The Commerce Hold’em Series just got underway yesterday in California. It’s a 2+ week festival with limit, no-limit, and pot-limit hold’em tourneys … most of them in the $200, $300, and $500 range … and some with fun little twists such as knockout bounties and creative payout structures. They got off to a good start with 1,217 entries on Day 1A in their $220 NLH — with a $500k guarantee — and It all culminates in a $2,580 main event (also with a $500k guarantee).
But the event that’s most intriguing to me: Event #15 — a $1,600 “Ironman” tourney, on Wednesday, Sep 23.
The concept, from a Commerce spokesman:
$1600 Ironman Tournament. 10,000 in starting chips. 1 hour levels starting at 25-50, with slow progressions. Includes 50-75, 250-500, 900-1800 blinds. The key is that there are no breaks! We will play from start to finish without interruption. 3 meals provided as long as you are in the tournament. Must play down to one player. Paying only the final table with 50% for first.
Wow. Awesome. Cool. While part of me thinks this might-should be called the Meth-head Invitational, it will be really interesting to see who plays the best under those conditions. Short-stacked smokers at a disadvantage, but hey … them’s the (only) breaks.
UPDATE: Event #1 seems pretty unique, too. Each Day 1 plays down to 27, and 90 players have already made the money. An additional funky caveat — those who have already busted can re-enter on Day 1B or Day 1C. What-the …
It was no secret that Harrah’s Entertainment planned to enter the online gaming business, especially after hiring former PartyGaming bigwig Mitch Garber as the CEO of its new Interactive Entertainment division in May of this year. But the next big step was announced today.
Gaming Intelligence reported that Harrah’s signed a deal with Dragonfish, a subsidiary of online giant 888, to support Harrah’s entry into the online market with the World Series of Poker and Caesars Casino.
“This is a ground breaking deal for 888 and demonstrates our ability to provide real value to globally renowned, land-based casinos and their leading brands,” said Gigi Levy, Chief Executive Officer of 888.
“We have the structure in place to realise our B2B division’s full potential over the next 18 months and beyond and today’s announcement of our partnership with an industry giant is further vindication of this strategy.”
Mitch Garber, CEO of Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment, added: “As we develop and roll out our interactive strategy, we have chosen to work with 888, primarily for their world-class technology, scalability, and a strong commitment to compliance, and responsible gaming,” said Mitch Garber, Chief Executive Officer of HIE.
No specific time frame was given for the official launch.
Here’s their preview video … gotta say, call me a homer, but I’m already a fan. Go purple!
I think you can see from this who is going to be the domineering personality … and I think you can tell they will probably go far. And you haters commenters can say all you want — LOL on their claims of $1 million in tournament winnings — but one of the things I like about reality TV is the risk the participants are willing to take. It’s not a new phenomenon … we know how it works, how the producers need to create storylines, and to do that they need characters. They need nice guys, meatheads, bitches, sluts, all that good stuff. And if you give them repeated indication of any distinct characteristic, they will edit away to make that seem like that’s all you’re about. And for the most part your true colors show.
Take Annie Duke on Celebrity Apprentice, for example. Extremely divisive character. Half the people thought she was a super-smart, savvy woman. The other half saw her as a total control-freakish bitch. Yep, no offense to Annie, but that pretty much lines up with all I have heard about her over the years within the poker world, and at least two of the above descriptors line up with my own personal observations and conclusions.
So while reality stars often claim they are misrepresented, frankly, in the spirit of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, some might contend that you actually do get to see the real person even better when all the superfluous “personality” is stripped away and left on the cutting room floor. With that in mind, I’m looking forward to getting to see and know “Maria and Tiffany” — whom I suspect will come off a little different but not too much so from the Tiffany Michelle and Maria Ho we already know.
Rumors of these arrests have floated around the forums the past week or so, but now The Las Vegas Sun reports the arrest of four casino supervisors and managers at the Planet Hollywood Resort in Las Vegas. Johnathan Sanner, Jason Peterson and Thomas R. Kordick, of Las Vegas along with Scott Marshall of Henderson were charged with forgery, embezzlement or conspiracy in the false reporting of $2,201 in high hand jackpots for two instances in August.
I have a feeling Party Gaming’s (PRTY.L) stock will go up sharply this morning. I dunno — total stocks donkey here — but I like what Obama had to say about the importance of generating revenue, and I suspect Canary Wharf (I think it’s also called The City?) will, too.
Let’s see if I’m right. I’ll be checking it in the morning. Party stock opened today at 2.53 (and I started writing this post before the London bell rang). It’s at 2.60 now.
Full disclosure: I own a teensy-eensie-weensie sliver of PartyGaming … I think I bought the company a few sleeves of coffee cups post-UIGEA. This post contains forward-thinking statements that are not my attempt at a pump-and-dump.
UPDATE: Boo, Boo! C’mon, get up there!
UPDATE: Closed at 2.59 … up about 2 percent. So I kinda win, but not really.
In keeping with my newly-formed collection of the hottest boys of poker, I couldn’t resist adding this one to my list.
Hello, Carter Phillips! The well-armed winner of the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour’s Barcelona stop just collected 850,000 Euros for his victory in the tournament there. Is it just a coincidence that I’m open to dating well-to-do men? I think not!
Uh-oh. Just read that Mr. Phillips is only 20-years old. I have a rule, and he doesn’t fit in my age range. Oh well, a woman can admire…since he’s legal and all.
While the criteria for getting, retaining, or losing online poker sponsorship deals remains a mystery in many cases, decisions are made, and we regurgitate from press releases report. Some are not surprising, like Jason Mercier signing with PokerStars, while others (like half the Full Tilt roster) are baffling. Regardless, two developments came to light today.
First, UltimateBet announced that Tiffany Michelle has been re-signed to another one-year deal with the site. In addition to again noting her deep run in the 2008 WSOP Main Event, the press release cites “accomplishments in land-based events and UltimateBet’s online poker tables.” Coincidence that the announcement came on the same day as her photo appeared on the Amazing Race website?
“I’m happy to be signing on for another year with UltimateBet and I’m eager to get back to playing in live tournaments and exclusively at their online tables,†said Tiffany Michelle. “The corporate team at UB has been so welcoming and supportive and I’m thrilled to be working with them. I can’t wait for the exciting things in store for us.â€
Second, the European Poker Tour Barcelona live reporting team let it slip (after a commentator first did on the EPT Live broadcast earlier in the day) that Isabelle Mercier is no longer a PokerStars-sponsored player. Since sites usually give no reason for dropping players, much less release that information themselves, we can certainly speculate don’t know why Isabelle was dropped. The blurb from the PokerNews reporter:
Incidentally, owing to the folks on the live feed and their tendency towards verbal incontinence, it has just now become public knowledge that Isabelle Mercier is leaving Team Pokerstars. The very best of luck to Ms. Mercier in all her future poker endeavors.
It was pretty much confirmed by everyone but Maria Ho and Tiffany Michelle, but now the CBS website lists the contestants for the upcoming broadcast of the Amazing Race, and they’re on it. The Associated Press provided a quote from Ho:
“It’s obviously different from competition at the poker table,” said Ho, who came in 11th place at this year’s World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. “It’s outdoorsy. This is physical and mental, but we will definitely be applying whatever skills we have as gamers to this competition and push ourselves in different ways that we’re not used to doing.”
Their combined bio can be found on the CBS website and describes them as well-traveled, extremely competitive, strong-minded, and savvy. (Funny – but not really – that they’re described by most poker media as simply “hot.”) Despite my usual ban on reality television, I’ll set the DVR to see how far the ladies make it. The premiere is Sunday, September 27.
Tuesday night’s WSOP Main Event episode featured Norman Chad stating one sentence about the Ultimate Bet scandals as Phil Hellmuth and Todd “Dan Druff” Witteles were at the same feature table. Michalski noted in the comments, Mark originally “broke his silence” regarding the Absolute Poker scandal over at Raw Vegas back in 2007.
The official ballot has been released … so basically I’ve got about three weeks to choose Mike Sexton and one other guy from this list, in alphabetical order:
BARRY GREENSTEIN
DAN HARRINGTON
PHIL IVEY
TOM McEVOY
MEN NGUYEN
SCOTTY NGUYEN
DANIEL NEGREANU
ERIK SEIDEL
MIKE SEXTON
I see two who definitely won’t get my vote. As for the rest, will have to give them some thought. It’s gonna be a tough call. I’ll probably do a bracket.
Click below for the official press release on it all, giving the criteria, PHOF schedule, etc.:
Not sure that anything came of it — their website looks a little sparse — but interesting concept to say the least … just stumbled across this video promoting a championship at the Choctaw Casino (in Oklahoma) for the Deaf Poker Tour.
Do you like fast cars? I like fast cars. Hassan Habib likes fast cars — red ones — and he gives me hope that a rapidly balding man can compensate for the onset of inadequacy as he shows off his 2004 Ferrari f360 Spider … all with an entertaining Pakistani accent:
Many in the poker industry consider the UltimateBet and Absolute Poker scandals resolved, at least as much as we can expect them to be considering the sources of any information and the lack of the ability to involve U.S. law enforcement due to jurisdictional issues. And while some of us still have eyes and ears open for further developments, such as those that may appear on a Russ Hamilton twitter feed, Haley Hintze, former Editor-in-Chief of PokerNews, has decided to put out all of her well-informed conjecture on her own blog and gives one of the more detailed explanations of how, when, and why the UB/AP scandals were perpetrated. Though she has only posted Part 1, the rest of the story, we presume, is forthcoming.
Part 1 dives into the beginnings and how Hamilton got involved and possibly recruited help. Here is a portion of the post:
There are three reasonable scenarios for how the cheating spread, as spread it surely did:
1) One or more software engineers working on the UB code recognized the illicit profit potential for themselves, and also began to slice money from the games;
2) Hamilton himself recruited one or more Costa Rican workers to assist him in the cheating, as a way of expanding the total money being stolen;
3) Someone at UB caught Hamilton — probably noticing unusual withdrawal amounts relative to the amount of play Hamilton was logging — and decided to cut himself in for a slice of the action.
From some time in 2006, I believe, it was game on in a big way for the cheats. I’d heard whispers as far back as 2005 that something was wrong with the cash games at UB, but I played there very little, only at small stakes, and couldn’t really speak to it.
Here’s the complete criminal record of Barron Glenn Boutte, the poker robber shot and killed in Houston last week. A lot of marijuana charges and some evading arrests. Pretty petty thuggish. Not a surprise that robbing a poker room seemed to provide him an opportunity to step up into a bigger game. Ahh, the poker dream …
The only thing that stands out to me is that the dude was so short — 5’5″, 110 pounds. Probably just a coincidence, but in many of the DFW robberies that we attributed to the “Dallas Poker Bandits”, there was always one distinctly tall guy (6’4″ish), and one distinctly short guy (5’5″ish).
But Boutte definitely seemed to be a Houston thug, not a Dallas guy who moved to Harris County when the games up North dried up.
Click here for details on Barron Boutte’s poker robbery gone awry, and below for his pre-poker criminal record.
randompoker: RT @MeanPokerDealer: I think it's SO cool how you guys loop the earbuds around your ears so they're hanging there all not in your ears and stuff. I hate you. 45 minutes ago
The Commerce Hold’em Series just got underway yesterday in California. It’s a 2+ week festival with limit, no-limit, and pot-limit hold’em tourneys … most of them in the $200, $300, and $500 range … and some with fun little twists such as knockout bounties and creative payout structures. They got off to a good start with 1,217 entries on Day 1A in their $220 NLH — with a $500k guarantee — and It all culminates in a $2,580 main event (also with a $500k guarantee). 
It was pretty much confirmed by everyone but Maria Ho and Tiffany Michelle, but now the CBS website lists the contestants for the upcoming broadcast of the Amazing Race, and they’re on it. The 
