Online poker room UltimateBet has gone global with the second season of its popular “Best Damn Poker Show,” which began running four times weekly on the Poker Channel.  The Poker Channel is Europe’s largest dedicated gaming TV network.  It’s available online to a global audience, and to more than 18 million cable and satellite homes in Europe.

The second season of “Best Damn Poker Show” reunites the lead combatants of the first season — Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke — and pits them against each other.  Each poker legend hand-picks a team of both online and real-world poker players and coaches them to victory (or defeat.)  The show’s goal is two-fold: to give Annie and Phil the chance to compete against each other and to help create the next wave of poker greats.

Each episode of “Best Damn Poker Show” includes taut player eliminations, so each week’s competition among both the coaches and team members gets fiercer as the pressure mounts.  In addition to the game itself and attendant drama, Phil and Annie highlight individual player’s play, analyze the competition, and comment on the eliminations that take place.  Alongside the broadcasted version of “Best Damn Poker Show,” there will be extended versions of the showdowns between Duke and Hellmuth online through the Poker Channel Europe website.

Just like the show’s first season, online poker players at UltimateBet.net competed for a spot on the show by creating audition videos that were submitted to the producers and Phil and Annie.  Many of these can be seen on YouTube.  In addition to this, the online site also invited Texas Hold’em fans to take part in a series of qualifiers that paid out spots on the show.

The next wave of auditions took place at the 2008 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. The majority of the 24 poker hopefuls were cherry picked from the legion of on-camera interviews conducted here, where producers had access to the thousands of talented Texas Hold’em fans who were in town for the world’s most prestigious poker tournament.

The 7-episode second season of “Best Damn Poker Show” will be repeated on Thursdays and Saturdays at 16:00 CET and additional footage will be showcased exclusively online.