France Announces Online Poker Crackdown

It’s a good time to be in European online poker, so long as you’re on the list. France have been running a strictly regulated market since May 2010, but have this month enacted laws which require ISPs to proactively prevent French players from accessing unlicensed sites. This follows similar action taken by the Belgian government. Meanwhile, Spain – one of the big EU countries without a regulated market – has elected to delay its online gambling plans until June 30th. [Poker News]

Duthie Says Cheerio

John Duthie has left PokerStars. You might be thinking, “Who cares about John Duthie! So long as they still have Liv Boeree, it’s all good. She’s so hot, ship it holla check-raise.” Oh you and your staggering ignorance. The wiser heads in the audience will know that Duthie is lauded among the poker community thanks to his founding of the European Poker Tour. John spearheaded the tour to great success, but as part of his resignation, has also decided to step down as EPT CEO. Although he may not be as high profile as some of his former team mates, John is a highly respected member of the industry and you can be sure that the game’s movers and shakers have taken note of his departure. [Poker News Report]

Regal Reward for Betting Queen

The founder of Bet365, Denise Coates, has been named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the UK’s New Year’s Honours list. Now that our empire has shrunk to size of a tiny thimble, this title has become a purely symbolic ‘well done’ from the monarchy. For your reference, a CBE is one rank below Knight and Dame-hood in Britain’s chivalric hierarchy. As part of the ceremony, Denise gets to meet the Queen and listen to her say things like, “What do you do?” “Oh that’s nice,” and “I have this special badge for you.” [BBC]

WSOP Bracelet Theives are All In Jail

In Canada, which is mostly empty, four men and one woman will have to locate the Longueuil courthouse. They are summoned to hear charges that include aggravated assault and armed robbery, all accrued while breaking into the home of former World Champion, Jonathan Duhamel. Although their cases are yet to be heard, it seems that the nexus of the robbery may have been Duhamel’s former girlfriend, Bianca Rojas-Latraverse. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. [CTV]

Cheer up mate! Things are looking good for poker after all. I mean, barring some sort of Even Blacker Friday, 2012 has got to be an improvement over last year. If that much-analysed DoJ opinion bears the fruit we’re all desperately hoping it does, perhaps this will prove to be one of the industry’s finest hours. Hope springs eternal.

# 888’s Third Quarter Upswing

While you Americans were outdoors being adventurous, we Brits carried on our time honoured tradition of ‘staying indoors and being poor’. At least that’s what 888 Holdings Plc credit for the massive boost in revenue they’ve been enjoying recently. The company banked $86 million in the third quarter and grew their userbase to over 10 million. [Reuters]

# Spain say eCOGRA are A-Okay

Spain have opened their doors to fully regulated online gambling, but before you can get your hands on a shiny Spanish license, you need to have your software thoroughly examined by an accredited agency. eCOGRA – whose seals are sported by the likes of Party Poker – have been given the blessing of the local government to carry out these inspections. eCOGRA’s CEO made happy noises at the news, but also took the chance to moan about EU nations being allowed to develop contrasting systems. [eCOGRA]

# MacPhee Takes Aim at the Hendon Mob

Veteran British grinder Barny Boatman kept his upper lip fully stiffened this week after enduring a verbal barrage from American pro Kevin ‘ImaLuckSac’ MacPhee. The fracas took place on Twitter, in the aftermath of the latter’s exit from the EPT San Remo. MacPhee, who is not a qualified physician, branded Boatman a “f*cking r*tard” for eliminating him from the event. In reaction, Boatman took the Hendon Mob forums to present an eloquent defence of his play. [Poker News Report]

It’s not been the most thrilling week in worldwide poker. America has clutched all the big news to its bosom like a greedy news-clutching monster. Even going so far as to steal away reliable Euro headline makers bwin.party. Nevertheless, I shall continue to sift through the bins of the internet, searching out the choicest morsels for your delectation. Until next week…

I’m normally not much of a complainer, but I want the people that aspire to be a professional tournament poker player to get a realistic idea of what that grind can really entail. Winning sure is fun, but traveling 50 hours in total, flight delays, losing your luggage and most all your C-notes is what it’s all about sometimes.

We arrived in Barcelona at noon on Wednesday. Julie got her luggage at 7 p.m. on Thursday. Let’s just say this would have been a good time for an “Angry Julie” segment on Beyond the Table. The good news for her though is that she had packed her very special curling-iron-blow-dryer-brush in my suitcase, so she didn’t have to go without that until I blew it up by plugging it into the wrong electrical converter. I wish I had recorded that. Then she gets into the shower and I hear, “To-oo-mmm!” Oh shit, what now? The shower’s not draining and water’s getting all over the bathroom floor. Just as we unpacked all our clothes we had to switch rooms.

Our new abode had a 4-foot obstruction right across our whole window. Excellent. And it had a similar problem with the plumbing.
Julie and I did play some cash games, and some even stranger things happened at Casino Barcelona.

First off, if you leave a cash table without picking up your chips, you will be blinded off just like in a tournament. This rule seemed to keep people from taking extended walks and leaving games short-handed, however, I don’t believe that the rule encouraged hand washing after relieving oneself – don’t want to take a 30 Euro dump.

While I was playing in a 20-40 Euro limit game, before the flop I wanted to re-raise to 60 Euro. I stacked 6 – 10 Euro chips on top of one another and shoved them forward across the betting line, then cut them into 2 stacks of 3 chips. The dealer immediately called string raise with the enthusiasm of the nuns that used to slap my wrist with a ruler in grade school. She seemed ecstatic to be able to do this. Then, like the gypsies the night before, a few locals at the table started crying, “yes, a string raise!” like they were so pleased. I had grown tired of this group fervor when it comes to screwing Tom. I said call the floor, which I haven’t done anywhere in years. The dealer looked shocked and didn’t seem to want to get the floor involved. I insisted. The floor came over and I showed him how I put my raise in. He wondered what the question was. Case closed. Gypsies lose this one.

Julie was playing in a 20-40 Euro limit hold’em game. There was a 40 Euro bet on the end. Julie won the pot, but one of the players thought it was appropriate to grab his 40 call back and conceal it in his hand. The shell game didn’t work this time on Julie. She insisted that the guy open up his hand. Voila! There was no trap door in his hand.

After getting knocked out of the WPT event with pocket aces, seeing some funny business going on at the casino and meeting some gypsies that took $450 from me, I thought it would be great to go out and see how the locals would treat us.

Unfortunately, the people of Barcelona are among the least friendly people in any major city I have ever been to. I’m told by my good friend John that the people of Catalan, which is like a state in Spain, are not very open people. Julie and I walked into 30 shops in a small town near Barcelona called Sitgen. Only one shop owner said, “Hola,” when we walked in. These folks could use a little help from Sam Walton. None of them smiled and none wanted to help us much if we were struggling with the language a bit. Both Julie and I know quite a few words in Spanish, but not Catalan, which is some snooty version of Espanol. It would be like someone going to San Francisco and using the word ain’t and the shop owner saying they don’t understand.

I’m sure that being from the good ole USofA didn’t help either. Some people around the world aren’t in support of our government including many people in the U.S.A. That’s OK, but I’m tired of us helping people that treat us like shit. I guess I shouldn’t have worn my medium sized “Viva George Bush!” T-shirt, with my hamburger filled belly partially hanging out. Note to self.

We decided to leave a day early only to get into Philly and have US Airways get us out 6 hours late, but we did get our luggage this time. (Note: I wrote this anticipating only being 6 hours late) It turns out that we were 13 hours late and Julie and I had to sleep in the airport. Angry Julie rides again, but she was nothing compared to some of the people that were ripping into U.S. Air people. As always the sleeping was wonderful at the Philly airport with a couple of guys needing to polish and wetvac the area right in front of where we were sleeping. In addition, the music playing throughout the place sounded like a score from Hannibal Lecter’s iPod played at teenager volumes.

Other than spending time with my good friend John and his wife, Bardelona was a bust. I don’t plan on making the trip back there until their attitude changes. What’s your line on the over/under of that happening? I hear the people of Scotland, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand are nice. I’m blowing my money on their gypsies next time.

My friend John lives in Barcelona and has for several years. He takes Julie and I down to this famous street called the Ramblas…don’t know if that’s the right spelling, and I don’t give a shit either. He looks at Julie’s wedding ring and suggests she not wear it and says that the only real crime in Barcelona is pick pocketers, so watch your purse and your wallet. I’m guarding my wallet like a pit bull and watching Julie’s purse like a trained assassin.

We are walking down the street and we see statue people. They dress up in unusual costumes and people pay them for this. We stumble onto this group of people in a circle making a lot of noise. I always like to see what’s going on so Julie, John and I squeeze in. The guy has 3 tops of match boxes which he rotates and scrambles while hiding a pea underneath one of them… in essence a shell game. The strange thing about this shell game is that people are winning at it and the pea is actually easy to spot in many cases. Enter dumbass.

Julie and I both see the pea under the same match box so we decide to bet. They want us to bet 100 Euros. OK, it’s for sure…NOT. We were wrong. How could that be? Oh well we watch for a little longer and people keep winning. We look interested again and the people around us urge us to bet again. They saw it too. Julie, as much as I love her, insisted that I get our money back and insisted too. I looked around for my friend John, and couldn’t see him. I was hoping he would advise, but I really didn’t want to bet anymore. The people around me virtually yelling at me to play and that I couldn’t lose. I got out my wallet to make a small bet and the GYPSIES saw my big wad, no I didn’t say unzipped my pants. Big mistake!

Now they will take U.S. $’s. A guy to my right grabbed almost all of my cash and urged me to bet it. I’ve never been in a building burning, but I would guess the mass exodus would have less confusion than what was going on here. People grabbing my cash. Other people yelling at me to bet, including Julie and her gypsy heritage. I finally got all but $300 of my cash back and voila, no pea under the box. My friend John later tells me that some old gypsy guy pushed him away from the crowd and looked like he was ready to beat the shit out of him if he tried to stop me.

I knew I didn’t want to bet, but there was literal pandemonium. The guy doing the pea thing is urging me to bet more and he knows where the pea is. This really is a great scam. There is a trap door on the platform and when he presses down the pea is gone and so is my cash. If you would like to learn more about the scams in Barcelona and this particular one go to http://www.jones.tc/barna/scams.html

Winning Wisdom: If this dumbass can win, there’s hope for everyone.