Hey, I coined a phrase!

http://wordlust.blogspot.com/2009/04/politi-dude.html

Glad to see that all these years of compensating for my limited vocabulary with hyphens has finally paid off. High on the glory and power of being recognized for my creative typing by non-poker strangers, expect many failed attempts to repeat myself to ensue.

In the meantime, enjoy all sorts of useful yet unScrabbleable words here.

This week it’s a new lineup of players on High Stakes Poker, as the Day 2 taping series of shows begins with Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Laak, Sam Simon, Nick Cassavettes, Daniel Negreanu, Patrik Antonius, Howard Lederer and Joe Hachem trying to take each other’s money. Again, this week’s show was put up on Youtube by GSN in 3 parts, and appears to be missing a segment as it’s shorter than previous weeks.

Twitter or csr … That is the question! (playing 1-2 at golden nugget while reading my own article in bluff.)

It’s the question running amok in blogging circles. It plagues readers’ innermost thoughts and causes rampant speculation. What am I having for lunch today? Where is California Jen?

I’ve been here and there, but over the past two weeks, I’ve been relatively consumed with the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) on PokerStars as part of the event blogging team assigned with recapping the 22 events and 66 tournaments. And today is the grand finale – Day 2 of each of the main events. Readers can follow the events at the tables or via our live blog. On the menu today is:

$10,300 Main Event, hosted by Short-Stacked Shamus and Yours Truly

$1,050 Main Event, hosted by Spaceman and Drizz

$109 Main Event, hosted by F-Train and Tuscaloosa Johnny

It was a not-so-happy Easter for one family a few houses from Pokerati’s LV headquarters, where some foreclosures are proving to be messier than others. Not sure how exactly it all went down, but big trucks arrived at 7 am, along with some angry door knockers … the occupants either ran off or were chased off … it coulda been a rental boot — where the owner gets foreclosed on, and the tenants, who may well have been paying rent on time, are suddenly on the streets. Whatever it was, there was lots of early-morning screaming and children crying, suggesting it was not an amicable move-out. Of the dozen or so “aggressive evictions” in Pokerati’s tiny 4-block compound over the past year, few have ended with furniture being tossed from windows. There are stories in some neighborhoods of angry former-owners absolutely trashing their places before they depart — like busting drywall and smashing cabinetry — so the bank takes over a place that is practically totaled … and other stories of people pouring cement down their toilets to destroy plumbing systems.

Anyhow, while visitors to the Strip may be noticing slightly smaller crowds and cheaper prices, this is what’s been going on for the past year or so in the areas where the people who work the Strip live. Even if you’re not subject to some component of it — and I don’t really know anyone who hasn’t been in some capacity — there’s so much tilt in this town right now … every once in a while someone just loses it.

More…

A gaming columnist for the LVRJ agrees with BJ … don’t expect changes to online gambling laws anytime soon, simply because Congress is busy with more pressing matters:

After checking with Washington, D.C., lobbyist contacts and casino company operators dialed into Capitol Hill, Simkins put steep odds on the issue seeing any light.

“We see little reason for investors to try to play this near-term,” Simkins said.

Meanwhile, I had almost forgotten there was an internet gambling bill pending in Texas … an effort to make the Texas Lotto playable online. (Ha! Just wait til Texas banks try to transfer that money around.) From the Beaumont Enterprise:

PRO:

Internet gambling might seem like a big step to some Texans, but it’s not. More and more of our modern society is moving to the Internet, from shopping to news to entertainment. Gambling is part of this matrix. There’s no logical reason to wall off the ‘net from something that’s clearly popular with millions of consumers.

CON:

OUR VIEW: NO INTERNET GAMBLING FOR TEXAS
Internet gambling, especially when targeted at young adults, would cross a moral line that Texas needs to stay away from. That makes gambling a little too easy. It increases the chances that compulsive gamblers would waste money and establish bad gambling patterns for young adults.

OK, fair enough … you’re entitled to your moralist point of view, despite what statistics suggest. In fact, I’ll even assure you that it absolutely WILL be harmful to compulsive gamblers … which represent .6 percent of people online . How ’bout we compromise? We’ll say no to playing the Texas lottery on the internet if you say yes to brick-and-mortar poker rooms? Cool? Awesome … cool.

Politics is so easy.

Mitch Garber, soon-to-be overlord of WSOP.com?

A small story in the London Times that’s actually kinda a big deal in the world of poker news:

Harrah’s has formed a new company that will oversee its web operations AND the World Series of Poker. The person who will reportedly be at the helm of this new major poker entity: Dan Michalski of Pokerati.com! Mitch Garber, former CEO of Party Gaming.

Meanwhile, with Party’s non-prosecution agreements with the US DOJ now in place, details are emerging about conscious efforts made by at least one online poker company to circumvent the obstacles of gray grey US law:

Unmasked -how gaming group hid ‘illegal’ US bets

Great, now the dot-net secret is out …

Gvr 1-2, 200, 1.5, 0, 500, 0 … Woot! Love sobering up at gvr!

I love sobering up at the green valley ranch poker room. Woot!

at green valley ranch. Jeff madsen is telling a masseuse hes a rapper. Not sure whos a bigger douche, him or me for twittering it

In one of the most unique episodes of Perspectives Weekly ever, we discuss major industry news as former Bet on Sports CEO David Carruthers enters a plea in St. Louis. Plus, we follow-up on Party Gaming’s deal with the US Department of Justice, and the National Footbal League’s takes a strategic aim at our industry.

Great new rule at Bellagio…you can text at tournament table as long as you aren’t in a hand.

The April 9th edition of The Poker Beat included a discussion about the possibility of poker legislation that would repeal the UIGEA, allowing companies like PartyPoker back into the U.S. Dan (the Wolfman?) made some solid arguments, but when he mentioned that Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has the know-how to slyly attach pro-gaming legislation to another sure-thing bill to get it passed, he may not have been aware that Frank has declared his intent to complete the mission of repealing the UIGEA not with political trickery but rather a stand-alone bill.

In a conversation with The Hill, Frank said that attaching his bill to other legislation — as was done with the UIGEA — would be “inappropriate.”

“I want to do this with hearings, discussions, and votes,” he said.

While Frank’s desire to handle it on the House floor as opposed to in the back hallways is being praised by some, others see it as dangerous to the bill, as an intense focus/debate on it could make it more difficult to pass.

Let’s think about this for a moment. Frank has been on UIGEA-tilt since 2006, as was evident by his introduction of H.R. 2046, the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act (IGREA), in April of 2007. He has likely been calculating the best way to repeal the UIGEA after fighting against it since its passage, and his decision to reintroduce H.R. 2046 as a standalone was not made lightly. Could he have some Republican aces up his sleeve? Does the recently-quiet PPA have a master plan to garner support for the bill? All of this remains to be seen, but methinks Frank would not have been so vocal – to mainstream media nonetheless – since January of his intention to repeal the UIGEA if he did not have a solid plan with which to proceed … which at this point, he is saying begins after Congress returns from their Easter break on April 20th.

On today’s episode of The Poker Beat, BJ and I lightly sparred about the significance of Party Gaming’s $100+ million settlement with the US Department of Justice. I’m pretty sure I beat him in everyone’s mind but his own … but still, I also know I got a few things wrong that might unsettle the Insider, so it’s good to know the Washington Post pretty much agrees with my take on the fluid situation:

Today’s news sent online gambling stocks soaring overseas. That’s because some financial analysts see the settlement as possibly leading to others, thus reducing uncertainty in the industry and opening the door to industry consolidation and expansion outside the U.S

Moreover, it’s taken some hard work to educate the masses on our semi-complex issue, but it’s good to see the message the (super-influential) non-poker media is putting out there:

… some legal scholars and Internet gambling proponents see the government crackdown as a disconnect between 21st-century technology and the 20th-century laws used to protect Americans from gambling.

The Justice position is considered controversial with some members of Congress and gaming analysts arguing it has steered U.S. players to unregulated offshore sites. “The U.S. government has now succeeded in driving out the reputable publicly-traded Internet gaming operators,” said Joseph M. Kelley, a professor of business law at the State College at Buffalo, who has also served as an expert witness for gaming and government interests. “It has not decreased online gambling, but has reduced the ability to monitor suspicious transactions.”

I never woulda expected to find such a thoughtful commentary on the role and position of women in the pervy world of poker (as discovered via Google image searches) on a porn blog:

http://asses.fucking4utoo.com/?p=242

Believe it or not, the above link is pretty close to SFW … if you excuse the blog’s subtitle.