“I am delighted to have signed a new contract,” Ferdinand said in a statement. “Who wouldn’t want to play in this fantastic team in front of 75,000 fans each week, it has been an incredible journey and I am glad it will continue. I can now fully concentrate on my club career, which has worked well for me over the past few years.”

Former England defender Ferdinand retired from international football last week. Ferdinand has made 432 United appearances since his debut in 2002 and Moyes, who starts his new job on July 1, is pleased he is staying on.

“It is clear for everyone to see that Rio has had one of his best seasons with the club and I think even from the outside you can see what a big character Rio is around the dressing room,” Moyes said in a statement.

“So I am delighted he has signed a new contract and I am looking forward to working with him.”

Guests are offered the gold plated iPads when they check into the hotel, and can use them to browse hotel services, menus and guest information. The Burj Al Arab is the first hotel to offer the Interactive Customer Experience (ICE) software on an iPad – meaning guests can use the iPad as a concierge.

The iPads were designed exclusively for the Burj Al Arab by bespoke luxury brand Gold & Co. London, infamous for their gold-plated technology products, who engraved the iPads with the hotel’s logo. Gold & Co. London and the Burj Al Arab teamed up for a month in October 2012 to create a rose-gold iPad in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but this venture is at the Burj Al Arab to stay.

Fellow poker legends Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu are also the subject of betting markets from the London-based poker room, while a number of markets are available for the $10,000 Main Event, including a female player to reach the final nine. Four members of Team PKR Pro – Vladimir Geshkenbein, Sofia Lovgren, Scott Shelley and Simon Hemsworth – can be collectively backed at 25/1 to pick up a WSOP title.

PKR’s Head of Content & PR Dan Grant is glad the site is returning to the unusual waters of poker betting. “Given the profile and prestige of the World Series of Poker, it’s surprising so few operators offer odds. But at our core we are poker fans, we love a good sweat on the Series and so do our players. Last year we took plenty of stick for pricing Hellmuth at 4/5 to win a bracelet. But we’d done our homework, and were happy with the price. But many of our punters were too, and when Phil did the business we got stung! But we’re back for more this year and I think Phil must have just as good a shot at collecting gold again, so we’re courting disaster by offering bigger than evens. Given his record and the incredible number of final tables he reaches, I don’t see the price lasting long.”

“The Main Event field size market is a fascinating one and really divides opinion. The number of entrants fell for two successive years in 2011 (6,865) and 2012 (6,598), and we expect that trend to continue, with our line at 6,466. But for a number of reasons some are more bullish than us so who knows, we could see a bump.”

Selected markets*
Phil Hellmuth to win a WSOP bracelet: Yes 11/10 No 8/13
Phil Ivey to win a bracelet: Yes 11/10 No 8/13
Daniel Negreanu to win a bracelet: Yes 7/4 No 4/11
WSOP Main Event field size: Under 6,466 5/6 6,466 or more 5/6
Female player to reach WSOP Main Event final nine: Yes 9/4 No 1/4

Keane commented “I would like to thank LA Galaxy for reconsidering their decision after further conversations between us which really means a lot,” Keane said in a statement. “We have reached an agreement that will enable me to make it to the games and I look forward to playing my part.”

There was another stacked final table in the SCOOP-03-M tourney, where Adam ‘Roothlus’ Levy finished top of a final six that included Mohsin ‘sms9231’ Charania, Steve ‘gboro780’ Gross and Chris ‘NigDawG’ Brammer. The most incredible thing about Levy’s $67k win was that he was playing out the live EPT Monaco Cup final table simultaneously from the EPT Grand Final festival. For more about his exploits, check out the PokerStars Blog report.

Unfortunately, it was a night of near-misses for Team PokerStars Online as the Draw event (SCOOP-06) saw Shane ‘shaniac’ Schleger come second in the Medium stakes version for just over $8k, and George ‘Jorj95’ Lind finish runner-up in the High stakes tourney for $15,200. Despite missing out on the victories, both players are showing great form for the rest of the festival.

Twelve hour-long episodes will be broadcast globally and feature all the action from last January’s $20,000 invitation-only National Heads-Up Poker Championship, where 64 of the biggest names in poker battled it out in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.

“This is just the start of many exciting and unique TV products from Full Tilt Poker; plenty of these will have the opportunity for players to qualify for and take part in too,” said Full Tilt Poker’s Head of Marketing Sarne Lightman. “To complement the Heads-Up Championship shows, we will be running a series of promotions this summer on Full Tilt Poker, allowing players to win the opportunity to compete heads up against our professionals and play for a share of over $100k in prize money.”

Two of The Professionals at Full Tilt Poker – Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Viktor “Isildur1” Blom – can be seen battling it out in the Championship, as well as former winners Phil Hellmuth, Huck Seed and reigning champion Erik Seidel.

Now that Full Tilt Poker has full international distribution rights to the show, even more poker enthusiasts will be able to see this challenging tournament up close and personal. “It really is great news that Full Tilt Poker is getting involved in helping this popular tournament reach such a global audience,” said Blom. “This year was my first Heads-Up Championship, and it immediately became one of my favourite events – it involves all the big names and the format is also very challenging. One-on-one is the purest form of poker in my opinion, because it’s all one big mind game.”

Following broadcast in the UK, the Championship will air in Russia (TV3), Canada (Sportsnet), Germany (Sport1), LATAM (ESPN), Ukraine (Mega TV), Hungary (SportKlub), Poland (SportKlub) and Czech Republic (Nova Sport).

There is plenty more action on the horizon with Full Tilt Poker broadcasting an array of other shows throughout the year, such as Poker After Dark Season 7, Million Dollar Cash Game Season 5, and the 2012 Aussie Millions. Past television shows have also included The Poker Lounge, Late Night Poker, and Poker Million.

With 515 armed police and burley private security guards prowling the marina protecting it’s yachts, understandably the country also clams the lowest crime rate on the globe.

But, having spent a fair amount of time in this particular pin-prick on the world’s map, I‘m duty bound to point out a few anomalies. Firstly I’d estimat that 36,000 of that 36,371 population use Monaco in the same way unscrupulous businesses use PO Boxes as their contact address.

Walk those safe streets any night and you will see firsthand that just a handful of the apartments which make up the scores of tower blocks are illuminated. Between the hours of 7pm and 10am the streets can best be described as morgue-like and finding signs of life anywhere might be easier on the Moon.

Admittedly the daily occurrence of a cruise liner disembarking her anxious load sees the streets bustling. But once this throng of tourists have taken their pictures, bought their postcards, enviously peered through boutique windows and inspect restaurant menus – which spellbound and then astonish (when looking at the prices) – they eagerly return to their boat and the evening sitting of the ‘eat as much as you like buffet’ like a retreating army. It leaves the Western Front morbidly quiet once more.

Of course the public persona of Monaco is of Lamborghinis and Bugatti Veyron’s parked opposite the casino or moored multi-million pound yachts which have harems of stunningly tanned scantly clad vestal virgins.

That reminds me. I once, before poker was kind enough to take me to this shallow, silly and sometimes ugly concrete tundra with no centre or soul, considered paying Eddie Irvine a fortune to watch the GP on TV with the luxury of hearing the live screams of passing cars whilst sat on the back of his yacht. It took a while but I ultimately declined when realising my ego was not that big or my penis that small.

It’s guaranteed come Sunday afternoon television producers will be whipping up their viewers into a homogenised frenzy of envy and jealousy with pictures of all that is extravagant to the point of futility and stupidity. 200mph sports cars which have never had third gear engaged on the streets of their home town; uncorked bottles of Champaign left to waste. Neither are a sign of wealth instead medical proof of a very small brain.

Monaco’s pair of beaches, at first glance in pristine condition, epitomize the place. They may appear as perfect as Holly Willoughby’s cleavage but, in fact, their sand is fake. It is not even sand, it is something that resembles sand from a distance but is actually a substance which is closely related to cat litter.

You see beyond the façade, far away from the madding TV cameras, Monaco hides a fake morally grubby side that’s not wearing any underwear and it wants to show you. That’s because the most overwhelming statistic of them all is Monaco has the highest infestation of prostitutes per square 2.05 km than any place on earth.

We are not talking those who habitually carry around a bottle of KY, a nasty case of the clap, and the scornful attitude which accompanies $100-a-trick working girls found in downtown Vegas.

Here the hoards of ‘ladies for hire’ are draped in designer clothes, they wear enough top-end jewellery to decorate a Christmas tree and find their clientele at the bars of five-star hotels.

They have names like Genevieve, Francesca and Evelina. But no, they really do. And, if you look like you have a few disposable million in your Coutts & Co. current account, they may discreetly slip you a business card promoting their free iPhone app offering easy ordering and payment options.

You see sex in Monaco is primarily of the commercial variety. True love is thin on the ground. In neighbouring San Remo and St Tropez the jewels may be fake but the orgasms are real. In Monaco the jewels are real and the orgasms unquestionably fake.

It’s a sad parade of events. Elderly filthy rich men, or just rich filthy men, parting with a sum of money for a 30 minute service which would, in the real world, clear the national debt of a small South American country for weeks. Little wonder squeaky clean Monaco is overrun with wealthy businesswomen.

As well as offering an insurmountably superior moral backdrop Vatican City could probably offer a better racetrack than Monaco. 1996 was the last time Monaco delivered anything other than a tragically boring race.

Drivers, teams and punters all know Monaco is not the bedrock-scraping examination of man and machine an F1 race is supposed to be. Instead it is a showground for an exhibition and normally a mindless procession.

Unsurprisingly eight of the last nine pole starters have won here because on-track overtaking is more impossible than unlikely. Bookmakers are all too aware of the correlation between pole-setting and the likelihood of winning and naturally they are not offering get-rich-quick prices about the pole-setter making a penalty-kick style conversion. As for a ‘safety car’, they are generally offering odds of 1/5 (equates to 83.3%) about it being deployed.

Five of the last six Monaco F1 Grand Prix have been won by four seconds or less but, with the line hovering around three seconds the men with satchels – based in Gibraltar this modern low-tax online offshore day and age – have clearly done their homework.

Ah, Gibraltar. Another workable F1 venue? Population: 29,750. Area: 2.6 sq-miles. Sounds so ridiculous it fits in nicely alongside Monaco as a sensible street circuit for my two-penneth.

Speaking as someone who skilfully identified Felipe Massa was going to take a late set of tyres in Barcelona and would re-emerge with an empty track before him. And speaking as someone who backed his judgement at 8/1 in-running with Betvictor.com about him claiming ‘fastest lap’ – only to see Esteban Gutiérrez take an even later pitstop and claim the accolade – I feel like I have a score to settle.

This week, with stakes kept to a minimum, ‘fastest lap’ is the primary market to play. There is method to my madness. In addition to Gutierrez, Sergio Perez in that slow-as-a-boat McLaren is on the list of unlikely ‘fastest lap’ claimers this season. The winning scenario is always the same. A change of boots 90 percent into the race and an empty track before them with a car running on empty. Job done.

I’ve visions of a 12 car snail-trail backed up behind a leading car/driver and, amidst this monotony of cars featuring tyres with more blisters than an obese burns victim, a lowly team/driver combination sat at the back of this M25-esqu procession decides they are so board a late pop into the pits will brighten everyone’s day.

Elsewhere, in the Royal Enclosure to be precise, maybe bookmakers should follow their own Royal Ascot example and offer a market on the thing the average attendee is primarily interested in… the colour of Princess Charlene’s hat. Finally some excitement.

This week’s selections (prices courtesy of Betvictor.com):

V. Botas 40/1 15 points

P. Maldonado 40/1 15 points

D. Ricciardo 33/1 20 points

N. Hulkenberg 33/1 20 points

J.E. Vergne 33/1 20 points

E. Gutierrez 33/1 20 points

S. Perez 25/1 25 points

P. Di Resta 25/1 25 points

A. Sutil 25/1 25 points

R. Grosjean 20/1 30 points

This week’s investment: 215 points

Current profit/loss: +615 points.

The Portuguese’s imminent departure, three years before his contract expires, will add fuel to widespread expectations he is poised to return to former club Chelsea.

While Real have yet to name a successor, president Florentino Perez confirmed the club had approached Paris St Germain to ask about the availability of Carlo Ancelotti.

“After the talks with our coach Jose Mourinho we have reached the agreement to end the contractual relationship at the end of this season,” Perez told a news conference at Real’s Bernabeu stadium after a board meeting on Monday.

“Both the club and the coach agree that it is the right moment to end this relationship,” the construction magnate said, adding Mourinho would not receive a payoff. The club have two La Liga games left to play this season and Mourinho’s final match in charge will be at home to Osasuna the weekend after next.

Elsewhere, last year’s SCOOP superhero, Shaun Deeb, who has five SCOOP titles to his name, was denied a sixth in the high stakes Badugi tourney. He lost heads-up to Paul ‘paulgees81’ Volpe, who secured his first SCOOP win.

For sheer value, though, you have to look to the SCOOP-02-M winner, ‘rossing’ from Belarus, who won more than $225,000 after satelliting into the event for just $28.

There was also some excitement in Norway, where double Olympic cross-country skier Petter ‘NorthugJr’ Northug Jr (Norway) came seventh for just over $60k. He clearly plays a lot of poker in his spare time as he cashed in last year’s EPT Barcelona Main Event and final-tabled a side event at the same festival.