Wider World of Poker
Neil Armstrong’s departure got me thinking. What’s the over/under on the number of years until there’s a tournament in space? Perhaps it’s a moot question. Maybe astronauts on the International Space Station have already gambled for rights to powdered space rations. At any rate we, sadly, aren’t able to leave the Earth during these week’s roundup of poker news, unless you count exploring the depths of a Frenchman’s imagination.
If you’ve not been following the Cirque de Partouche over the last few days, here’s a quick summary: A smaller than expected crowd turned up to what they thought was a €5 million guarantee, expecting their hosts to fill in the missing €750,000. Then, the silver-haired Monsieur Partouche himself appeared on stage to tell everyone that, not only were they not going to honour the guarantee (that he denied even existed), but that this would be the last ever Partouche event.
Cut to a few hours later and the company are announcing that they will in fact bump the prize pool up to €5 million, but that this is still definitely the last ever Partouche Poker Tour. At some point during all this a poker tournament happened and Ole Schemion from Germany won it. [Card Player]
Speaking of a French-led spectacle, the much-trailed International Stadiums Poker Tour just added a few more pros to its list of representatives. The ISPT squad now includes David Beyamine, Patrick Antonius, Liz Lieu, Michael Mizrachi, and Sam Trickett. Expect to see them all in London for the first event in May 2013. [Poker News Daily]
Bwin.Party Poker on a Downswing
Sometimes I worry about a terrifying dystopian future where Daniel Negreanu is president and we need to use our PokerStars bankroll to buy bus tickets. You’d be worried too, if you’d taken a look at bwin.party’s financial results from the first half of 2012. Overall, their revenues where up, but poker took a big hit. Thankfully, dishevelled underworld hero bwin.party co-CEO Jim Ryan has vowed to fight on, “against a backdrop of an ever strengthening PokerStars.” [The Guardian]
After Black Friday I think you’d be hard pressed to argue against nationwide regulation for online gambling. Although I’m sure that Betfred and William Hill could put forward a case, after the Belgian government blacklisted their domain names and made it illegal for anyone to play there. That leaves only a handful of approved online poker operators for Belgians to enjoy. [Poker News Daily]
Excuse me while I unscrew my head and place it back among the stars. It’s lovely up here, but while the asteroids whizz between my ears I’ll remember to keep an eye on terra firma and keep track of all its poker doings. Until next time, pokernauts.