Over the last few weeks, New Jersey has made major strides in legalizing online gambling. Jersey has been the leader in this space, pushing a bill through the state senate by a 29-5 margin. The goal of the bill is to allow the state's casinos to generate income by hosting the online sites. These sites would be primarily restricted to the state's residents but also accept bets from players outside the United States. The next steps for this bill are to go through the New Jersey Assembly and get the seal of approval by the governor, which isn't a lock in itself as no real public support has been seen at that level.

The interesting note is the fact that only New Jersey residents will play. If more states go this route and offer their land-based casinos the ability to create state-restricted sites, it will be hard to see the real potential of this regulation. These online sites will eventually have to open their doors to external consumers, hopefully from states which follow similar legislation, but in the short term (and if this bill does pull through), expect the immediate creation of a lot of smaller sites looking to share a limited player pool and tax revenue.

Results from overseas

The tournament scene in Europe continues to thrive as the latest stop of the European Poker Tour in Barcelona, Spain, attracted a field of 758 players which set the attendance record for the Spanish stop. A prize pool of 3.7 million euros (5,300 buy-in) offered an 825,000 euro first-place prize that would be taken home by 22-year-old Kent Lundmark.

The Swedish Lundmark defeated Spain's Jesus Cortes Lizano for the win and became the sixth Swedish player to win an EPT event. This was his largest career cash, greatly exceeding the $69,911 he earned in the Nordic Masters of Poker main event in Stockholm in March. Lundmark also finished 29th in the 2010 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure main event. Coming in third was 2010 WSOP bracelet winner Konstantin Puchkov.

Other notable finishers included Bryn Kenney (32nd), Pascal LeFrancois (38th) and Bertrand Grospellier (56th). Here's a look at the results from the final table:

1. Kent Lundmark (825,000 euros)
2. Jesus Cortes Lizano (525,000 euros)
3. Konstantin Puchkov (300,000 euros)
4. Shander de Vries (222,000 euros)
5. Giuseppe Pantaleo (170,000 euros)
6. Thor Stang (130,000 euros)
7. Georgios Skotadis (90,000 euros)
8. Francesco Notaro (70,000 euros)

WPT Marrakech

The Moroccan stop of the World Poker Tour in Marrakech offered a 4,250 euro buy-in and a 750 euro fee which included deluxe accommodations, breakfast and a buffet dinner. The turnout in 2009 was a solid 416 players, but only 221 would show up in 2010. The story of this tournament was Sebastian Homann's incredible run as the chip leader for basically the entire tournament. The German dominated the field to earn 244,508 euros and his first major victory.

Twenty-seven players made the money in this event including Dominik Nitsche who finished in sixth, Jean Philippe Rohr in 16th and Nicolas Levi in 18th. Even though it was a small field, it did include some of the best in the world including Antoine Saout, Grospellier, Liz Lieu, Melanie Weisner, David Benyamine, Ludovic Lacay and Carlos Mortensen. Here are the results of the final table:

1. Sebastian Homann (244,508 euros)
2. Guillaume Cescut (135,831 euros)
3. Sebastien Compte (90,554 euros)
4. Felix Oberauer (72,439 euros)
5. Guillaume de la Gorce (54,334 euros)
6. Dominik Nitsche (36,220 euros)
7. Johan Williamsson (28,977 euros)
8. Julien Labussiere (25,356 euros)
9. Patrick Muleta (19,920 euros)

Around the felt

• USACOOP was a tournament series on PokerStars that featured 11 events and offered $3.2 million in guaranteed prize money. Well, the guarantees were rarely reached including a $175,000 overlay in the $1 million guaranteed main event. These regional tournament series are going on around the world and are seeing slightly better results (in terms of expected turnout) outside of the United States. John "trainwrecks" Hayes won the main event for $140,743 and David "gaucho2121" Paredes won two of the 11 events.

• December will be filled with a lot of major tournaments highlighted by the WSOP Circuit stop in Atlantic City. The main event of the WSOPC will begin on Sunday, Dec. 12, but the biggest event held at the venue will be the televised $10,000 WSOPC regional championship starting Dec. 19. Other tournaments this month include the UIKPT's stop in Galway, the Russian Poker Series Grand Final in Kiev, the APPT season finale in Sydney, Australia, the Five Diamond World Poker Classic $10,000 WPT event and the Foxwoods Megastacks Challenge.

Small blinds: Voting for Bluff's Reader's Choice Awards will begin Dec. 6. … Peter Eastgate's WSOP main event championship bracelet sold on eBay for $147,500. … Poker agent Brian Balsbaugh said on Twitter that the last 96 hours have been "very good for poker regulation in U.S." … Christina Lindley won USACOOP Event 4 for $127,500. … Tom Dwan lost $1 million in online action Tuesday with most of that money going to "cadillac1944". … The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure has over 600 players already registered. Not bad for the event being more than a month away. It will again be the second-largest $10,000 live tournament of the year. … The Commerce Casino is offering a $1 million guarantee for its $335 buy-in opening event at the L.A. Poker Classic. … The 2011 LAPC will feature 53 events in 43 days. … Eskimo Clark's WSOP bracelet, won in 1999, sold for $4,050 on eBay. … Remember Samuel McMaster? You know, the guy who was sentenced to play poker to pay back the nearly half a million he stole? Well, things didn't go so well and a judge ordered last week that he go through tests to determine if he has a gambling addiction.