This week we’re heading back to Macau – the Las Vegas of the Orient – to discover why Phil Ivey was really hanging out at the APPT. Here’s a clue: It has to do with playing poker for stupid amounts of money. Plus, a social media development that will surely plunge my homeland into an endless spiral of degeneracy or, alternatively, transform the nation into a utopia of Teutonic smugness. Depends on how the cards fall.

Megabucks in Macau

All eyes turned to the East last week, as the global poker media witnessed the long awaited return of Phil Ivey. Turns out, he’d been there all along, sat in a $1,300/$2,300 cash game chocked full of rich Chinese businessmen. Apparently ‘The Big Game’ has permanently moved continents and if the high rollers are still in town come 2013, they’ll be first in line for a 500 player tournament organized by Macau big wigs. The event, which has the support of local businesses, is mooted to feature an incredible $100 million prize pool. [Poker News]

PokerStars Join Soccer Brawl in Germany

PokerStars has recently joined soccer on the list of things the rest of the world enjoys more than Americans. To commemorate this fact, the world’s largest online poker site have recently announced a sponsorship deal with the German football team, VfB Lübeck. However, this not only a straightforward business arrangement. PokerStars have been vocal supporters of planned gambling legislation introduced by the state of Schleswig-Holstein, in which Lübeck is located. Rules which would fly in the face of those proposed by the German government. [CardPlayer]

Gambling on Facebook coming to the UK

Our final news nugget for today is undoubtedly the shiniest. Social networking megaliths Facebook have made detailed plans to provide real money online gambling in the UK. Soon, the denizens of this sceptred isle will be able to ‘like’ an inane photo of their gurning acquaintances and then stack off their entire bankroll all on the same platform. The likes of 888 are reportedly in talks to acquire a Facebook license, with FB credits being used in place of the pretend dollars we’ve been playing with up until now. [Tech Crunch]

At the end of this column I often say something like, ‘if I’m still here next week’ preceded by a flippant comment about one thing or another, but this time, I’m genuinely concerned for my well being. My fiancée has passed into another hemisphere for two months and there’s a very real chance that in seven days time I will be buried under my own ineptitude. So, if I’m still here next week…

I knew early on that Zynga was gonna be kinda a friggin’ big deal, with plans to get even bigger. While just about every other online poker entity has struggled with receding revenues of late, Zynga has seen theirs take off. But how? You don’t even play for real money there (yet) …

In an effort to better understand the secret to Zynga’s success, I went to the Texas Hold’em Poker Facebook fan page for preliminary research, and omg, here’s what I found:

Zynga Poker fans: It’s a good bet that the majority of commenters and likers here aren’t familiar with the phrase “don’t tap the aquarium”.

Yeow. Is this what poker has been missing all along? Power Hours and Free Kitties!?!

So simple, so brilliant … how did PokerStars or Full Tilt not think of it? Forget rakeback, black cards, rush poker, final-table patches, re-entry and cashout tournaments … just give away a few cartoon images and let the people play! And that’s when they rebuy?

OK, maybe I don’t have the Zynga equation down exactly yet, but that’s some of what I’ll be looking into as Zynga’s inaugural PokerCon comes to Las Vegas, March 18-19, at the Palms. I’ll be part of a team covering Zynga PokerCon with Michele Lewis and BJ Nemeth.

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WPT Texas Hold ‘Em Poker is FREE to play on Facebook. Get a $20K chip package when you join the game and play with your friends and poker buddies on Facebook.

You can create your own poker persona by using the Avatar Shop and play any range of table stakes.

With nearly 2 million WPT fans already playing the game, it is a great place to practice your poker skills and have some fun.

For tournament lovers we offer a 3-round Shootout Tournament where 2,000 chips can get you 500,000!

Come check it out and have some fun…for free. Visit and Like the official application fan page here or go directly to the game here.

In last Friday’s twitfeed, my favorite tech-biz site Tech Crunch tweeted about their post  “Is Zynga Trying To Patent Virtual Currency?” Apparently, the leviathan of multiplayer gaming networks — and big wildcard in the future of real-money online poker — filed a US Patent Application in March of this year in an effort to corner the virtual currency market.

At least that’s my take. After reading the actual legal document, “Virtual Playing Chips in a Multiuser Online Game Network”, I gather what they are really trying to do is define and patent the purchase and flow of “Non-Redeemable Virtual Currency” as it pertains *specifically* to gambling on social networks.

 

click to enlarge

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I swear I’m not the Facebook police any more than I am a Harrah’s attorney … but when the shit just gets served up while I’m busy liking stuff … it’s kinda hard to miss! Yet another example appeared on Tuesday night of a rather blatant misappropriation of WSOP trademark on Facebook. It always seems to happen on Tuesday nights … hmmm.

First, before I get into the new offense … to be fair and clear, the WPT did acknowledge their error almost immediately after we mocked their maiden foray into Facebook marketing. On September 21 a WPT spokesman said:

“We would like to confirm that the Facebook ad mentioned in your September 17, 2010 post was indeed a mistake on the part of a 3rd party advertising agency used by our “WPT Texas Hold’em on Facebook” licensee. The ad was placed by the advertising agency without the knowledge of WPT or our Facebook game licensee.

Please be assured that we acted immediately to rectify the situation and that the advertising agency has pulled the unapproved ad. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.”

Cool, yeah whatever, like we said, we’re not the Facebook police, but you’re welcome — Pokerati is always happy to help. We did notice the replacement ads that appeared the following Tuesday:

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I think we all understand the nature of the WSOP’s push for their play-money online poker game on Facebook, which is being heavily advertised on commercials during ESPNs broadcast of the WSOP main event. People seeking more information, however, could be mistakenly led to the Facebook page promoting action with the WPT, arguably one of their biggest competitors for this market.

Check out the potentially confusing appropriation of the WSOP logo in an ad currently being served up to hundreds of thousands of fans of “poker” on Facebook:

Sure enough, it takes clickers to the official WPT Texas Hold’em Poker page.

Careless mistake by a WPT social media intern … or conscious effort on days the WSOP is airing on ESPN such that they get the “likes” before Big Casino corporate lawyers make someone say “oops, sorry” and change the ad to something that doesn’t use tactics usually reserved for fly-by-night operations looking to make a quick buck?

UPDATE: On 9/21, the WPT issued an official statement on the matter:

“We would like to confirm that the Facebook ad mentioned in your September 17, 2010 post was indeed a mistake on the part of a 3rd party advertising agency used by our “WPT Texas Hold’em on Facebook” licensee. The ad was placed by the advertising agency without the knowledge of WPT or our Facebook game licensee.

Please be assured that we acted immediately to rectify the situation and that the advertising agency has pulled the unapproved ad. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.”

This isn’t particularly new — has been out there since August — but it’s the first I noticed … Zynga, the free Texas Hold’em game on Facebook and MySpace and therefore one of the biggest online poker communities out there, apparently has bots growing out the ying-yang. And now, as of about a week ago, after some fixes and revisions, it’s finally working well.

The code for it is publicly available on Google-code:
http://code.google.com/p/zynga-poker-bot/

It’s already had more than 88,000 downloads. If even just 1 percent of those are installed to fruition … well that’s a lot of bots competing for your fake chips and theoretically feeding the imaginary rake.

And here’s a rockin’ video showing exactly how to install it.

Hmm, interesting. More confirmation that bots are a real issue, and will be a major factor in future online poker operations. Also kinda funny to think that bot armies are essentially being trained playing free poker … where they theoretically can eventually work their way up in stakes like a human player who gets better and better.

The concept of Poker Patience is simple enough … arrange 25 cards to make the best poker hands vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. About 14 25 40 plays later, you start to think you’re starting to understand proper strategy:

http://www.thecodezone.com/games/pokerpatience.php

Facebookers can play (repeatedly, and compare scores with friends) here.

[via DealerZach]

Kinda-sorta. Zynga’s Texas Hold’em was the most popular game on all of Facebook — more popular than its sister games Mafia Wars, Yoville, and that farming game — which was all fine and dandy until people started hocking play-money chips on eBay.

http://tweet.pkrrd.com/news/posts/zynga-texas-hold-em-maybe-a-little-too-popular

So now they’re apparently in the midst of a Facebook poker crackdown, looking to lock out multi-accounters, for example, and take play-money pushers to court. Conspiracy theorists say it has more to do with black-market undercutting of Zynga’s chip-selling business … but regardless, kinda effed up, not just because of poker, but because of the inevitable hubbub that seems to spring up whenever you see any semblance of a free market on the internet leading to unregulated virtual finance transactions.

Sometimes I think they’re important to have. Other times, um, lol? From Facebook:

J ***** sent you a message.

Subject: WSOP

“You still in the main event? In the money yet?”

Hey, so if all you could play along … I’m thinking of telling him yeah, it’s Day 3, I’m good for like $160k and am thinking of cashing out before I lose it all. Cool? If he asks who’s winning we’ll say Greg Raymer, OK? Ooh, or even better, Phil Ivey … er …

The other two-bracelet holder on our squad, Pat Poels, made the money in $3,000 HORSE.

We’d say follow his progress here, but they’re not really covering him much — with 46 out of 452 players remaining, many of them plenty big names. (Which is kinda why he’s on Team Pokerati.) At the same time he’s not twittering nor Facebooking his play … so that may become an issue at contract renegotiation time.

As of the current break, he’s got a slightly below average stack.

Doyle Brunson is on the grid, that’s for sure. In his latest blog post, which I read via Facebook, he tells us he’s really getting into Twitter. Here’s his address if you want to follow him: twitter.com/texdolly

In doing so, you’ll learn why he’s not playing in the WPT Championship, and that Phil Ivey lost $1 million in Bobby’s Room last night.

And then, back to his blog, he explains to all the Teabaggers out there why he thinks they should STFU!

I headed over to my CPA to get my taxes done and ran into a traffic jam. Hundreds of people were blocking the streets having what they called a “tea party”. I think they were protesting the current financial crisis our nation is going through, but some of the signs were ridiculous. “Impeach Obama”, “What comes after trillions”, “Stop spending our money” and other statements blaming our president. For Pete’s sake, let’s give the guy a chance to straighten this mess up. I got a lot of heat for voting for McCain, but I knew when I cast a late vote, John didn’t have a chance to win. I was just being loyal to the Republican Party. But now that the nation has spoken that they wanted Obama, we should all support him.

We all have our guilty pleasures … and one of mine is taking corny 7- to 10-question quizzes on Facebook. So far I have learned I should be living in Italy, the Star Wars character I most resemble is Jar-Jar Binks, and the US President I would be is Ulysses S. Grant. I’m sure you are all impressed …

Anyhow, Tuscaloosa Johnny posted a comment that got me thinking:

You sure do like your quizzes. Is there a quiz telling you which poker player you are most like? By the way, U.S. Grant was one of the most incompetent presidents in our history…

That really would be a fun little quiz. Full Tilt or PokerStars … can you get your people on that? Thanks, I would really like to take that quiz, and I’m sure it will be much appreciated by Facebook’s 275 million users, most of whom don’t play poker but probably have a few friends who do.

Everyone’s hustlin’ gigs these days … and beyond status updates to my Facebook page, I’ve found two welcome homes for some non-Pokerati writing — at Bluff, and most recently What’s On … where I let the not-so-poker-geeky Vegas tourists know about happenings of interest from the LV poker scene, such as:

The Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza (which I think ended yesterday or today!) and, coming up, Dream Team Poker.

Microsoft, we know, likes to fight … and the company fired their first shot against cheaters in their online Xbox Live community by conducting a little neighborhood sweep. They aren’t banning players, but instead dropping their player points down to zero and marking their profiles with the digital equivalent of a scarlet C. Not sure how that would work in poker … but it shows the relevance of poker issues in a non-poker world, and perhaps suggests some potential allies who have an interest our fights. Online gam(bl)ing and online gaming, after all, aren’t that far apart.

Online video game competitions for money are already in play — the Fifa Interactive World Cup, for example, awards $20k to the winner. And the shoot-em-up game Kwari has started offering real-money competition, where you win cash for kills and the house takes its cut by charging you for ammo. Bullets, chips … tomato, D’amato … Seriously, how familiar does this sound:

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