In Washington state, this video would be grounds for a criminal prosecution on par with with child molesting. But down south, in Portland, Oregon, it’s a super-feelgood story with online poker pro Dusty Schmidt (aka “Leatherass”) gambling for the homeless.
His schtick is playing for rent for the underprivileged, and ends up making $20k for the folks in the process:
This shoulda gone up about two-and-a-half months ago … but hey, we were busy with the November Nine and Tiger Woods was busy banging every chick in Vegas who ever said “call me!” … not to mention posing for photoshopped covers of Golf Digest with advice for Barack Obama. No wonder he didn’t have time to be smoking pot with Michael Phelps …
Still, before golf officially decided to go the degen route — or perhaps in preparation for it? — Golf Magazine ran a feature in their November issue about Phil Hellmuth, Layne Flack, Erick Lindgren, and Gavin Smith hitting the Las Vegas links, apparently foreshadowing the concept of risking big-big bucks on every hole:
Golf Magazine feature on High Stakes Poker Players Golfing
The latest and greatest from Huff and Seebs as they review the WPT Five Diamond Doyle Brunson Classic, an interview with 2009 CardPlayer POY (and new addition to Team UB Eric Baldwin) and a story on several players shaving their heads in support of Thuy Doan. Parts 2 and 3 appear on the following page:
A lot of people in the poker industry claim they know who Isildur1 is. I don’t buy any of it (yet) … because when you trace back who said what and how they knew who made who on 2+2, you realize there’s a 50-50 shot that the historic player on Full Tilt was probably in a movie with Kevin Bacon.
But PokerNews ed-honcho Matt Parvis did speak with a heavily accented Isildur1 on the phone recently, for a limited two-part interview:
In Part 1 they address the controversial session against Cardrunners Pro Brian Hastings. And though hardly seeming upset, Isildur does say he intends to file a complaint against presumed datamining violations.
In Part 2 Isildur reveals that he had been playing $200/$400 NL on different sites before coming to Full Tilt in October; he isn’t the other mysterious Swedish nosebleeder Martonas (”Martonas is honestly my enemy in poker”); he learned to play PLO only 8 months ago; durrr is good, Ivey tough; and yes, he’ll be back.
This video overwrite is almost two years old … but new to me, and kinda funny to post Hitler stuff around Christmas considering the issues emerging related to an online site’s control of a player’s funds:
(And this came out even before the maker of it could know that Joan Rivers accuse Annie Duke of being Hitler1.)
Also makes you wonder … surely there is at least one world leader out there, good or bad, who has an online poker account (or three). Brings us one step closer to the day where international trade disputes and military conflicts can be replaced by heads-up sit-n-gos …
… our new-good friends at Ksino.com, who think they’ve got just the stylish-cashz textiles for the guy who needs to be comfortable at a poker table and still be all-good should he get dragged out to a baller night at the clubs to compete against Ed Hardy douchebags for the affections of a lovely girl who may or may not know shit about how to play Ace-King but really needs another vodka-Red Bull …
Use coupon code ‘Pokerati’ for a special discount at Ksino.com,
where they’ve got shirts, jackets, hoodies, and
semi-naked pictures of Playboy bunny Jessa Lynn Hinton.
It seems like Beanie from Bluff (the website, not the magazine) isn’t the only one with data mining on his mind these days. Joining Paul in expressing their dismay over this increasingly common trend are the folks over at 2+2 who are starting an online petition to try and convince sites like Stars and Tilt to completely ban the use of TableRatings.
Which brings us to Brian Townsend, a Full Tilt Poker pro and popular CardRunners instructor who has recently learned something about bans and TableRatings. It seems that Townsend, Cole South, and Brian Hastings got together to brainstorm strategies for taking down Isilidur1 shortly before Hastings booked his incredible $4.2 million win against the Swedish phenom.
While their strategizing was in no way a violation of FTP’s Terms of Service, the fact that they poured over a Townsend-supplied database of hand histories in order to decipher Isildur’s playing patterns was — and, as a result, Townsend is now playing without his red status for 30 days. Our buddy Matt Parvis has the full story over at Poker News.
The armed robbery of what looks like probably a 5/10 game was the lead story on KXAN’s 6 pm broadcast … and they spoke to longtime friend of Pokerati (and Texas state director of the PPA) Lavigne in Austin about the robbery at the Gaines Ranch Apartments for the skinny on what’s really at stake with these masked gunmen poker things:
“From what I understand, investigators are at a stalemate,” said Commander Chris Noble with APD’s organized crime division. “The victim is not being cooperative.”
But, Mike Lavigne, the Texas State Director for the Poker Players Alliance , blames antiquated laws for the robbers’ success and the unsolved crimes.
“A lot of times people don’t even call the cops if these places get busted by a thief because it’s not legal for them to be necessarily running that room in the first place,” Lavigne said.
[...]
“It’s not seen as a crime in most parts of the world,” said Lavigne. “It just happens to be the leftovers from some old laws in Texas. It’s not clear what’s legal or illegal in our state right now.”
UPDATE: Here’s the video:
Dan and I have talked a long time about having me as a guest contributor to Pokerati, but we never could find the exact right angle. What we ultimately decided on was a discussion about online poker trends. As someone who does consulting for online poker sites and is an active member of the affiliate community, I have some insights that might be interesting and slightly outside of the scope of most of the poker discussion here.
I have been following a few threads on two plus two recently that I think could use a bit more attention. As many people know, there is a site called pokertableratings.com that data-mines all of the major online poker sites and provides visitors with charts and such. Really just enough information to whet your appetite to get you to buy some of their pirated data. For a long while they operated as a free site and, mostly, people did not mind them or feel a need to object until they started selling the data that sites like Full Tilt and PokerStars prohibit players from using.
When players are able to have access to information that they have not collected, that crosses a line. And when you know your opponents have more information than you do, it creates a temptation that puts online poker players at a crossroads similar to athletes with steroids.
This is a particularly frustrating topic for me because I am a co-developer of the Bluff Poker Software and the owner of Bluff.com. Certainly, we knew it was possible to do what TableRatings is doing, but it did not seem like a long-term winning plan to build a site that was essentially an enemy of online poker players and online poker sites. Our software (which is in Beta) allows players their own private database so they can review their play after the fact. While players can share hand histories with other people via our forums, each player is given the option to keep all of their hand histories private. We are basically a scaled down (but online) version of some of the information you get from Poker Tracker or Holdem Manager, which are programs that sites deem legal because it is your own information that you have collected.
@JessWelman has more info over at PokerNewsDaily about the new Aria poker room … and specifically some details about their highest-stakes salon/fishbowl:
Fans of Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio will be happy to hear there is an equivalent in the Aria poker room and it has already been put to use. Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, David Benyamine, Tom “durrrr” Dwan, and Patrik Antonius were all spotted playing in the secluded VIP lounge on Thursday evening, the day after the casino opened. While the room is semi-private, ogling railbirds can get a peek at their favorite high-stakes players through the glass front door. According to one of the employees at Aria, Phil Ivey is currently in talks to loan his name to the room in the same fashion that Bobby Baldwin did at the Bellagio, so news of big games being played in “Phil’s Room” could be on the horizon.
Two questions come to mind:
1. Is there enough room for two “Big Games” in this town?
2. Big-name players supporting poker rooms or poker rooms supporting big-name players?
3. What’s MGM/Mirage’s vision for poker across its competing properties?
4. When are they gonna put this highest-stakes shit on 24-hour webcam?
OK, that’s four. But hey, CityCenter is big … and so far, just a few days old, it raises more questions about Las Vegas’ future than it answers.
This one apparently happened a few days ago in Houston. They were playing 1/2 NLH/PLO (interesting game selection) … and the game was running a bit bigger than usual. According to one player who was there, about $8,000 was on the table.
It’s about 3am and i’m up about 300 when one of the guys that was smoking outside(who is definitely not in on it) comes back in with 3guys behind him wearing masks. One has a fkn assault rifle and the other a pistol pointed at the table. “Everyone get your hands and heads on the table”. “Mother fker” I say to myself as i’m complying. The game was soo good. I had my leather jacket over my lap and i shake it off and kick it to the ground under the table just hoping they wouldn’t find the $800 i had in it.
It was a semi-violent assault, with one player trying to hide a Rolex getting clocked upside the head, and the other players being duct-taped.
Apparently the mistake the bad guys made this time was stealing a car from one of the players … which made them easier to chase and track down. Before long, cops were in pursuit, a chase was on, the robbers ditched the car (a Range Rover) and fled on foot. Eventually they were caught and the money was recovered.
More details as they come-in …
NOTE: Just because Texas players are getting better at stopping the robberies doesn’t mean the robbers aren’t learning too … in this case, supposedly, the gunmen were wearing body armor.
This is the second Texas poker robbery in the past month where players chased the assailants, who would end up arrested and facing serious prison time. Travis Thomas, the 19-year-old apparent ringleader of a botched robbery of an oldtimers game in Seagoville, has a court date tomorrow. He’s charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, and faces 5-99 years in prison.
Turns out a higher-stakes game in South Austin was also hit in the past few days. This game had reportedly about $25k on the table, and unlike recent robberies outside of Dallas and in Houston, the armed bandits got away without being arrested or killed.
Lisa Wheeler, president of Greasie Wheels, a poker consultancy that specializes in charity events, says that actually, numbers are not up across the board at charity tourneys in Las Vegas and elsewhere, though thanks to a handful of players, they aren’t hurting like all get-out:
Though attendance is down, and charity poker tournament coordinators are constantly looking for creative ways to stimulate participation, poker players continue to be extremely charitable. Many who have experienced success over the years have often donated even more. It balances out the ones who are less able.
The All In for Cerebral Palsy charity tourney ran last weekend at the Hard Rock … and as any event-planning fundraiser can tell you, it’s been a little unnerving in 2009 wondering if people will actually show up to support your cause.
This was a $500 buy-in event (with $200 rebuys, an auction, and silent auction to boot) … and in the end turned out to be an arguably successful second-annual event — raising more than $58k for the One Step Closer Foundation while bettering its inaugural bar of $44k. Some 91 players competed for an $18,500 prize pool — including yours truly, who was in on a freeroll, but couldn’t resist making a tax-deductible, charitable donation to keep playing at a fun table with a PPA friend, Dennis Phillips, a CP-suffering beneficiary, and Ken Davitian (the fat naked guy from Borat) … especially with Davitian and another actor (whom I recognized but couldn’t name) being the weakest players yet having the biggest stacks as the rebuy period was coming to a close.
Alas, QQ sometimes is < AK just minutes before the break. I shook off the tilt by wandering around with a (shaky) camera to give you a glimpse of All In for CP and the Las Vegas rounders who seem to continuously show up and spur donations via fun-times feelgood poker when called upon:
Here’s a better look at the new Aria poker room in CityCenter … with Aria photos and info coming from Flipchip at LasVegasVegas:
24 tables.
Games being spread in the opening days:
1/3 NLH
2/5 NLH
5/10 NLH
4/8 Mixed (Badugi, 2-7, Razz, Stud 8, O8)
100/200 PLO
NOTE: According to @LasVegasMichael, while this room was absolutely packed throughout the evening, the games totally died by morning, with only two 1/2 tables, and some heads-up 2/5 going on shortly after sunrise this morn.
Perhaps to be expected on an overall slow Vegas weekend, in a room without a loyal following yet, with most of the players being just passersby?
The ARIA poker room, at CityCenter, along with the rest of the casino around it, is now open for business. Here’s a picture of last night’s festivities, celebrating the addition of 4,000 more hotel rooms to the relatively unoccupied Strip:
The AP reports some guy named “Daniel” was the first person to sign up for action — putting his name on an interest list for 1/2 no-limit hold’em two hours before ARIA opened for business at midnight.
Now that all the multibillion-dollar pomp and circumstance is over (ha) … low-stakes Vegas pokerers may want to head to the Hard Rock, where we’ve got a Pokerati 1/2 game (nlh/plo round of each, w/ automatic run-it-twice) getting underway tonight at 7 pm. #MoreFireworks
UPDATE: The Pokerati Hard Rock game made a full table … even has a very brief wait for seats, but broke by 11 pm. Everyone was headed to Aria … where there supposedly “like 37 tables!” all full with a $1/$3 waiting list some 30something deep. I guess people really like new shiny things.
RE-UPDATE: Here’s more on the Aria, with specifics about their poker room, from Gaming Today:
The entire race and sports books is located in its own wing near the north entrance of ARIA, which also features the casino’s poker room.Poker Room Manager Adam Altwies has created a beautiful room with 24 tables, 18 of them located on the main floor, with five in a high-limit alcove and one reserved for an exclusive VIP room.
The room is designed so players have plenty of elbow room, with comfortable chairs and food and beverage service available.
A nice touch is the Genesis-Bravo reservation system, which allows the poker room to summons the guest through a text message to his cell phone, rather than using some of the pager-type systems.
After a delay when an original schedule was “leaked”, the 2010 WSOP Schedule is now online with 57 bracelet events. The WSOP starts with a doubleheader on Friday, May 28th with the $500 Casino Employees Event starting at 12 noon, followed by the $50,000 Players’ Championship, which will be an 8-game mix (HORSE, NL Holdem, Pot-limit Omaha and 2-7 Triple Draw). The final table will consist of No-Limit holdem only.
The full schedule, with structure sheets are now online at the wsop.com site.
For other details regarding the 2010 WSOP:
Here’s this week’s episode, with a report from the WPT Five Diamond Classic, a Mike Sexton interview, and other stuff. Per usual, parts 2 and 3 appear on the next page:
From EGRmagazine.com comes word that lawyers from the state of Kentucky filed a motion add additional US citizens and companies to the list of 141 domains the state has been attempting to seize since September 2008. This is an interesting development since a decision from the Kentucky Supreme Court is expected soon from the October hearing appealing KY’s Court of Appeals decision to prevent the seizure. No names or companies were mentioned in the motion, requesting a hearing on January 20 before Franklin County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate, who granted the request for seizure. More details as they become available.
ESPN.com’s Andrew Feldman and Bernard Lee co-host the last Inside Deal episode of the year, discussing the news in the poker world over the past few weeks and a visit from 2009 World Champion Joe Cada. The good news is the web series will continue in 2010.
The NBA has long been in line with the NFL when it comes to publicly opposing betting on their games — especially since one of their refs got so deep into it with shady non-legal sports-betting types that it may or may not have jeopardized the purity of his calls.
However, it turns out that busting bad guy Tim Donaghy has had the NBA taking a closer look at sports betting and seeing some new realities … perhaps.
While the league’s seemingly softening stance gets Las Vegas excited about the possibility of having its own franchise some day (the NFL still says no way, not never!) the discussion has now been opened up in the sports betting world for the possibility of “nationally legalized gambling” on the NBA.
I don’t even need to waste your time pointing out how obviously connected this is to anti-UIGEA efforts, right? Good to see the big-league sports media embracing PPA talking points … and at least one big-league honcho open to changing a long-held anti-gambling position.
Click here to read SI’s discussion with David Stern on where fully legal gambling may or may not fit in the future.
Perhaps inspired by Wicked Chops’ telling him to please stop, Jeff Madsen apparently has rented 8 Mile and/or got laid this weekend:
ALT HED: Poor Girl
Man, 2009 sure has been a year full of lawsuits, no? People seem to need money these, and I suppose they gotta find it somewhere … and that may or may not alter their perception of who really owes what to whom. Beyond the frivolous, sometimes the big guy screwed the little guy, other times the little-guy with big-money poker dreams (but little experience in poker) defrauded backers and/or customers, and other times plans just didn’t work, and the parties can’t seem to agree on what they agreed on.
In this situation, Guardian Gaming is suing Montel Williams and the International Team Poker League in federal court over a $300k apparently investment gone awry.
The plan called for a team tournament concept attached to live casino events and a (new) online poker site. I dunno … sounds to me a little like the Poker Bowl meets WorldPokerParty.com, maybe with a dash of Sports Legends Challenge?
Without looking too deeply into the Montel case, we can tell you:
Unconfirmed … but that’s the word we’re spreading, based on possibly drinky information from a semi-reliable source, a presumably reliable source, and a plausibly reliable source.
The status of PokerPages has been up in the air ever since they announced they’d be closing up shop effective Oct. 31. That day passed and they still kept publishing — and even sent two reporters to cover the November Nine. But no original content has been put up on the site since Dec. 3. Everyone was expecting some sort of sale, and now that has apparently gone through.
PokerPages, of course, is one of the oldest poker information sites on the internet – having reported on tournaments since 2000 … and having built a massive tourney/player/results database in the process.
What PokerStars plans to do with a site they haven’t yet told many people they’ve bought (or intend to buy) remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, the transition from NeverwinPoker to Donkdown seems complete — with the old NWP forums successfully transfered over to their new home. Donkdown is now a Bryan Micon and Todd Witteles (aka “Dan Druff”) joint, with no more Tony G or Dustin Woolf, who is now the lone face for his namesake site.
Speaking of forums … 2+2 honcho Mason Malmuth has sued Dutch Boyd (and a guy named Anthony Scocozza) over domain squatting issues.
Oh, and our once-superbeloved PokerBlog.com … yeah, they’re apparently gone. For at least the past week, visiting the site gives you this message:
Fatal error: Table ‘./pokerblog/cache’ is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: SELECT data, created, headers FROM cache WHERE cid = ‘variables’ in /home/pokerblogcom/public_html/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 66
R.I.P. Yeah, seems kinda appropriate. PokerBlog was/is a PartyPoker operation … but now they seem to be focussing blogging efforts on their more official company blog.
UPDATE: PokerBlog is back. Looks like we can expect some WPT coverage there.
Speaking of the M Resort … Wow, not sure how all the #WPBT bloggers in town missed this (ha!) … the lighting this weekend of the biggest (cut) Christmas tree in the USA. Seriously, it was going on right down the street and yet the idea of going South for free hot chocolate and Christmas caroling never came up once!
The 109-feet-tall, 11-ton White Fir from Oregon may be the biggest bush in town, but I guess it’s still not large enough to be seen from inside the Imperial Palace Geisha bar.
See how this recent addition at the very bottom of the Las Vegas Strip stacks compares to other arboreal monster stacks here.
This (long) weekend’s #WPBT festivities are coming to a close … and as I type the poker bloggers are gathered for Sunday football at Lagasse’s Stadium in the Palazzo. There some of them are experiencing, for the first time, what many say is the future of gambling: handheld, semi-portable real-money action.
A new-ish device, “eDeck”, lets you gamble Blackberry/iPhone-style theoretically from anywhere, but currently within the confines of three Las Vegas casinos — the Venetian, Palazzo, and M Resort. Global Gaming Business Magazine named it Best Table Game Product or Innovation for 2009. And none other than Doyle Brunson has been pimping it:
Another in a long line of poker related songs comes from Phil Bellante who’s hoping to parlay his appearing on ESPN.com’s Poker Edge podcast with Phil Gordon and Andrew Feldman into a few sales of his song “All In”. Here’s Phil performing his song live at the Adams Avenue Street Fair in San Diego back in September:
You can get more info on a website dedicated to the song as it appears it’ll be getting exposure on other poker programming in the coming months.
Check it out … Phil Gordon (”dean” of the Full Tilt Academy) sits down with one of Isildur’s key opponents, Patrik Antonius, to discuss what’s really going on in these highest-stakes online games vs. the biggest mystery opponent of 2009/in history.
Part 1 is an 18-minute interview where they discuss the Isildur1 phenomenon, the advantages of playing anonymously, and other matters relevant to those risking six- and seven-figure sums against him.
Part 2 gives nearly 30 minutes of actual hand analysis where Antonius discusses what was going through his mind at the time.
A clip from the CNBC program:
And here’s the CNBC press release:
CNBC Original Reported by CNBC’s Melissa Francis to Premiere on Wednesday, December 16th at 9PM ET/PT on CNBC
ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., December 10, 2009-Beyond the Las Vegas strip there’s a thriving underworld of illegal gambling. It’s a multi-billion dollar business and millions of Americans are in on the action…
On Wednesday, December 16th at 9PM ET/PT, CNBC presents “CNBC Investigates: The Big Business of Illegal Gambling,” a CNBC Original reported by CNBC’s Melissa Francis that takes viewers inside this high-stakes business that brings some people immense wealth, while others pay the ultimate price.
This week, featuring Phil Hellmuth in studio for an interview, a preview of the WPT Doyle Brunson Classic at the Bellagio, Chino Rheem (the defending champion) discussing a key hand with Justin Young, and other stuff. As usual, parts 2 and 3 appear on the next page:
The charity poker season here in Vegas is in full holiday swing. And one of the bigger tournaments (celebrity-wise) is this Saturday — the second annual All In for CP at the Hard Rock. (More info here via Facebook.)
It has a $550 buy-in (with $200 rebuys through the first hour). Early RSVPs include the likes of Doyle Brunson and the usual crew of high-stakes Las Vegas charity-circuit rounders, along with Phil Laak, Sam Simon, Jennifer Tilly, and others. Here’s a video invitation from Tilly, with more details about the tournament itself.
This event is put on by everybody’s favorite omnipresent scooter-rider at the WSOP, Jacob Zalewski, and raises money for his One Step Closer Foundation’s fight to make life easier for Cerebral Palsey sufferers like Terrance, featured in the video below:
Everybody likes a sneak peak into high-roller hotel rooms … and this YouTube vid gives more than a glimpse of the Bruce Willis and Marilyn Monroe suites at Planet Hollywood. PHo’s poker room is under new management, btw, that seems to be working hard to bring good, friendly customer-servicey low-stakes action ever since their previous management team turned out to be a bunch of (alleged) crooks:
Back in the day, you know, like 2007, rooms like these — with amazing views, foosball, and a bidet — were reserved for people willing to pay a few thousand a night or gamble with 10s of thousands. Now, as 2009 comes to a (bittersweet?) close, such suites are being given away for free to semi-famous YouTube bloggers who know a guy who knows a guy who once worked at Best Buy and sold stereo equipment to a previous high-roller with leftover comp points.
Economy prediction: Bargain luxe + favors will be hot in 2010, too.
For the past two months, Phil Ivey, Durr, Gus Hansen, Patrik Antonius and the online phenom/enigma known as Isildur1 have been playing some of the most outrageous poker we’ve ever seen at what can only be described as nosebleed-level stakes.
The question is, with millions of dollars being shifted around each session - or hand, as the case may be - how much longer can they keep these remarkable games going without any fresh fish at the table? Our friend Bill Rini thinks the answer is not much longer.
That’s what the now-22-year-old WSOP Champ is doing today … meeting with Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) to help push Barney Frank’s legislation.
While Jim McManus is preaching All-American poker goodness to the presumably liberal academic NPR set, Rich Muny (aka @TheEngineer2008) has taken it upon himself to address non-poker conservatives.
His latest missive on BigGovernment.com is a good one that puts online poker restrictions in the context of the 18th Amendment. And while yeah-yeah, we all know (most of) this stuff already, check out the 87 (!) comments to see how this key audience is grappling with the notion of creating a bureaucracy in the name of less government intrusion.
More kids and poker, man … it was gonna be an issue anyhow, and Joe Cada’s WSOP win maybe made it even more so. I got an email from a student at Rollins University who’s doing a paper for his English Composition class on something that has indeed become if not a hot topic, a warmer than usual one on college campuses across the U.S.
Below are the questions Tyler in Winter Park, FL, sent me. While #1 is probably the hardest to answer — and ahh, the memories brought back by #2 — I think it’s interesting to see where his thinking is coming from … how the internet is obviously part of the issue, but not nearly all of it … and in general, the starting perception that gambling is a “problem”.
Questions
1.What is your profession?
2. Did you gamble in college?
3.How do you feel college administrations should address this problem? Do we need more awareness or intervention programs on campus?
4.Do you think this is a serious/risky problem for college students today? Why? Does the internet play a major role?
5. Can you comment on these areas of my argument
-Gambling can lead to addiction (colleges already educate on alcohol and drug addiction)
-Gambling can lead to risky behavior (financial problems, crime etc)
-Gambling can negatively affect academic progress
There was a little referendum this weekend that puts some more poker on the map in Darvin Moon Country …
Jefferson County, WV, approved “table games” — including blackjack, craps, roulette, three-card poker, and real poker — at the sure-to-be-renamed Charles Town Race and Slots. In fact, the poker room will likely open before the rest of the new-and-improved “racino” … with cards looking to get in the air by June 2010. The big cities likely to be feeding it players are Baltimore and Washington, DC.
It was a close-ish vote landslide victory, with 6,279 out of 10,622 votes cast supporting the measure — enough for poker to win in 29 out of 32 precincts.
Jefferson County had put the same issue to a vote in 2007 and it lost. Watch the commercial(s) below to see how one race track with a need for gambling was able to make a poker difference:
And though it’s not mentioned in the ads, on the go-table-games website ( http://www.yesforjeffersoncounty.com ) they do discuss competition from neighboring states as one of the reasons they needed to act now. Indeed, though Pennsylvania legislators have been dilly-dallying for nearly a year on their poker expansion, their House will be debating the practicalities of expanding gambling (in a way that includes poker) today.
Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, a Pennsylvania company got the contract to supply all the tables to Charles Town.
ALT HED: Poker = Jobs
The Poker PROducers showing they can feed the poker die-hards:
This week, and next, Poker After Dark is forgoing its usual $20,000 short-handed sit-n-go (yawn) for a Full Tilty high-stakes cash game with a $100k min and $250k max buy-in. (No rebuys maybe? Not sure … ). The players: Tom Dwan, Patrik Antonius, Phil Ivey, and Gus Hansen + Daniel Negreanu (representing PokerStars) and Phil Hellmuth thrown in for good measure.
I’m guessing Mori Eskandani doesn’t know who Isildur1 is either?
While PAD generally makes solid stumble-upon viewing, it’s been a while since they’ve assembled such a unique game that should play as real what everyone’s been watching on their computer screens lately. Sounds like there should be a lot of interesting (big) hands … and you gotta wonder just how much at least four of these people really want to give up about their cash-game play under the watchful eye of the hole-card cam.
I also wonder: would they ever do a similar show with the game being Omaha? The biggest hands (in history) these days seem to be playing out mostly in PLO … but conventional poker wisdom says, supposedly, that non-Texas hold’em doesn’t play well on TV.
I gotta say, I was kinda tickled when Hank Gilbert, a Democratic candidate for Texas Governor, chose Pokerati as the place to first publish his op-ed in which he declared not only his staunch support for fully legal poker in Texas, but also expressed a commitment to making gambling a significant issue in the upcoming governor’s race.
But alas … from the also poker-friendly Kinky Friedman’s Facebook page:
Texans For Kinky 2010 Here: Hank Gilbert has stepped down from the Democratic Primary Governor’s race. We welcome all of Hank Gilbert’s supporters to join Texans for Kinky 2010. Together we can make power to the people a reality.
Turns out that Hank has decided to run for a more powerful position in Texas politics — agricultural commissioner. Here’s his website. And though the Hankster has thrown his support to Farouk Shami, here is Kinky Friedman’s book-selling gubernatorial campaign website.
Check it out … the New York Times Book Review, as part of a holiday gift guide, have put out their “100 Notable Books of 2009“ … and making the list is Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker by Jim McManus.
Of those 100, 55 are non-fiction. Cowboys Full sits between ‘A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent’ by Robert Merry, and ‘Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression’ by Morris Dickstein. Granted, the list is alphabetical, but still …
Take a look at the excerpt the NYT ran last month — titled “Pokertician“. Considering all the good recent press poker has gotten from the likes of the Times, the Wall Street Journal, the National Journal, NPR, et al, you can see how McManus’ book — and his or his publisher’s attached promotional efforts, of course — has done more in 2009 to spread contemporary poker ideology to America’s liberal elitist intellectual set than any press release from PokerStars ever could.
(No offense, Matt, just sayin’ …)
Of course the NYT’s review of McManus’ book is hedlined the (”The Cheating Game“) … so maybe that’s a reminder that despite efforts that may seem to legitimize poker pursuits, the game still will always be thought of as … similar to dieting and matrimony? If so, that might explain why this tome — currently ranked in the Top 500 on Amazon — has apparently struck a chord with at least a few people who aren’t otherwise thinking ’bout poker.
. No one’s paying us to say that, but Pokerati will earn at least $0.14 if you do.
Bumping as a reminder of tonight’s tournament:
Tournament ID: 121607994
Title: Justin Shronk Memorial Tourney
Game: NLHE
Buy-In: $5+$5
Starts: Sunday, December 6 at 18:00 server time (6 p.m. EST, 3 p.m PST)
Password: Justin Shronk
Half of the buyin goes towards the Justin Shronk Memorial Fund at the Temple University School of Communications And Theater (SCT).
The first thing that caught my eye when I saw the cover of the new issue of National Journal was the hand: Obama already has Jacks-or-better, but could also be drawing to an inside straight. Great artistic display of poker metaphor … and I can’t believe, after more than six years since Moneymaker, someone has finally posed a hand as something other than a royal flush. That in and of itself tells me the story’s gonna be good … as the editor clearly understands a little something about politics and poker.
Once and future NJ subscribers can click here:
Or click below to read (the full text from) an email that has been floated through the poker-political ether:
Finally, someone asked President Barack Obama semi-directly about gambling legalization. The college-student questioner didn’t specify online gambling, and he lumped us in with drugs, prostitution, and other non-violent crime with revenue generating potential.
But it does give a little insight suggesting that we probably shouldn’t expect President O to wholeheartedly support the efforts of Barney Frank et al.
ALT HED 1: Come on, Flip-Flop!
ALT HED 2: Is that Isildur?
Free Pokerati T-shirt to anyone (college student or otherwise) who can get an on-the-record audience with the Prez and can ask essentially the same question, but being a little more specific about “online gambling”. Throw a few government stats in there, too, and phrase it in a way that allows less generic wiggle room.
(Or not. Maybe now we know we don’t want Obama getting involved in our issue?)
Here’s this week’s episode, discussing the delay of the UIGEA, an interview with John Pappas of the PPA and other stuff. Parts 2 and 3 appear on the next page.
I may or may not be talking about this morning’s House Financial Services Committee hearing on today’s episode of The Poker Beat … so that’s why I’m up listening/watching/clicking. It’s kinda a big deal, I think … we got our 6-month extension on the enforcement deadline, and now, here in Barney Frank’s committee, the good rep is basically (re-re-re?)-reintroducing legislation that could effectively undo the UIGEA.
Here’s what I’m watching. Follow along if you we can …
* Yikes, video is great - HD! - but audio sucks, like irritatingly buzzy and scratchy.
* Barney’s opening argument … personal freedom. On the internet.
* He quotes John Stewart John Stuart Mill.
* Holy shit, you can pause this video? Like even without Tivo … awesome. I’ll be right back … need to get a beverage …
* OK, I’m back. While I was gone a press release came over the wire … apparently something that will be introduced forthcoming:
(h/t to Oldbookguy over at 2+2):
Thursday is the hearing in the Barney Frank-led House Financial Services Committee in regards to regulating online gambling.
Witness List & Prepared Testimony:
You can watch the proceedings over at this link
Dec 3 - 10:00 AM ET
The Honorable Robert Martin, Tribal Chairman, Morongo Band of Mission Indians
Ms. Parry Aftab, Executive Director, WiredSafety
Professor Malcolm K. Sparrow, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Mr. Keith S. Whyte, Executive Director, National Council on Problem Gambling
Mr. Jim Dowling, Dowling Advisory Group
Mr. Samuel A. Vallandingham, Chief Information Officer and Vice President, The First State Bank on behalf of the Independent Community Bankers of America
Mr. Mike Brodsky, Executive Chairman, Youbet.com
You can read the testimony for each person at the PPA site.
