Clonie Gowen filed an amended complaint in her lawsuit against Full Tilt Poker last month, according to Pokerlistings. The complaint added two additional defendants (Pocket Kings Consulting and Tiltproof) as well as adding seven causes of action in a response to the defendant’s motion to dismiss.

Those interested in reading the case can read the amended complaint and her motion for expedited discovery over at Scribd.com:

Amended Complaint
Motion for Expedited Discovery

From Monday’s Late Show with David Letterman:

Short-Stacked Shamus has a good writeup on the clip.

From The Guardian: Betfair takes a £35m punt on American racing channel

Betfair, of course, sponsors WSOP-Europe. And they’re willing to take a $50 million gamble on their being able to somehow facilitate bets among American horse race fans? Very interesting …

Interesting story out of Detroit, about a struggling horse track (and thriving bowling alleys) suddenly offering No-Limit Texas Hold’em … thanks to a little legally creative finagling that allows third-party fundraisers to run poker games to benefit properly accredited tax-exempt endeavors.

You follow? Basically they’re taking something akin to the old Red Men’s model … run a game, make sure some charity really does get a cut … and making it fit within Michigan law. Presumably inspired by the recent success in Florida with poker rooms in race tracks.

They’re limited to running games four days at a stretch, so each week is technically a different event, with a different charitable recipient. The first beneficiary was a high school theater club. Should be interesting to see who lines up to get in on the action.

UPDATE: Though the above news article is only a couple hours old, according to the Northville Downs website, they’ll be running games 7 days a week starting, um, tomorrow.

Here’re more specifics about the charity hold’em set-up in Northville, and for folks in Texas and other states fighting to play the game above-ground … a glimpse of what even barely legal poker could look like. You’ll NOTE: It’s not just NLH … they’ve got a $1/$2 Hold’em/Omaha round-of-each game, and $3/$6 Omaha Hi-Lo.

NEATO: Northville is an outer Detroit suburb, and the new poker room is located right off 8 Mile road — Eminem’s hood! (Or at least his street.)

UPDATE UPDATE: OK, really, I had no idea how much charity poker action there was in Michigan. Check it out. So I guess what’s new is just that the horse tracks are finally getting on board, realizing the slot machines and/or “video lottery terminals” they’ve been fighting for just may never come. Lesson for Texas horse tracks?

I’ve been thinking more and more about the current economic conditions … I hear more stories of old friends getting laid off — especially those who worked for newspapers — and it occurred to me that the frequency is resembling the Vegas foreclosure scene a year ago. And with that in mind, yikes, like they’ve been telling us, things are gonna get worse. My newly un self-employed friends are all enjoying the days off now, but we all know the status of most Americans’ savings … it ain’t gonna last long, and when these folks suddenly have no more money to spend … ouch.

Anyhow, it’s all about more than poker, and yet at the same time, this has me feeling so good about various poker bills’ prospects, specifically in 2009. I mean really, how will any non-zeaot be able to say no to the money? And to that extent, as much of a semi-crazy coot as he is … you gotta love having Barney Frank (D-MA) on our side. From a Huffington Post on bailed-out bankers (the folks currently charged with enforcing the UIGEA, btw) being called to the Congressional woodshed (emph. added):

For Frank and other backers of the bailout, known as TARP, or the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the problem is that its purpose is to prevent a total collapse of the global financial system. Because of the way politics works, it’s difficult to get credit for preventing harm rather than doing good.

“It’s like wearing dark pants and pissing down your leg,” Frank said before the bailout vote in October. “It gives you a warm feeling, but no one knows you did it.”

Are we sure this Massachusetts flaming liberal isn’t a good-ole-boy from Texas?

As Dan mentioned during his Poker Beat podcast debut last week, former New York Senator Alfonse D’Amato is on the case of the UIGEA in Washington, D.C. He published a piece in Roll Call, the magazine of Capitol Hill, in which he points to online poker – and the billions of dollars in revenue potential – as a potential source of revenue for the economically-challenged U.S. government. It’s worth reprinting here, not because of the message that went out to the politically-minded last week, but because it shows that the Poker Players Alliance is working behind the scenes in D.C. It might be worth it to be patient with the PPA during this time of relative silence, as they may just have a few aces up their sleeves.

Here is the article in full:

The New Deal: Regulate and Tax iPoker
By Alfonse D’Amato
Special to Roll Call
January 27, 2009, 4:21 p.m.

As the Obama administration and the new Congress evaluate their policy priorities, they cannot ignore the significant challenge to fund these programs given our nation’s financial situation. Our new leaders have been dealt a struggling economy, and even President Barack Obama can agree that tax increases to pay for his agenda won’t reveal the winning hand, politically or practically. A possible solution, however, is not out of reach. Our new president needs only to look at his favored form of skillful avocation: poker.

Yes, I said poker. While business leaders and politicians debate how much, or how little, we should regulate the business community, the online poker industry and the millions of Americans who play on the Internet have been crying out for regulation and taxation. The absence of government regulation, and in fact the quixotic efforts to ban Internet poker, has left U.S. consumers vulnerable and left billions in potential tax revenue on the virtual poker table.

More…

Though I’m not yet ready to declare football the new poker — or sports wagering for that matter — it is now safe to tell you about my dominance in something called U Pick’em.

You may recall a post a while back about the heated non-poker competition in the Michalski family, where I was proving my prowess as a no-spread football picker. Of course in the week right after that post, I totally tanked — dropping dramatically on the family leaderboard and several percentage points nationwide.

But as in poker and life, you’ve gotta play 60 minutes of football! … And with that (as well as the knowledge that I probably shouldn’t post about my non-poker greatness) I clawed my way back to the top. With a last-minute switch to the Pittsburgh Steelers yesterday, my end results for the 2008 NFL season:

Nationwide: 277th out of 145,498
For people playing through the LVRJ: 33rd out of 9,727
Michalski family: Tied for 1st out of 13

Total winners picked: 176 out of 266 (66 %)

So clearly, I need to develop a sports-betting habit in 2009 to make up for all my rivers that don’t hit in poker.

Got a press announcement about a week ago:

WORLD SERIES OF POKER EUROPE DEBUTS SUNDAY, FEB. 1 ON ESPN
ESPN’s first ever coverage of the World Series of Poker Europe will begin on Sunday, Feb. 1 with the first four episodes beginning at 6 p.m. ET, followed by an encore presentation of episodes 1 and 2 on ESPN2 at 10 p.m., co-hosted by Lon McEachern and Norman Chad.

I figured, cool … new WSOP events that really I knew nothing about … would be just like old times. They should be able to do a pretty good editing job on this one, too — with way more time than production crews had for the November Nine. But I wasn’t able to put 2+2 together to realize that ESPN decided to debut the WSOP-E up against the Super Bowl! So it’s on right now. Anyone watching?

As they say in Britain … Brilliant!

UPDATE: So what’s up with the Euros laying out the flop one card at a time? That doesn’t seem right, does it?