Instapoker
Another guilty plea related to “Black Friday” and another stint in jail. This time it was Ira Rubin finally hearing the wrath of U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan after pleading guilty in January to “money laundering, bank and wire fraud, and gambling offenses“. He was expected to receive 18-24 months in Federal lockup, but instead got the nice round number of 3 years.
As quoted by Bloomberg, Kaplan told Rubin “You are an unreformed conman and fraudster.”
Ray Bitar must be questioning why he didn’t follow the Scott Tom and Isai Scheinberg strategy of staying the hell out of Dodge. I hear Dublin is lovely this time of year. I’m far from an expert but I have to think if a payment processor received 3 years, then the bigwigs at FTP/UB/Stars would have to be looking at some decent time.
Link Dump
Tweet of the Day – Must have been a slow (non)news day for the “entities” or they are just going to pick this carcass to the bone.
Does anyone know when the next Epic Poker event is?
— Wicked Chops Poker (@wickedchops) July 26, 2012
Opinion: PokerStars to Acquire PokerNews.com – Interesting Op/Ed from Matt Showell at PokerListings about a potential PokerNews/PokerStars buyout. He brings up some good points concerning one of the biggest poker “media” sites going from affiliate to shill. True unbiased poker reporting is a rare thing and this is a big test for those media sites who dined mostly on affiliate fees in the past.
Nevada Online Poker Affiliates Will Need Licenses – So you make a bunch of money as an affiliate for an online gaming site? If Nevada has it’s way, you’ll need a license to operate along with the $3,000 application fee and the ability to withstand an investigation from The Man. Or at least that’s how I read it.
Zynga: Closer to Real-Money Online Poker? – Zynga’s stock takes a dump and CNBC.com posts a story about the company investigating the possibility of real-money poker games on their platform. The most shocking part of the article? CNBC name checks Gambling911.
Pinnacle Entertainment Announces Positive Earnings, Plans to Expand Heartland Poker Tour – Pinnacle had a good second quarter but more importantly (for a lot of people I know), they have plans to expand rather than contract their newly purchased Heartland Poker Tour. No one wanted to see the HPT get completely jack just because they were introduced to Jeffery Pollack, and it now looks like they were bought by a company looking to help them improve. Pinnacle properties seem to fit nicely into the HPT philosophy.
Winstar Casino “Play Big” – Since the WSOP has wrapped up, it’s become tough to find interesting videos. When in doubt, put up something with Maria “SEOGold” Ho. This commercial has too much Raymer, not enough Ho.
