Topics this week include the emergence of Darvin Moon and Phil Ivey in the press, tournament spotlights (Shulman def. Negreanu @WSOPE, Gustafson def. Eastgate @EPT-London, UB’s Aruba-fest), and the demise of PokerPages (feat. former PP EIC Amy Calistri) …

on PokerRoad

The Poker Beat
Huff, Caldwell, Michalski, Wise, Nemeth, Calistri, Stapleton
10/8/09

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A couple of great pieces for weekend reading…

Amy Calistri always has eyes on the stock market and the corporate goings-on of poker-related businesses, and her latest take on the sale of the WPT assets is right on the money. She gives the latest about stockholder rage over the WPT/Gamynia move and puts into words what I’ve been thinking for years, since shortly after I left the WPT fold and began to notice its downfall. That’s not to say it can’t rise again, but it might need new leadership to make that happen. An excerpt:

Frustration and envy appear to be the seeds of the series of missteps that sapped millions of dollars and focus away from the company’s core business. While the WPT helped create the poker boom, its television production business model only got a small piece of the obscene profits that were being generated by poker’s popularity. Online poker companies and online media sites reaped the lion’s share. This infuriated the WPT; they felt they were owed.

Gambling law professor I. Nelson Rose can break down a legal document or political issue like nobody’s business, and it’s a good thing he took the time to analyze the Menendez bill introduced to the Senate this week. Thanks to Poker Grump, this piece takes a look at the 91-page document and sheds some light on the proposed participation of states in the regulation/licensing of online poker, the tax on deposits to online sites, and the possible exemption of sites like PartyPoker from licensing. A sampling from the article:

Taxes might be a problem. The Frank bills have no limit on what taxes states can impose on operators, but limit the federal government to what is called a fee of 2% on deposits. Menendez is asking for less and more: A Federal Internet gaming license fee of 5% of deposited funds and a State or Indian tribal government gaming license fee of another 5%. This does get over the big problem with the Frank bills, that the big states, like California, where the customers will be, have no incentive to support Internet gambling operated and taxed by Nevada. Under Menendez, California gets that 5% tax. Although the states won’t like this provision: Tribes are treated like states, so if a player is on Indian land, that tribe gets the full 5% and the state in which the tribe is located gets nothing.

Of course, the tax system is still screwy, since it is a tax on deposits, not revenue. But it might work.

It’s true. And she’s been palling around with druggies and convicts just so she can “write about it” and (don’t tell anyone I said this) I’m even hearing unconfirmed, squalidly detailed rumors from an imaginary source that she’s got a thing for Somali pirates! I’ll pull short of calling her The Ann Coulter of Poker … but she certainly touched a nerve by questioning the “good fight” behind our beloved little Texas HB 222.

Player safety, protection from shady games, capitalist personal freedom not real enough issues to vote on?

I might be extra-sensitive because, frankly, the bill seems to be stalling in Calendars Committee. Why that is, I’m not sure … they’ve heard our message, they know it has passable support … throw an amendment on if you need to, but c’mon … put us on the agenda already! I’m a little removed from what’s going on in Austin during this hectic part of the Session, but I’m pretty sure if we don’t move the bill forward in like the next -2 days, we might be in trouble … Just sitting there for like two weeks seems odd, assuming it’s ready for a simple yay or nay. I suppose it’s possible we’re getting Fristed somewhere in the process. Or, perhaps they’re just having a sincere intellectual dilemma, inspired by Amy Calistri’s question:

Why Do I Want to Pay a Rake?

Why is the PPA wasting time feigning a “grass roots” issue over a Texas bill whose only beneficiary is commercial poker – in a state where poker is unquestionably legal? … It doesn’t exactly meet my definition of fighting the good fight. I mean, even the banking lobby doesn’t ask me to petition my legislators for higher ATM fees. And they can be shameless.

[OK, deep breath, find peace ... no tilt]

More…

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.

We love the guys at PokerListings more and more … not only do they bowl well and generally produce quality poker content, but also, they get it: They can buy a blogger’s affection by throwing freerolls with quality cash prizes at stake. Brilliant, as the British would say.

In the first go-round of the Run Good Challenge, the guys hosting the event dominated. Oops, not very hospitable. But they rolled the money over and then the ladies started winning, including Change100′s victory in the Grand Final. But in event #1 of Run Good Challenge 2: Electric Boogaloo, the one only semi-employed male in the field with firsthand memories of Bobby Riggs losing to Billie Jean King took it down — kudos to Dr. Tim for making a stand on behalf of chubby white bald men who, frankly, needed the inspiration to know, Yes We Can!

The Shrink won $600 for his Sunday-morning skills, fending off attacks from his writing partner Amy Calistri ($300) and longtime Pokerati fave Michele Lewis ($100).

California Jen, Liz Lieu, and Lacey Jones apparently missed the starting bell, but yours truly woke up to his PokerStars alarm this time — seriously, you get a rousing beep on the first hand if you register for the tourney pre-sleep and leave Stars running overnight — but couldn’t get his head fully in the game before pushing all-in with his Q3o vs. the eventual winner’s Q8s (on a flop of Q-8-x) … damn, finished 11th out of 14, which seems about right for how I played almost into Level 2.

While Jen was slaving away covering the WCOOP on the PokerStarsBlog this weekend, I was extremely busy playing in a $1,000 freeroll on PokerStars (12 players max). I’m sure it won’t make her extra-happy to know that I overslept for this special-invite tourney and logged in with an M < 1. But that's what it took to make the final table -- playing tighter than ever. My stats en route to finishing 9th:

During current Hold’em session you were dealt 122 hands and saw flop:
- 0 out of 21 times while in big blind (0%)
- 0 out of 22 times while in small blind (0%)
- 2 out of 79 times in other positions (2%)
- a total of 2 out of 122 (1%)
Pots won at showdown – 1 of 2 (50%)
Pots won without showdown – 0
The series of events is called The Run Good Challenge — mad props to our friends at PokerListings for putting it on. 10 independent typists and two professional bloggers from Listings … duking it out in a game of online hungry-hungry hippo for real American cash:

Event 1: NLHE, regular Stars Structure (Sept 6)
Event 2: NLHE, turbo structure (Sept 13)
Event 3: NLHE/PLO, regular structure (Sept 20)
Grand Final: NLHE Deep Stack structure (Sept 27)

For the three prelims the top three spots will pay: $600, $300, $100. Grand final will consist of top five performers from external bloggers plus best of Dan or myself and will pay all six spots: $1,000, $650, $400, $200, $150, $100.

Sweet, no? Be sure to click below for “live” chatlog coverage from the feature table — kinda interesting to see how entertaining poker can be when you eliminate the hands. (And gives you disturbing insight into the sick minds of bloggers competing in a tournament that couldn’t happen at the WSOP without the entire final table being sent to the penalty box.)

More…