The idea of using online gaming tax revenues to help fund elements of health care reform became part of the Congressional conversation this weekend. On Saturday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced a possible amendment to the Baucus bill (America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009) that would rely on the passage of Rep. Barney Frank’s HR 2267 to set up a regulatory structure that would provide health care revenue.

According to the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative, the tens of billions of dollars collected by the U.S. government from online gaming could offset health care costs going forward:

An increased focus on the benefits of Internet gambling regulation are expected as the Senate Finance Committee considers a proposal introduced on Saturday to use Internet gambling revenue to offset the costs of health care reform. The amendment offered by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) would dedicate Internet gambling tax revenue generated through implementation of the currently pending Internet Regulation, Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act (H.R. 2267) to increase low-income subsidies provided through the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009. A PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis shows that collecting taxes on regulated Internet gambling would allow the U.S. to capture up to $62.7 billion over the next decade.

Wyden is a chairman of the Senate Finance subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness.

To answer a question asked at the beginning of Seebs’ interview, the thread on 2+2 is currently at over 200 posts.

Don’t call it a comeback … Vinnie Vinh, from Houston, had done little on the tournament scene since his chair finished 3rd in a limit hold’em event at the ’08 WSOP. But he did book a 14th place finish in a $970 No-Limit tourney at the LA Poker Classic in February … and check out results of Event #10 — a $335 NLH — at the Commerce Hold’em Series:

EVENT #10 $335 NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
ENTRIES 152 PRIZE POOL $43,776

PLACE NAME/HOMETOWN PRIZE
1 Vinnie Vinh, Houston, TX $14,006 plus $2,580 Seat
2 David Lopez, Tucson, AZ $7,486
3 Pho Tran, West Covina, CA $4,772
4 Glenn Forster, Los Angeles, CA $3,502
5 Huy Quach, West Covina, CA $2,845
6 Derwin Lowery, Los Angeles, CA $2,145
7 David Liau, Los Angeles, CA $1,707
8 Dono Terranova, Los Angeles, CA $1,270
9 Patrick Karschamroon, Los Angeles, CA $919
10 Adam Weinraub, Orange, CA $657
11 Nhut Tran, Norwalk, CA $657
12 Panayotis Kalessis, Los Angeles, CA $657
13 Impounh Vongvone, Los Angeles, CA $569
14 Sami Banizuraij, Salt Lake City, UT $569
15 Rocky Eniso, Glendale, CA $569
16 Gideon Cross, Los Angeles, CA $482
17 Bobby Binsky, Miami, FL $482
18 Yarom Limor, Beverly Hills, CA $482

I’m keeping tabs on these big-little tourneys via Steve Hall.

UPDATE: Steve tells me that Vinnie is playing these minor league Commerce tournaments for Men the Master.

John Paul Kelly 2009: 2 bracelets, 2 continents.

The first event of the 2009 World Series of Poker Europe is completed and we have crowned the first champion. He ended Day 1 as the chipleader and finished the tournament in the same vein, step forward Mr JP Kelly.

The £1,000 entry-fee appealed to pros and amateurs alike, with Day 1a attracting 295 runners including the likes of Phil Hellmuth, Roland de Wolfe and Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliot with the former being eliminated very early on into proceedings.

After raising preflop, then calling a re-raise from Eddie Hearn, Hellmuth somehow managed to get all his chips in the middle holding 5h6h which gave him an open-ended straight draw. He definitely needed to hit as Hearn held pocket kings, but a 9s turn followed by a Qc river saw ‘The Poker Brat’ heading for the rail.

The action was thick and fast due to the shallow starting stacks and hour long blinds and by the end of play only 41 players still had chips remaining!

Day 1b showed no signs of slowing down either, despite it been a more pro-heavy day with Phil Ivey, Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, Annette Obrestad and 2008 WSOPE Main Event winner John Juanda taking to the tables. Out of the 313 that started, only 58 would return for Day 2.

JP Kelly was the overnight chipleader with 99,000 chips but Richard Kellet, Ian Frazer andFabian Dunlop were all hot on his heels with stacks around the 65,000 mark. Of the 89 remaining players, only 63 would make the money, meaning 26 unlucky players would be going home empty handed.

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Didn’t really see this one coming, but Joe Sebok explained in great detail why he made the decision to join the UltimateBet team. His latest blog post on PokerRoad starts with his skepticism about joining UB when he was asked on previous occasions, and it ends with the reasons he not only agreed to be a sponsored player but a consultant for the company in charge of media and operations.

The stipulation for joining the team came with wanting to ensure that the company moves forward – away from the scandal – in a positive direction and maintains a spotlessly clean reputation and record. Feeling responsible to the poker community that is part of PokerRoad, he wanted to be sure that he will represent a company that he believes in and one that the poker world can again trust. And to show that UB is willing to be as open as possible, the company has agreed to let Sebok’s first priority be the release of all hand histories associated with the scandal and the names of those paired with those accounts. Though KGC wanted no part of releasing the names of Russ Hamilton’s 31 co-conspirators, UB seems to have changed its mind on the subject.

Sebok wrote:

The first order of business with my position at Ub has been to help aid in the release of not only ALL of the hand histories from the super-user scandal, but also the accounts that were used to perpetuate the scandal itself and the actual physical names of those individuals who we believe to have been directly involved in disparate ways with the actual cheating. As most of you know, two-thirds of this has now been accomplished. Please take this as a first step in showing that things will be different at UltimateBet moving forward. I commend Paul and the management team over at Ub for being open to this release and making it happen at my insistence . They deserve all the credit in the world today in taking these first steps in ensuring that this case gets closed, and closed correctly.

We’ve got a new highly unscientific poll up. I’m curious … where do you like to go for information on players — whether it’s to see how a well-known entity has done over the course of a career or to see just WhoTF some new-name is?

Cast your vote over yonder in the sidebar on your right.

Totally subjective criteria. And though there have long been accusatory murmurs about who steals data from whom, I’m looking at the thoroughness and accuracy of their records, ease of use, and any creative touches that make theirs different. Though I suspect others exist* sites I’ve visited for player stats and (live or online) tourney results include:

Bluff
CardPlayer
Hendon Mob
PokerListings
PokerPages

Trying to decide on one as my go-to source.

* and some I knowingly omitted, like WSOP.com and WPT.com, because they include only their own tourneys, and what use is that to me beyond summing up totals?

NOTE: I also removed PocketFives from the list (they had no votes) … because they, similarly, only have profiles for their own members … though if you are looking for data and results from serious online screen names, they seem to have the best info, well-presented.

UPDATE: Just discovered (in the process of doing this post) PokerListings’ online-player database — complete with their cool MarketPulse thingy — and theirs may be better than P5′s.

Semi-interesting video from Steve Hall and Michael Chung … an overhead time-lapse shot of one of the events going on at the Commerce Hold’em Series in California.

The plot of this silent short-film: You’ll see a packed field piddling in pots early, and they seem to do that for awhile, but then things really pick up as bustouts accelerate and tables break — boom-boom-boom! And not to give away the ending, but the climax comes not with a final table, but a dramatic pan that makes you realize this event is even bigger than you thought it was … but this time, when players are gone, it could be because they’re just on break …

(Sigh.)

Check out PokerGossip.com for more of the ongoings at the Commerce, where Matt Savage’s experimental lower-middle-stakes festival is still going strong-ish.

You know that glorious feeling of having a cocky opponent check-raise into your top set with a nut flush draw? “Meet the Monster” … distinctly poker music by Five Finger Death Punch. The band kicks off their new tour at Wasted Space in the Las Vegas Hard Rock tonight … like not even a 25-second walk from a relatively tame 1/2 No-Limit Hold’em game:

Definitely a good tune for either your tournament or cash game iPod.

Five South Carolina poker players convicted of gambling in February — after a raid on a private home in 2006 — had their convictions overturned on appeal yesterday.

From the Post and Courier:

In a letter that supports the argument that Texas Hold ‘Em is a game of skill, not one of chance, Circuit Judge R. Markley Dennis said this week it is his opinion the state Supreme Court would likely adopt “the dominate factor test” in deciding the case.

Under the dominate factor test, Texas Hold ‘Em is not gaming or gambling, the judge wrote, which would make it illegal under state law.

He also said the law covering the play “is ambiguous and must be construed in favor of appellants.”

The South Carolina law the judge is referring to was written in 1802.

Both sides expect the state to appeal the appeal to the SC Supreme Court.

Barron Boutte, 1985-2009

The funeral for Barron Glenn Boutte is today in Houston. He’s the 24-year-old shot and killed while attempting to rob a Houston underground poker room earlier this month. His shooter is not being publicly identified, though police have determined Boutte’s death a matter of self-defense. Club 203, where the fatal shootout occurred, has been indefinitely shut down.

A few more details about the thwarted robbery, coming to us now secondhand, as opposed to thirdhand …

Apparently the robbery suspects confronted a player leaving the game in the parking lot, and a scuffle ensued. The first shots were reportedly fired at the door to gain entry, and the robbers continued shooting into the air once inside. They did indeed shoot one patron in the leg when he was slow to get on the ground as ordered.

Boutte’s armed nemesis and several others were smoking in the break room when the melee went down. One robber supposedly told these players they’d better not be coming out without cash — thinking maybe they were hiding it — and that’s when the poker-room hero emerged brandishing his own gun.

Boutte was shot at least four times in the abdomen and made it out to the parking lot before falling and dying.

A nervous wave has washed over the Houston poker underground — with action slower than normal, and some rooms looking to hire visible security.

I know we poker people hate lotteries (unless of course there’s a ridiculous Powerball overlay), but recent results in Bulgaria seem worthy of mention …

The numbers for the Bulgarian Lottery on September 6:

4, 15, 23, 24, 35, 42

The numbers for the Bulgarian Lottery on September 10:

4, 15, 23, 24, 35, 42

The BBC reports the odds of this happening as 1-in-4 million. ABC-Australia puts them at 1-in-14 million.

Poker people know statistical mathematics is often debatable, and the above occurrence is far more likely than quad aces losing to a royal flush.

Interestingly enough, nobody picked those six numbers the first go-round. On the do-over, 18 people picked them — a Bulgarian lotto record.

Each of the winners will get 10,164 leva (equal to €5,196 or US$7,643). While that might not seem like enough to create shenanigans, the average monthly salary in Bulgaria is about €400

The Bulgarian government is investigating … Perhaps sadly, you cannot find out more information about this at Lotterati.com.

Missed this article two weeks ago … but it’s a good one, as they always seem to be when the non-poker media takes a more-than-cursory look at poker “issues”.

From the LA Times:

Taking their chances on poker’s legality
Is Texas Hold ‘Em about the luck of the draw, or the skill of the player? The question is being played out in courts around the country.

The WSOP-E gets underway today … and as part of the celebratory ti-doo, they’re unveiling celebrated Lego artist James Fentiman’s latest work at the Casino at The Empire, Leicester Square … an image of the Queen constructed out of £1 million worth of poker chips. (2,000 checks in total.)

Umm, OK … pardon my Yankeeness, but I don’t see it!

Really? Really? There’s a queen in there, LOL? I guess that’s just how fine art works.

Nolan Dalla’s latest article on Poker News Daily has a point. Much of the focus is on the men who helped pass the UIGEA, giving little attention to the powerful women in Congress who now oppose our attempts to pass reasonable online poker regulation bills. No argument on that, but when he cites the female members of Congress who stand in the way of positive change, he lists:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA)
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Gov. Christine Gregoire (D-WA)

Ummm, the last person is a governor! While she certainly screwed up online poker in Washington in a major way, she has little to do with the passage, or lack thereof, of federal legislation. Methinks Mr. Dalla got a little carried away with women who are “bad for poker.”

His advice to the PPA and the voting public is well-taken, though. The PPA should consider refocusing its media attempts at constituents who can make a difference, whether by votes or campaign donations. His closing remarks after the break:

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So this Face the Ace lawsuit … yeah … you’ve got a lone amateur TV-show concept-creator trying to take on (lawyers for) PokerPROductions and NBC with claims that they stole his legally protected idea to put out a ratings-bomb game show … and therefore owe him $85 million.

OK.

Similarities between Brandon McSmith’s video pitch for All Star Poker Challenge and Face the Ace are one thing … and this video, shot outside what appears to be Poker PROductions studios in Las Vegas and posted on YouTube in July (and pointed out to us by a reader yesterday) is another:

Umm …

Click below to read the rejection letter sent almost two years earlier from Poker PROductions honcho Mori Eskandani that may or may not have put McSmith on tilt:

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