First, a link from the San Antonio Express-News showing that our efforts to legalize poker in Texas are taking hold:

Legalized poker rooms in Texas closer to a reality

And in Florida, which is in the midst of its own mini-poker boom after legalizing the game a couple years ago, is continuing to improve the game, pushing forth legislation to raise cash-game limits and allow for bigger buy-in tourneys:

Florida House plan raises poker stakes

What’s particularly interesting about Florida isn’t so much the poker, but the tax-tweaking related to it. And with that, the ussual opposition seems to be taking a different tack:

The House plans to expand poker and lower the tax rate are paired with an effort to shut down blackjack tables at Seminole resorts.

Fellow Republicans in the state Senate, though, have a different vision. To maximize revenues, senators want to authorize full casinos at Seminole resorts, complete with craps and roulette, as well as blackjack at South Florida tracks and bingo-style slots at facilities across the state. The Senate goes even farther than the House, allowing no-limit poker wagering.

Meanwhile, a pretty good summary of gambling-related initiatives in Texas comes from an email sent out by our opposition in the Christian Life Coalition. And the poli-blogger who subscribes acknowledges that while he is plausibly opposed to much that has to do with expanded gambling in the state, he still endorses Jose Menendez’s HB 222:

Of all the various gambling expansion options I’ve seen, allowing for poker seems to me to be the most sensible and least potentially harmful. Plus, as a bridge player who has had the chance to play for money legally, I think poker is a legitimate game of skill and should be treated as such. In fact, poker players in Pennsylvania and South Carolina recently won court rulings that agreed poker is a game of skill. As such, it’s not clear to me that the AG’s opinion would agree with the CLC about the inherent level of chance here. Of course, I Am Not A Lawyer, and Lord only knows what Greg Abbott will do.

Yeah. People are starting to get it. Go Poker!

No details yet … just an unsubstantiated report. More info sure to emerge:

http://www.aintluck.com/clonie-gowens-claims-dismissed-against-full-tilt/

UPDATE: And that “more info” is that someone misread a legal document and pressed “publish”. LOL! If I had a dime for every time I did that I’d have at least a nickel! … April 27th still the next relevant legal date.

Recorded the latest episode of The Poker Beat today … episode is already up. On the show a few weeks ago, we had a spirited discussion about the oh-so-important role of Lady Gaga in poker, and there I was semi-mocked for acknowledging I have a whole playlist on my iPod of just-poker music.

Though the new “All In” song by The Grouch and Eligh (w/ Pigeon John) isn’t included in my public playlist — along with a few other tunes I haven’t yet paid full price for — thought I’d share it with you in case you’re looking to fill out your own iWSOPod with just the right mix of poker-specific musical inspiration to carry you through a tournament or the cash-game grind:

Sometimes, even I’m not sure what makes the category of rap music anymore, but this tune called “All In” is poker-centric and the video features the lovely Lacey Jones. What more could you ask for?

“All In” is done by Pigeon John, The Grouch and Eligh, and seems to err on the side of the rap music category. Good tune, actually, as far as poker-related songs are concerned, and far better than the overplayed Poker Face by Lady Gaga.

The embeddable video should be available soon, but in the meantime, click here to view it.

While the cause of death is being investigated, Doyle Brunson wrote in a blog post today that it was a prescription drug overdose.

It seems like yesterday when my nephew called and gave me a message that made my blood run cold, “I think Chip just died” he told me.

It happened again yesterday, only this time it was Chip’s only son, Casey Reese. Casey was found in his apartment from an apparent overdose of prescription drugs. I had seen Casey a few days ago and he looked great. He was very handsome and extremely personable. I will always remember the closeness between Chip and Casey.

My deepest condolences to the Reese family. I feel like I’ve let Chip down but I don’t know what I could have done to help Casey.

Few details about a presumably sad occurrence, but Casey was 20, had a promising baseball career, and likely would’ve found his way to poker upon reaching legal casino gambling age, where we would’ve watched to see if he would indeed become the Dale Earnhardt Jr. of Poker.

The unconfirmed word on the street is that it was from a drug overdose … and it seems plausible enough, as the untimely death of a father can often send someone down such a path.

Party Gaming has entered into a non-prosecutional agreement with the US Department of Justice, in which they admitted to illegally providing gambling services to US customers from 1997 to Oct. 2006 and agreeing to pay $105m in fines in semi-annual payments thru 2012.

Their press release regarding the matter after the jump:

More…

Weak aces tend to be the hand that you see bad players get in the most trouble with at the table. This is because weak aces are usually very far behind most good hands in hold’em, and weak players seem to misunderstand the mathematics of weak aces and habitually over play them.

“Although looking down at any hand with an ace instinctively feels like a good in hand, the reality of hold’em is that basically any hand below Ace-10 that is not suited can be extremely problematic to play.”

In terms of pre flop all in odds, a hand like ace seven only has a 25% chance of winning against a better ace, and 25% chance against any pair bigger than sevens, and is basically dead against aces. It is also only about 60/40 against any two cards between aces and sevens, so even when you are ahead of a hand like king jack, it is not by much. Against all pairs lower than sevens it is a classic 50/50 race, with the pair holding a slim edge.

More…

We try not to engage in too much schadenfreude here at Pokerati, but the last post about Amarillo Slim’s efforts to restore his stature in the poker world has me contriving a poll in my head about who are/were the most undesirable people in/from poker.

Current Poker Sith Lords
Russ Hamilton — guilty til proven innocent, and with good cause.
Ernie Scherer III — he’s still innocent til proven guilty, but considering that he faces the death penalty for killing his parents to pay off poker debts — and the last 10 Google searches found on his computer were “countries that don’t extradite to the U.S.“, I think we can rest assured that he will not become a Full Tilt pro anytime soon.

Dishonorable Mentions
James McDaniel — this Dallas poker room operator was convicted of killing an ex-cop, engaged in collusion in Oklahoma (my personal observation and unproven accusation), and is currently on trial for supplying drugs to one of his railbirds who ended up OD’d-dead in a portable toilet.

Reformed Reputations
Jamie Gold
Justin Bonomo
Dutch Boyd

Jury Still Out
David Sklansky — technically crime-free, but young aspiring female players are hardly flocking to his tutelage.
Amarillo Slim — he says he’s not guilty, and his family and a lie detector now apparently agree, even though his criminal record implies otherwise.
Layne Flack — everybody seems to like Layne, but unless he’s working undercover a la Poker Brasco, hanging with Russ Hamilton surely won’t help him get sponsored by Ultimate Bet.

So who else? Really, I’m not looking for a bunch of potentially libelous name-calling … but I am looking to create a list of once and future poker bad-guys, and maybe a rating system for criminals and outcasts and offenses that may or may not attract the attention of law enforcement, but still result in scorn and contempt from fellow poker players.

For the first time in six years, Amarillo Slim’s speaking out on charges that he inappropriately buggered his granddaughter. In Part 1 of 2 of Nolan Dalla’s interview, Slim addresses specific allegations and tells us that charges have been dropped, and family relationships repaired. In Part 2, we learn more details behind what were apparently incriminating plea deals. We hear nothing, however, about his loss of sponsorship at WinStar. I’m having a hard time finding any info about that — but wasn’t he accused of inappropriate sexual advances toward a teenage employee when the casino first opened? I could be confusing that situation, of course, with the parking lot proclivities of any number of my friends.

A few things jump out at me from the pieces … 1) be sure to read Johnny Hughes’ comment about the old days with slim; 2) his declarations of octogenarian impotence — “Back when I could have sex, I don’t have it anymore – I can’t help that – I would have had it when I could. How come I waited until I was impotent to do something like this?”; and 3)

There was a site [WickedChopsPoker] which called me a pedophile. I’m considering suing them if they don’t publish a retraction because none of it is true.

Libel cases are, thankfully of course, difficult for plaintiffs to win. He’d have to show:

1. Blatant disregard for the truth … that should be no problem with WCP, they do that all the time! But it’s also arguably part of their shtick, so …
2. Financial damages … easy enough. Without a doubt, Amarillo Slim missed out on plenty of sponsorship opportunities because of his poker-boom reputation as an extra-dirty old man. But is Wicked Chops any more responsible for this than, say, 2+2 or any other blogs that reported the same things with similar verbiage?
3. Malicious intent … and this is probably what saves Wicked Chops from legal trouble — he’d have a near-impossible time proving The Entities had it in for him and therefore were specifically out to do him harm.

With all this said, am I the only one who thinks there might be more to AS’s coming clean/defending himself? The WSOP is coming up, and World Championship buy-ins can be pretty darn expensive. Being able to wear a patch promoting an online poker room would certainly help the cause, and that simply wouldn’t be/hasn’t been possible with a sexual predator stigma hanging over him.

But now with the likes of Russ Hamilton and Ernie Scherer III out there, and dudes like ZeeJustin being welcomed back at PokerStars, the timing seems right for him to remind the world that, hey, I’m endorsable, too! I’m predicting a Doyle’s Room patch … but wouldn’t it be kinda funny if he ended up as Bodog’s partyin’ grandpappy?

Once upon a time, poker books were everywhere and everything. Then we found that saturation point, right around the time the poker boom was coming to an end … and it became harder and harder to really care about the latest poker tome … poker books stopped selling, the bookstores took down their dedicated poker racks, and uber-poker geeks like yours truly built up a pile of literature still collecting dust while waiting to be read. I swear I’ll move beyond page 26 of Bill Chen’s The Mathematics of Poker one of these days!

But probably not before reading two books that we can expect later this year: Lost Vegas, by Dr. Pauly … and Check-Raising the Devil, by Mike Matusow (with Tim Lavalli and Amy Calistri). Lost Vegas will be based on much of what we’ve been reading over the years on Tao of Poker, though I personally know the book is what Pauly’s been saving his best, so-far untold stuff for … so I’m confident every poker-industry douche insider will be eager to read what he’s been holding back.

Likewise, Matusow’s tale promises to be the kind of interesting auto-bio that even my grandmother could enjoy — lots of sex, drugs, and crime that just so happens to be set in the world of high-stakes casino gambling and/or prison — by a guy who has seen up-close-and-personal the good, the bad, and the really bad side of it all. Judging both these books by their recently completed covers (click to enlarge), I gotta think there might be something to these pokery stories, even though neither promise to tell you anything about how to play Ace-King.

For whatever reason, tonight’s High Stakes Poker got uploaded to GSN on Youtube in 3 parts. This is the last show with this lineup:

Doh … I missed it this week. Anyone wanna fill me in? Annie’s still alive, surely, right? Any pokery guest appearances?

Jeffrey Pollack speaking to RawVegas.TV about the upcoming World Series of Poker:

Via Wicked Chops.

The Silverton Poker Room will be holding the $25,000 Silverton Invitational on Saturday, June 27, 2009.  Invitations will be earned by playing live poker or by participating in daily tournaments starting on April 6 — a total of 50 invitations will be available for this event. Thirty invitations are reserved for live action poker players and 20 invitations are reserved for players who participate in daily tournaments.

More…