After very literally emerging from a Soviet bunker over the past week, I’m finding it difficult to integrate myself back into sublime British capitalism. Having a Russian man dispassionately tell you that, “now vee are in nuclear war,” as an alarming red light flashes in an underground corridor will do things to a man. Luckily there’s a whole warhead’s worth of worldwide poker news to help me readjust to society. Read on, you snivelling imperialist dogs. Oh, sorry.

Bodog Shifts Priorities

Making good on last week’s threats, Bodog have undertaken a daring raid into Asia. After abandoning their poker products throughout Europe, the copmany have welcomed TLC88.com onto their network, in an attempt to shift the focus of their business from West to East. [CardPlayer]

Possibly, but probably not, coincidentally, on the same day as Bodog confirmed their new parternship Sunderland A.F.C. – a mid-table team in the highest echelon of English football – announced TCL88.com as their official betting and gaming partner. [SAFC.com]

France Masters Tournaments

There’s a distinctly Gallic feel to the big tournament results this week. Firstly the France Poker Series event in Mazagan, Morocco reached a dénouement. The victor was Karim El Rharbaoui, who picked up around €44,000 for his efforts. [Poker777]

Meanwhile, down in the boot of Europe, the EPT San Remo was grinding its way to a finale, with the French-sounding Canadian Jason Lavallee and actual French person Ludovic Lacay engaging in a swift heads up battle. Real France beat out psuedo-France to take the title. [Poker News Daily]

PokerStars Macau Announcement

I don’t often include tournament announcements in this roundup, but I think that news of anything new coming out of Macau is particularly interesting, given how under exploited it is. In fact, only PokerStars seem to have really grasped the bull by the horns (dragon by the ears?) so far as tournaments are concerned. To stand alongside the likes of the Macau Poker Cup, Stars have announced the Asian Championship of Poker – a $13k NLHE event that kicks off in just over a week. [Tight Poker]

Full Tilt Reward System Teased

If you were fond of building up Ironman streaks and cashing in 27% rakeback deals on your Full Tilt account then you’ll have to carry on pining. Full Tilt’s new reward system, details of which have been dribbled out onto 2+2, is a totally different animal. There does appear to be the possibility of earning a decent internal rakeback, but a move to the Weighted Contribution method will reward the aggressive player more than the tight. [Poker News Daily]

Dwan and Isildur on Tilt Again

Speaking of aggressive poker, Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and Tom “durrrr” Dwan will be reuniting on the virtual felt of Full Tilt as paid up members of the site’s new roster. Respectively the most exciting names in high stakes cash games for the last few years, Blom and Dwan join Gus Hansen in Full Tilt’s reformed team of sponsored pros. [PokerNews]

France and Spain Cosy Up

No doubt hastened by the news of massive contractions in the Italian gaming market, Spain and France have agreed a deal to share regulatory data. A deal which many see as a precursor to a shared player pool. The French have been running their own insular market for a while now, but newly regulated Spain will likely have some legitimate concerns about their ability to support their own isolationist economy. [PokerFuse]

Huddle close comrades. I come to you this week from a small apartment bunker deep within Russian territory. There are Muscovites on all sides. So far at least two people have asked me for directions in a language I didn’t understand. It was harrowing. Meanwhile it’s been a busy old time for poker news, so strap on your ushanka, down a bowl of borshch and join me for this week’s roundup.

Hellmuth Conquers Europe

The Poker Brat confirmed that this week that he is back among the game’s elite by taking down his 13th bracelet in the WSOPE Main Event. By his own admission, Phil was caught up in his own travelling carnival during 2009 and 2010, but after a period of self-reflection his skills on the felt appear to be back in full bloom. [Poker News]

Bodog Abandons Europe

The wheels are not so much coming off Bodog Poker’s European operation as they are careening over a cliff as the car does somersaults on the asphalt. Its last remaining bastion – Bodog.co.uk – has now officially closed its doors to poker customers, focussing instead on casino games. The company are moving on the relatively underexploited Asian market. [OnlinePoker.net]

Italy is in Europe

Italy was one of the first European nations to enact a regime of tight intranational online poker regulations. While early signs were positive, recent financial figures raise fears about the future for other isolationist licensing systems. Gaming revenues have fallen over 40% since January of this year, with the decline chalked up to a very limited player pool and high taxes. [PokerFuse]

Full Tilt’s New Island Home

Full Tilt’s rebirth is another contraction closer as they are granted a license by the Isle of Man, a short hop around the UK from their old home on Alderney. It is my considered opinion that a very large factor in ensuring that PokerStars emerged so positively from Black Friday was down to their license in the Isle of Man. Specifically the clause that requires licensees to keep a segregated fund equal to player deposits. [BBC]

Hansen on Board

Full Tilt built their reputation on having the biggest and most star-studded stable of pro players and while those pros mostly fled the paddock after Black Friday, at least one will be returning. Gus Hansen has been unveiled as Full Tilt’s primary brand ambassador. The Dane was long associated with the old site and has declared that he is “coming home.” [Gambling Kingz]

High Stakes Intrigue in The Big Smoke

A notorious high roller enters London’s oldest casino with a mysterious Asian beauty on his arm. He sits in a private room and wins $11.7 million, but the house won’t pay. Turns out his date has a chequered past and the British Gambling Commission are called in to investigate. No, not James Bond; Phil Ivey. [CNN]

And with that I’m off to take refuge. There’s this colourful fort in the centre of town that looks pretty safe, I think I’ll start there.

Maxx Dansky
Photo: CardPlayer.com

Today’s Boxscore

Galen Kester $165,000 – Gold Strike World Poker Open
Maxx Dansky $152,008 – Card Player Choctaw Main Event

It’s not poker and it’s not in the States, but there are now a few games on Facebook where you can gamble with honest-to-god cash money. For now there’s just Bingo and Slots available for wagers and only if you are of legal age in the United Kingdom. The door is now open for people to lose their money while posting inane drivel for the rest of the world to see.

Still no word from the big C-level suits at Facebook or Zynga concerning their entry into the market though the latter has shown interest in the past and could use all the good news they can get. Zynga has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons including their stock taking a nosedive and getting sued by EA for copyright infringement.

Link Dump

Colorado Club Fed for Absolute Poker’s Brent Beckley – Haley Hintze reports AP vice president Brent Beckley is scheduled to enter a minimum security prison in Colorado after his plea deal with the DoJ. Most disturbing part for me was finding out Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were held in a Club Fed during their trial for killing 168 people.

Bodog Poker to Exit 20 Countries by September 2012 – Per PokerNews, Bodog is saying goodbye, la revedere, ardievas, zbogom, ???????, and ?? ???????? (thank you Google Translate) to 20 countries by the end of the month per an email sent out to customers.

Zokay Entertainment Acquires Global Poker Index – Another part of the Epic mess put to rest with the fire sale of the GPI. No one thought Pinnacle was going to give a crap about a poker ranking system and they sold it off.

WPT Merit Cyprus Classic kicks off WPT Season XI in style – Lynn Gilmartin seems to be having a horrible time in Cyprus, can’t image why anyone would want to go there. Besides the perfect weather, lovely views, and bottomless bottles of booze.

Be sure to check out our new sponsors at Face Up Gaming. Legal, subscription-based online poker with plenty of great prizes including cash, WSOP seats, and poker trips. Sign up with Bonus Code pokerati.

Nadal, accepting 2008 Olympic gold medal, wrapped in Spain's flag

Nearly every poker player knows that May 27 kicked of the 2012 World Series of Poker. It was also the first day of Tennis’ coveted Rolland Garros, better known as the French Open. But that may not be only common feature between tennis and poker this year.

The Spanish blog PokerGenio posted a rumor that PokerStars had signed the Spanish tennis star, Rafael Nadal to a two-year endorsement deal (thanks Google translate). In a 2+2 thread on the topic, Marty “LipoFund” Mathis chimed in that he had “heard about this at the stars meeting.” 

Last year’s French Open final featured an epic showdown between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Nadal prevailed in the hard-fought battle. By signing Nadal, Pokerstars may be looking to prevail in the increasingly costly battle for Spain’s online poker market.

Spain plans to launch regulated online poker on June 1st. A number of poker sites, including Bodog and Titan, have folded their hand in Spain, rather than pay the new regulated tax rate of roughly 20 percent. But the remaining poker sites are going to have to dig even deeper if they want to operate in Spain.

As Pokerati’s token chief European Joe detailed, cash-strapped Spain recently upped the ante by shaking down online poker sites for back taxes. PokerStars’ back tax bill is estimated to be roughly $250 million. If the rumor about Nadal is true, it will say a lot about PokerStars’ intentions to pay for residence north of Gibraltar.

When Calvin Ayre got indicted this past week, some were wondering what took so long … because if the DOJ couldn’t nab the brashest of online gambling kingpins (Bodog did sports-betting for chrissakes!) then there had to be a formula — a legal-enough way to run an online gambling empire while steering clear of America’s internet police.

Stu notes that the investigation leading to Bodog’s shutdown wasn’t singular in scope, and asks who might be next on the DOJ’s hit-list. The answer to that question, I believe, is in the indictment itself — and though they don’t name any magazine or website by brand, the DOJ does reveal that after more than five years of investigation they consider certain media part of a criminal conspiracy to facilitate illegal online gambling.

Read and decide for yourself on the not-so-subtle nuances of the DOJ-Maryland office’s carefully chosen words:

6.Through these communications, members of the conspiracy caused the media reseller to create and execute an advertising campaign to increase the participation by gamblers in the United States on the BODOG.com website.

7. Through these communications, members of the conspiracy caused the media reseller to send invoices to BODOG ENTERTAINMENT GROUP S.A., d/b/a BODOG.com. These invoices represented the costs and fees for the creation and execution of the advertising campaign.

8. Members of the conspiracy caused funds to be sent by wire from accounts located outside the United States to accounts located in the United States to satisfy the invoices sent by the media reseller. These wire transfers totaled more than $42 million during 2005 through 2008.

More…

The icy tendrils of winter are tightening their grip on the northern hemisphere and my sugar intake has increased 4000%. It’s December! Which, for the poker world, means not much at all. The felt is green all year round and money tastes as sweet as ever. Unless you play on Bodog or Everleaf, but we’ll get to that in good time.

Brits Can’t Stop Gambling

For now let’s start with some good cheer. UK gambling revenue increased to $4.2 billion during 2010, with bricks-and-mortar accounting for almost two thirds of that figure. Gambling is traditionally a recession resistant industry and in a country with an open – but properly regulated – market that adage appears to ring true. Noted number crunchers PriceWaterhouseCoopers predict that this UK uptick is part of global trend that will see gambling revenues increase 10% per year until 2015. [Independent]

Bodog Anonymous

Last week, Bodog unveiled poker tables which hide your ID from other users. The intention was to protect bumbling recreational gamblers from being stalked by evil grinders and their advanced HUD software. It didn’t work. Hackery hacking guys hacked into the client with their hack machines and hacked the whole thing to pieces. At least that’s what this article from data-miners HH Smith sounds like to me. At the very least, it says makes some important points about the responsibilities companies have to protect the privacy of their customer’s information. [HH Smithy]

Everleaf isn’t for Everyone

Over at the Everleaf Network, they’ve taken a similar dislike to winning players. If you generate too much income one week, expect to be barred from certain tables the next. Users are assigned a rating that accords with how much profit or loss they have recently made. Pass a certain ratings threshold and you’ll be penned into a small area with all the other successful players. And just in case you harboured any hopes of a clueless fish wandering into your sharks-only game, any player attempting to join a high rating table is presented with a pop-up encouraging them to find a seat elsewhere. [Poker Fuse]

Time for Contemplation at the AGCC

Amid the fallout from the collapse of Full Tilt, the Alderney Gambling Control Commission took a lot of heat from irate onlookers. In response to that criticism, Excecutive Director Andre Wilsenach has announced an independent review of the process that lead to revocation of Full Tilt’s operating license. The inquiry will be conducted by Peter Dean, the former chair of the British Gambling Commission and will be all important and official and stuff. [Poker Strategy]

The writing of this roundup has been punctuated by occasional bouts of rage as my football team of choice concede goals against inferior opposition. Quite literally as this sentence is being typed, we’ve pulled a goal back with 3 minutes remaining. Check the tone of next week’s column to discover if we’ve won or lost.

We talk about the 2nd round of DOJ indictments, this time with Doyle’s Room, Bookmaker, and True Poker being the victims.  Neverheeb calls us to tell us of his car-jacking and pistol-whipping, an event covered by a Bay Area newspaper!  We prank call Bodog and try to get them to offer bets on the future of their own site.  The Cake Poker 60k confiscation fiasco is discussed.  Pokerati Dan joins us to talk more about the legal environment for online poker.  Druff announces that he’s quitting online poker until it becomes legal in the US.  An update on our WSOP media pass situation is given.  We talk about the situation with Pokerstars shills, including owner Isai Scheinberg, on 2+2 for the past nine years!  We discuss the Quicktender/Usemywallet collapse.  Micon shits the bed and his actual toilet during the show.

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The news won’t stop breaking … and just because American online players may be crying in watered down beers … that’s not gonna stop one magnetic on-camera Croatian from signing a player sponsorship patch deal with Bodog, the original American-friendly online gambling operation to officially go rogue:

A semi-ironic old photo (l to r) of Phil Hellmuth, Clonie Gowen, and David Williams.

I woke up this morning (really – WSOP media conference call) and noticed a few murmurs on twitter. But surely it was just a poorly worded joke … then ran into a power problem that prevented me from digging for more. But then late tonight, I heard details from a generally reliable source, definitely reliable on this …

And indeed, David Williams is no longer a Bodog pro. What, winning the WPT World Championship and wet-cementing himself as truly one of the top-top players in the game isn’t quite the “Bodog Life”? Maybe his minglings with hot chicks and celebs at Vegas nightclubs doesn’t count as much if he ain’t drinking hard?

Williams (go Dallas poker!), of course, was one of the longest-lasting Bodog pros. The site recently scrapped Jean-Robert Bellande and Justin Bonomo, but they kept Evelyn Ng. Who woulda thunk that second place in a 2004 six-player ladies sit-n-go could ever mean so much!

Oh, and the big news somehow related to it all … Bodog did sign Amanda Musumeci, a hottie-ish 25-year-old American who built her microstakes bankroll into nearly $200k online. (Click for her Betty Page-meets-online-grinder pics.) She goes by the name “Manderbutt“, btw. Kinda looks like a Manderbutt, no?

Anyhow, new chick aboard + Evybaby = Team Bodog. It’s hard to determine if this was a pre-arranged firing or maybe Williams, who proudly wore his Bodog patch during the WPT, initiated the break-up? Perhaps it was as simple as Bodog not being willing to pony up the price Williams, now a WPT World Champion, could get elsewhere and thus they split amicably? They almost always split amicably, right? (Save for Clonie …)

I’m pretty sure we’ll discuss this a little more on the next Poker Beat … but you gotta think whatever was behind this move — again, more crazy industry shifting — it makes @dwpoker one of he hottest commodities in the game.

Unless of course he decides to vigorously declare his online poker independence and run all Darvin Moon with his newfound free agency.

We cover industry news from France to the United States, as professional sports leagues & governments have a dramatic affect on gambling. The NFL joining with others to sue the state of Delaware? Plus, an announcement about Bodog.

Our good friends at Betfair have released the betting lines — already moving — for the final table of the WSOP main event. Current market numbers:

Darvin Moon – 4.2
Eric Buchman – 5.8
Steven Begleiter – 7.2
Phil Ivey – 8
Jeff Shulman – 8
Joseph Cada – 16.5
Kevin Schaffel – 17.5
James Akenhead – 19
Antoine Saout – 21

Bodog’s lines are a tiny bit different, at least at the top:

Darvin Moon – 17/10
Eric Buchman – 3/1
Phil Ivey – 4/1
Jeff Shulman – 4/1
Steven Begleiter – 4/1
Joe Cada – 10/1
Kevin Schaffel – 12/1
Antoine Saout – 12/1
James Akenhead – 22/1

Am I the only one who thinks being chip leader is virtually a kiss of death?

A little less douchey different than the UB Party … the Bodog Party took place at the Palms Kingpin Suite, and Jean-Robert Bellande was there to bring-it so you could share in the joys of a sponsored online pokery Las Vegas drink-fest. In the process, he makes an interesting prediction that with the deeper-stacks structure in play, we should be seeing a lot more pros go deep in the 2009 WSOP main event — and if ever there’s a year for it, this could be the one where the field of bona fide pros stand a statistically real chance of loading up the final table and seeing one of their own potentially win it all:

Watch Jean-Robert Bellande and the Amazing Bowling Bodog Girls on RawVegas.tv

As of today … you can forget about BodogLife.com … after some courtroom wrangles, the Costa Rican bad boys of online poker are back at the original Bodog.com.

Their news arm — Bodog Beat — still hasn’t repopulated yet at the new old domain. But hey, as Calvin Ayre and friends now know … the internet is hard.

The 200 companies that are to supposed to be blocked by 11 ISPs to Minnesota residents has now been published by IMEGA, which can be found here on their site . The list of 200 companies is an eclectic list of sites, because it was chosen randomly. While sites like Bodog and Full Tilt Poker are on the list, there are a few notable omissions: Absolute Poker, PokerStars, and Ultimate Bet. The list also contains sites that don’t take US customers (BetFred, Everest Poker, Interops, William Hill, among others).

Why was the Washington State Gambling Commission ordering PR Web to cease and desist? And what’s the good news from the Bodog camp? We cover these stories, plus interesting online gambling news from Europe.