We know little because we’re thousands of miles away, but why am I not shocked that what coulda been the greatest thing ever — poker that helps a bunch of kids on Super Bowl Sunday — has left at least a few people with a sour taste in their mouths?
I sent an email trying to find out how many people played, how much money was raised, and what celebs if any may have gone deep in the biggest freeroll in Texas history … but instead learned from Dallas CAN!, the charity who helped make it happen:
Went ok the poker company we partnered with did some things that were not right to help our charity and although we packed the place and paid up front for everything, we never saw a dime last night.
The Hard Rock Poker Lounge is getting its weekend poker orgy underway — this is the “relaunch” of the poker room there … under new management, with new ideas, and more action than usual …
They’ve got a full slate this weekend — beyond just the free food, splashed pots, a 20k guarantee Friday tourney and stuff like that … they’ve got a whole slate of events, including a Sharon Osborne celebrity charity event (Trash Talk Championship of the World they are calling it), a party for the launch of Victory poker. Currently filming (for ESPN 360, I believe, is a $100/$200 NLH cash game. $50k buy-in … with Antonio Esfandiari, Andrew Robl and others on the table … we’ll have some more names for you. And I think that’s The Maven waiting in the wings for a seat.
Of course the game next table over is what really interests me — $1/$2 NLH/PLO … just an option to run-it-2x today, not automatic. But in my jaded opinion, that’s where the real poker is going on. The plan is to keep this game running throughout the weekend — as Super Bowl raffle is currently my 2010 bankroll plan.
More TK throughout the weekend … but here’s a glimpse of surprisingly early Friday night action taking off at the Hard Rock’s big poker weekend:
1. PokerStars
2. Full Tilt Poker
3. Mitch Garber
4. Howard Lederer
5. Ty Stewart
6. Doyle Brunson
7. Joe Cada
8. Barney Frank
9. Tony G
10. Daniel Negreanu
11. Phil Ivey
12. John Pappas
13. Mike Sexton
14. Mori Eskandani
15. Brian Balsbaugh
16. Lance Bradley
17. Joe Sebok
18. Barry Shulman
19. Matt Savage
20. Per Hagen
There could be 1,000 players or more gathered in South Dallas this Sunday, just a few blocks from Dallas Police Headquarters btw, competing for a WSOP main event seat in what’s being advertised as the biggest “True Freeroll Texas Hold’em Poker Tournament” in history
The event is technically a charity fundraiser for the much-respected DallasCAN! Academies around a Super Bowl viewing party. Tons of non-poker stuff and prize giveaways going on — and the freeroll poker tournement just happens to be part of it.
It took them like 6 years to figure out how to pull this off in a fully legal way, Big ups to all things Texas poker for this. Though like a McDonald’s Monopoly game, no purchase is necessary, they do offer a VIP upgrade that includes, among many things, extra chips for players in the tournament.
It all goes down at Gilley’s, which has much experience pulling off large poker events, though possibly never one this size before, featuring current Dallas Cowboy stars and tea legends:
Join celebrity athlete hosts and Dallas Can! Academy the 2010 DFW Big Game Watching Party!
Door prizes, spirits, food and legendary athletes all come together for the kids at the Can! Academies.
Hosted by:
Jason Witten,
Randy White,
Drew Pearson,
Stephen McGee and
Jay Novacek.
Sunday – February 7, 2010
Gilley’s – 1135 S Lamar St
Dallas, TX 75215
Fan Fest: Noon – 4PM
Game Watching Party: 3 – 10PM
Doors open to VIP at 3PM
Click below for details on the poker tournament itself — going around my old hometown stomping grounds via email. Should be a pretty fascinating mix of amateur poker types and major players in the Dallas area trying to win their way (via an arguably soft field in a challenging blind structure) into the other Big Game this summer:
A report from CTV in Canada is reporting that Loto Quebec has received approval from the province’s Cabinet to allow online gambling, including poker. The Quebec site, expected to launch in fall 2010, would be restricted to residents of Quebec, but they would be able to play with players from the BC lottery and the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, which handles the lotteries of the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island in offering a common platform for the players in the six provinces, similar to what the government of Sweden offers with the Svenka Spel site, which offers legalized online gambling to its residents.
In light of what happened over a year ago at Ultimate Bet, where Phil Hellmuth won a pot he wasn’t entitled to, a similar issue popped up on Cake Poker earlier this afternoon. Per usual, a post came to the 2+2 poker forum with all the details, along with a confirmation in the thread from Lee Jones, card room manager of Cake Poker:
Hi folks -
Unfortunately, at the moment, this appears to be real. What’s bizarre is how it happened this one time out of the tens of millions of hands we’ve dealt. Needless to say, our software people have dropped everything else to track this down. I’ll update you as soon as we understand what happened.
A later post from Jones mentioned they would shut down the servers for a brief period of time to see if the issue reappears, more details and information as they become available.
Though Isildur1 player names have popped up on the microstakes tables at PokerStars, Absolute, and PartyPoker … there’s one new player over at Betfair — Omlphalotus — that looks possibly to be the real Isildur attempting to work on his game / shore up his bankroll.
Firstly, the player in question is Swedish – the same nationality as Isildur1 – and is certainly playing the type of nosebleeds stakes expected from the most talked about online player for years.. A railbird told me he was seen recently with just under 400k at the tables waiting for action at some 250/500 and 100/200 NL HU tables.
[...]
Other factors that have stoked this rumour include railbirds noticing Omlphalotus playing a similar style to Isildur1 as well as enjoying long sessions multi-tabling.
More details here from a site with an arguably less-compromised interest in pimping high-stakes games on Betfair.
Here’s a quick rundown of what’s going on in one of the hungriest industries out there, and, game of skill or not, the parent biz of our beloved little poker world:
ALABAMA — A small little gambling fight is going down in the land Spencer Bachus represents, over a matter of semantics, technology, and the millions of dollars bingo machines represent. Bingo is legal in ‘bama … but should video bingo be? The fight is a dirty — complete with one agency repeatedly trying to raid a well-monied operation that believes it’s on the right side of the law.
Chinese foreign ministry officials strongly disputed the report, issuing a statement calling it “full of bias and ulterior motives.”
Personal information in the breach included names, Social Security numbers, home addresses and dates of birth. Most of the people in the licensing database are Iowa residents, but it also includes residents of Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin and other states, Ketterer said.
The list includes workers such as card dealers, slot machine technicians, jockeys, trainers and owners of horses and greyhounds.
LOUISIANA — The New Orleans-to-Shreveport casino-biz is in a definite recession, one not planned for when the state planned on becoming the central-coast alternative to Las Vegas and Atlantic City. They blame Texans for not gambling enough Oklahoma and Mississippi for cutting in on their action.
So little gets me excited about poker these days … unless, of course, it includes Pot-Limit Omaha or somebody getting sued/arrested. (C’mon HSP, can we just get one episode of PLO? Just to hear Gabe Kaplan talking about it. Promise not to sue you if you use this idea.)
But I stumbled across this last night — a game I read about on the internet back when it was being recorded (I believe in September). It’s just a regular-ole episode (Season 4 Ep. 3). But still much more exciting on video than anything I read about online, and way better than the Poker Stars Million-Dollar Challenge, not to mention Face the Ace:
Starring:
Patrik Antonius
Tom Dwan
Mike Matusow
Chris Ferguson
Gus Hansen
Allen Cunningham
Andrew Feldman Isildur1
It really is amazing, when you think about it, that 10s of millions of people worldwide are competing in games (whether they be sports or shoot-em-ups) on XBox Live, and they’re doing it for no money!
But with Sega opening up a real-money poker room (and casino), you gotta wonder if the likes of Microsoft wouldn’t try to get in on the real-money gaming/gambling action if the UIGEA were suddenly to go away. ** (You also gotta wonder how the guy in the picture even saw the flop. Can you imagine how soft these Xbox games must be?!)
I don’t mean to overstate anything here — because poker is just a game, after all, that we know plenty of people enjoy playing for free.net — but the new Hoyle Texas Hold’em for Xbox Live leaves you wondering if they aren’t preparing themselves for a future where they stand to make more than $10 per download.
And looking at the key features of this new release …
Gamers can play as their Microsoft Avatar.
* Single player games against up to 9 AI players.
* Mixed Multiplayer games with any combination of up to 9 AI and/or human players.
* Fully customizable games let the player decide game type, table minimums, mix of AI vs. human players and much more.
* Ability to reserve seats for private custom games.
* Deep statistic tracking covers over 50 key stats categories found to be the most important to professional poker players.
You gotta wonder if any new players stepping onto the online poker landscape might not have a different outlook on things like bots and datamining than current industry leaders.
** The makers of Hoyle Texas Hold’em have slot machine games, and handheld iPhone versions, too.
Legendary chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov is in the New York Review of Books saying (via the NY Times ideasblog) it’s time for computer programmers who make chess-related AI to learn a thing or two from the people (bots?) playing programmable poker.
Perhaps chess is the wrong game for the times. Poker is now everywhere, as amateurs dream of winning millions and being on television for playing a card game whose complexities can be detailed on a single piece of paper. But while chess is a 100 percent information game—both players are aware of all the data all the time—and therefore directly susceptible to computing power, poker has hidden cards and variable stakes, creating critical roles for chance, bluffing, and risk management.
I swear we’re not going gay(er than usual) here at Pokerati … but that song we told you about a long time ago, Poker Face by Lady Gaga, has now been turned into a male figure skating routine:
In preparation for the upcoming Vancouver Olympics, US figure skating champ Johnny Weir skated to the song about bluffin’ with muffins for an exhibition performance at US Nationals last week. Glad to see that the word about poker/lesbianism is still spreading.
The Poker Beat Crew celebrates our first-year victory in Bluff Magazine’s Reader’s Choice Awards. Then we take on the Kathy Liebert / Daniel Negreanu confab in Mississippi where they talked about what it really takes to get a sponsorship deal in this day and age … and we speculate on where Annette Obrestad fits in to all this. Then, what it means if anything that Phil Ivey dethroned Daniel Negreanu as the all-time tournament money leader.
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Here are the other winners:
Favorite Poker Personality: Mike Sexton
Top TV Poker Show for 2009: High Stakes Poker
Favorite Poker Podcast: The Poker Beat on PokerRoad.com
Top Poker Blog for 2009: WickedChopsPoker.com
Favorite Poker Forum: TwoPlusTwo.com
Best Poker Twitterer: Doyle Brunson
Favorite Las Vegas Poker Room: The Bellagio
Favorite Poker Room Outside of Las Vegas: The Commerce
Favorite Online Poker Site: Full Tilt Poker
Favorite Online Poker Resource: CardRunners.com
Top Story of 2009: Phil Ivey Makes WSOP Main Event Final Table
Best Online Poker Player: Tom “durrr” Dwan
Favorite Poker Villain: Phil Hellmuth
Favorite Player of 2009: Phil Ivey
That’s the word we’re hearing … but no confirmation other than that the World Poker Association’s website — wpapoker.com — has disappeared. A good idea with lots of support that never quite found its way before getting entangled in all sorts of internal political struggles that left a true grassroots coalition of players a dream that never quite came to fruition.
Some pokery political types are in London right now for the International Gaming Expo. Figure out for yourself why there might be foreign interest in the likes of the Poker Players Alliance, right as this bill gets ready to go into “mark-up”. Our pal J. Todd is there and he tracks down PPA Exec. Dir. John Pappas to talk about the 2010 Barney Frank bill, what’s the strategy behind it, and what makes it different from previous online poker legislation.
We love high culture here at Pokerati, but I gotta say, I never thought I’d spend 12 minutes of 2010 listening to/watching ballet. Though my tastes lean more towards watching heavy metal videos with semi-pokery themes on Youtube, I couldn’t help but click this one when I saw a ballet about the difficulties of playing pocket Jacks.
I’m no dance critic, but I think they capture the inherent conundrums with the hand pretty well:
ALT HED: Jacks Are Gay
OK, my apologies for making you watch that. Here’s a better dance about potentially troublesome pocket Kings:
The Venetian Deep Stacks, with the first ever NAPT tag attached to their main event, is underway. Click here to see the schedule.
One other new not necessarily that new thing this go-round is the Best Overall Player Award. Details from The V:
BEST OVERALL PLAYER AWARD
The four players that accumulate the most player points throughout the entire event will be awarded Best Overall Player cash awards. One-half of one percent will be withheld from the prize pool of each daily tournament and added to the Best Overall Player total prize pool. The standings will be updated daily and posted in The Venetian Poker Room. Super Satellites, 7 pm second chance tournament and the $5,000 NAPT are not part of the overall point’s race.
Damn, that was quick. a few weeks ago Delaware considered the idea of legalizing table games at its casinos (which includes poker), the Senate voted on it yesterday, and the governor signed it into law. They expect to be playing by summer time.
Harrah’s is moving forward on a plan to acquire Planet Hollywood. Harrah’s took over management of Planet Hollywood’s hotel operations and some of its restaurants and bars in January. Planet Hollywood continues to run its own casino, though Harrah’s has made it clear it wants eventually to own the entire operation. If successful, it would give the company control of all 126 acres on the east side of the Strip between Flamingo Road and Harmon Avenue. Adding PH’s 2,496 hotel rooms to Harrah’s inventory would give it nearly 23,000 rooms on or near the Strip.
I couldn’t help but find this convo between Kathy Liebert and Daniel Negreanu incredibly interesting. Not just because they kinda-sorta call Annie Duke a “Hooo-ore”, but also because Pokeratizens have long dealt with @donkeybomber’s bitchings about why he doesn’t get the accolades and patch deals offered less accomplished players. With him, my usual answer is, “What have you done for me lately?” But that doesn’t necessarily apply for Kathy Liebert — who is pretty much always winning something. Instead, there’s another game out there, Negreanu suggests, that Liebert chooses not to play.
NOTE: Kathy Liebert still has a standing offer to play for Team Pokerati. We don’t pay your buy-ins, but we will put a patch on your chest and clap extra loud for you.
We sometimes forget that a lot of poker players out there — particularly mid-tier pros — rely on big tournaments to help them make their living. So when they see something potentially asinine, they get a little upset. Unlike we analysts, who simply laugh, scoff, and position ourselves to “cover” what could well be a gloriously entertaining collapse.
So it goes for the upcoming Bellagio 5-Diamond event in April — which features a ridiculous 17 rebuy tournaments as its preliminary events. Seriously, someone has lost it here, right? We’ll see if we can’t get a comment from Tourney Director Jack McClelland on what’s the thought process behind this. Because right now, the best we can deduce arbitrarily surmise is that maybe it would be contractually better for him to get fired as opposed to resigning?
Some players were so incensed by this rebuy-crazy sked, supposedly, that they began circulating a petition to change the schedule back to its original set-up — a scheduling revolt supposedly led by Scott Clements. And in it, they proposed an alternative that seemed to make more sense. However, according to 2+2, the Bellagio has said thanks-but-no-thanks to the suggestion — leaving some players already talking about skipping this series, and a few media types excited about the pending collapse.
Check it out … I suspect someone was playing at a casino and watching how the table-embedded auto-shufflers work when they thought: How awesome would it be if you could press a button, and instead of getting a new deck, you got snacks and cocktails? The new GameBar, from the not-quite-sueably named Playerati, features a hidden, refrigerated snack bar that serves up refreshments at the table. A much better way to get everyone a round of chilled Tuaca shots than waiting for cocktail service. Press the button again for the electronic poker dumbwaiter to retract until the next round.
Theoretically can also be used to serve up weapons and drugs. Load the thing with semi-automatic handguns, and never fear home-game robbery again, knowing that you can arm your table from your game’s hidden (refrigerated) weapons cache at a moment’s notice. Good place to hide the bank, too … not to mention little sandwiches.
That’s about all we know, but who knew, and glad to know … the US Men’s National Team striker has been recovering from injuries suffered in a major car accident. To help his healing, he’s been playing some $5/$10 no-limit hold’em at Bellagio.
It’s starting to occur to us that a lot of poker players out there might have a keen interest to bet some international football gamesin the coming months. Bear with us, and we’ll see if we don’t know anyone who can help that cause.
ALT HED: Phil Ivey, the Ronaldinho of Poker?
Meanwhile, Nick Geber, formerly the multimedia guru at Bluff and a Sirius Radio soccer analyst, is back in public action … just in time for the World Cup — over at The Ref’s a Wanker.
Who says tournament poker is dying/hurting? It’s hard to go anywhere on the planet these days without finding a major soccer poker tournament. Lots of kids with disposable bankrolls, it seems … and lots of older folks trying to grab it.
At the EPT Deauville, which just wrapped up, all eyes were on Elky and Peter Eastgate to take down the biggest tournament ever in France. But out of 768 runners, they went out in 9th and 8th, respectively, with 21-year-old Brit Jake Cody winning the €847,000 top prize and presumably earning himself a spot on the PokerStars Kids Team.
Elky, meanwhile went pimptastic/not-gay in his homeland, sponsoring Team ElkyLady:
Across the continent, in Atlantic City. the World Poker Open at the Borgata is rolling along, with their $3,500 main event starting Sunday. They’re still drawing fields in the multi-hundreds, making Borgata the East Coast place to be.
But let’s not forget Mississippi — which used to be the preferred place for poker players to kick off the new year. They only got 208 entries into the $10k WPT main event at Beau Rivage. The final table for the Southern Poker Championship is set:
Name Chips
Hoyt Corkins 2,069,000
Tyler Smith 1,169,000
Jerry Vanstrydonck 1,044,000
Jonathan Kantor 894,000
Jared Jaffee 762,000
James Reed 377,000
Halfway around the world, the Aussie Millions is into Day 2 of their main event. After a festive Australia Day celebration, things got underway for the big-daddy of this Southern Hemisphere main event:
Some other cool tourneys at the Crown Casino still going … It’s very 2 Months $2 Milliony In the Australian heads-up championship, they’re duking it out to see which four will advance to the money matches against Andrew Lichtenberger, Barry Woods, Vanessa Selbst, and Martin Gudvangen.
And action is just getting underway for the Team Event. Here’s how they play team poker down under:
How Does Team Poker Work
The game is No Limit Hold’em. Teams of two, only one member from each team is on the felt at a time.
The partner’s rotate whose turn it is to play the team’s stack each level. The first players in the game get half of the team’s start bank, if they bust in the first level the team mate comes in immediately and plays with the other half of the team’s starting bank.
That person will play the remainder of the first level, and the second, before the original partner resumes play in the third level.
From the second level onwards team will have their full stacks in play, and once it’s gone the team is eliminated.
And our new-good friends at the Heartland Poker Tour are in Quapah, Oklahoma — at the Downstream Casino in the far northeast end of the state, running qualifiers for their next televised main event, which gets underway this weekend. This one is good clean All-American fun for the kids, too, as you only need to be 18 to play.
When the mainstream media attempts to interview poker players, it’s more likely than not there will be a moment where the poker enthusiast cringes. This interview with Fox Business’ Neil Cavuto and Tiffany Michelle is nearly 5 minutes of those moments:
This could turn out to be quite the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa thing, with less Creatine. Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey could be going back-and-forth at the very top of the Hendon Mob leaderboard for all-time tournament winnings.
Ivey just re-passed Negs by finishing 2nd in the Aussie Millions $100k event.
BTW, I’m pretty sure the winner, Dan Shak, was not the same guy who helped send Beth Shak on her renegade red-carpet/no-carpet milf path. If so, he sure has aged since the divorce:
UPDATE: I could be wrong. I was confusing Dan Shak with Bill Gazes, one of the other milfly departeds in poker:
It turned out to be an exciting finish to Event #1 at the LAPC — one of the largest live-tournament fields in history, with 5,847 players entries ponying up the $335 buy-in for a $1 million guarantee (which the Commerce exceeded by more than $600k). It was a funky event that saw some players cash twice. As they got down to the final table. Darrel Cain from Sacramento became a fan favorite after a series of botched chops left him with 8 chips and what seemed like just an $88k payday. But he came back to take it down and claim the biggest piece of a $364k first prize.
Tourney director Matt Savage and his team are chronicling the action and results on the official LAPC blog.
Meanwhile the state of Iowa thinks poker is booming, and though they already have legal poker there, they think it would be neato to have really big tournaments. And thus there is a new bill pending — and being pushed by the House Majority Leader — that would make room for more tables to accommodate big special poker events.
Their numbers and expectations however, may be a bit off:
“We have the people already playing poker in Iowa. We have a zillion poker players. Apparently, they’re just going someplace else to do it,” Hudson said.
It’s just my guess that the online poker/gambling lobby is gonna need some doctors who are experts on addiction in their pockets to counter medical opinions like these, who are warning about the extreme dangers of chasing straights and flush draws. I pity the kid whose parents actually take this advice.
I would treat finding gambling Web pages on your teen’s Internet history with the same concern as if you found a baggie with crystal meth in their drawer. I sure wouldn’t need a checklist to tell me the trouble has already begun and I have a crisis on my hands. I would have my kid face-to-face with a youth counselor with experience in dealing with this problem for at least four sessions, to find out how to turn this around
I’m just guessing the authors of this column weren’t following the 2010 PCA nor have they tried the new Rush Poker yet.
Tons os news stories to blow through … John Caldwell can now say definitively that it takes the work of three men to replace him. But the poker news keeps beating. On this week’s docket :
– everyone’s abuzz about Rush Poker. Full Tilt seems to have come up with a catch-on concept that makes no bones about feeding the addiction in a way that seemingly takes multitabling to a whole new dimension. But will Hevad Khan ever be able to play?
– the new WSOP hygeine rule. Yuck. But does it affect strategy?
– and the Heartland Poker Tour flies in to town to pit Vegas locals against “heartland” tourists, bringing more action to Red Rock than Station Casinos coulda anticipated. My personal poker dreams re-crushed.
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Bill Rini has some screenshots (that America-based interneters can’t see.) And some good analysis of what this means for the online poker landscape in coming years.
The thread-weavers at Ksino.com have taken on the monumentalt ask of transforming dumpy online poker players into stylin’ success stories who can hit the Vegas clubs without getting punched in the face. Meet Andrew Robl, Antonio Esfandiari, Brian Rast … and the heavily armed Dan Blizarian.Then join Lacey Jones at Ari’s Engel’s training center (”home of The Maven VT”) — essentially a dormitory for poker students who some day hope to live in Panorama Towers:
We don’t necessarily talk much strategy here at Pokerati, but I’m gonna make an effort to occasionally chronicle my own errors at the table with the goal of not repeating them (often). I had a pretty good session of Pokerati 1/2 (no-limit hold’em/PLO round of each) at the Hard Rock. In for $400, I had made a nice come back from about $80, rebuilding my stack to about $800+change — thanks to Katikin-on-tilt — when I got 6d 8c 9c Jd in the small blind. With about four limpers I threw in the buck.
The flop: 6-7-10 rainbow.
I tossed in $6 … had to build something. The cut-off, a solid player and the other big stack at the table with about $700, also mostly from @JaKatkin, called.
I know better than to bet the non-nuts in Omaha … and my instincts were screaming, “That Ace is not a bad card for him!” But I convinced myself it might also have given him something like A-10, which he likely wouldn’t bet, but might call with.
The turn came another 7, to put two hearts on the now-paired board. He bets $20. I pot it for $82. Alarm bells go off for my opponent but he calls. I start thinking about the boats he might have. Not pocket 10s. 6-7 was a possibility, but I think he woulda raised me on the flop. Pocket 6s was a threat, but not a big one, because I had one. 7-10 was scarier, but same thing … I think he woulda popped me on the flop with either of those hands.
Check it out … Rising poker diva Liv Boeree is in the December issue of British Maxim, which just recently went up online. While some in poker may scoff at her mere $200k in lifetime tournament winnings, hey, there’s not an online poker site in sight on this photo shoot, and yet Maxim is still interested enough to show sexually suggestive pictures of her ask about her life on a farm rolling around in mud? That’s pretty cool.
At least we think the sites are live. With players from the US and Japan forbidden to play, I get a 403-Forbidden error when trying to access SegaPoker.com.
A sign of how things change … back in 2005 the already legendary TJ Cloutier was still tearing it up. But in 2010, the WSOP bracelet he won in the 2005 $5k NLHE is now for sale on eBay. I guess he didn’t cash big enough via the sale of PokerPages to buy it back Bummer, dude. We feel ya. Not sure where the big fields are coming from in LA, AC, Australia, and France … everybody seems broke. But either way, you get the sense that those who are playing are doing so with far more seriousness than the fields were back in the day when TJ won this:
The seller is Plano Pawn Shop (”specializing in fine jewelry and firearms”), who has a 100 percent positive feedback rating after 314 eBay sales. Plano, of course, is the suburb next door to TJ’s home in Richardson … and on the way to the Choctaw Casino in Oklahoma, not to mention some of the bigger private games in the Dallas area.
UPDATE: His bracelet from the Scotty Nguyen Poker Challenge IV is also up for sale.
Oops, I can’t believe I forgot Tony G in my Power 20 rankings … the man who directly controls the paycheck of so many of my cronies and the bankroll of at least a handful of international tournament players is now officially on board with the crew Mike Sexton built/is building. Further evidence that PartyPoker/WPT is making serious moves (to challenge PokerStars and Harrah’s?) … and re-enforcing Sexton’s original vision that anybody is welcome to play at Party. Also makes Party’s upcoming Premier League Poker in Las Vegas a lot more interesting …
Click below for the full press release. We’ll see if we can’t figure out any more details about what went into bringing The G on board.
Players are flocking to Poker’s Second City for that other, LA version of the WSOP, aka the LAPC. Early numbers look strong. Much more to come from this festival of poker tourneys to be sure:
Elsewhere around the world, the big action is going at the Borgata Winter Poker Open in Atlantic City, at EPT-Deauville in France, and the Aussie Millions in, er, Australia … where our favourite under-25 Betfair-blogging scrapper fought FTW in the $1k PLO event. @Annette_15’s inspirational tweet-story:
Dinner break in plo, avg 32k, got 20k. Lost half my stack with KxJxTs9s on KJs8sAx5x board lol. 30 something left, 16 paid. Start in 1h.
22 left. At avg
Got 50k. Avg 56. On the bubble now. 17 left. Good table
Itm yay
Final table . 9 left. Cont. tomorrow at 4. Avg 100k. I got 150k. 40k for first. 1x?
One hour break. Got 550k i think. Didnt count. 4 left. Got over half the chips in play. Go me
yayyyyy i won!!!!
A nice little roadmap on how to move from the middle of the pack to the final table with the momentum it takes to go all the way, no? 40k AUD ($36.7 USk).
REMINDER:Today is Omaha day at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas. Playing 1/2, half no-limit hold’em, half PLO … w Run-it-2x. I like to think of this game as PLO with training wheels. Did you know sets aren’t necessarily all that good in Omaha?
For those who missed it, on last week’s episode we bid farewell to co-host John Caldwell … then got to business discussing the PCA and the new breed of Tiger Beat PokerStars. And then we get into the first annual Poker Beat Awards … where the crew waxes gay about Phil Ivey and all his accomplishments or lack thereof in 2009. I woulda voted for him (maybe I did?) but he wasn’t even at the ceremony to accept his awards. What a jerk!
We also talk a little Clonie vs. Full Tilt lawsuit and say our goodbyes to those who left us in 2009.
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Pokerati sources embedded in Atlantic City are reporting that the Caesar’s-AC poker room recently paid off the biggest bad beat jackpot in East Coast history … only to have that followed by some more bad beat jackpots hit at other poker rooms nearby:
The biggest bad beat jackpot in AC history went off 3 days ago for over $ 550,000. Quad threes vs Quad Aces. then on the same day 2 other bad beats went off in other casinos. Total of almost $ 1,000,000 issued.
This isn’t particularly new — has been out there since August — but it’s the first I noticed … Zynga, the free Texas Hold’em game on Facebook and MySpace and therefore one of the biggest online poker communities out there, apparently has bots growing out the ying-yang. And now, as of about a week ago, after some fixes and revisions, it’s finally working well.
It’s already had more than 88,000 downloads. If even just 1 percent of those are installed to fruition … well that’s a lot of bots competing for your fake chips and theoretically feeding the imaginary rake.
And here’s a rockin’ video showing exactly how to install it.
Hmm, interesting. More confirmation that bots are a real issue, and will be a major factor in future online poker operations. Also kinda funny to think that bot armies are essentially being trained playing free poker … where they theoretically can eventually work their way up in stakes like a human player who gets better and better.
In yet another clear sign that America is ready for fully legal online poker … and perhaps another example of why it will take so long to get there … New Jersey is looking to jump ahead of the federal curve (and California) with a bill to allow its citizens play online poker freely … and, of course, for the state to profit from the action.
“There are probably 500,000 online poker players in New Jersey alone. And we’re missing out on around $100 million in revenue,” said state Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Union, the bill’s sponsor.
Meanwhile, the opposition is upping its rhetoric:
Arnold Wexler, former executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, said legalizing Internet gaming would make it easier for people to “lose their life.”
Lose their LIFE?!? Wow … He goes on to make it about the kids. Mild opponents of any online poker bill have continue to make it clear that if anything is going to move forward, they need some assurances that 13-year-olds aren’t playing on their brother’s account and developing mad skillz that will allow them to win more than $2 million in the PCA before completing their first semester of college.
And while we’re on the topic of New Jersey … CORRECTION: Despite what I may have twittered with heavy disclaimers on Tuesday, The Situation is not a poster on 2+2.
The PPA is giving a heads-up that they’ll be needing your help in coming weeks. Apparently, Barney Frank’s HR 2267 will be coming for a committee mark-up vote.
If I remember correctly, mark-up is where the committee votes yay or nay on moving the bill forward, but everyone, regardless of how they’re voting, gets to pipe in with what elements they’ll need to see in it to vote for it on the floor. So you know, maybe some sorta protection for the kids has to be included, or money for the Indians … that kinda thing.
Here’s PPA honcho John Pappas letting you know that anti-anti-poker legislation — a licensing and regulating bill — is indeed moving forward in 2010:
The entire world got a reminder about life, death, and nature this week … the Haiti earthquake gave us all at least a bit of pause to find ourselves, at least momentarily, caring about people we didn’t think we cared about.
We know how charitable poker players can be — it’s our one saving grace — and I’m sure at least a few of you have made donations already toward some humanitarian relief. PokerStars has set up “dummy tournaments” and accounts where players can transfer money to help the cause … funds the online poker site will match and send to the Red Cross. Likewise, Calvin Ayre has issued a $1 million matching-donation challenge to the entire online gambling industry.
With all the donating options out there — and the ever-present uncertainty over the difference between efficient humanitarian aid and exploitive charitable graft — I just wanted to weigh in and give a thumbs-up to one specific Haitian charity that I personally know does meaningful work AND has a little poker in its blood.
It’s called Project Medishare. They’re a bunch of doctors and volunteers who since 1995 have provided medical services, equipment, and training to some of the poorest villages in Haiti. Currently, they’re flying in trauma surgeons while helping coordinate relief with Haitian officials. And their chief blogger chronicling these efforts and helping drive online donations got her web-media start in poker.
The rules for the 2010 World Series of Poker were released this afternoon, with the obligatory press release appearing on the next page. To alleviate the fears of Phil Hellmuth, there has NOT been a change to what logos a player can be sporting. There were some minor changes to reflect the latest rules published by the Poker TDA, as well as some changes for players who choose to register late (Rule #12) and clarification for those who registered but don’t show up (Rule #14). Also of note is there was a change to the rule regarding cell phones and electronic devices that “banned” the Iphone, Blackberry, Itouch, and similar devices has been removed for 2010 in light of the immense popularity of Twitter. One other new rule that someone pointed out on 2+2, part of rule 37 about player conduct (bolding is my emphasis):
B. All participants are entitled to expect civility and courtesy from one another at every Tournament table and throughout the Tournament area. Any individual who encounters behavior that is not civil or courteous — or is abusive in any way — is encouraged to immediately contact a Tournament official. This shall include, but is not limited to, any player whose personal hygiene has become disruptive to the other players seated at their table. The determination as to whether an individual’s personal hygiene is disruptive to other players shall be determined by the Tournament Staff which may, in its discretion, implement sanctions upon any such player who refuses to remedy the situation in a manner satisfactory to Rio.
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. 9 left. Cont. tomorrow at 4. Avg 100k. I got 150k. 40k for first. 1x?
