September 12, 2008
Instapoker (the Return of?)
Ahh, remember the good-ole-days when there were only like three stories at a time coming in on the Google News Alerts for “poker”, and only like three bloggers who had signed up for them? Me neither … it was never quite like that (but close) … and though I make no promises to keep this up on a daily basis, in an effort to inform the poker-news-hungry to the best of my abilities keep my open browser tabs to a minimum and my email backlog < 500, I will try to provide you some basic links to the plausibly worthwhile shizznit shaking down:
CardRunners and StoxPoker have joined forces to create a poker-training supersite. [PokerOnAMac.com]
Original PartyGaming honcho Anurag Dikshit — creator of some of the earliest online poker software — is one of three Indians to make Forbes’ list of 34 web-innovator billionaires … as well he should be. [MSNBC]
More on the Fed’s aggressive pursuit of Bodog — including criminal investigations on the company and Calvin Ayre. [Forbes.com]
Barney Frank has re-introduced the Payments System Protection Act, a revised version of HR 5767, which was shot down in his own committee earlier this year. [PokerNewsDaily]
Las Vegas visitation is down — to its lowest point since the start of the Iraq war. [Las Vegas Advisor]
And thus it only makes sense that LV gaming revenue is down — 14 percent this time — for the 7th consecutive month. [Forbes.com]
You know those new poker rooms popping up in Arizona? Well the Pascua Yaqui tribe doesn’t like them and is trying to get them shut down. (Funny: the mayor of Phoenix is named Phil Gordon.) [Zonie Report]
Poker parties and poker school are all the rage in Croatia. [CroatianVillas.com]
FUN RUMORS: Apparently Johnny Depp is quite the poker player, but he’s having a hard time getting alt/indie band We Were Scientists to pay up the $28k he beat them out of. (But all debts have been settled with Orlando Bloom, whom he supposedly beat out of $800k during the filming of Pirates of the Caribbean.) [Online Casino Advisory]
And in hardly related non-poker news … Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter’s pregnancy … do we want to start this century off in a world where teens (sometimes) use birth control and occasionally have an abortion or one where we preach abstinence and then glorify/celebrate the shotgun wedding? The MySpace page of the potential VPson-in-law Levi Johnston: [NYPost via HuffingtonPost via Kevin Allen/Sun Times]
“I’m a fuckin’ redneck” who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes.
“But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some shit and just fuckin’ chillin’ I guess.”
“Ya fuck with me I’ll kick [your] ass,” he added.
He also claims to be “in a relationship,” but states, “I don’t want kids.”
Perhaps we all have something to learn from a billion (Non-American) Indians. Not only did “these people” give us one of the founders of PartyPoker and hundreds if not thousands of terrible customer service reps, but also they made what is arguably the best condom commercial ever:






I like to troll Craigslist every so often for some hot, anonymous NSA poker action. Not looking for games — there’s no shortage of ‘em here in LV — just wanting to take the pulse of what people are pushing related to poker. Look at the ads all together and you get some interesting tells on the state of the poker world and its semi-anonymous inhabitants:








The first notable I ran into was OREL HERSHEISER, who apparently just moved here to Las Vegas and sat to my left in a 1/2 NLH game at RED ROCK — fresh after being denied selection into the baseball HALL OF FAME. I tried to play the not-knowing-who-he-is thing — “You lost a vote? Were you running for city council or congress or something?” — but he would end up busting me out when I tried to run a little STOP-N-GO. As I pushed all-in, he asked, “How much money do you have?”
Red Rock seems to be the OFF-STRIP place to be. On my second post-WSOP outing there, I ran into GARY THOMPSON — World Series of Poker
Back at RED ROCK a couple days later, I ran into ABRAHAM, and he really deserves his own post, because he tilted the table unlike anything I had ever seen — and even managed to invoke mockery from a cute young girl who wasn’t playing. Basically imagine the worst personality and poker characteristics of ME, 

Then JASON from JACKIE’S (in Dallas) and 


Perhaps RANDY BROWN will do better. He starts today with 67,000 chips.





The final table of $1,000 7-stud Hi Lo gets underway at 3 pm. This was supposed to be just a two-day event. TOM SCHNEIDER entered into nine-handed play last night (with a random fifth alternating between two tables) as the shortest stack; he’ll take his seat as the CHIP LEADER.

Rosie has also spurred further conversation about BACKING-DEAL DISCLOSURE — specifically as it pertained to BILL CHEN’S WSOP-









Airport Casino Filipino Parañaque will host the first Metro Manila satellite/qualifying tournament for the 3rd Philippine Poker Tour (PPT) Million-Peso Hold’em Championship on March 31, 2007. Registration starts at 1 p.m., and tournament at 2 p.m.




And speaking of Up for Poker … if you haven’t read it already, check out 
