interesting … seeing some new buttons and blanks, but am not sure which installation has added them. scott, if you see this i am slightly lost without you …
Hi, my name is Al. You may know me on twitter as @AlCantHang, or not. Doesn’t much matter. I recently found myself with a lot of time on my hands when the latest job to support my nomadic lifestyle ended up in the bankruptcy courts. I suppose that is a little better than my other former employer who is currently under indictment by the Department of Justice. That was my situation when Dan asked if I was available to do a little technical work behind the scenes on the Pokerati engine and do a little writing in my spare time, old school blogger style. The poker world is changing and I just hope at least one poker blog doesn’t forget the indepent coverage we found so desirable.
The WSOP held their annual Media Conference Call on Tuesday, gathering together a captive audience to listen as they highlight their latest and greatest branded poker ideas along with policy/rule changes. There is very little difference between this call and any other corporate press conference full of rainbows but avoiding anything too shocking. All of which could have been delivered via email or press release.
But for some reason people still call in each year. Dave Ferrara covered it here for Pokerati and you can find his recap in his post “A Bigger, Louder WSOP for 2012?”. Dave is one of the new kids on the block around these parts. Not the overrated 80′s boy band but a solid writer who will provide quality updates from around the Vegas poker rooms throughout the summer. He’ll take the high road and I’ll continue to find my way through the sea of degenerates.
If the initial call wasn’t enough, Dan joined POKERGSSP, Kevmath and Rich Ryan on QuadJacks to spend two hours talking about a one-hour conference call. Proving once again, if you gather enough scribes in one place they will talk a thing to death until their time is up or the bartenders announce last call.
Download
It’s a global gambling show, with industry news from England, France, Belgium, Germany, Antigua, and the USA! Stories include licensing, trade disputes, and the collapse of a spread betting firm.
I was never an online poker rock star. At the height of my online career I was mid-stakes PLO grinder on Pokerstars and FTP. The low expenses and generous player incentives made this a comfortable lifestyle for La and I, who also made her living grinding online mtts. Decent bankroll management and a few well timed live scores prior to April 15th 2011 left us in better shape than most when our virtual bankroll was frozen, but our lives were still drastically altered after our freedom to play online poker was taken away.
Our average pre Black Friday day consisted of waking up whenever, having “breakfast”, and grinding out sessions in the upstairs war room. We lived a good life in a nice house close to our friends and family in DFW. A few times a year we would travel to a deep stack tournament series for a change of pace, but the majority of our working hours were spent at home in our boxers and bathrobes. When we went on the road we would take our laptops with us. If there was no action after we busted a live event we could supplement our income with online sessions.
After Black Friday our war room got turned into an arcade.
hmm, so the media uploader seems easy enough. let’s do a picture and video.
that was simple enough. now a youtube vid embedded with uploader:
manually embedded
now lets try short codes
This is being posted from my iPhone. With geotagging turned on. Let’s see how it looks, and maybe even add. Photo.
That set of poker chips you got a few years back may have worked fine when you were playing for peanuts on the kitchen table. But you’ve stepped up in life and need something more befitting a home-game player competing at higher stakes. This mahogany chip case — complete with 500 heavy-weight, 13.5 gram chips — is a perfect living room or office talking-piece to encourage your guest to suggest getting up a game. (Click to buy.)
Do you often find yourself strategizing or calculating odds and your friends frequently ask for your advice on how to play poker? Think you know a lot about this game? Well, why not share your experience with the world?
The Pokerist.com application is holding a competition for the best poker strategy article. Take part in our competition — share your tips on how to increase chances of winning this game and become a winner yourself!
Your work may be written, recorded as a voice or video (provided it is a good quality recording) or drawn as a scheme. It must be in English, but you may also write it in your native language as an addition. All works must be original. In order to win the contest not only the content must be informative but it should be entertaining, too. All contestants must post their works on their personal Facebook page, blog, YouTube or MySpace with a reference “Made for Pokerist.com”. The winner will be determined by the number of likes/retweets.
Send links to your works to contest@kamagames.com.
Authors of the first three best guides will receive an offer to join the Pokerist.com team as writers, and their works will be posted on our website with reference to them.
Remember to “Like” this post so your poker buddies can see this too!
Pokerist is a virtual-money application providing Texas Hold’em worldwide on Facebook, Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
I’m back in the office after a great CasinoFest 9 in Tulsa and a fantastic International Masters of Gaming Law Spring Conference in Napa, California. I want to try to put pen to paper in the coming days and do blog posts for both of those events, so stay tuned.
For now, I’ll share the podcast that Sarah Klaphake Cords put together last week in Tulsa. Sarah did her usual wonderful job. Her first guest, Jason Lowry, Senior Director of Casino Operations at the Hard Rock in Catoosa, gave a great interview and had some fascinating thoughts on the dynamics of his local casino market. Sarah and I then chatted about the panel I was on in Tulsa later that day and on the current state of the Canadian gaming market, but Jason was a tough act to follow!
If you can’t get the embedded player to work, the interview is on the CEM site here. Enjoy.
I know it runs counter to conventional poker(ati) wisdom that this could be true, but, well, it kinda is:
Republicans offered some hope Tuesday to online poker players sidelined by the Obama administration’s “Black Friday” crackdown.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) is planning to introduce legislation that would legalize and regulate online poker and said he hopes the measure can pass both chambers of Congress this session.
“Poker is a game of skill,” Barton said in defense of the sites during a press conference outside the Capitol.
He suggested those who believe poker to be a game of chance should try playing with their own money against world champion Greg Raymer, who stood behind him at the press conference.
Shockingly, too, most Pokeratizens will probably find this curious:
Barton said he has spoken to the leadership of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, including Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), and hopes to move a bill through the committee in the near future. Barton said the bill is being finalized in consultation with the Poker Players Alliance (PPA).
OK, that’s enough from me — I’m just a morlock, and I’ll probably be locked up for this, but hey…breaking news!
Via genes @ Big Bill Quick’s joint…who’s kind of got his headline wrong, unless I’m so drunk I can’t read the news.
You can now embed a video as an Author:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04KQydlJ-qc
Maybe people are just jonesing to click-and-raise or maybe various industry stalwarts are starting to see the new poker era that dawned upon us on April 15th isn’t all about tearing down Full Tilt and PokerStars [update: and now Doyle's Room] in their battle with the DOJ … it’s about building new structures that will become the basis for the game (and industry surrounding it) in the 21st century. (That’s how Vegas-style implosions work.)
Rise — those clothing makers who you may recall came onto the scene a while back as the people trying to remove the d-bagginess from poker fashion — has partnered with Poker Royalty, the pre-eminent poker representative agency, to launch a new fully legal play-for-free online poker site with real cash prizes. Though I do have to wonder when they say their new poker team will include “some of the most recognizable poker players in the world” … are they talking about pros who may or may not have deals currently with dot-net (lol) online sites or the likes of @kevmath?
ZEN Entertainment, the operation powering the new Rise Poker room, is the group that recently launched the Hustler Casino’s online poker site. Though we weren’t necessarily anticipating a clothing line getting in on the action before more casinos … and two doesn’t necessarily make for a statistical trend … Pokerati is feeling good about our newsy speculation that the upcoming 2011 WSOP may indeed be full of free online qualifiers, which would be kinda different from WSOP’s past.
Read below for the official announcement:
The DoJ District of Maryland unsealed an indictment today charging multiple online poker and gambling sites of charges similar in nature to the Black Friday indictments last month. While the indictment itself has not been released publicly at this time, the DoJ has a press release describing the action. In all, two businesses and three people are charged, with 11 bank accounts seized around the world.
The following sites are in connection with this indictment:
The biggest site poker players will see there is Doylesroom.com, of which their namesake Doyle Brunson left the site just a couple weeks ago. Whether it was excellent timing or Doyle was aware of what was about to happen we can’t be sure, but him leaving the site may, in hindsight, might have been a tip-off to the rest of us that something was off.
One big difference between this set of seizures and the Black Friday group is that the FBI actually opened a fake payment processor to get the business of the offending sites, only to flip when the time was right. An affidavit filed to support a seizure warrant during the investigation noted several laws as justification for the seizure. It should be noted that these are not necessarily the laws that the companies are being accused of, merely the laws used for justification for the seizure:
One notable absent law violation are the bank fraud charges that appeared in the SDNY case. It might be that the sites did things differently in this case, but its too early to tell without the indictment text. Finally, the press release noted a cooperation between the DOJ, IRS, and ICE. @Karak2p2, a regular on the Quadjacks Radio program, noted on twitter that the cooperation made sense, as the DOJ is after the federal law breaking, the IRS for money laundering, and ICE for the potential organized crime angle of running an illegal gambling business.
The indictment, when it is revealed, will contain more information as to the specific charges.
For more links and information about this fast-moving story, check out Scarlet’s post on the same subject.
EDIT (7:20 PM ET): The indictments have been posted online, the two companies have been charged seperately, or at least have separate indictments. Both have the same two counts, one for conducting an illegal gambling business (18 USC 1955) and one for money laundering (18 USC 1956).
ThrillX Systems (beted.com) Indictment
K23 Group Financial Services (BMX Entertainment) Indictment
The United States Attorney’s office from the District of Maryland took action against two more gambling businesses and three defendants today. The indictments were unsealed this afternoon.
This is a summary of the situation from an article in the Baltimore Sun:
The indictments, returned late last month and unsealed Monday, are the result of a two-year sting operation by the Homeland Security Investigations in Baltimore, a division of U.S. Customs and Immigration enforcement. The agency set up a phony payment processing business in Atlantic City and spent two years infiltrating the world of illegal online betting.
Agents ultimately handled more than $33 million in transactions and uncovered a thriving criminal community in Maryland and beyond: “There are numerous individuals in Maryland who have authorized payments to these [foreign] businesses,” claims one agent’s sworn affidavit, filed with court records.
Charged in the indictments are ThrillX Systems Ltd. and owners Darren Wright and David Parchomchuk, both of British Columbia, Canada; and K23 Financial Services (known as BMX Entertainment), run by defendant Ann Marie Puig, of San Jose, Costa Rica. They’re all charged with running an illegal gambling business and money laundering through various Web sites seized Monday, including Truepoker.com and Funtimebingo.com.
Banners saying the sites had been shut down were expected to replace the websites Monday, though they had not yet been posted by mid-afternoon
The following links are the current stories on the subject:
Full DOJ press release -> OPERATORS OF INTERNET GAMBLING SITES AND THEIR BUSINESSES INDICTED FOR RUNNING AN ILLEGAL GAMBLING BUSINESS AND MONEY LAUNDERING (h/t @Kevmath)
Article in Baltimore Sun -> Baltimore feds target Internet gambling (h/t @GamingCounsel)
Article in The Republic -> Gambling web sites, international bank accounts seized in federal sting (h/t @Kevmath)
Maryland criminal code link cited -> Section 12-102 in Maryland Criminal Law Code (h/t @AlexRipps)
I have a feeling the inaugural WSOP million-dollar freeroll might feature some of the best poker we’ll see throughout the WSOP. The unofficial kick-off for the 2011 WSOP activities — and perhaps opening testament to the dramatically reduced relevance of typical patch players this year — gets underway this Friday.
Below is the official list of who gets to play — final save for point and money totals on the nine players who locked up seats yesterday and played (or are still playing) the Southern regional championship at Harrah’s New Orleans today.
NOTABLE:
Plenty of interesting names qualified for 1 of 100 seats over the course of the ever-expansive WSOP-circuit 2010/11 season. And I’m sure some of the best stories come from winners we’ve never heard of … but regardless, several well-known players and a few special-to-Pokerati players will be fighting for 10 payouts ranging from $27,500 to $300,000, including …
La Sengphet (one of only two women who qualified)
David Clark
Josh Evans
Charles “Woody” Moore
Dwight Pilgrim
Allie Prescott
Allen Kessler
Tim West
Bernard Lee
Ali Eslami
Traci Brown (the other female qualifier, also from Texas)
Brandon Adams
Shannon Shorr
Andy Frankenberger
This week’s online gambling news included several poker pros as the latest victims of “Black Friday”. Plus, some of the stupidest stories we could find… with a Chuck E. Cheese lawsuit and the end of life on this planet!
The signs of Rapture are all around us. No, I’m not talking about the idiot who spent his life savings putting up billboards around the country to tell everyone the world was going to end on May 21st. I’m talking about the world in which I exist, the poker world, where we’re clearly in a time loop, as the same things happen over and over again and nobody seems to notice. Déjà vu was certainly the theme for this week’s winners in poker.
Scott Seiver Breaks Through On WPT; Seidel Wins Another High Rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
WPT Championship & Super High Roller, Bellagio, Las Vegas, Nevada
C/O WPT
There are times in the poker world in which a situation goes beyond explanation. Sometimes players, for no better reason than running bad or random chance, a player will go an extended period of time without a big score. Michael Mizrachi’s previous results at the WSOP leading up to last year’s explosion comes to mind. A player of the caliber of Scott Seiver doing no better 19th place in 5 years of WPT tournaments defies explanation. Unless the explanation was that he was saving up all his rungood for this past week’s $25,000 WPT Championship.
Seiver beat an impressive collection of players in the final six, including 2011 PCA Champion Galen Hall, Justin Young, and Farzad Bonyadi. For his breakthrough WPT performance, Seiver raked in an impressive $1,618,344.
In news that can’t possibly surprise anyone who knows anything about poker, Erik Seidel took down the inaugural WPT Super High Roller Event. 28 of the sickest gamblers of the world decided to put up $100,000 to vie for second place to Seidel. The lucky second place finisher was fellow Team Full Tilt member Erick Lindgren, but the human cybernetic organism that is Erik Seidel walked away with another score of over $1 million, bringing his total for the year to over $5.4 million. Nice life.
Freitez Wins EPT Season 7 Finale; Mercier Wins PokerStars Sponsored zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
EPT Grand Final, Madrid, Spain
C/O PokerStars
The EPT Grand Final, a €10,000 event to conclude an interesting season for the crown jewel of the PokerStars tours featured a “live” broadcast with hole cards on a two-hour delay, sequestering players until their eliminations had “happened” on TV. It’s interesting to see the lengths that they had to go to to broadcast this table on a delay, while the WSOP was able to negotiate just a 30 minute delay between play and broadcast, with no sequestering, but that’s another story for another day.
Two members of Team PokerStars made the EPT Grand Final final table, with Brazilian Alex Gomes chasing a triple crown and Juan Maceiras trying to become the first Spanish-born EPT champion. Both players found the rail early on in Final Table play. Venezuelan player Ivan Freitez was the last man standing, claiming €1,500,000 (about $2.2 million) in the swan song for the EPT’s seventh (!) season.
The following day’s action saw winners from the EPT’s first seven seasons compete for a first place prize of €50,000 in buy-ins to the next season of the EPT. In what should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, Jason Mercier was the champion.
Chris Porter Tops Station Event With for $60K
Sunset Station Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada
C/O Station Casinos
The Station Casinos have created an interesting series of poker tournaments at their various Las Vegas properties. They’re running four separate $1,100 events at four different casinos, each with a $200,000 guarantee, and the top 25 finishers at each casino will compete in a championship event with a $200,000 guarantee of its own, to create a prizepool totaling $1 million for the five events. The most recent event, taking place at Sunset Station, brought in over 200 players, with FullTilt player representative Chris Porter taking down the top prize of $60,000, and a chance at some more in the championship event.
Matt Legard “Positions” Himself For Big Win in New Game at Bellagio
Bellagio Prelim Event, Las Vegas, Nevada
C/O Position Poker
As much as the popularity of poker continues to flourish, there are some innovative minds thinking of “the next step” in the evolution of the game. Most of the time it’s an innovation in bringing in more players or changing the pace of the game, but certain developments, including Rush Poker, have completely changed the way poker can be played. An exciting new version of live poker made its debut during the preliminary events at Bellagio a few weeks ago, and this one is called Position Poker. The key variation of the game is that the player winning a pot gets to act after the button on the following hand. There are a few other intricacies, which you can check out at their website here. The winner of the first ever event was Matt Legard, who won $18,000 for his efforts.
NOLA Wraps the WSOPC With Scramble For Points(+2 rings +Team Pokerati Update +National Championship update)
WSOPC Harrahs New Orleans, Louisiana
C/O WSOP
With the conclusion of the WPT Championship, all eyes in the poker world have turned towards New Orleans, where the last few entries to the $1 million WSOPC National Championship have been grinded out over the last week and a half. There are three methods by which players earned their seats in this event; the grinders who have followed the circuit around all year tried to accumulate enough points for one of the at large spots (including Team Pokerati member Dave Clark, who seems to have squeezed his way in with a few key points at this final stop).
Another option was to be the “Casino Champion” by accumulating the most points at this stop. That spot was snatched up by an impressive performance by Brian Walsingham, who locked up two rings inside of a week. In Event 4, a $355 No Limit Hold’em event was the first ring he won, and in Event #8 he really cashed in. The $1,085 tournament generated a prize pool of over $340,000 and Walsingham took the lion’s share of over $78,000. He also gave himself a chance at $300,000, the top prize in a field of less than 100 that will take place in Las Vegas in the coming week.
The third method? Outlasting 75 players and make the final table of the $10,000 Southern Regional Championship, ensuring yourself of one of the last nine seats in a $1 million freeroll. At the time of publication, there are 12 players left, including Allen Kessler, Allie Prescott and Shannon Shorr. Once the final nine is finalized, we’ll throw a quick update your way.
UPDATE: The Final Nine was just set. The unlucky bubble boy was Shannon Shorr, who ran pocket kings into the pocket aces of Allie Prescott to go out in tenth. Prescott punches his ticket to the National Championship, as do Harry Cullen, Allen Kessler, Jeremy Gaubert, Gary Friedlander, Kunal Patel, Matt Waxman, AJ Jejelowo and Scott Lipshutz. The overall field for the freeroll is unofficially set, but you can look here to see who has “officially” qualified and here to check out how the National leaderboard for at-large qualifiers shook out.
We thought it was a big deal when PokerStars got T-pain for a night, and then a bigger deal when they brought in @SnoopDogg for a party that certainly won’t be one-upped at this year’s WSOP … but what’s the point with Lady Gaga becoming a farmer?
In many ways it’s a disheartening reminder of what Phil Hellmuth can never be … and possibly indicative of poker’s future direction. Say what you will about the struggling American family farm, clearly there’s more money in virtual harvesting than poker, and hence the biggest name in poker (as far as Google is concerned) — and the most powerful celebrity in the world thanks in part to a song talking about poker — has moved beyond Texas Hold’em to sign with Farmville — and the parent company of the biggest online poker site.
Implications are clear … Zynga is planning to take over American agriculture by introducing poker players to the concept that money can indeed grow on trees. It should play great with the kids (who love Lady Gaga).
At a minimum you can see how Zynga’s at least thinking along the similar lines as Caesars:
$5,000 for Your Thoughts? - American-friendly online freeroll this weekend and then ... http://t.co/0VgYiks1
All the best for this, Jon --> MT @JonFriedberg: @CLVpoker room will be crazy this weekend with the @AVPoker Tour event happening #Vegas
Guess it's time to go ahead on this twitter id rename already seeing as I moved back from Nevada...
At walmart w/mom. Old lady walking down ice cream aisle looking 4 tom and jerry's ice cream. Hope it doesn't have mice in it. #helltogetold
$5,000 for Your Thoughts? - American-friendly online freeroll this weekend and then ... http://t.co/0VgYiks1 Illinois and California in Race to Regulate - Legal poker stories not to miss http://t.co/duoCneg8
