the site - particularly in the case of PokerStars where this data is all available on the home page for all of us to see. While I realize that some of the players online, must be there to withdraw funds; the fact that there is nearly 6 000 tournaments playing, meaning players are still putting their money into this game.

In the online poker world the more players at a site, the bigger the prize pots are; as more players = more liquidity. Nearly 200 000 players simultaneously is not an amount even an 800 pound gorilla such as PokerStars can sneeze at; this is a huge amount! What I cannot see is that players are being driven to European facing rival sites - not in the face of the numbers PokerStars is displaying. As far as FullTilt is concerned I don't seem to be able to easily access the amount of poker players online, but then I also don't have a previous knowledge of how many were online before the shutdown. A soar in share price is really confusing news.

In not so confusing news and live UK poker, Alan Mansbridge, a London taxi driver has won the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour Walsall main event. With a buy-in of £1,000 they were dealing in some pretty big money, and although this player was into the game; short-stacked and was not counting on his chances - he still beat 171 opponents to the top prize of £50,000. Apparently he was so unsure of his chances; that he never bothered booking a hotel room for the following night.

The Grudge matches are without any doubt one of the most eagerly anticipated events to be played as part of the 42nd year of the WSOP. These matches are meant to be a re-enactment of the most famous heads-ups ever player at the WSOP and poker aficionados will be able to watch the very man who is credited with having sparked the boom of online poker – Chris Moneymaker – playing once again against Sammy Farha. When he played him back in 2003, he went to the match with 5.40 million chips and, before he won the game, he made the most famous bluff ever. Now the two of them will play this historical match again, only with their chip stacks swapped. Further down on the schedule are two other famous rival couples: Johnny Chan versus Phil Hellmuth and Johnny Chan versus Erik Seidel.