A leftover story from around Christmastime related to the Choctaw bus and an overall decline in U.S. gambling revenues …
CardPlayer on the poker mini-boom in Oklahoma.
This is probably old news to most, but while rummaging through an ESPN media site looking for a pic for the WSOP Europe post below, I came across these stats, which while familiar to me, I hadn’t seen all together, at least not without the summertime Fog of WarSOP clouding my perspective.
Thought you all might find them interesting, too:
The World Series of Poker — By The Numbers
Last night was allegedly the debut of season 7 of the World Poker Tour on Fox Sports Net. Since FSN is really a collection of regional networks, it airs at a variety of different times depending on what version of FSN you have in your area. Also, each tournament is broken down into two 1-hour segments instead of the two-hour blocks the programs were shown in its previous six seasons. Their press release stated that there would be a “channel finder” for people to watch their programming. Problem is, they haven’t gotten around to doing that, and they’re still linking to the Season 6 schedule on GSN. Last year, the WPT created a site for people to watch previews and get details on each week’s tournament on GSN. This year, the domain name wptonfsn.com is still available for the taking (hint, hint).
OK, hmm, some new poker on TV coming in less than a month that I’m actually interested in Tivo-ing watching. ESPN’s first ever production of WSOP Europe. They’re playing 4/8 Hour-Limit episodes (with Reruns and a half-kill?) — promising a different feel-and-vibe, and introducing the mobile hole card-cam.
Alright, I like the sounds of it! Can’t wait to watch the eps with a hypercritical eye and then haphazardly tear apart the hard work of dozens, if not hundreds of people trying to give the whiners and moaners viewers Pokerati readers what they say they want in poker television.
Though I doubt WSOP Europe on TV will have quite the cultural impact of similar-length miniseries such as V, Shogun, and The Thornbirds … I suspect it can be equally as catching as From G’s to Gents.
Straight from the mainstream press, the gambling industry has fallen on hard times, following the trend of…well…just about every other industry there is. According to Bloomberg, Atlantic City has seen a significant drop in revenue for the second year in a row. New casino projects are on hold or canceled, and thousands of casino employees in AC have lost their jobs.
In the article, one expert predicts that Atlantic City will continue to sink:
James Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, said the casino industry is vital for the economy of southern New Jersey and for the tax revenue it generates.
“It’s possible Atlantic City is past its peak,” said Hughes, who predicted the situation may worsen next year. “It could never go back to its past glory. It’s a much tougher game now.”
But another analyst predicts a recovery in 2010:
The U.S. gaming industry will “remain under significant pressure in 2009, with a recovery unlikely until 2010,” Michael Paladino, a Fitch Ratings analyst in New York, said in a Dec. 16 report.
In other news, the Wall Street Journal reported that gambling in general is in a downward spiral that will never be the same. *Insert Debbie Downer sound here.* In fact, one survey specialist who clearly doesn’t follow poker trends at the University of Pennsylvania thinks that A) poker is a fad, and B) it has peaked.
Meanwhile, despite the fact that ESPN’s poker-tournament coverage has become ensconced in the culture, card-playing for money among college-age youth declined in 2007 for the first time, according to a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. “The fad has peaked,” survey director Dan Romer said.
Ummm, Mr. Romer, please note that that ESPN card-playing thingie to which you referred enjoyed its most righteous numbers ever just last month. Methinks we need another survey.
As my first post after the holidays and some taking-care-of-personal-biz time, I am proud to serve this one up. Monks in South Korea were busted by the police for gambling. That’s not very zen, but the visual brings laughter every time.
The Korea Times reported that a group of five Buddhist monks were minding their spiritual business by playing a little high-stakes poker at a hotel in the North Chungcheong Province, where they were staying for a monk-ish convention. There was about 9 million won in play, which translates into roughly $6865 and some nice action. Where monks might get that kinda dough is probably not my concern, but I do not believe it was the best karma decision for the cops to bust them for playing cards with it.
“We were tipped off that a group of monks were gambling,” a police officer said.
On December 31, Ultimate COO Paul Leggett issued an update on previous software issues that happened earlier in December. It’s linked here, or you can click on the button below to read it in full:
I’ve been in Dallas for the holidays, and the other day — New Years Day, actually — I was riding with Sang northbound on Central Expressway (US 75) and saw this pokery transport vehicle, which I found very interesting:
It was a full-size tour bus, and was full of people as the Native American driver shuttled them (for free) across the river to that land of opportunity, El Norte Durant, Oklahoma. I just gotta wonder what Texas legislators think about the Choctaw bus, which offers daily trips not just to and from Dallas, but also Fort Worth … and on Thursdays has a special “bingo route” that picks people up in DeSoto, Garland, Plano, and McKinney.
More info about Choctaw poker here.
Bus details here.
We kick off the new year with our very last installment of Perspectives Weekly! Plus, a look back at the most important online gambling events of 2008 and current news, including Doyle Brunson vs. Anurag Dikshit with an explanation of what the PartyGaming co-founder really was thinking.
On Sunday night’s Ultimate Poker Show at Rounders Radio, hosts Annie Duke and Mark “PokerH0″ Kroon interviewed their UB teammate Phil Hellmuth on a variety of topics, and took a call that led to his first public statement on the hand that was awarded to him in error.
Hellmuth discusses hand that was awarded to him in error
You can listen to the entire show at the Rounders Radio site here.
While I was away from the web space for a family visit in St. Louis, the guy who robbed the Sahara poker room on the Las Vegas Strip likely spent the holidays hoping no one recognized his mug from the photos released by LV Metro Police.
According to the Las Vegas Sun, he did use a firearm when robbing the Sahara on December 19th and escaped on foot. He was described as follows:
The gunman was described as white and about 20 to 30 years old with a thin mustache and thin build. He was wearing blue jeans, a brown cap, a brown or green hooded sweatshirt with lettering down the left side and a yellow ballcap, authorities said.
Yikes, if Metro has ever been in a poker room, they know that description alone will get them nowhere, as it sounds like two-thirds of players in any given room!
Here’s a good post from a non-poker blog, written by a dude named Tony H, which is sorta like Tony G but different:
Everything I Know about Business I Learned from Poker
It’s a pretty comprehensive analogy … though he does leave out one chapter I’ve got working in my poker/business book — “Beware of Fuggit Mode”.
From $4 to $5 in most rooms and games. Don’t know the exact casino-by-casino and hand-by-hand breakdowns of what the house takes, but the Rio and Caesar’s Palace both recently put the $1 uppage into play earlier this month.
Ultimate COO Paul Leggett has given an update to the blog at Ultimate Bet about the Phil Hellmuth v DOUBLEBALLER hand that caused all sorts of controversy in the online community since Saturday morning, a portion of that comment is excerpted below:
As we explained in our press release, the incorrect payout was caused by a software malfunction. The software malfunction occurred when the winning player was disconnected from the hand at the precise millisecond the software was determining whom to award the prize. This in conjunction with the “player’s state” data being cleared from memory caused this extremely improbable incident to occur.
Originally we were unable to reproduce the error in our test environment, until we programatically forced a disconnect to happen at the precise millisecond the hand was being awarded.
We have never had an issue like this reported previously and we have reviewed all of our database and application logs for December and November and have been unable to find any historical occurrences. We are continuing to go back further into the historical data to ensure no hands from the past need to be corrected. Analyzing this data takes time but we will continue to go back further and further into our history to ensure no one else was affected.
Leggett’s entire statement can be found at the Ultimate Bet blog.
Tokwiro Enterprises, who own Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, issued their own statement on the matter, after the jump:
During the big blogger get-together earlier this month, one of my most mind-tickling new friends I made was Human Head. He’s a great writer, a cosmological thinker, and has a really big head … as in physically, not egotistically. (No offense, Sang, you’re #2.)
Anyhow, as HH writes up his trip report, he spends a fair amount of digital ink discussing my atrocious bustout hand against my most kidney-jabbing new pal, PKPNF. Argh, for nearly five years now I’ve been trying to build up an “image” as a weak-aggressive player … setting myself up for a bigger, long-term win. But considering I have hardly made it past a break in a blogger tourney, I’m not sure that’s going so well for me. In Human Head’s (accurate) analysis … my play that day was clearly inspired by this.
Details are sketchy here in Las Vegas, but apparently it took place Friday night near TI (Texas Instruments) headquarters on the city-limit outskirts of northeast Dallas … Ironically enough, according to what we’re hearing, this longtime-running, near-legendary game had moved to another location nearby but recently relocated again, going solo when the partner venue wouldn’t pony up for security.
This robbery does not appear to be the work of the homicidally notorious Dallas Poker Bandits, unless they drastically changed their MO. The unconfirmed word spreading around D-town is that a dealer had stepped outside to smoke some pot, and when one of the owners went looking for him (good help is hard to find), a couple black males jumped out (of some bushes?) and began “throwing down” … the owner ran off … and as two or three others came out of the poker room to investigate what was going on, they too were robbed, at which point the assailants took off on foot.
Though Pokerati hasn’t yet talked with police for an official report, the cops were supposedly all over it with multiple patrol cars and a helicopter.
No specifics, btw, on the robber’s (or robbers’) weaponry.
Reliable sources say Kahnawake Gaming Commission regulators are less than thrilled about the need for a special holiday session to look into these troublesome pot-shipping matters … but they are aware and already proceeding due-diligently with/against AP/UB=>Cereus. What this will lead to isn’t clear outside the Mohawk Nation (and probably not clear yet inside) … but there’s presumably some uneasiness about the prospect of three-strikes-and-out, as the KGC may or may not be inclined to pull the plug on servers for the troubled company bought by the former Kahnawake Chief.
The software problems at UB appear to continue, here’s a hand posted on 2+2 from this afternoon. It doesn’t involve a name player, but it does show a player winning a pot with no hand at all, literally:
More from HSP, after you read about the WPT airing on Fox Sports Net starting January 4.
I’ve never heard of Lee Russakoff until this morning, but apparently he’s sports editor over at Comcast.net. Lee was also at the High Stakes Poker tapings at the Golden Nugget this weekend, and has 5 posts on his blog about the various goings on that should make for interesting watching when GSN starts to air High Stakes Poker on March 1.
Caught up with Peter Eastgate, 23, as he scoped out the $400/$800 NLH action at the Golden Nugget yesterday … The reigning WSOP champ goes into today’s HSP game down $100k — if you consider the results of a warm-up session at Bellagio (against Daniel Alaei and Bryn Kenney) part of the same trip — and speaks about what it’s like to play with a freshly inflated bankroll against more experienced players in bigger games than you’re used to.
Curiously enough, the guy he really fears at this table is the only dude younger than he is — 22-year-old (Fort Worthian?) Tom Dwan, aka durrr.
Peter Eastgate, Las Vegas
12-20-2008
4:29
Playing today are:
Tom Dwan
Doyle Brunson
Eli Elezra
Peter Eastgate
David Benyamine
Barry Greenstein
Ilari Sahamies
Daniel Negreanu
I’m about to head over the the Golden Nugget (in an hour or so) … so then I’ll have an official count on who’s playing … but there were some last-minute swaps in play.
Yesterday, both Peter Eastgate and Barry Greenstein were hanging around waiting for an open seat. When Sam Simon decided to call it quits, Greenstein took it … seniority?
David Benyamine, Doyle Brunson, Ilari Sahamies, Eastgate, and Greenstein supposedly have their seats for today locked up. Eastgate was playing highest-stakes at the Bellagio on Friday in preparation, and lost $100k to Daniel Alaei and some player named “Brinn”. (My phonetical translation of what I heard from Eastgate’s heavy-accent recount.)
Phil Hellmuth was supposed to play today, but he backed out. Likewise for Phil Ivey. Ivan Demidov considered taking one of the empty seats, but ultimately declined. As of late yesterday, Chino Rheem was a probable, and Alaei was a possible.
UPDATE: Just got word from the set … players are late. Start delayed a half-hour.
CORRECTIONS: Tom Dwan took Sam Simon’s seat. Hellmuth was never officially on the sked. But somebody told me he might play. Perhaps he just felt the games on UB were better for him?
From the guy against whom I played my worst hand of December (and a Top 5 finalist for 2008):
[via Pauly]
The hot topic at 2+2 at the moment involves everyone’s favorite whipping boys: Ultimate Bet and Phil Hellmuth. Seems a player by the name of DOUBLEBALLER was playing $200/400 limit holdem with Hellmuth this morning when the following hand comes up:
Hellmuth wins hand without showing cards at showdown.
According to the hand history, Hellmuth has 10-2, while Doubleballer has KQ.
As you can imagine, all sorts of heck breaks loose on the Internet when a glitch like this happens. The person who was affected by this would post on 2+2, saying he contacted UB support, who would only credit $2300 for now (he would later post in the thread that he had to make another call to support to get the rest of what he lost).
While it was supposedly a software glitch (that UB support says has already been fixed), it’s peculiar that the problem happened with the player most synonymous with UB in the hand in question. More details on the situation as things happen.
Update: COO Paul Leggett blogged briefly about the incident over at the Ultimate Bet blog.
I’m on the set of High Stakes Poker, Season 5, blogging live … only thing is I promised not to do any “live blogging”. Holy smokes, worst beat ever! How could he call with Ace-5? Someone ship Doyle Brunson another mil!
So while I mill around the Golden Nugget over the next day and a half, I’m wondering … any weekend readers out there have anything specific they’d like me to try and find out? I’m making no promises that the answers will be accurate or true, of course … but regardless, I’m happy to consider asking.
By all accounts, the WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic final table was going to be a good one with a line-up that included Corkins, Sung, Rheem, and Filippi. But most eyes were on Rheem, who was one of the November Nine favorites but had to settle for a seventh place finish at the 2008 WSOP final table.
Rheem was determined going into the WPT final table, even knowing that two of his opponents - Steve Sung and Amnon Filippi - were close friends. But as players dropped out of sight, Rheem was able to go heads-up against Justin Young in what ended up being a five-hour epic heads-up match. The chip lead was exchanged numerous times, but it may have been sheer determination and fan support that led Rheem to finally capture the title at 2am. He won the World Poker Tour title and the $1,538,730 that came with it.
Here are the final results:
6th - Hoyt Corkins $216,175
5th - Amnon Filippi $288,235
4th - Steve Sung $396,206
3rd - Evan McNiff $540,440
2nd - Justin Young $936,760
1st - Chino Rheem $1,538,730
I would point you to the official WPT live updates, but it has been unavailable on the internets all morning. So, for updates as they happened throughout the final table, check out Martin’s reporting at PokerListings.
The fine folks at Wicked Chops Poker are reporting this morning that The Real Deal, the poker game show at the Venetian, has closed after an 8 week run. As the blog mentions, a combination of a poor economy and doing a poker show 3 years after the peak of the poker boom surely doomed this project from the start.
Meanwhile, our buddy Tom, the high-stakes pro who coulda made more money at Bellagio as a volunteer blogger than he did as a poker player during his 5-diamond extended weekend, is apparently all the rage in Bulgaria. Pic #1 of 100 … pretty impressive:
(Thanks, Shamus, for the link.)
It seems that All In Energy Drink is getting recognized in non-poker markets. Who knew?
The Examiner recently took notice of the Johnny Chan-sponsored drink, and it’s getting good reviews. In the Caffeine Examiner column, Big Red Boots (the caffeine guru, evidently) reviewed the grape and citrus concoctions of All In Energy Drink with the following results on a scale where 10 is the highest score:
Tasty grape poker themed drink keeps your game face from sagging:
Taste: 7
Nutrition/Buzz: 8
Packaging: 8
Website: 9
Citrus poker energy drink puts fear in competition:
Packaging: 8
Nutrition/Buzz: 8
Taste: 8
(Assuming the same website gets the same rating, it would be a 9.)
Does anyone say “stick-up” anymore?
Regardless, Poker Grump reported tonight that the Sahara looked as if it had been robbed, as the poker room was closed with police tape keeping patrons out. And he was right, as a local news outlet reported that there was an armed robbery at the poker room just before 6pm.
Obviously, the robbers did not know that there is a 7pm tournament there each night, so there may not have been much money in the poker kitty more than an hour before. Curious to know if anyone witnessed it, as this seems a bit brazen…to commit a robbery in a casino in Las Vegas on a Friday night.
I’m assuming Dan’s at the Golden Nugget watching the taping of day 1 of the latest season ofHigh Stakes Poker, but for those that want to know when it airs, Card Player is reporting that season 5 of HSP will air starting March 1 at 9pm ET on GSN. The network made a recent decision to make Sunday their “Poker Night”, with Season 6 of the World Poker Tour episodes at 6pm ET, and previous seasons of High Stakes Poker at 8pm ET. As mentioned before, the minimum buyin will be $200,000, with the blinds $400/$800 with a $200 ante. Last year’s taping of a $500,000 minimum buyin game last season appears to be gone, as it tightened up the play to the producers’ dismay.
Not exactly, but close … this picture from Time magazine’s White House Photo Blog, taken in the Oval Office, caught my pokery eye:
Begs the question, of course, of who will make the next administration’s Presidential poker chips … because clearly he’ll have to have some, right?
From APCW.org:
Online gambling news, as the founder of Party Gaming pleads guilty to violating the US Federal Wire Act. We also give a follow-up report on the Grand prive’ Casino Group, with evidence of thier lies as they continue to steal affiliate commissions.
Dutch is having a good December. Not only did he win one of the preliminary events at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio - the $2K NLHE event - but he found out this morning that he won his case against PokerHost.com.
The battle with PokerHost ensued in October when he received notice from an attorney that there was a UDRP complaint against him for holding the PokerHost.net domain. Dutch then turned the PokerHost.net site into one about the case and stood his ground on the issue, since he had tried to negotiate with them for quite some time before the complaint to no avail. But this morning, he received notice that the World Intellectual Property Organization decided the case for him, as he documented on his blog:
The Pokerhost.net WIPO decision came today. Not only did I win, but the WIPO panelist found in favor of my reverse domain name hijacking claim, which hardly ever happens. Unfortunately, the UDRP doesn’t actually give any punitive relief to respondents who win on this claim, but it’s nice to get anyway. It definitely put me in a better mood and was a nice thing to wake up to.
In other Dutch news, as it relates to his purchase of Steve Hall’s Pokerfolio domain, the misunderstanding has been settled. According to the text message from Dutch today:
“Just FYI, I did end up giving Steve Hall back Pokerfolio.com for free… Wish him the best.”
Ahhh, the holiday season!
Actually, it’s just one song, from the musical Fiorello! But still … stumbled across this on YouTube and found it funny/poignant:
Gets me thinking about all the collusion, chip dumping, soft play, multi-accounting, and superusers that may or may not come to light from the Rod Blagojevich scandal (which is clearly “bad for politics”).
Sure, the Bellagio 5-Diamond is a pretty big deal to the pros — it’s one of those tourneys that harkens back to pre-boom days of the WSOP, both in competition and relative size of the buy-ins. Every table is star-studded, and the no-names who make it to the Fontana Room have fought hard to get there, knowing mathematically maybe one or two of them stands a chance of doing something truly special.
You wouldn’t know anything about it, though, from the 82 bloggers who were in town for the fourth or fifth (anyone know?) annual Unnamed Winter Blogger Holiday Gathering — this year honoring the netty nuptials of Pablo and Gracie (ceremony officiated by Rev. AlCantHang). While all that mattered to the professional world was going on at Bellagio, what attracted reps from the other 99.9 percent of poker players out there was shaking down and out at the MGM and Venetian … where friends, colleagues, and acquaintances gathered for boozing, boasting, bitching, and busting chops, all surrounding a big-but-affordable challenging tourney that would reward on-the-felt bad-assness with real American dollars while everyone else still enjoyed ever-festive poker-bloggery times.
A full moon was closer to Earth than usual, naturally enhancing the funk. Dr. Pauly busted out the portable satellite Tao of Pokerati studio, and before you knew it, our recorded commentary degenerated into lunar analysis of semi-annual drunkfests, slumped-over gambling addicts, donk-ass keno play, and, of course, hookers in a down economy on the late-night Vegas prowl. Recorded live from an extended weekend’s worth of bars, sportsbooks, bedrooms, bathrooms, and casino floors … with guest appearances by Derek, Human Head, Bobby Bracelet, Mean Gene, and PKPNF, before and after his unsuccessful relationship with Betty Underground.
Aural delights below:
From the Financial Times: Party Poker co-founder Anurag Dikshit will appear in the Southern District Court of New York Tuesday to plead guilty to violating the Wire Act, pay a $300,000,000 fine and cooperate with the Department of Justice in the hopes of avoiding a 2-year jail sentence.
Dikshit currently owns 27% of Party Gaming, but it appears he won’t have to divest his holdings in Party after pleading guilty. Ruth Parasol and Russ DeLeon, who also co-founded Party Poker, don’t appear to be near any type of settlement with the US government. Party Gaming has been negotiating with the Department of Justice for some time now; could this mean their eventual return to the US if and when Internet gaming is regulated?
More on this developing story later…
UPDATE: Party Gaming has released their own press release stating that they are still in final negotiations with the US Dept. of Justice in terms of a settlement, and that they will pay a substantially lower amount to the US government than Dikshit. At the time of this update, they’re up over 25% in trading today.
5pm UPDATE: Dikshit has entered his plea, and is free on a $15m bond, which limits him to travel within the European Union, India and New York. He has also already paid $100,000,000 with another payment due in 3 months, and the rest by September. Also, he’s scheduled for sentencing December 16, 2010. Further details here.
The two chip leaders on Day 2 in the World Poker Tour’s Doyle Brunson 5-Diamond World Poker Classic at Bellagio (the WPT DB5DWPC?) are Clonie and Kido Pham. I’d say congrats, but I have argued vehemently with many an ESPNer that being chip-leader early in a big tournament is more often a kiss of death than a path to victory. Hopefully I’m wrong — I’d love to see Clonie and/or Kido go extra-deep. Also looking forward to seeing a big-table pic of her without the Full Tilt uniform.
Donkey Bomber, btw, went into Day 2 with 8,000 chips (they started with 45k) … and is still hanging on, now with 20k.
200 players left. Average stack is about 110k. BTW, field size this year was 497, compared to 664 last year. But by no means does there seem to be a shortage of any periphery play at Bellagio.
Click here to follow the tournament action.
UPDATE: Tom is out.
Also, a WPT video update, where we learn it snowed in Las Vegas today (or at least in Summerlin), Daniel Negreanu doesn’t like to tip valet parkers, and apparently now he drinks again (didn’t he go straight-edge at some point?):
The World Poker Store announced the expansion of its Bar Poker League into Mexico with plans to host 40 free tournaments per week in or around Mexico City, beginning in February of 2009. Liga Mexicana de Poker is set to become the licensee of the Bar Poker League and manage the tournaments.
Other Bar Poker Leagues are set to begin in 2009 - China and Germany in January, The Netherlands in February. Those ideas sound great…but Mexico? Has someone missed the news recently about the LAPT’s rather serious problems with hosting a tournament in that country? Like when Mexican officials shut down the event without warning, refused to let the tournament resume despite talks between attorneys, and supposedly seized all of the production equipment that the government still holds nearly a week later… Sure hope someone lets the World Poker Store know about that little poker snafu south of the border.
Bluff also has their 2008 Reader’s Choice Awards ballots up online, where they’re naming “Bests” in 20 categories — asking your favorite online sites, broadcasters, poker rooms, forums, podcasts, etc. Pokerati is one of 10 finalists in the blog category. Sweet-ish!
Cast your ballot accordingly. To encourage your willingness to spend your valuable click-time with Bluff, all respondents go into a drawing for WSOP Academy seats and a one-year subscription(?) to thepokerdb … which is already free, but still.
Poker is having its day in court, that’s for sure. One case getting press all over South Carolina comes from a busted $20 tourney being held in a private home — raided in 2006 by heavily armed police — where 5 of the 25 arrested have refused generous plea bargains and are trying to persuade a presumably non-poker jury that poker Texas Hold’em is indeed a game of skill. A judge has ruled that the defendants do indeed have the right to present witnesses and evidence to make to support this claim. A court date is expected to be set for later this winter.
More here (Charleston.net) and here (Up for Poker).
This is exactly how California became California, poker-wise — it took arguments about skill in the courts to pave the way for all the great poker there. I don’t know the details of the cases, but Mike Caro was one of the guys who testified, bringing charts and graphs to show statistics of specific games — hold’em, Stud, and 5-card Draw, I believe.
Meanwhile, also going on last week and drawing lots of non-poker attention (Lexington Herald-Leader, Business Week, Physorg.com) … a Kentucky Court of Appeals will attempt to begin to start to decide: Does a single US state have the right to venture across its own borders to seize internet domains of businesses based in Costa Rica and run out of a protected Indian nation in Canada … and who will get to hold onto these domains while the courts figure it all out. The court will supposedly be making its decision in January, and judicial facial tells suggest poker is leading in this court 2-1.
You know, the evidence thing has me thinking … one of the hardest things for Kentucky to prove in their case will be that online gambling does actually hurt regulated Kentucky gambling interests. You don’t have to look much further than the WSOP to present actual numbers refuting this claim. So what evidence will Gov. Beshear and the state be able to present — they have the burden of proof, after all — that suggests the opposite? I don’t think it exists, at least nothing stronger than what the poker side could present.
The new episode is a pretty good one … Joe, Gavin, Shronk (via robot voice), a hot girl, and the other guy Ali Nejad haven’t even gotten to the Annie Duke interview that I clicked over to listen to yet … but they’ve kept me thoroughly infotained talking about the Bellagio 5-Diamond blind structure, November Nine TV appearances, and a few poker hands.
Good stuff. Goes well with FoxNews in the background: PokerRoad Radio, with Annie Duke
UPDATE: OK, I listened … and though I’m not sure I cared to know so many details about Annie Duke-Joe Reitman sex, she does answer some questions revealing why she didn’t participate with 60 Minutes (her claims of their falsehoods to lure her into the story seem totally believable to me — media people do say these things — though I do wonder could they have gone with a more regulation-oriented storyline had she or Paul Legget gone on camera), why she is indeed so confident about AP/UB/Cereus’ commitment to running an honorable business, why she remains a loyal face for the brand (it’s not the money), and how she wants to see Russ Hamilton burn in non-Atheist hell.
She also dances around questions about her rumored appearance on the upcoming season of The Apprentice in a way that semi-confirms she has intimate knowledge of a show beginning in March with a finale in May.
Good morning …
In the current issue of Bluff, Wicked Chops gives their 4th Non-Annual 1st Annual WCP Awards. And one of them goes to Lee Watkinson for “The Most Hilariously Awesome Billboard of the Year”. We agree(d) — very WTF. But have they seen the outtakes on his MySpace page?!? Even more awesomely WTFer:
