Gamblers could be playing Internet poker in Nevada even before the Legislature has a chance to act on several Gaming Policy Committee recommendations to tweak current state regulations covering interactive gambling.

Our new-good friends at Face Up Gaming just gave away a bunch of money to show that they are serious about winning your non-gambling subscription poker business. And while a $10k free-ish-roll is nice, that may not be enough to get people to try yet another freemium site to hold them over til two-way real-money gaming comes back in play. But Face Up has a video explaining why their site is worth checking out:

Cool. Indeed. I’ve played a few games to earn points and figure out the buttons at Face Uo, and am gonna pay the $20 $25 (correction: my initial math error) at least once for a shot at the better freerolls. Curious to see how the streaming video technology plays at the table, and am wondering how long before somebody pulls out their junk thinking maybe I should comb my hair.

I’m still clicking around and looking into their leagues and other options at the site Tom McEvoy is pimping this summer.

It does beg the question is this how all online poker will be played in the future? Sign up and it should be fun finding out.

La Sengphet took down another one on the WSOP-circuit — winning a $345 NLH at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, Calif. for her fourth WSOP-C victory (third in a ring-bearing event) and a $25k payday. Her other half, David Clark, made a final table the day before, and won his second ring just a couple stops earlier at WSOP-Tahoe. Their story is becoming sickeningly charming … perhaps even inspirational … showing that true love and poker success can go hand-in-hand for a couple of old-fashioned rounders making their way across an ever-unpredictable poker landscape.

(That, or … Go Team Pokerati!)

More…

Readit

• Bloomberg Business Week @BW | Betfair May Boost Profit With Fixed-Odds Sportsbet
• Fox5 LasVegas | Mobile wagering expands to iPhone {Leroy’s Sports Books/American Wagering}
• The Hill | Let states legalize online gambling to stimulate the economy | h/t @taxdood
• Indian Country | Internet Gaming Tops NIGA Agenda | h/t @taxdood
• Irish Times @the_irish_times | FTP Dublin subsidiary makes 180 positions “redundant”
• Bloomberg Business Week @BW | Online Poker Should Be Dealt a Fresh Hand With Regulation
• Charleston Daily Mail | Lottery funding goes to (WV) casino slots upgrade | h/t @casinocityvin
• Inside Poker Business |  Poker Networks 2012 | h/t @InfiniteEdgeKim
• @hardboiledpoker | Reports from the (FTP) Department of Redundancy Department
• @InfiniteEdgeKim | Buyers Beware {handy shopping tips for iPoker purchasers in US}

Watchit

• Livefeed @ Congress | “iGaming: Is There A Safe Bet?” | http://energycommerce.house.gov/
  The House Energy and Commerce Committee will be holding a hearing Oct. 25 called “iGaming: Is There A Safe Bet?” at 10:30AM EST in the Rayburn House Building RM 2123. Details of this hearing (and witness list – ty to @WriterJen for pointing this out) may be found on the Committee website -> here.
• @AGAupdate posted this testimony from Frank Fahrenkopf for tomorrow’s congressional hearing.

Witness List:

• Parry Aftab | Member, Board of Advisors Chairman | FairPlayUSA
  —> Witness Testimony
• Ernest L. Stevens | Chairman | National Indian Gaming Association
  —> Witness Testimony
• Keith Whyte |Executive Director | National Council on Problem Gambling
  —> Witness Testimony
• The Honorable Alphonse D’Amato | Chairman | Poker Players Alliance
  —> Witness Testimony
• Kurt Eggert | Professor of Law| Chapman University School of Law
  —> Witness Testimony
• Dr. Dan Romer | Director, Adolescent Communication Institute
  —> Witness Testimony

Marvin in Somewhere — shoot, I forget where he’s from, but somewhere in America, I know — writes in to complain:

I’m watching the “Live” ESPN coverage and it sucks. It’s like it was before the cameras. Not only don’t we see all the hands, but we don’t know whether the better has the “Nuts” or is bluffing. Since they are afraid of people telling what the other players have, how about a one hand delay?

Marvin, Marvin, Marvin … c’mon, can’t you see the positives at all? This is semi-monumental … not the kinda Poker TV you see on Versus, ya know? Though not perfect yet, they gotta start somewhere, right? You bring up some good points that I’m sure they’ll consider in the future … but really, remember, while not necessarily “alpha” version of live coverage, it is rather “beta”.

In an ideal world — according to Pokerati — all cards and chips would be RFID’d worldwide and you could watch all poker anywhere in any place at any time, as live as possible as permissible by gaming jurisdiction, and decide for yourself whether or not you wanna see hole cards. (I tend to enjoy guessing sometimes.) With super-duper extra-HD All-360 technology, of course … on my iphone should I so choose. But we’re just not quite there yet!

From the Rio sportsbook: For people not glued to Twitter, "live enough" coverage is ... um ... not too different from reruns usually airing on screens in many sports bars.

Not sure how it would work with exposed hole cards and future "in-game betting" on the WSOP. (Seen at the sportsbook in the Palms, where you can't yet bet that way.)

And remember, one other factor complicating matters here is approval by Nevada Gaming. Even just allowing twitpics in casinos and cell phones in sports books is relatively new territory for them. And there are some people who don’t believe you should be able to know a players cards a half-hour later when your buddy — or even the players themselves — can find out if that key tell thy picked up goes along with the nuts or nothing.

Click the promo banner to watch things as live as we’re gonna get them for now.

Tim Chilcote

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OP-ED

Machines have always been the enemy of man, at least in movies and on television, yet somehow we never see our A.I. overlords coming until it’s too late.

Case in point, in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Doctor Miles Bennett Dyson spends a lifetime developing artificial intelligence as part of the Skynet project, only to discover that his work is more suitable for evil than for good – the price? His life. You remember the scene: Dyson detonates his own lab, and in doing so blows himself up, sacrificing himself to save us from an army of Schwarzeneggers.

With the computer Watson now a winning contestant on Jeopardy!, the man v. machine debate has been rekindled, and it would seem that we’re in danger again, if not for our lives (yet), then for pride. In a recent Slate article, “Jeopardy, Schmeopardy: Why IBM’s next target should be a machine that plays poker“, author Chris Wilson asks whether the next logical progression from Jeopardy!’s Watson is a poker playing robot, and suggests that robots have a lot to teach us about poker, and might even be — gasp! — better.

Bots sound dangerous, and it would be easy to infer that their skill is only going to grow and that their dominance of the poker world is a forgone conclusion.

Poker bots have been hot topic in online poker for years. The fervor usually stems from a fear of the unknown. Gambling robots reached a fever pitch in 2007 when Phil Laak and Ali Eslami played against the Polaris poker bot. At the time I asked myself the obvious question – is Polaris the next terminator, and if not, then what’s the point of this experiment and why should I care? I sat down that summer with computer-poker researcher Darse Billings of the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group to have him explain how Polaris actually worked and to see what he thought was the point of his poker robot experiment, just to put my mind at ease.

More…

Gah, another juicy newsbriefable thingy to speculate wildly on with little information or context when we all could just make a phone call or send an email to find out what’s up) … yet no Poker Beat to break it down. 🙁

Anyhow, check it out and decide with minimal information for yourself … Daniel Negreanu, “caught” on webcam via screencap … playing on a site that isn’t PokerStars?

It’s something new called PokerView — which looks like just about any other online poker site except instead of avatars you have webcam video. Very tell-revealing you might think in straight-up play. And Negreanu obviously isn’t making any effort to hide his identity any more than he’s actively trying to promote this new endeavor.

So many stories potentially in play here. Is Negreanu going the way of Hellmuth, Duke, Raymer, and Maven … seeking a new poker home? Does this new site have any connection to PokerStars (the biggest online poker company in the world, save for maybe Zynga)? Could this technology be a major step forward in TOS security, giving a real-time glimpse of who’s really playing and what else might be going on in their seat. Could you mix it with Rush Poker to create online poker’s version of chat roulette? And with that in mind, serious question … how long before people start showing their junk and contend it’s merely a strategic maneuver if your schlong got the other guy to fold?

ALT HED: Show Me Your Nuts

(Thanks, DL, for the tip!) (Shame on you, DL, for trying to play me a chump!)

CONFIRMED: Not a real Daniel Negreanu endeavor.

Check it out, of the many nifty-neato things I saw at the (brand-spankin’) new Aviator Casino in California’s Central Valley … their tables have a new embedded computer that seems to take swiping player cards to a new level. According to Team Pokeratier-turned-floor supervisor Harris, these are the first in play in a US poker room — what they are calling “the Julian System” by IT Casino Solutions:

This is one of those stories that may not be a big deal — especially for people who don’t bet sports (like me) … but for some reason I see a lot in play here that could prove plausibly significant for the future of gambling, both live and online. You decide whether or not this is a game-changer:

Check out this article from the AP about what will be called “Leroy’s App”.

American Wagering Inc. launches their new Blackberry app supposedly like next week … in time for the NFL and college football seasons. And then in coming months they’ll have the same thing for iPhones, Droids, and other “smart” mobile devices, they say. The Blackberry version has already been approved by the NV Gaming Control Board, while the others will face similar vetting upon release.

The catch: You can bet on sports from anywhere — your home, the grocery store, a bar, middle of the desert, Pahrump whorehouse, etc. — so long as you do so somewhere in the state of Nevada.

The things I find curious about this, both technologically and, um … license-and-regulatorially(?):

• GPS tracking applied to online gambling, creating a virtual gaming wall at the state lines; makes me think of both Kentucky and California.
• Different than Cantor Gaming devices at M Resort, the Venetian, and (coming soon) the Hard Rock, as their mobile sports-betting tech only works on casino property.
• Wonder if Leroy’s app will have in-game betting, like Cantor’s casino product.
• Would love to meet Leroy. He’s got to be an interesting character.
• Wonder what this has to do, if anything, with stripping sports betting from HR 2267.
• GCB approval suggests confidence in ability to block underage bettors online. Live first-deposit at Leroy’s seems to be the key.

Here’s a little more on the forthcoming release as per the tech-biz media at cnet.com.

This one goes to 11: Rob Gusman and Danny Egelhoff knew there had to be a better way to watch poker — all they needed was a high-resolution camera with 11 lenses digitally stitched together.

When Danny Egelhoff was a “multimedia producer” for CardPlayer in 2007, he quickly realized, “we needed a way to make watching poker more interesting. Events were edited down to boring bare essentials, and viewers were force-fed what they had to watch.”

Fast-forward to the 2010 WSOP … Egelhoff, 31, and his partner, Rob Gusman, 34, are founders of All 360 Media, an upstart video company launching what some are saying could be the most significant technological advancement in poker since the hole-card cam.

For the past six weeks, these friends of 10+ years have camped out in a makeshift bunker across the hall from the Amazon room. In addition to powerful computers, video equipment and an all-in-one printer/copier/fax, there’s an air mattress, mini-fridge, and 4-cup coffee-maker — all of which have played a role in bringing their vision to fruition. This is Egelhoff’s fifth Series, Gusman’s first. Taped to the wall by one of their monitors is a letter from the Nevada Gaming Control Board, approving All 360 Media to record limited casino action with these strange cameras the GCB had never before seen.

The device looks something like a studio boom-mike outfitted with a Magic 8-ball at its end. It’s actually a special camera (they have two of them) with 11 different lenses all pointing in different directions, packed into a small black orb, and digitally stitched together to provide a seamless view of an entire poker area. The set-up is so new it doesn’t yet have a name. But it uses the same basic technology that Google Earth deployed to map out the planet … upgraded and customized for watching poker.

More…

Not sure what really happened yesterday, but I guess I started paying attention to the poker tournaments … or at least wandered near them. And it just so happened to be on a day when the 2010 WSOP faced its first brushes with meltdown.

First probs came with PokerNews’ suffering extended downtime … You’d expect the Lithuanians to have it all fixed by Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 … With hand reports and chip counts hard to find, the big story of the day was supposed to be the $50k Mix, whittling its way down toward the money. However, it was the first of six $1k NLs getting too close to the money too quickly that had Ty Stewart potentially facing his own Day 1-Donkulus. And it apparently came at a time when Nevada Gaming regulators were supposedly on premises breathing down necks while studying payout structures. Perhaps to his chagrin, Stewart had little choice but to give an unrehearsed, impromptu press conference in the face of a Tao/Pokerati ambush, complete with cussing and follow-up questions.

Episode 6: Universal Tech Tilt

It seems as those tech issues have been plaguing the poker media from Poker News to the Tao of Pokerati. Dan quizzes Pauly about what really goes on behind the scenes at Poker News.

Episode 7: Ty Sweat

While “brainstorming” for future episodes of Tao of Pokerati, Dan and Pauly encounter WSOP VP Ty Stewart, who is returning to the Rio around Midnight to keep an eye on a potential disaster, as he sweats the thinning field in the last level of Day 1B of the $1k Donkulus.

Click below for the first thing that comes up, from Urban Dictionary, when you do a Google search for “donkulus”:

More…

Those PokerTek tables and the subsequent knock-offs are starting to look a little Commodore 64 … But still say they were onto something. Check out the latest generation of real-live poker stepping into the online technology domain.

Via Gizmodo … and Engadget …

Poker Surface: Combining Mobile Phones and a Multi-Touch Surface in Interactive Card Games

IMHO, these college kids deserve an A.

Conceptually, based on interactions in traditional card games, our poker game application explores different natural ways of interaction, including touching the table as well as tilting, throwing, and shaking a mobile phone. By translating traditional gestures into the digital domain, we provide a use case to discuss useful gestures combing mobile phones with tabletop surfaces, as well as to explore a private-public display setting for digital card games at interactive tables. Additionally, the mobile phone provides the tangible feeling similar to physical cards. The preliminary user study showed that users preferred using mobile phones for interaction compared with direct interaction on multi-touch table. Further information can be find in http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1613858.16… . The project is done in Pervasive Computing and User Interface Engineering group at University of Duisburg Essen (http://www.pervasive.wiwi.uni-due.de/en/profile).

#AlmostGettingThere

UPDATE: There was a step in between that was pretty cool too:

#Atari2600ofPoker?