A sign of how things change … back in 2005 the already legendary TJ Cloutier was still tearing it up. But in 2010, the WSOP bracelet he won in the 2005 $5k NLHE is now for sale on eBay. I guess he didn’t cash big enough via the sale of PokerPages to buy it back Bummer, dude. We feel ya. Not sure where the big fields are coming from in LA, AC, Australia, and France … everybody seems broke. But either way, you get the sense that those who are playing are doing so with far more seriousness than the fields were back in the day when TJ won this:

The seller is Plano Pawn Shop (”specializing in fine jewelry and firearms”), who has a 100 percent positive feedback rating after 314 eBay sales. Plano, of course, is the suburb next door to TJ’s home in Richardson … and on the way to the Choctaw Casino in Oklahoma, not to mention some of the bigger private games in the Dallas area.

UPDATE: His bracelet from the Scotty Nguyen Poker Challenge IV is also up for sale.

Via Bluff Magazine.

Kiplinger’s, the DC-based publisher of business forecasts and personal finance advice, appears to have “gotten” poker. A senior editor there attended a WPT boot camp (for a compilation story on adult camps), and before long he started seeing the world of investing and finance as a poker player … and that spawned a three-part series relating poker to all things economic.

Check it out … they’re all good reads:

INVESTOR PSYCHOLOGY
How Poker Can Make You a Better Investor
Learn to avoid emotional traps by playing a little Texas hold ’em.

STOCKS & BONDS
How Texas Hold ‘Em Simulates Investing
Both are based on incomplete and unfolding information.

STOCKS & BONDS
How Deepak Chopra Helped Me Play Poker Better
A device featuring the wellness guru taught me to keep my emotions under control.

And then, to top it all off, in yet another article in the January issue, they quote Barry Greenstein about investment risk:

Barry Greenstein, for instance, is a poker player by profession, so you might think he’d be prone to gambling with his portfolio. Instead, Greenstein buys utility stocks and municipal bonds, and says he follows his father’s advice: “You can play poker, but don’t trade commodities.”

So in conclusion, if I am surmising this right, the key to personal financial success in 2010 is play more poker. OK, got it.

(This, btw, is probably a good-for-poker message to go out to Kiplinger’s subscribers.)

Lisa Wheeler, president of Greasie Wheels, a poker consultancy that specializes in charity events, says that actually, numbers are not up across the board at charity tourneys in Las Vegas and elsewhere, though thanks to a handful of players, they aren’t hurting like all get-out:

Though attendance is down, and charity poker tournament coordinators are constantly looking for creative ways to stimulate participation, poker players continue to be extremely charitable. Many who have experienced success over the years have often donated even more. It balances out the ones who are less able.

Everybody likes a sneak peak into high-roller hotel rooms … and this YouTube vid gives more than a glimpse of the Bruce Willis and Marilyn Monroe suites at Planet Hollywood. PHo’s poker room is under new management, btw, that seems to be working hard to bring good, friendly customer-servicey low-stakes action ever since their previous management team turned out to be a bunch of (alleged) crooks:

Back in the day, you know, like 2007, rooms like these — with amazing views, foosball, and a bidet — were reserved for people willing to pay a few thousand a night or gamble with 10s of thousands. Now, as 2009 comes to a (bittersweet?) close, such suites are being given away for free to semi-famous YouTube bloggers who know a guy who knows a guy who once worked at Best Buy and sold stereo equipment to a previous high-roller with leftover comp points.

Economy prediction: Bargain luxe + favors will be hot in 2010, too.

I went to Bellagio yesterday for free danish a little poker suit ho-down to learn more about the PartyGaming-World Poker Tour merger/acquisition/absorption … and was thinking how this meeting that included outgoing WPT president Steve Lipscomb and incoming new boss Adam Pliska might be kinda like George W. Bush handing the keys to the White House over to Barack Obama — you know, peaceful transition of power, new regime, new direction … change … then I thought, nah, that comparison might not be fair, and might be stretching things a bit.

But then, upon meeting Pliska a few minutes later …

Hmm … White House, WPT House, WPTE House … Party Politics … workshop … but still, there might be something there.

Click below to read the corporate bio of a guy who stands to be rather influential in shaping poker’s future. But first, here’s another pic (taken at the actual White House) of the new WPT president, who was in town to talk about plans for what he believes will be a major poker stimulus:

Some astute Pokerati commenters have broken down the November Nine prizepool bump (note to self: actually read WSOP media guide; people worked hard on that) … and man, the economy the economy … Thanks to KevMath, Mean Gene, and Fifth Street Journal for showing us how such an infinitesimal little slice of the WSOP can reveal so much more.

Read their tri-alogue for relevant microeconomic calculations, and even some suggestions on how Harrah’s might want to gamble with these funds in the future.

In a nutshell, last year $25 million held in the Nov-9 interim accrued $98k in interest. This year remaining payouts total $16 million; but the extra money that brings to the party — thanks to a drastic drop in short-term T-bill rates — is only $1,321.

ALT HED: Lack of Interest in the November Nine?

He’s not broke, he swears, but he is, like everyone, way more money-minded than before … because he has to be! You have no idea how much a prop bet against Phil Ivey can affect the price of a barrel of oil.

Phil Hellmuth sat down for an hour with PokerTube.com the other day (an hoouuurrr), and while most of it’s gag-worthy, I did find his explanation of bankroll management and his personal cash sitch interesting:

He really really really wants you to buy his stuff at PokerBrat.com.

Wow, I took the under … but this is so under I’m not even sure I still win: 95 players in $50k HORSE, compared with 148 the year before, 148 the year before that, and 143 the year before that.

Had there not been a delayed start, the number mighta been closer to 50.

All this on a Day when the WSOP decided to take a risk and play the Sex Pistols version of God Save the Queen in lieu of the British national anthem, which some thought was great, others thought was terrible, and in the end had @WSOPsuits apologizing. (All I can say is yikes, rough day, know how that goes …)

I suspect there’ll be a lot of buzz and analysis over the HORSE field for a some time to come … after all, though not the first event with a decline in entry numbers, it is the most noticeable … resulting in a $2million drop in prize pool and a six-figure hit in the take for WSOP tourney staff.

Hey, bottom line, $50k is harder to come by these days — way more harder than in 2008, and presumably even harder than in early June 2009. But is it the money, or is it the lack of ESPN coverage?

NOTE: More than 25 percent of $50k HORSE players are members of Team Full Tilt. That doesn’t mean FTP ponied up their buy-ins (directly) … but it does say something. Particularly since many of these players were some of the last to buy in, after the entry period would have ended were it not for the cards-in-the-air delay.

Bailout?

A $2,250 Mega-Sat for the $50k HORSE breaks out right in front of us, where suddenly the seasoned pros are kicking it old-school — playing with jovial intensity and the hope that their real poker dreams can be bought at a bargain. It’s the poker economy, the regular economy, and backer variance in play … with satellite sponsorship deals, backing syndicates, and a question about what kinda team Russian backers will deploy. Special appearances by Michael Mizrachi, Allan Kessler, Bill Chen, et many medium-higher-rolling al.

presented by:

Tao of Pokerati at the 40th WSOP
Las Vegas, NV

Episode 11.21: HORSE Hunting
4:09

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.

Episode 11.22: The Satellite Economy
5:06

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.

The creator of Cirque du Soleil took 4th place in the 2007 WPT Championship after winning his entry via super-satellite.

That’s the name of the day, today, June 16, in Las Vegas.

The town’s Partyer-in-Chief, Mayor Oscar Goodman, declared it such in celebration of the uber-bendy, adult-acid-trippy Cirque du Soleil’s 25th anniversary. To honor the day, the name of the Strip has been changed — with plausibly confusing street signs and everything — from Las Vegas Blvd. to Cirque du Soleil Blvd. And at 1 pm today, outside Bellagio, some 300 people will be walking around on stilts as part of the festivities and a six-city worldwide effort to break the Guinness record for stilt-walking.

More than 90 million people have seen Cirque shows, which explains why its creator, Guy Laliberte, is the 261st richest man in the world, with $2.5 billion in net worth. He is also, of course, a poker player … much to the delight of Bobby’s Room and the regulars on High Stakes Poker. Without a doubt, both directly and indirectly, he has been a valuable contributor to the poker economy.

Also this week, Laliberte’s lawyers are protesting the release of a new, unauthorized biography that details some of the ballerest Dionysian fests in Vegas that only the creator of Mystere could imagine — A-lister orgies with the finest food, booze, drugs, music … and hookers flown in from Montreal.

In September, Laliberte, 49, plans to take an arguably well-earned vacation by traveling to space via Russian rocket for 12 days.

Click below to read more about what Guy Laliberte was allegedly doing when he wasn’t playing poker:

(Or click here to see David Benyamine win a $1.2 million pot from Laliberte.)

More…

Normally we wouldn’t think much of a thread on 2+2 about some withdrawal problems at a major American-friendly online site. Usually these problems get resolved in a matter of days or maybe weeks, but this time something’s different.

Developing …

We’ll hold off on saying too much until we get more solid information, but basically, checks from PokerStars are “bouncing”, particularly with New York banks. Instant E-checks seems to be the payment processor most notably affected at present. However, it’s not just e-checks … paper checks are proving uncashable, too. Reliable sources tell us that this is not just a little snafu, but that it’s the direct result of DOJ enforcement actions somehow connected to the Federal Court in New York’s Southern District.

This is the same court, of course, that handled Neteller way back when, and more recently came to non-prosecution agreements guilty plea settlements with Anurag Dikshit et al. While the Party Poker dudes are officially in the clear,* is it possible the Feds are now saying, hey, that was fun, and we got a lot of money … let’s try it again with those PokerStars guys!?!

The FBI offers more clarity on who’s agreed to what between Party Poker peeps and the Feds here.

The best I can tell, right now Stars seems to be the target. No confirmation on the fates of Full Tilt and UB payment processing.

UPDATE: Problems at Full Tilt, too. (Thanks, Ken, for the info/link!) And Ultimate Bet.

Regardless, whatever shakes down (pun intended), it raises a lot of questions at an interesting time, considering how much big money gets transfered passed between poker players — particularly in the summer — often on an online site in exchange for casino chips and/or bricks of cash.

Might the value of the Euro have just gone up, at least in the poker economy? Seems plausible if they’re the only ones able to convert online bankrolls into real American WSOP buy-in dollars.

* Cases against (with?) two other Party principals, Ruth Parasol and Russ DeLeon, are still pending in the same court.

Just talked to one of my dealer sources — a reliable one, with decades worth of experience, not the sort who just likes to bitch after blowing a night’s worth of tips playing video poker … and she tells me, “In the six years I have been dealing here [at the WSOP] this is by far the worst.” She says she knows the economy is bad, “but this year they stiff you all the time. More of them.”

The worst game for dealers is supposedly 7-card stud (no relation to previous post), where she is regularly making $2-$3 a down (a half-hour shift).

Her best down so far has been $57. “But that only happened once.”

The tables that provide the best, or at least most reliable tips: $2/$5 no-limit, and $5/$10 PLO. “But never the highest stakes [$25/$50] PLO. Those guys never tip.”

I’m definitely no economic analyst (”sure, close enough … I kinda-sorta almost have pot odds; I call, why not?”), but I continue to see anecdotal evidence around Las Vegas that suggests the recessionary worst is behind us. And meanwhile, when I talk to friends in Texas — they are saying things that sound a lot like what people were saying here a year to 16 months ago … whether it’s talk of layoffs, foreclosure, salary cuts, messy home-building situations, etc. It’s all led me to think of the financial storm as a wave — one that has since passed the West Coast, and is now wreaking its havoc in the central time zone.

The latest example of things turning around here, that may or may not be of interest to Pokeratizens — the Hard Rock is hiring:

www.twitter.com/Hardrocklvjobs.

HARD ROCK HOTEL & CASINO HIRING 1,200 EMPLOYEES
BEFORE THE END OF 2009
For Immediate Release:
June 2, 2009

LAS VEGAS – Hard Rock Hotel & Casino is hiring a total of 1,200 employees before the end of the year to fill a variety of positions due to the property’s current expansion.

Hard Rock recently hired 400 employees and plans to hire approximately 800 more before the end of 2009. Positions in all areas still to be filled include on call dealers, housekeeping staff, bellmen, front desk agents, room reservation agents and EVS attendants. A series of job fairs will be held on property throughout the summer. Specific dates and times will be announced soon.

More…

Don’t forget that the WSOP isn’t the only big poker action going on in town right now. The Venetian has its own not-so-mini series of poker four times a year, the third of which kicked off today.

Event #1 ($300+30 NLH) of the 2009 Deep Stack Extravaganza III had a record 700 entrants — compared to 337 for the same event last year.

Total prize pool: $202,650. 1st Place: $56,743. Paying 63 spots.

(Not sure where the $1,650 overlay comes from.)

We actually had a Team Pokerati player in the field — Cliff Fisher, aka @brdpoker — but he made it only halfway through the field (and halfway through the first level in the second-chance tourney). Cliff plays in the WSOP $1,000 Stimulus tourney on Sunday, btw.

We’ll also see if we can’t find out how the other Little Big Tourneys are doing — specifically the Grand Series of Poker at the Golden Nugget, and the Caesar’s Megastacks.

The WSOP unofficially starts at 9am today as the Amazon Room at the Rio opens for registration, cash games and satellites before the tournaments begin Wednesday with Event #1, the $500 Casino Employees tournament. That’s as good a reason as any to do the preview for this year’s World Series of Poker, so here’s some things to look out for during the Series:

More…

Another one bites the dust. It was in late March that Bugsy’s Club closed and sent its players to PokerStars, but another shut its online poker operations yesterday. PokerRoom.com posted a message on its site, including a note suggesting that players are switching to bwin, where special bonuses await the fleeing players. Here is the note from PokerRoom:

End of an Era
Apr 14, 2009

Well folks, after almost ten years of fun and games, it is with a heavy heart and a tear in my eye that I have to announce that this is it; as of 11:00 CET today, Tuesday the 14th of April 2009, PokerRoom.com will no longer be open for online poker.

More…

Semi-related to all the activity going on today … there’s a great story in Salon about poker:

A city awash in cards
Inside New York’s underground poker scene, where no one thinks about the recession, or their rent money, when there’s a good hand to be played.

Hi, my name is Jim, and I have a gambling problem.

I told myself the last time was the last time, but here I am, in another bind: $1,000 in chips resting anxiously on the felt in front of me, and the ace-queen of hearts in my hand.

My lone opponent is Al, an egg-shaped old wiseguy who breathes heavy when he has a winner. Right now he’s taking up most of the oxygen in this three-story walk-up.

The rational part of my brain is screaming at me. “Fold, you stupid motherfucker. That’s half a month’s rent you are about to toss into the pot on a draw.” But Al is legendary for losing and that’s all the compulsive part of my brain can focus on. “Maybe he’s bluffing,” it whispers. “Move all-in.”

Read more …

Just got back from Bellagio — not my usual stomping grounds — and noticed that starting tomorrow, March 10, they’re offering something different there on Tuesdays … a lower cost, above-average-stack 2 pm tourney. For a long time, this was a standard $500 weekday event … $500 for 10k in chips. But now it only costs $300, and you get 6k in chips.

They also have 1/2 NLH there now. Apparently they’ve had it for a few months … News to me, though. I still thought their smallest game was a raucous 2/5 populated with monster stacks. Silly me.

Interesting article about how the Golden Nugget is pushing forward with expansion — new tower and all — despite economic woes. I had forgotten GN was a Texas-run joint … no wonder it’s one of my favorite places in town. And though it’s my preferred downtown cash game venue, when someone recently asked me to put together a list of the 10 best most noteworthy poker rooms in Vegas, it didn’t make the cut. (Would come in #11 or 12.)

And lastly, speaking more generally about downtown and economy … though I haven’t seen any numbers, I was on Fremont St. on a recent Saturday night, and it was busier and more packed than I have ever seen it. Ever. And yet the Strip, different hotels and the street itself … noticeably quieter than in months and years past.

Take that for whatever it’s worth.

If you haven’t voted (a few times) already, be sure to check out our current sidebar poll … Currently we’re wondering how your poker play has changed in Q1 2009 from, say, Q1 or Q2 2008, back when 11-figure numbers seemed really big.

I actually asked this question in mid-December — how has the current economic climate affected the poker economy? — to all my bestest poker pro friends and any others whose email addy I pilfered off someone else’s semi-spam. Because you know, there aren’t too many professions where the “players” carry around the equivalent of a car in their pockets and keep a house in their Bellagio box.

I got only one response (I see how it goes Tom and Clonie) … from Daniel Negreanu (whom frankly I hardly know):

I don’t think it’s affected the poker community all that much yet, outside of the tournament circuit which is seeing a decrease in numbers that I think it directly tied to the economy.

I’m not sure I fully agree with him, but I can say that these don’t sound like words coming from a guy who’s going broke, as PokerNews has insinuated.

Anyhow, click a sidebar bubble and vote. I’m curious to know how off-table circumstances have affected your action on the felt.

The Atlantic has a post about a section of a chapter of a book that may have figured out why America and the world has gotten in a total economic mess ever since George W. Bush Osama bin Laden Chris Moneymaker won … bridge helped pull us out of the Great Depression, apparently, and poker has taken us the other way:

Yet in the first decade of the twenty-first century contract bridge is in serious decline, viewed as a game for the elderly, with few younger enthusiasts. In contrast, in recent years poker — and especially its twenty-first century variation, Texas hold ‘em — has surged forward. These games are played by individuals for themselves alone, emphasize a type of deception variously called bluffing and “keeping a poker face,” and are generally played for money.

[...]

if card games played by millions of people shift the role of deception, wouldn’t we be naive simply to assume that such shifts do not also occur in the world of commerce?

Now before you get all up in arms at the absurdity of blaming a whole subculture that just so happens to take pleasure in raping their friends and stealing from the blinds with total junk hands, I think we should consider taking the heat on this: Yes, absolutely, poker is to blame. We totally fucked up. Oops, sorry about that. But we get a bailout now, right? Please send a few hundred billion care of PartyPoker and the World Poker Tour.

Straight from the mainstream press, the gambling industry has fallen on hard times, following the trend of…well…just about every other industry there is. According to Bloomberg, Atlantic City has seen a significant drop in revenue for the second year in a row. New casino projects are on hold or canceled, and thousands of casino employees in AC have lost their jobs.

In the article, one expert predicts that Atlantic City will continue to sink:

James Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, said the casino industry is vital for the economy of southern New Jersey and for the tax revenue it generates.

“It’s possible Atlantic City is past its peak,” said Hughes, who predicted the situation may worsen next year. “It could never go back to its past glory. It’s a much tougher game now.”

But another analyst predicts a recovery in 2010:

The U.S. gaming industry will “remain under significant pressure in 2009, with a recovery unlikely until 2010,” Michael Paladino, a Fitch Ratings analyst in New York, said in a Dec. 16 report.

In other news, the Wall Street Journal reported that gambling in general is in a downward spiral that will never be the same. *Insert Debbie Downer sound here.* In fact, one survey specialist who clearly doesn’t follow poker trends at the University of Pennsylvania thinks that A) poker is a fad, and B) it has peaked.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that ESPN’s poker-tournament coverage has become ensconced in the culture, card-playing for money among college-age youth declined in 2007 for the first time, according to a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. “The fad has peaked,” survey director Dan Romer said.

Ummm, Mr. Romer, please note that that ESPN card-playing thingie to which you referred enjoyed its most righteous numbers ever just last month. Methinks we need another survey.

Not entirely.

But the WSOP Europe can’t seem to grow its numbers. Amazingly, two of this year’s London events had the exact same number of entrants as in 2007.

2007 HORSE – 105 players
2007 PLO – 165 players
2007 NLHE main event – 362 players

2008 HORSE – 110 players
2008 PLO – 165 players
2008 NLHE main event – 362 players

The only major difference is that there was on additional event at the 2008 WSOPE in the form of a NLHE tournament that drew 410 players. With that extra event, one could say that the overall turnout for the WSOPE grew, but that’s not the real story. THE story is that the World Series of Poker has had such high hopes for the growth of its brand, even throwing out the idea of expanding to Latin America and Asia in the coming years, but the first two years of the WSOP Europe haven’t indicated that there is a real public demand for it.

More…

Cards are in the air, and though you technically can still buy in, the $50k HORSE event starts with 115 players. But we knew that was gonna be the case, right? Not a comment on the popularity of HORSE as a game, but just on the state of the poker economy at the top levels of the poker pyramid.

Some will suspect, I am sure, that this 20 percent drop in field size could be a foreshadowing of what’s TK in the Main Event … but I don’t think so. There’s a big difference in a poker player’s ability to get their hands on $10k for some No-Limit Hold’em and $50k for Crazy Pineapple.

To that extent, the 2008 dip probably does more to enhance than it does hurt the HORSE event’s prestige.

UPDATE: I now count 135 players. Gettin’ up there, but surely not going to pass last year’s totals in the next couple hours, right?

UPDATE: They’re up to 140.

New prediction:the HORSE numbers this year, like so many other events, will be roughly the same as last year — either a little bigger or a little smaller — just took a few folks a little longer to buy in than before, for whatever reason.

UPDATE: Crap, wrong again on this … turns out to be not a little bigger, nor a little smaller, but the exact same size as last year, with 148