There was a Russian invasion on Austria this week, as a pair of high-profile tournament stops in the land of Schwarzenneger were each taken by Russian players. On US soil we saw the end of the Wynn Poker Classic, as well as am interesting event in Tulalip, Washington. And don’t forget about the ANZPT.

Pesky Russian Wins Twitter War on Way to EPT Snowfest Crown
Hinterglemm, Austria

Photo C/O PokerStars

Twitter has steadily grown in popularity in the poker community over the last three years, and some have wondered when it would become a standard way to pick up information about players sitting at your table. While there hasn’t been a proliferation of Twitter tells and false Twitter tells, we got some real-time Twitter trash talking among two players at the final table of the EPT Snowfest.

Brash Russian player Vladimir Geshkenbein started it, taunting Kevin Vandersmissen by Tweeting, “Up to two mil… Valuetowned a fat Belgium guy.” Vandersmissen later countered, “Valuetowned the Russian alcoholic! 6.6 mill now.”

It was only appropriate that these two got down to heads-up play. They were relatively even and deep as the heads-up match started, but the match took less than a half hour. Geshkenbein seemed to be channeling his inner Tony G, making two pair to wrest control and throwing salt in the wound, telling Vandersmissen “Don’t be sad… second place is good as well.”

Several hands later, Geshkenbein again made two pair to make it official. His win at EPT Snowfest was worth €390,000 and a seat in the upcoming EPT Champion of Champions event.

Dmitry Gromov Crushes Record WPT Field in Vienna
Vienna, Austria

Photo C/O PartyPoker

The serious influx of poker players into Austria continued with even more players showing up in Vienna. 555, in fact, to produce a prize pool of almost €1.5 million, with a first place prize of just under €500,000. The chip leader headed into the final eight was Russian Dmitry Gromov, a lead that he would take from wire-to wire at the final table. While this tournament is not destined for American TV airwaves, the whole WPT crew was there, including Matt Savage and the Royal Flush Girls. Mike Sexton and Jesse May did a live stream of the action, with hole cards, and the presentation was top-notch. Gromov outlasted another Russian, Maksim Kolosov by winning a key coin flip on the final hand, and took home €447,840 for his efforts. On top of that he got to do a winner’s interview with Tatjana Pasalic! What a lucky guy.

West Wins Wynn Classic Main Event
Las Vegas, Nevada

The biggest tournament action in the US this week was at the Wynn, as the conclusion to another successful Wynn Poker Classic did not disappoint. 212 players put up $5,000, and there were not many weak spots in the field, and the final table featured a collection of online superstars including Annette Obrestad, Tim West, Eric Froelich, and Carter King. West and Obrestad would match up at the end, with the man known as Tmay coming out on top to the tune of over $300,000, his biggest career score.

Non-Russian Grant Levy Adds ANZPT title to previous APPT Win
Perth, Australia

Photo C/O PokerStars

While tournaments outside of the continental United States were dominated by and large by a Russian contingent, the ANZPT Perth stop was an exception to the rule. After going 0 for his last 12 attempts on the ANZPT, Sydney native Grant Levy finally unleashed all of his stored up run-good at once to take down the Perth event. To make the feat even more impressive, Levy satellited into the tournament, making the $131,000 payday at the end of it all that much sweeter. Levy is just the second player ever to capture both an ANZPT and an APPT title.

Ernie Holthusen’s First Cash in 5 years is $100K Win in Tulalip
Tulalip Poker Pro Challenge, Tulalip, Washington

Everybody goes on a cold streak in poker from time to time, sometimes reaching several months of bad luck before turning things around. But going four-and-a-half years without recording a tournament cash is something out of a terrible nightmare, as Ernie Holthusen might be able to tell you. Whatever the reason for Holthusen’s long cashless stretch, he made quite a statement in ending that streak, taking home $100,000 at the Tulalip Poker Challenge. Holthusen defeated Scott Clements heads-up, an impressive feat on top of making it that far in the field of 361.

Jon Katkin

---

The Poker Economy

---

A lot of things have changed in the poker world since the Zynga PokerCon ended here in Las Vegas last Saturday. Partnerships have been approved (Caesars/888), announced (PokerStars/Wynn) and speculated upon (Full Tilt/Station Casinos). Legislation surrounding the legalization of online poker has been introduced and debated in various jurisdictions around the country and, I’m pretty sure that Erik Seidel won another high-stakes tournament somewhere in the world.

In short, it’s been a pretty busy week. And yet, with everything going on – or perhaps, because of it – I still find myself puzzling over Zynga’s potential role as a player in the post-regulation poker economy.

For those of you still unfamiliar with Zynga, they bill themselves as the largest online poker room in the world with a database of approximately 38 million players who compete for chips and tokens that have value only within the confines of Zynga’s proprietary system. In other words, Zynga is a play money site in the truest definition of the word. And yet, they came to Las Vegas last weekend to hold a live event for their fans and players.

Zynga has something every major real money site is looking for: players who have yet to make an initial deposit online. Would Zynga really stay out of real money gaming if someone came along with a partnership offer they couldn’t refuse? I don’t think so.

Populated by attendees who either won or bought their way into the event through Zynga’s site, the two-day conference was an interesting mix of Zynga players and industry insiders who were looking for information on this most mysterious of potential competitors or, perhaps, partners. I can’t speak for anyone else at the conference, but I have to admit that I walked away from the event with no clear answers.

As a fan event, I have to say the PokerCon was a success. For the cost of a $125 entry, Zynga’s players received professional instruction from Annie Duke and a plethora of other name pros, the chance to meet legends like Doyle Brunson and Mike Sexton, free food and drink at a Zynga-sponsored party, and a seat in a $100K tournament with a guaranteed payout of $26,000 to the winner. Not a bad deal, if you ask me.

As a “coming out party” for Zynga Poker, however, I can’t say I was as impressed.

More…

Sexton: Ever-gracious ambassador.

I’m pretty sure you’re gonna be hearing about Zynga for awhile … not just because I still have lots of pictures and audio to unload from Zynga’s inaugural PokerCon at the Palms last weekend … but because, imho, as plenty of industry stalwarts seemed to recognize, this company that didn’t even exist in 2006 (that oh-so-glorious year of Jamie-Gold-boom-and-UIGEA-bust) has something that every other big-idea “revolutionary” poker undertaking has lacked since, well, PartyPoker.

Have a listen to Hall-of-Famer Mike Sexton, invited to simply share his brand of poker lore while mingling with Zynga players, give his quick take on the relevance of this relatively small little event and the booming company behind it:

Mike Sexton at Zynga Pokercon 2011

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

pic by Michele Lewis

Hellmuth: Party crasher?

Phil Hellmuth musta seen something more than just a $100k freeroll going on, too. Whether delivering a “bonus” to Pokercon attendees out of the kindness of his heart or just because his feelings were hurt for not being asked to take part in Zynga festivities, the “poker brat” slipped in as an uninvited (but presumably still welcome?) guest and revealed his presence at the Pokercon final table to a smattering of gasps and boos. When poker’s self-proclaimed badboy tried to educate the fans that they were supposed to boo him, the nice Zynga people didn’t exactly oblige — giving him instead a polite round of applause. You can tell, however, at least a few in the crowd understood the subtext of his unscripted exchange with host Ali Nejad — effectively trying to put PokerStars back in its (2nd) place.

Phil Hellmuth at Zynga Pokercon 2011

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Stumbled across this vid on Youtube — the time-lapse construction of the welcome desk @AviatorCasino in Delano, Cali. I can 100 percent say that Aviator is my favorite poker room in California’s Central Valley … (where Bakersfield is the big town some 30 miles away, but is also just a $15 flight from Vegas on Allegiant! $40 after taxes, but still … airplanes!)

That’s the whole theme of the Aviator Casino … airplanes, airports, and pai gow. That’s why at least some non-poker people see this creation of an info station at a California poker room as less about tourney registration but not too much less because it is still “functional art”:

More about this awesome little poker room — the coolest I’ve ever seen in the area — at TheAviatorCasino.com.

Rabbit Hunt:

Our friends on the Rabbit Hunt podcast jump right into the middle of the Joe Sebok drama this week. The guys break down and criticize both sides of the drama, breaking down what both sides of did wrong. They also discuss why Paul Leggett will probably never agree to come to 2+2 to answer questions from the forum readers and how much work the moderators have had to do over the past few days. Take a listen to the show on either the Cardrunners site or download it directly from iTunes to listen to this interview.

The Bernard Lee Poker Show:

Making its first appearance in the roundup The Bernard Lee Poker Show welcomes mindset coach Sam Chauhan to their show. Chauhan speaks about being in the positive mindset in order to be successful. He also discusses about how he got started in the poker community with a short discussion that he had with Antonio Esfandiari in a restroom at the Rio. To close out the show the two discuss some of the tools that Chauhan uses with his students to keep them in the right mindset. If you would like to listen to this show you can either download it from Bernard’s site, listen to it directly on on Rounders Radio, or through iTunes.

I Am Nanonoko – Team Pokerstars Online Documentary:

OK, this is not a podcast but it was brought to our attention this week from our good friend Dr. Pauly from Tao of Poker. If you have ever wondered what it is like to be in the head of a Supernova Elite you definitely should check out this short documentary that was done on Randy “Nononoko” Lew. Also check out the brief blog that gives an introduction to the film.

Online baller and live-action unballer Shaun Deeb apparently has heard about my prowess at Zynga Texas Hold’em… where I’ve been killing the 5/10 game on their Las Vegas server. Yep, after giving up on Tilt and Stars back in ’08, I’m back on the online poker horse; and now Deeb apparently thinks he can turn me into a real player. Or maybe a playa?

Clearly I’ve got skillz … But I’m still headed to Deeb’s boot camp this weekend … because as anyone who’s played 1/2 with me recently in 2008-11 can attest, my live-action game might-could benefit from a little tweaking.

Gotta do something so I can hang at the real tables (without needing multiple rebuys) right? Check out the details at LivePokerTraining.com. (Scroll down to get to the goods.)

Friends don’t let friends blog and drive … but sometimes you can get a lot of good content at a red light or while in heavy traffic.

Those who’ve read Lost Vegas may recognize the “Redneck Riviera” off to the left … westbound on Trop a few lights away from the Strip. Pauly called this fortress of blight and putridity home for two months during the 2005 WSOP. It’s also near where I began tailing this fine imported automobile with a driver clearly driven by poker:

click to zoom in.

I wanted to follow close enough to grab a shot of the plate with the school bus rolling past the Adult Superstore — caption contest maybe? — but traffic sped up and I missed the shot … and before the Clark County school kids would pass the next porn outlet, Pocket 8s+Broadway would turn into the Orleans … leaving many to wonder about the role of education poker in bridging the rich-poor gap as seen in Las Vegas neighborhoods surrounding the Rio.

Just before the hearing on AB258 held in the Nevada Legislature this morning, the PPA released an official press statement supporting the “interstate” iPoker bill.  This announcement made an for an interesting preface to over three hours of testimony on internet poker in Nevada, featuring a bevy of high-octane witnesses presenting an array of statistics and factoids *in favor* the bill, without a whole lot of testimony (publicly) against.

It kicked off a major rush of online poker activity in the state of Nevada today.

At the hearing, witnesses giving testimony in support of the bill included Vanessa Rousso, who made the obligatory “poker star” (pun-intended) appearance.  She gave a rather harried and then hurried Online Poker 101 primer to Nevada Legislature, who by all appearances needed it – one state rep asking during the hearing for clarification on the difference between “video poker” at a casino and “online poker”.  There were some questionable large quotations of gargantuan customer bases and revenue projections by Applied Analysis, revelations of the wealth iPoker has provided the Isle of Man, and an infomercial reassurances from the Aristotle group (whose client is PokerStars) that their INTEGRITY age verification software could protect Nevada children from gaining access to iPoker.

Or – in short – a whole ton of high-end testimony that the backers of this bill would surely like to have presented. No vote was held in the Assembly Judiciary.  The next step per @RindelAP is that AB258 will proceed to the committee’s “work session” for amendments; date to be announced.

What I was truly intrigued by was the testimony of the “objector”, Pete Ernaut, representing the Nevada Resort Association, who seems to be the public voice for at least some of the Nevada casinos.  Ernaut did not testify against iPoker, but opined that Nevada should not pass their own bill, but rather wait for federal legislation.  He agreed, when questioned, that the federal process may be indeed too slow for Nevada to have competitive advantage.

His solution? A “re-ordering” of things where Nevada doesn’t need new legislation to begin building their advantage, and can begin planning for business without federal legislation like #campbill already in place.  He referred to some previous internet gambling  legislation in November 2001 named AB466 (see full bill text).

More…

Only two states in the US have no legal gambling — Hawaii and Utah. Could be just one soon, say supporters and opponents alike of a bill in Hawaii that would specifically legalize Texas Hold’em and Omaha poker, live and online.

The bill, which passed out of committee yesterday, looks to make Hawaii a destination for big-time live (and televised) poker events … as well as a potential home base for online sites serving US players … by designating the foundations of Pokerati NLH/PLO as games of skill, not played against a casino “house” and therefore exempt from state gambling prohibitions.

PPA Exec Dir. John Pappas supplied written testimony for the hearing, suggesting that the way this current bill is crafted could be problematically prohibitive, as it seeks to charge $100 million for a server license and impose a 20 percent tax on all wagers while potentially challenging federal law. Pappas, however, did not provide any statement on the economic impact such a law would have on Waikiki vendors selling T-shirts like these:

Surf’s Up by Pokerati Generic T-Shirt Shoppe

The Hawaii poker bill — originally written supposedly to provide a tax holiday for buying school supplies — passed out of the Economic Revitalization & Business Committee on a 7-1 vote, and the House Judiciary Committee, 9-3. It now moves on to the House Finance Committee.

(Mahalo Poker Gnome for the heads-up.)

PPA just released a statement of support for intrastate bill AB258 – that is currently heard right now in the Nevada State Legislature.

Here is the complete statement from PPA below -> More…

The Nevada Legislature’s Assembly Judiciary will be hearing the PokerStars-backed iPoker bill, aka AB258 (complete bill text here) this morning at 11am PT. The hearing is the next step in the process for this bill to become a law, though not the final one.

This internet-poker specific bill is both uniquely controversial among all of the proposed intrastate iGambling bills.  Not only does it explicitly state that the NGC may not discriminate against the likes of Poker Stars and Full Tilt, which have operated gambling sites unlicensed with US players, but the legislation defines a model by which internet poker websites *outside* of Nevada could pay to connect player pools with new Nevada player pools through B2B state-regulated “compacts.”

That’s right.  If passed as is, players on new Nevada iGambling sites could play with people that live in places outside the state of Nevada “where interactive gaming is not prohibited” – so long as a regulated deal exists between the state and external websites.

One has to wonder – if this NV bill is made into law before the newly re-introduced federal internet gambling #campbill, what will the landscape of the future internet gambling market in the United States look like?

Watch it -> Live feed for AB258 in Carson City 11AM PST here ->  Assembly Judiciary @ NV Legislature webcast

The CampBill is now available on www.govtrack.us. A copy of the bill is here. (If you can’t download the copy from that link, you can view it in a number of formats here.)

As mentioned in the press release by the House Financial Services Committee and in my blog post from this past Saturday (here), this version is the same as the version of H.R. 2267 as amended by the Committee last summer. Don’t get too excited about this version. Any federal law that passes regulating Internet gaming (and most likely only poker) will look very different from this draft. There is a broad consensus among AGA members that regulation needs to come at the federal level, but there are a lot of items yet to be negotiated among many different interests.

Mike Sexton Gives Up Announcing Career in Pursuit of Long-shot Poker Dream
WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star, San Jose, California

Photo c/o WPT/Bay 101

There were a ton of storylines on display at the final table of the WPT’s Bay 101 Shooting Star event this week. It was the second consecutive final table for Vivek Rajkumar, who finished second at the LAPC and put on quite a display during this California swing of the World Poker Tour. Mike Matusow made his way to his fifth WPT final table, still seeking a win that has thus far eluded him in his career. But the biggest story of them all was that, for the first time in the history of the WPT, Mike Sexton would not fill the seat in the broadcast booth next to Vince Van Patten. It wasn’t a coup by Tony Dunst, though it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities for Dunst to try something like that, but rather for the first time ever, Sexton made the final table of a WPT event and was unable to fulfill his broadcasting duties.

The story would not have a happy ending, however, as Matusow took cards that were not quite live and turned them into monsters, eliminating Sexton by catching a jack as a 3-1 dog and knocking him out in 6th, collecting his $5k Shooting Star bounty and leaving himself as the only player with that target on his back. Rajkumar would bow out in fourth place to conclude his impressive run, while Matusow would find himself short-stacked before going out in 3rd place. Allen Sternberg would claim the final $5,000 bounty for knocking Matusow out, and that win would propel him to the chip lead. Sternberg outlasted Steven Kelly with a timely two-outer on the river, winning the Bay 101 Shooting Star and the $1 million first place prize.

Photo c/o PokerStars

Kanit Be? Moustapha Wins at IPT Nova Gorica

Nova Gorica, Slovenia

The second biggest prize of the week comes from a somewhat unlikely source. The Italian Poker Tour is one of PokerStars’ regional poker tours, but it’s latest stop, technically not in Italy but on their border with Slovenia, generated a prize pool of almost €800,000. 395 players put up €2,000, and the first place purse ballooned to over €200,000. It remains to be seen whether Mustapha Kanit can be considered a “local” champion, considering the event didn’t happen on Italian soil, but the Italian player bested Marco Mancini to claim the IPT Nova Gorica title.

Photo c/o HPT

Jeremy Dresch Is First to 3 HPT Titles, Sore Loser Makes it Best Out of 7
Shooting Star Casino, Mahnomen, Minnesota

2009 Heartland Poker Tour Player of the Year Jeremy Dresch made history by being the first player to capture two HPT titles. It was made all the more impressive by the fact that he captured those titles in consecutive weeks. Dresch now holds the distinction of being the first to three titles, winning the HPT stop at the Shooting Star Casino in Minnesota. He takes home almost $50,000 after besting the field of 170.

Photo c/o PokerStars

First Brazilian LAPT Champ Crowned in Chile, Hopes for Less Messy Crown Next Time
Viña del Mar, Chile

Last month on the LAPT, the hearts of thousands of Brazilians were broken when they failed to crown their first Brazilian LAPT title in Sao Paolo, Brazil, despite the volume of Brazilian players in the field. The champion was, in fact, a Chilean, and the Brazilians returned the favor this week when Murilo Figueiredo took home the win in Viña del Mar, Chile. Figueiredo defeated 620 other players in the largest LAPT field ever to win $146,000.

Aaron Alanen PWNS 1st Zynga IRL MTT for $15K
Zynga PokerCon, The Palms, Las Vegas, Nevada

There’s not much to be said about this tournament that wasn’t said by Dan. So I’ll just let this tournament recap, as well as these other articles he wrote explain what happened this past weekend at ZyngaCon.

Pros Living Locally in Las Vegas Were “Wynning” This Week
Wynn Poker Classic, The Wynn, Las Vegas, Nevada

The Wynn has pretty quietly been running a successful poker series the last couple of weeks, and more recently with buy-ins in the $2k-$5k range they’ve drawn in quite a few poker pros living locally. The best story has to be the victory of Chad Brown; after undergoing surgery recently to remove a large tumor, Brown showed up at their most recent $2,000 event and won the whole thing, banking almost $75,000. Also winning this week was Bryan Micon, who took down the $500 HORSE event.

Last month saw a civil complaint filed against a number of online penny auction sites in federal court in the Northern District of Illinois. This is the same district in which the Crespo v. Seth et al case was filed last year. It’s too soon to say if these cases are starting a trend, but they may be harbingers of creative and enterprising plaintiffs’ attorneys’ attacks on the gaming and entertainment industry.

The penny auction case is Bryant v. Entertainment Shopping, Inc., and it names a number of bigger players in the sector, including the owners of www.swoopo.com and www.bidcactus.com. For the uninitiated, penny auction sites are websites that auction off consumer goods and services (including popular electronic devices like tablets and MP3 players). Typically, these auctions have three key features that set them apart from some other types of auctions: 1. you pay a fee for each bid you place (e.g., $0.50); 2. each bid raises the bid price by only a small amount (e.g., a penny); and, 3. each bid placed extends the bidding for a period of time (say, ten seconds). Many of these auctions come down to a frenzy of participation in the final seconds of the auction. A winner will often walk away with a good purchased for well below the retail price, even with the cost of the bids factored in. Many more people will have bid for the good and paid for the privilege of doing so, which is how the penny auction site more than pays for the auctioned item and makes a profit.

More…

photo: BJ Nemeth/Sport of Poker

Big congrats to Aaron Alanen … who won what may well have been the fastest 490+ player tournament in history this weekend in Las Vegas at the Palms … by taking down the inaugural Zynga Pokercon bracelet. He’s a software consultant from Phoenix, and a real player who enjoys two different poker games — No-Limit Hold’em and PLO. (Nice!)

Before the end, the final six would chop it up, each player taking $10,000, and the winner getting a bracelet and an additional $5,200.

Alanen, 43, seems a humble dude who won’t deny that luck certainly played a big factor in his win. Extra lucky for Zynga, probably, that their first ever real-life champion happens to have the initials AA. Alanen says he plans to give a portion of his winnings to the Red Cross for Japan relief efforts.

(Though not confirmed: @Sandau on Twitter plausibly seems like he could be Sandau on Full Tilt/Sharkscope. Both appear to be members of the PPA.)

UPDATE: Confirmed. He is both. Plays microstakes NLH and PLO on FTP.

$15k may not seem like much to grizzled poker veterans capable of blowing that on a bad day without a Kleenex, but it’s by far the biggest prize ever paid out in Zynga history … the only one actually. And should Aaron or any of the other final six decide to put their winnings back into the Zynga economy … at the current rate of exchange (handled with ease by American credit card or PayPal) they’d become instant multibillionaires.

$7.3 billion to be more exact … $4.8 billion for 2nd through 6th.

(US$1 = Z$480,000)

Damn, that would be enough to bowl over the Zynga big game, which from what I understand features the most monster-stacked ballers on Zynga playing $1mm/$2mm NLH. They’d also have the option of redeeming their real American brick-and-mortar casino cash in Zynga Casino Gold if they think precious virtual metals are gonna continue to rise in value.

Meanwhile, a simple $10k in real money went to:

More…