Many of our lives changed five years ago today, as George W. Bush signed the Port Security Act into law.

At the time, many wondered if this marked the end of online poker, which had been booming at a rate that woulda had virtually the entire planet + Jupiter playing by now. Ironically, what was supposed to be a death knell for online poker would actually be what made several of my friends and colleagues (temporarily) rich … and the principals of Full Tilt and PokerStars and Ultimate Bet (momentarily, in the scheme of things) extremely powerful.

Let’s have a little flashback, shall we … to slightly more innocent-til-proven-guilty times … commemorating this uber-significant day in poker history:

Poker Faces in the Crowd
October 16, 2006

Online poker is kinda-sorta illegal now. Pokerati wanted to know America’s thoughts … so we asked the question, How has the new law affected you?

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With only 51 players left after three days of play here at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood Florida only two players are left wearing patches.

Mike Sexton and Zachary Clark will be the only two players returning for Day Four wearing Party Poker and Doyle’s Room patches. Sexton returns with 192,000 while Clark is close to the bottom of the standings with 119,000.

It appears that if one of these two players do not reach the final table that the final six will be completely patchless since the representative for Full Tilt that usually ensures the two of the final six are patched is leaving on a flight on Saturday.

At the top of the leader board is Taylor VonKriegenbergh with 1,080,500. He is closely followed by the only female left in the field Abbey Daniels who has 1,016,500.

The players return to play down to the final 18 or for six levels on Saturday at noon.

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

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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

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The second installment of the Islidur SuperStar Showdown took place yesterday evening on PokerStars. After getting beat by Isaac Haxton in the first match Islidur1 took on Tony G in the 2,500 hand heads-up match. By the time the 9 hour match was concluded Islidur1 came out victorious with a final winning margin of $44,820.

At different points of the match each player held a lead of at least $70,000 before the biggest hands of the match even happened. The largest hand of the match came on one of the PLO tables when both players were sitting with over 60k each. Tony G was the aggressor for the entire hand and was the one who got the players all-in after the river when the board read . Tony G held the lead throughout the hand with his but the river was enough for Islidur1 to steal the $124,300 pot with his .

As the matched closed Tony G went into desperation mode and tried to make a move with but ran into the of Islidur1. After this hand Islidur held a $45,000 lead and that was where the match ended.

Post match comments by Tony G can be found on his blog where has laid down the challenge for Islidur1 to come over to Party Poker.

Who is next in line for the SuperStar Showdown? Some think it will be Phil Galfond while others think that a Islidur/Haxton rematch is possible. PokerStars Pro David Williams hinted in the chat box last night that David “Viffer” Peat has sent in a proposal for a challenge between him and Islidur1 take place live at PCA this month. Keep an eye on the official SuperStar Showdown page for the announcement of the next opponent.

Early holiday shopping?  Have some unused cash on your Paypal account?  Can’t make day 2 in a WSOP $1K, let alone run deep in the Main?  eBay has you covered.

Listing the item under the “Jewelry & Watches >> Fashion Jewelry >> Bracelets >> Other” category, Peter Eastgate, who announced his retirement from poker during the series in July, put his 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event Bracelet for auction on eBay yesterday – donating 100% of the sale amount to UNICEF.

PartyPoker’s Tony G, who has pledged to win the bidding for the “pre-owned” item (a.k.a. bling for his German Shephard Zasko), can be assured that there is no wear and tear:  The Las Vegas Review Journal quotes Eastgate as saying that while he had great pride in the title, the bracelet was never worn.

While this sale hasn’t been met with a lot of support by poker media-types in Twitter this morning, at least the potential buyer(s) will be happy to know that it is ready for delivery (standard shipping free!) just after Dec 24th.  No returns accepted.

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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The final table of the £10,000 + 350 Main Event concluded Tuesday evening with Briton James Bord taking down the gold bracelet along with £830,401, defeating Fabrizio Baldassari heads-up. Here’s the full final table results:

1 James Bord 830,401
2 Fabrizio Baldassari 513,049
3 Ronald Lee 376,829
4 Roland De Wolfe 278,945
5 Nicolas Levi 208,119
6 Daniel Steinberg 156,530
7 Dan Fleyshman 118,643
8 Brian Powell 90,617
9 Marc Inizan 69,754

Nolan Dalla’s final table report is up at WSOP.com

Elsewhere…

EPT London :: Day 1a of £5,000 Main Event starts Wednesday, EPT London Schedule PokerNews and PokerStars blog cover all the action.

WSOP Circuit Southern Indiana – Elizabeth, IN :: The WSOP Circuit visits Indiana twice in October. Sat. Oct. 2 commences the Horseshoe Southern Indiana WSOP-C with 10 rings up for grabs, including the $1,600 Main Event. The winner, along with the best all around player, aka “Casino Champion” gets a seat at the $1,000,000 Championship Invitational in Las Vegas. WSOP-C schedule

Before I appeared on This Week in Poker with the folks at Wicked Chops Tuesday evening, I did a brief interview with Tatjana Pasalic for PartyPoker’s blog. Wish it went a little bit better, but was still a fun interview, even though it may not have looked that way:

The bad news: People in France were recently blocked — just last week — from playing on PokerStars.com.

The good news: They’ll be able to play on PokerStars.fr, in a fully legal and regulated way.

They just won’t be able to play against anyone not in France … which sets up a new dynamic of what licensed and regulated online poker could look like worldwide in the not-too-distant future.

France’s regulatory body ARJEL released a list on Friday of nine more approved licensees, adding to 17 previous approvals. French parliament passed a law in October 2009 that ended its state-run online gambling monopoly, allowing up to 30 licenses for privately owned websites. PokerStars got one in this second wave of approvals, and PartyGaming got five.

The newly licensed companies and their completely legalized domains are:

LIL Managers Ltd (FriendBet.fr): sports betting
Reel Malta Ltd (PokerStars.fr): poker
Electraworks SAS (PartyBets.fr , GameBookers.fr, PartyPoker.fr, ActPoker.fr, LuckyJeux.fr): poker, sportsbetting
Gaming Iliad SAS (Chilipoker.fr): poker
Partouche Gaming France SAS (Partouche.fr): poker

[Source: eGaming Review]

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Check it out … many of you probably know Warren Lush, PartyPoker’s longtime PR guy and an occasional voice on the PartyPoker Blog. Always good to see a mate do well … and a poker person cross over into not-so-pokery territory, as Warren did a few weeks ago on Britain’s Election Night. The man once charged with babysitting Padraig Parkinson during a Hall of Fame drinking binge appeared on C4′s Alternative Election, a live comedy-satire-news show (about 6:30 in) to talk about the wild political wagers flying around.

Also, can someone let me know if there’s a Google Translate available for YouTube vids that’ll allow me to understand whatever language it is they’re speaking here?

The final table of the Bay 101 Shooting Stars Classic concluded early Saturday morning as McLean Karr, down to just 10 big blinds with 27 players left when day 3 started, winning $878,500, which includes a $25,000 WPT Championship seat, defeating Andy “BKiCe” Seth in heads-up play. Phil Hellmuth was the first elimination at the final table, when his QQ lost to Seth’s AJ when another ace hit the river, causing Hellmuth to curl up in the fetal position, leading Tony G to blog an open letter to Hellmuth, expressing concern for his mental health after his stunning elimination. Here’s the full results from the final table:

1 McLean Karr $878,500 including $25k WPT seat
2 Andy Seth $521,200
3 Daniel O’Brien $292,800
4 Hasan Habib $234,300
5 Matt Keikoan $175,700
6 Phil Hellmuth $117,000

Here’s an interview tournament director Matt Savage had with McLean and friend Maria Ho after his win:

UPDATE: Tony G is now blogging for PartyPoker, too.

Oops, I can’t believe I forgot Tony G in my Power 20 rankings … the man who directly controls the paycheck of so many of my cronies and the bankroll of at least a handful of international tournament players is now officially on board with the crew Mike Sexton built/is building. Further evidence that PartyPoker/WPT is making serious moves (to challenge PokerStars and Harrah’s?) … and re-enforcing Sexton’s original vision that anybody is welcome to play at Party. Also makes Party’s upcoming Premier League Poker in Las Vegas a lot more interesting …

Click below for the full press release. We’ll see if we can’t figure out any more details about what went into bringing The G on board.

Meanwhile, speaking of G’s, Kesan, the Napoleonic thug on Season 2 of From G’s to Gents, is going to prison for beating a baby.

[Link thanks California Jen!]

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Had to double-read this one … How is it possible that Kara Scott isn’t already in the pocket of PokerStars or Full Tilt? Or at least UB/Absolute! Oh well, like a late draft pick, PartyPoker — in yet another sign of their prepping to re-enter the American market — has added the new High Stakes Poker co-hostess to their start-from-scratch poker crew. Back in the day, PartyPoker prided itself on having no pros — save for Mike Sexton. But now it seems they’re clearly trying to build a real, competitive team of personalities like the American-friendly sites have been doing for years.

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Unconfirmed … but that’s the word we’re spreading, based on possibly drinky information from a semi-reliable source, a presumably reliable source, and a plausibly reliable source.

The status of PokerPages has been up in the air ever since they announced they’d be closing up shop effective Oct. 31. That day passed and they still kept publishing — and even sent two reporters to cover the November Nine. But no original content has been put up on the site since Dec. 3. Everyone was expecting some sort of sale, and now that has apparently gone through.

PokerPages, of course, is one of the oldest poker information sites on the internet – having reported on tournaments since 2000 … and having built a massive tourney/player/results database in the process.

What PokerStars plans to do with a site they haven’t yet told many people they’ve bought (or intend to buy) remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, the transition from NeverwinPoker to Donkdown seems complete — with the old NWP forums successfully transfered over to their new home. Donkdown is now a Bryan Micon and Todd Witteles (aka “Dan Druff”) joint, with no more Tony G or Dustin Woolf, who is now the lone face for his namesake site.

Speaking of forums … 2+2 honcho Mason Malmuth has sued Dutch Boyd (and a guy named Anthony Scocozza) over domain squatting issues.

Oh, and our once-superbeloved PokerBlog.com … yeah, they’re apparently gone. For at least the past week, visiting the site gives you this message:

Fatal error: Table ‘./pokerblog/cache’ is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: SELECT data, created, headers FROM cache WHERE cid = ‘variables’ in /home/pokerblogcom/public_html/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 66

R.I.P. Yeah, seems kinda appropriate. PokerBlog was/is a PartyPoker operation … but now they seem to be focussing blogging efforts on their more official company blog.

UPDATE: PokerBlog is back. Looks like we can expect some WPT coverage there.

Seriously, it’s 2005 again, right? Remember, Juha Helppi and Robert Varkonyi were playing underwater, or maybe it was on an iceberg? Regardless … while on first glance this gets more eyeroll and groan than live-event invitations to Michael Phelps, Lady Gaga, Barack Obama, Sasquatch, and Superman … the idea of Mike Sexton and Tom Dwan playing against some Danish online qualifiers while dangling over the streets of Copenhagen? Yeah, I can dig …

From a poker perspective, it’s actually an interesting concept: Let’s force difficult poker decisions under conditions that guarantee a little extra heart-pumping, with some extra life-on-the-line chemicals in the bloodstreams. Though that’s about as gimmicky as you can get, gotta say, I think I’d be really interested in seeing this on TV — bring back some heart monitors and attach everyone to bungee cords for when they get knocked out! And maybe sprinkle the set with bread crumbs to attract the railbirds …

Click below for full details from da.PartyPoker:

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Here’s an interesting little new poker device that just might not suck! The poker controller is a vid-game-inspired joypad designed with specific online poker moves and multitabling in mind. Supposedly works with Full Tilt, PokerStars, PartyPoker, and Ladbrokes. The bet wheel seems pretty cool, and the tilt switch … well just go ahead and embed that in me now:

Each Poker Controller comes fully integrated with a pinpoint Raise-O-Meter (bet wheel), Custom Bet Buttons, Lightning Fast Table Switches, Mouse Touchpad, Fast-play Buttons to Bet, Check/Call & Fold, Table Settings & More. All designed to enable quick play at the touch of a button!

The Wireless Poker Controller can help even the most seasoned player to increase their bet speed & bet accuracy, avoid errors & play more efficiently. The Poker Controller even features an emergency ‘TILT’ switch, which can be programmed to shut you out for a cool-off period when tilt takes the better of you. Save losing $$$ from emotional and irrational play!

[via Thrillist]