Oklahoma Johnny Hale was scootering around the record-setting WSOP-Seniors event last night once they got down to about nine tables … he was splashing pots with $5 commemorative chips from Palace Station honoring members of “The Seniors” Poker Player Hall of Fame.

The chip plausibly stimulating additional action on the table I happened to be watching bore a familiar mug … none other than disgraced poker pioneer Russ Hamilton, which presumably could make for quite the collector’s item.

Jack Ward has only seen his fortunes in the WSOP-Seniors event improve since taking down the pot with a Russ Hamilton Hall of Fame overlay.

The winner of that pot, btw, and the hotly desired piece of poker memorabilia, was Jack Ward, from Gulfport, Miss. Not all the Johnny Hale splash pots happened to feature Russ Hamilton chips … there were also some Vince Burgios, Johnny Moss’s, TJ Cloutiers, and others. But since taking down the Hamilton coin, Ward jumped from about 50k in chips to 519k, which had him on the verge of elimination in Day 2 starting Day 3, today, in 7th position with 23 players remaining.

En route, Ward also happened to take out Berry Johnston, a current member of the Seniors Hall of Fame, who lasted longest amongst that group and finished in 39th place.

UPDATE: At this moment there are currently 13 left, with Team Pokerati’s Tom Schneider out in 14th, and newfound fan favorite Jack Ward in 10th.

You can follow the chip-for-chip action here.

Investigations into Hamilton Role in UB Cheating Scandals Ongoing

Meanwhile, Wicked Chops seem to be getting onto the multi-part longform-narrative bandwagon, perhaps realizing that’s the really the only way to tell the full story of the biggest poker cheating scam in history, and possibly a multibillion-dollar black eye to an online poker industry still struggling for legitimacy.

Be sure to read Part 1 of WCP’s The Ultimate Bet Super-User Scandal, as they piece together initial Nat Arem discoveries, Haley Hintze’s continuing investigative research, and their own original reporting to weave together a tale of how “Russ Hamilton pulled the strings to develop a super-user ‘tool’ that cheated friends, associates, and UltimateBet customers out of millions of dollars.”

While it seems like Wicked Chops may be putting together something more akin to the Warren Report while Haley nails down the dirty details of Umbrella Man, it seems clear that before all is said and done with Cereus, we’ll be looking at a true-crime aga of online poker shenanigans that goes far beyond any one man on a single chip playing dirty.

No details, and no confirmation … but who wants action!?!

CalvinAyre.com is saying that the Cereus Network — the beleaguered yet thriving online poker+blackjack collective — is shutting down their office in the Kahnawake territory. The Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, of course, roughly 18 square miles located just outside of Montreal, has long been a refuge for online gambling sites operating literally outside the reach of US law. It has been the home of Ulitmate Bet (now UB) since 2001 and Absolute Poker since 2003.

No clue at present what this would mean if true, nor what might be the implications for representative players such as Annie Duke, Phil Hellmuth, and Trishelle Cannatella. Maybe it’s simply a matter of Cereus COO Paul Leggett just responding to Daniel Negreanu’s call for him and his business to take a hike?

It’s also possible, of course, that maybe their lease was just up, and they found a sweet new pad with a view of the St. Lawrence River?

We’ll surely see in coming days and weeks. But I’m at least 90 45 72 percent sure that such a move isbig deal in some capacity, and it coincides with more lawuits Pokerati hasn’t even told you about. I literally can’t keep up with all the shizznit heading toward various fans at this moment. I’m trying though … Stay tuned today, tomorrow, and in coming weeks to learn about more business and legal matters that may well affect operations at the 2010 WSOP and beyond.

UPDATE: Plausibly connected … @KevMath (of course) tips me off (and the folks at 2+2) to a letter from the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, dated May 10, 2010, acknowledging a “memo of understanding” between them and the Alderney Gambling Control Commission. Alderney is the small British dependency in the Channel Islands that currently licenses and regulates Full Tilt.

More…

If they just added a little Omaha, this show might be awesome … but apparently American players can’t handle that many cards? Alas … the rest of the world thinks we are dumb. Atill seems like it will be a pretty good, well-received show … a little new-school High Stakes Poker meets old-school World Poker Tour maybe?

Here’s the first look at the latest new poker infomercial set to repeatedly hit the cable-wire broadcast television — the PokerStars.net Big Game. This clip features a pretty fun hand that you gotta think might have Phil Hellmuth on tilt at least until WSOP Event #30something. It’s a $200k pot, with Hellmuth an 85 percent favourite over the must-win amateur “loose cannon” … but running it four times isn’t even enough for Hellmuth to get half the pot. (He woulda been better off running it once.)

Yeow, with that much on the line and a bad beat x3, it’s almost as if some people might see this and not think of poker as a game of skill at all!

PSBG debuts Monday, June 14, “late night” daily on Fox (Sports, I presume?) regular Fox-not-Sports’ local network affiliates.

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The scandal-plagued Cereus Network, home of Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, took another hit on Thursday regarding their encryption procedures. Poker Table Ratings issued a “security alert” advising players not to play at AP/UB as they revealed a major security flaw as Cereus was using XOR encryption rather than the poker industry standard SSL protocol for all network transmissions.

An example of what PTR found is in the video below:

Cereus COO Paul Leggett issued a response shortly after the PTR report came out Thursday evening and posted a status update just a few minutes ago stating that they’ve issued an update to their software earlier Friday and are working with PTR on the new encryption and the eventual release of a more advanced solution using the Open SSL protocol, scheduled to be available in one week.

For the third time in seven weeks, a woman has won a major poker tournament. Today, it was UB sponsored pro Liv Boeree the winner of the PokerStars.it EPT San Remo event, officially winning 1,250,000 Euros (about $1.7m US), defeating Jakob Carlsson in heads-up play. Below is a clip of the winning hand:

Meanwhile at the WPT World Championship, Heather Sue Mercer started Day 4 second in chips (1,364,000) with 35 players remaining. The only woman to win a non-ladies WPT event was Van Nguyen’s win at the sorta-open 2008 WPT Invitational. Among other notables remaining when play resumes at noon PT: Shawn Buchanan (1,841,000), Billy Baxter (887,500), Faraz Jaka (856,000), Phil Hellmuth (806,500), David Benyamine (731,000) Carlos Mortensen (586,000) and JJ Liu (495,000). Follow the live updates over at the the World Poker Tour site.

UPDATE: Mercer out in 20th

photo: The Courier-Mail

Daniel Tzvetkoff, first accused UIGEA criminal: Whoever said being a douchebag was a crime?

Dude … it’s gettin’ hot here in the US … specifically in Las Vegas.

Yesterday federal authorities arrested Daniel Tzvetkoff, a 27-year-old Australian national “on charges that he assisted illegal internet gambling companies by processing approximately $500 million in transactions between U.S. gamblers and internet gambling websites and disguising the transactions to the banks so that they would appear unrelated to gambling,” according to a statement from the DOJ’s Southern District of New York.

Illegal internet gambling companies? Yikes …

Tzvetkoff, as founder of Intabill and ACH System, faces up to 75 years in prison for bank fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to operate and finance an illegal gambling business, and … get this … for processing fund transfers in violation of the UIGEA.

I’m pretty sure that’s the first ever indictment to bring up UIGEA charges.

About a year ago the Australia Courier-Mail reported that Tzvetkoff owed Full Tilt, PokerStars, Ultimate Bet, and Absolute Poker more than $30 million as the overextended, ostentatious Gen-Y tycoon’s personal empire was crumbling. Then, Full Tilt (through Kolyma Corporation) sued Tzvetkoff in Australian Court, saying his company Intabill owed them $52 million.

Before his arrest, he was saying Full Tilt tricked him into a bad deal and his lawyer doublecrossed him. He blamed the economy for a multi-multi-millionaire having to declare bankruptcy earlier this year. More on the pre-arrest rise and fall of an online poker payment processor here.

I mean for chrissakes, he drove a Lamborghini with the license plate “BALLER”! And when a bank repossessed a competitive race car of his, they got everything except its $100k engine, which had been stripped out and hidden.

Click below for the official word from the DOJ:

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After having what he admitted was his worst year in poker last year, Phil Hellmuth decided some changes were in order. In his blog from February, Hellmuth hired mindset coach Sam Chauhan and had a battery of tests among other changes to get his poker game back to the when he was considered by more than himself as the best player in the world. It appears to be paying off this week, as Hellmuth has made the final table of the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars Main Event Friday afternoon. Here’s how the rest of the final table will be seated when play resumes around 4pm PT (results come from the Hendon Mob Database):

Seat 1: Hasan Habib – 455,000
Seat 2: Phil Hellmuth – 1,433,000
Seat 3: Andy “BKiCe” Seth – 2,164,000
Seat 4: Matt Keikoan – 371,000
Seat 5: Mclean Karr – 1,112,000
Seat 6: Dan O’Brien – 1,129,000

Other big names who missed the final table: Scotty Nguyen (8th), “Miami John” Cernuto (11th), Nick Schulman (13th), Chau Giang (14th), and current WPT Player of the Year leader Faraz Jaka (18th). Live updates will be available from BJ Nemeth and the other good people over at the WorldPokerTour.com site.

In other news related to Hellmuth, Ultimate Bet has decided to cancel the 2010 Aruba Classic as they decided to expand their offerings online, including having a second Ultimate Bet Online Championship series each year.

Once upon a time, February 27, was perhaps more important to the poker blogosphere than 4/20. You’d see the pokergeeky intertubes go nuts over the date representing a dream flop for those of us who like to raise from early position with 2-7 offsuit. But after so many years — and perhaps just an economic necessity of grinding in the Obama era — has the Hammer lost its luster?

It’s still been fascinating to watch the mainstreaming of a hand over the years. I hope I don’t get crucified for disparaging the sacred 7-deuce (as no longer seen on High Stakes Poker) … but perhaps the jumping-the-shark moment for the Hammer came when UB took it on?

A new show launches this week on Fox Sports … Poker2Night … starring Joe Sebok and Scott Huff. I’m not sure if this few-holds-barred-poker-news concept makes The Poker Beat more of a fluffer or a clean-up man, but regardless … good on Ultimate Bet for buying time in a way that helps elevate poker to the level of other sports that have weekly news shows covering the baseball/football/soccer/foosball/whatever biz.

Wednesdays at 11 pm … time zone/cable-service-provider variance not yet clear:

Early tip on improving the show without having seen any of it: More Wolfman!

@Poker2Nite on twitter.

More douchebaggerous debaucherous good times leaking out from the UB’s big annual Aruba event … the kinda special gathering that even Full Tilt Red Pros attend. And here we see some guy I hadn’t heard of before, Poker Rapper, show Jeff Madsen that the one-time WSOP Player of the Year will never be the Eminem of Poker. (He almost sounds like he’s crying when he tries to comeback from the schooling by kicking it into Marshall Mathers gear.)

via PokerNews

The Hardcore Poker Show makes news again with its interview on Wednesday with Daniel Negreanu. Among the variety of topics covered, Chris Tessaro and Rob Pizzo brought up Phil Hellmuth’s comments he made on the show two weeks ago, and adds comments about Ultimate Bet, a site he has been a critic of going back to their first WPT event back in 2002.

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The rest of their interview with Daniel can be found here.

Speaking of UB, Joe Sebok has an update on his blog regarding another delay in releasing hand histories from superusers on UB.

One of the main complaints about those affected by the UB superuser scandal is that players have not been able to see their hand histories against the list of 100+ superusers. From Joe Sebok’s blog:

Whew, crazy couple of days. Thanks everyone for all the support. You guys are amazing and I can’t thank you enough for the love. For the skeptical, I just ask that you give the situation some more time…

Now, let’s get to the release of the hand histories. It’s a two-part process and here is the rundown:

First off, UB is currently working to catch up on all past historical requests, so be aware of that if you already have a request in. In truth though, it can’t hurt to send another email request just to lock it up. You can do so at pokersecurity@ultimatebet.com. Please include all pertinent information in your email: your name, address, and your user name.

Now, once your request has been processed you should expect a summary version of the information first. It’ll be a spreadsheet that details every hand you specifically played against each of the identified 117 cheating accounts. This will be a complete record of all those hands so that you can go through and verify the refund amounts yourselves. This will act as a summary as we want to get something out to you while the actual detailed hand histories are processed, which obviously takes longer.

Some hand histories will go out quickly, as they won’t contain as many hands as others. Some players have played a ridiculous amount of hands however and that will take a longer amount of time to process. Again, this is the reason for the first, summary hand breakdown of the information, as that gets something in your hands that you can begin checking sooner.

Please be a little patient with getting this information out and back to you once you have requested it. I know you have all been waiting for quite a while, but this kind of project takes some time to run through.

Thanks to the KGC and UB for making this all happen. I am impressed to say the least.

“Mark my words,” he says.

Phil Hellmuth — fresh off the announcement of his coaching relationship with Harrah’s-hater Jeff Shulman and apparently still on tilt about having to pay for his own room at the WSOP this summer — appeared on the Hardcore Poker Show today (on the internet and Sirius 98) to reveal a Glenn-Beckish unease amongst some big-time pros about the WSOP’s intent to launch its own online poker site … and hints that Full Tilt, PokerStars, and Ultimate Bet might be talking about colluding cooperating to start their own WSOP alternative … a move he suggests could make the WSOP “worth nothing”.

Phil Hellmuth on Hardcore Sports Radio – excerpts
Sep 23 2009

“There’s a huge battle brewing …”

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Find the whole interview here.

In addition to the warning, Hellmuth calls out Harrah’s for “not giving any of [money] back to the players” and takes a pop at Jeffrey Pollack for not reassuring him that everything is gonna to be alright; but it seems, without naming names, that his fear and vitriol is really directed at Mitch Garber — FTP, Stars, and UB’s old rival at PartyPoker, who’s never really played nice with any of them before.

My question: How did UB outplay Doyle’s Room for third position in the unofficial alliance of American-friendly online poker rooms?

To answer a question asked at the beginning of Seebs’ interview, the thread on 2+2 is currently at over 200 posts.

Didn’t really see this one coming, but Joe Sebok explained in great detail why he made the decision to join the UltimateBet team. His latest blog post on PokerRoad starts with his skepticism about joining UB when he was asked on previous occasions, and it ends with the reasons he not only agreed to be a sponsored player but a consultant for the company in charge of media and operations.

The stipulation for joining the team came with wanting to ensure that the company moves forward – away from the scandal – in a positive direction and maintains a spotlessly clean reputation and record. Feeling responsible to the poker community that is part of PokerRoad, he wanted to be sure that he will represent a company that he believes in and one that the poker world can again trust. And to show that UB is willing to be as open as possible, the company has agreed to let Sebok’s first priority be the release of all hand histories associated with the scandal and the names of those paired with those accounts. Though KGC wanted no part of releasing the names of Russ Hamilton’s 31 co-conspirators, UB seems to have changed its mind on the subject.

Sebok wrote:

The first order of business with my position at Ub has been to help aid in the release of not only ALL of the hand histories from the super-user scandal, but also the accounts that were used to perpetuate the scandal itself and the actual physical names of those individuals who we believe to have been directly involved in disparate ways with the actual cheating. As most of you know, two-thirds of this has now been accomplished. Please take this as a first step in showing that things will be different at UltimateBet moving forward. I commend Paul and the management team over at Ub for being open to this release and making it happen at my insistence . They deserve all the credit in the world today in taking these first steps in ensuring that this case gets closed, and closed correctly.