Poker News

PokerTracker Releases Omaha, Mac Support

Just days before the beginning of 2010, the popular poker tracking and analysis software PokerTracker turned a new leaf of its own, releasing Omaha and Mac supported versions. The so-called Beta 30 was announced in the PokerTracker forums.

Mac poker software is quickly growing in popularity as more and more online poker players switch to the alternative computing system. Poker aficionados who received new Mac laptops for the holidays can now use PokerTracker with ease, as the programming team released support just in time for the new decade. Auto-import of hand histories for the new PokerTracker release is available for PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Ongame Network clients.

In addition to the Mac-supported version, another growing area of the marketplace received support from PokerTracker, Omaha. The up-and-coming game’s support on PokerTracker is still somewhat patchwork, as Auto-Rate is not yet functional and only hands from PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, PartyPoker, and the iPoker Network will import to the poker tracking tool. In addition, Table Tracker does not yet support Omaha. Text found in the PokerTracker forums notes, “The Omaha beta is freely available to all owners of the Holdem version and to all trial users. For those of you who do not own PT3, but have an expired trial, Omaha will be getting its own trial separate from the Holdem one soon, so please be patient.”

Beta 30 also received an extreme makeover in the form of a Setup Wizard. In an effort to make configuring PokerTracker as easy as possible, the program’s developers had the foresight to include a setup tool to add sites. A process that sometimes required a player posting on poker forums like PocketFives.com and TwoPlusTwo.com may soon be a breeze thanks to the Setup Wizard. Novice PokerTracker users and customers setting up additional online poker sites to the mix will be able to take advantage of the new feature.

Players transitioning from the Windows-based version of PokerTracker to the Mac utility can employ the software’s new backup and restore feature. Now, layouts, reports, stats, notes, and buddies can all be placed into one central zip file. This essentially creates one point of reference when switching versions or computers.

Because the new version remains in beta, a variety of bugs are expected. In fact, one day after Beta 30 was announced, PokerTracker programmers rolled out Beta 30.1, which addressed issues with the software’s Heads-Up Display (HUD), PartyPoker hand imports, and database names containing characters that sent the program into a tizzy. The site frankly states, “There's a very good probability that there will be bugs. If you aren't willing to deal with bugs and help us locate and fix them, please wait until the stable release is out.”

Bugs fixed in the Beta 30 release included importing hands from the Microgaming Network, tournament import issues on Full Tilt, and rebuy and add-on support for PokerStars. Support for heads-up tables was added for Bodog and tournament bounty support was also added across several sites. Improvements to sanity checks and keyboard shortcuts were also added.

Along with Holdem Manager, PokerTracker represents the industry-leading tracking and analysis software. At the time of writing, PokerTracker and Holdem Manager were the third and fourth highest rated programs by users of PokerSoftware.com, respectively, and both are used by thousands of online poker players. Holdem Manager launched an Omaha client, Omaha Manager, earlier this year. Poker Copilot serves as the staple tracking program for Mac players.

Posters on PocketFives.com have reported a bevy of bugs in PokerTracker’s Mac version. Member “diesel83” remarked, “It seems to be picking up my hands and results fairly well, but the HUD is worthless right now. At least it is here. Going back to fusion to run Windows until next update though.”

The Full Version of PokerTracker runs $89.99, while the Micro-Stakes Edition will set players back $44.99.

PokerStars ANZPT Season 2 Schedule Announced

The first six events of Season 2 of the PokerStars-sponsored Australia New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT) were announced in recent days, with Adelaide set to host the first event from February 9th to 14th.

The buy-in for the kickoff tournament of the tour’s second season weighs in at AUD $3,000 and the festivities will be held at the Adelaide Casino. The venue’s Poker Manager, David Galpin, commented in a press release distributed by the world’s largest online poker site, “We are looking forward to the return of the ANZPT in Adelaide after the wonderful success of the first year and we are excited to see the event grow and flourish.” The Main Event is capped at 360 players and preliminary tournaments will get underway in the Australian city on February 2nd.

In an interesting rule found on the ANZPT’s website, iPods are not allowed at the Adelaide event due to government policy. In addition, the casino has a strict stance against string betting and out of turn bettors will forfeit their contribution to the pot should they ultimately choose to fold. Poker players who win their way in through PokerStars will tour wineries and other nearby attractions during their trip.

After Adelaide, a brand new ANZPT event in Perth will play out, with the Burswood Entertainment Complex serving as the epicenter of the Australian poker market beginning on March 17th. The AUD $2,500 buy-in Main Event will name a champion four days later and the field is capped at 300 runners. On the new event, Jason Barry, General Manager of Table Games at Burswood Entertainment Complex, commented in the same release, “We feel this is just what our players have been waiting for and we expect big numbers will take part in the first PokerStars.net ANZPT Perth tournament.”

A total of five events made up Season 1 of the ANZPT, which kicked off in February in Adelaide. Tournaments followed in Sydney, Melbourne, Queenstown, and Queensland. In the finale of ANZPT Season 1, Scott Kerr earned AUD $168,075 for defeating a field of 249 players back in August. The largest field during Season 1 turned out in Sydney, where nearly 500 players took to the felts. The conclusion of that event saw Paren Arzoomanian scoop the AUD $246,500 first place prize.

A combined 1,309 players took part in Season 1 events and nearly $3 million in prize money was doled out. Here is the schedule for what promises to be a lively Season 2 on the PokerStars-backed ANZPT:

ANZPT Adelaide: Adelaide Casino
February 9th to 14th
Buy-in: AUD $3,000

ANZPT Perth: Burswood Entertainment Complex
March 17th to 21st
Buy-in: AUD $2,500

ANZPT Sydney: Star City Casino
April 21st to 25th
Buy-in: AUD $2,200

ANZPT Queenstown: Sky City Queenstown
July 17th to 25th
Buy-in: NZD $2,500

ANZPT Gold Coast: Conrad Jupiters
August 11th to 15th
Buy-in: AUD $2,500

ANZPT Melbourne: Crown Casino
October 8th to 11th
Buy-in: TBD

More stops will likely be added to Season 2 of the ANZPT, although no further information was available at the time of writing. A tournament leaderboard held during the first season of the tour saw Tony Hachem emerge victorious after cashing in four of the five ANZPT Season 1 events. For his leaderboard win, Hachem took home entry into Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) events as well as the 2010 Aussie Millions. Chris Levick, who finished in second place on the leaderboard, gained entry into every ANZPT Season 2 event.

In addition to the ANZPT and APPT, PokerStars also sponsors the European Poker Tour (EPT), Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT), Italian Poker Tour (IPT), Czech-Slovak Poker Tour (CSPT), Russian Poker Tour (RPT), and U.K. and Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT).

Grand Prix de Paris Returns to World Poker Tour

From May 8th to 13th, the World Poker Tour (WPT) will return to the Aviation Club for the Grand Prix de Paris. The €10,000 buy-in tournament will be filmed for television and beamed around the world.

The Aviation Club opened back in 1907 and makes its home on the Champs-Elysées in Paris, the city’s famous boulevard. The cozy club’s poker consultant, Bruno Fitoussi, commented in a press release distributed by the WPT, "The Aviation Club de France is delighted to welcome back a WPT event in Paris. The WPT Grand Prix de Paris is guaranteed to be a high-class tournament in the highlights of the international poker scene and will, for sure, attract players from all around the world."

The 2010 visit to the Aviation Club marks the first WPT event in Paris since 2006. That year, Christian Grundtvig defeated Finnish poker player Jani Sointula to take home the Grand Prix de Paris title and its corresponding €712,500 first place prize. Sointula earned a €356,250 consolation prize and others at the final table included Thomas Wahlroos (third place for €243,750), Henrik Witt (fourth place for €168,750), Phil Yeh (fifth place for €131,250), and Pat Schuhl (sixth place for €93,750). A total of 232 players entered and the top 27 finished in the money.

Land-based satellites for the 2010 WPT Grand Prix de Paris will kick off on May 1st at the Aviation Club. Adam Pliska, President of the WPT, told Poker News Daily, "France is an important part of WPT's world and will continue to be key for WPT as it expands across Europe and beyond. While WPT's television shows continue to expand their global reach, the introduction of non-televised events will also provide WPT and its partners with even more opportunities to connect with its consumers.” Earlier this year, the WPT was sold to Party Gaming, the parent company of the popular site PartyPoker.

In 2005, Roland de Wolfe bested Juha Helppi in the Grand Prix de Paris, outlasting a field of 160 players. That year, Alan Goehring also made the final table, taking sixth place for €74,950. The 2004 installment was perhaps the most memorable, as it featured runner-up Tony G lambasting eventual winner Surinder Sunar. The Club’s layout was unique in that the assembled audience watched the action from the final table in an adjacent area via television monitors.

Lyndsay Lagree, Senior Public Relations Manager for the WPT, added, “We're thrilled to be back in France for the WPT Grand Prix de Paris. WPT looks forward to building on its longstanding relationship with Aviation Club de France and to welcoming many poker fans through its doors.” The first WPT Grand Prix de Paris took place in 2003 and saw David Benyamine best Jan Boubli for the title. Also at the final table was Full Tilt Poker pro Erick Lindgren, then a relative unknown. Lindgren recorded his second WPT cash at the Paris poker tournament, earning €53,600 during the Season 2 stop.

The Grand Prix de Paris comes one month after the WPT Championship at the Bellagio, the $25,000 buy-in end-of-season event, and the French feature tournament includes two starting days. In March, WPT staff will head to Bucharest for an event at the Regent Casino. The WPT Bucharest Main Event boasts a €3,300 buy-in and begins on March 27th.

Also to be held during the Grand Prix de Paris is a €20,000 buy-in High Roller event that begins on May 15th and runs for three days. WPT representatives noted that French gaming regulations were to blame for the tournament series’ absence from the Aviation Club for the last three years.

2009 Online Poker Industry Trends

With the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) looming overhead and watchdog groups trying their best to curb internet gaming, many felt that the online poker industry would do nothing but regress in 2009. However, the opposite proved to be true.

Those same pundits used the weak global economy as the proverbial “nail in the coffin” and all but predicted that the online poker industry would collapse by the end of the year.  Now that we’ve reached the conclusion of 2009, we can clearly see that these so-called experts were completely wrong in their assessments.  Poker News Daily sat down with Dan Stewart, manager of PokerScout.com, to discuss the online poker industry trends of 2009.  PokerScout.com is a traffic reporting website that has kept records for all of the major sites.

Poker News Daily: Who was the big winner in terms of gaining market share in 2009? Has the market grown or shrunk during the year?

Dan Stewart: The big winner for the year was Full Tilt Poker, doubling in size and increasing its market share from 15% to 23%.  The market has grown 35% in 2009.  A large part of that growth came in the second half of the year since summer is traditionally a slow time for online poker.

PND:  We've noticed solid growth from Full Tilt Poker. Has the site’s increase in traffic closed the gap between Full Tilt and PokerStars?

Dan Stewart: Full Tilt Poker has gone from 40% of the size of PokerStars at the beginning of the year to 65% now.

PND:  It seems like there's a decent-sized gap between the 12 major online poker networks and #13 (Svenska Spel).  Is there any site or network on PokerScout.com ranked 13th or lower that is on its way up and might become a major player in 2010?

Dan Stewart: Of the sites ranked below 12th, only “win2day” has managed to grow at a rate equal to the overall market.  All of the other sites are either shrinking or growing slower than the market.

PND: What can you make of the rumors about a potential bwin - Party Gaming merger? If they did merge, where would that put their network in terms of traffic worldwide?

Dan Stewart: It’s hard to say exactly how a potential merger would play out and how much overlap there is between customer bases.  However, if you just add the two player pools together, the combined entity would easily move into third place ahead of iPoker.

PND: Can you talk a little bit about industry consolidation?

Dan Stewart: There is definitely a critical mass effect at work.  The sites that have the most players attract the most players because they offer more action around the clock.  Already, the top two sites (Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars) have about 60% market share.  However, the effect is slow to work and there are still at least 15 sites and networks with enough players to remain healthy.  Unless there is a wave of consolidation, players outside the U.S. will likely have a large number of viable options for years to come.

PND: We've talked about winners in 2009. Who are the big losers of the year?

Dan Stewart: In a growing market, “loser” is a relative term.  Many of the non-U.S. sites have had a hard time keeping up with the growth of the market overall.  In terms of actual player loss, the biggest loser has been Svenska Spel, down 9% for the year.  Svenska Spel is run by the Swedish government and they may have been handicapped by some internal disagreement as to how aggressively the government should be promoting online poker.

PND: What's in the future for PokerScout in 2010?

Dan Stewart: There are some exciting new features coming in January.  The traffic report will be expanding and we’ll be partnering with one or more rakeback providers to offer great rakeback deals to our visitors.

We would like to thank Dan Stewart and PokerScout.com for their very insightful information and data.  If you wish to read more detailed reports about online poker traffic, be sure to visit PokerScout.com.

Applying Online Poker Skills to One-Week Fantasy Football Leagues

We’re in the midst of the fantasy football playoffs in many leagues and, with some managers not a part of the post-season, the popularity of one-week contests has ballooned. Online poker players, in particular, should be quite successful in these games.

Fantazzle.com has partnered with Poker News Daily to help our readers enter the world of one-week fantasy games and put their online poker skills to the test. Most weekly fantasy sites, in fact, have online draft lobbies that look nearly identical to the ones you’d find on your favorite poker room, showing the maximum capacity and number of players already registered. Familiar buy-ins like $5, $10, and $20 parallel sit and gos nicely, especially as it relates to understanding payouts and rake.

At Fantazzle.com, two different types of one-week fantasy sports leagues exist. The first is a salary cap format whereby each manager receives a set number of dollars with which to buy players. How does this relate to poker, you ask? In poker, you have to be able to spot value and weakness in opponents. In fantasy football, it’s the same way. If Jamaal Charles (RB - Kansas City Chiefs) is going for only $30,000 and plays the Cleveland Browns in Week 15, he might be a better one-time play than DeAngelo Williams (RB – Carolina Panthers), who might have a price three times larger and also has a tougher match-up in the Minnesota Vikings, one of the league’s top run defenses.

In poker, it’s all about spotting value. Knowing when you can profitably make a play at a pot is key, as is mathematically understanding whether a play is in line with expected value. Being able to spot value in tournament registrations, such as overlays, is also extremely important. If a tournament like the Bodog $100,000 Guaranteed has a perennial overlay, knowing this information and then registering for it increases your value in an event. In fantasy drafts, understanding value in the middle and late rounds is especially vital to your success.

Fantasy football is really all about exploiting match-ups. Who plays who typically pre-destines success or failure in a given week. If your fantasy players face off against the likes of Detroit, Oakland, and Seattle, then chances are you’ll be flying high. However, if your quarterbacks are locked down against teams like Pittsburgh, Baltimore, or the New York Giants, then look out. In one-week drafts like those you’ll find on Fantazzle.com, understanding the match-ups and compiling your team accordingly is what determines your relative success. In poker, some of the top players in the world are heads-up specialists, capitalizing on their skill relative to others in order to make a living.

Fantazzle.com has been in business since 2008 and its owner, Ryan Parr, told Poker News Daily, “You will be assigned to a group of people. You don’t have to wait around for others to come.” Unlike a poker sit and go, you won’t have to stand by until a table fills up to play. As soon as it’s game time each week, you’re off to the races. While many fantasy football managers are currently shut out of the playoffs, at Fantazzle.com, everyone is able to participate. Metaphorically, all you need is a chip and a chair.

Online poker sites are all about building credibility. Using names like Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu to sell a site’s viability results in players swarming the online poker room left and right. At Fantazzle.com, the New York Giants’ Steve Smith foots the bill, as the wide receiver is lending his autograph to tournament winners each week. Smith leads the Giants in receiving yards and receptions by a large margin and has found the end zone five times in 2009, tied for the second most on the team.

Visit Fantazzle.com today and put your online poker skills to good use!

PokerStars Releases ANZPT Season 2 Dates

PokerStars announced dates for the second season of the Australia New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT) today and six events across the two countries are already confirmed with more to be announced in the near future.

"The ANZPT provides Australian and New Zealand poker players with a professionally-executed tour in their own backyard," said ANZPT Commissioner Danny McDonagh. "The ANZPT Player of the Year is now clearly the most coveted poker award in this region."

The tour will begin with a stop in Adelaide from Feb. 9-14, 2010, at the Adelaide Casino. After Adelaide the tour will move on to Perth, Sydney, Queenstown, Gold Coast and finally Melbourne in the fall of 2010.

New for this year is Perth, capital of Western Australia.

“We are thrilled to be part of the ANZPT,” said Jason Barry, general manager of table games at Burswood Casino. “We feel this is just what our players have been waiting for and we expect big numbers will take in the first PokerStars.net ANZPT Perth Tournament.”

Season 1 of the ANZPT drew a total of 1,309 players and awarded $2.9 million in prize money over its five events.

Tony Hachem was the ANZPT Player of the Year last season, winning $19,239 AUD and a spot on Team PokerStars Australia for this year when he cashed in four of the five ANZPT events.

Below is the preliminary schedule for the ANZPT season 2:

ECOGRA Certifies CEREUS Poker Network

The CEREUS Network has taken another step towards regaining the trust of its customer base.  The independent certification group eCommerce and Online Gaming Regulation and Assurance (eCOGRA) recently announced that CEREUS met all of the qualifications for the organization’s seal of approval.

According to an announcement on eCOGRA’s site, CEREUS passed the certification process with “flying colors.”  The eCOGRA staff traveled to CEREUS headquarters to review the software and the company that produced it.  The lengthy review process analyzed the company’s random number generator and its management team.  eCOGRA used its Total Gaming Transaction Review system to assess CEREUS’ gaming transactions in terms of fairness and efficiency.

When all was said and done, eCOGRA was more than impressed with CEREUS’ operation.  Sean Roberts, Compliance Manager for eCOGRA, commented on the group’s findings in its official statement: “The active measures taken, in light of events that impacted players, coupled with an impressive range of additional mitigating controls that have since been implemented, have contributed to the CEREUS online poker network’s software reaching the standards we require for software accreditation.”

The London-based eCOGRA has long been considered to be one of the more prestigious and reputable online gaming certification groups out there.  Sites are certified by the Board of Directors, which consists of Executive Director Andrew Beveridge and Independent Directors Bill Henbrey, Michael Hirst, Bill Galston, and Frank Catania.  The board also includes three non-executive directors.  The four executive directors include an accountant, a former board member of Ladbrokes PLC, a retired inspector from the British Gaming Board, and a founder and president of a consulting group.

Beveridge also serves as the CEO of eCOGRA and has been at his post since 2003.  He possesses more than a decade of knowledge and experience in the world of online business and gaming.  A former executive at International Gaming Networks, Beveridge expressed confidence that CEREUS would uphold the standards expected of sites with eCOGRA certification: “CEREUS management’s complete cooperation and commitment to an in-depth inspection and monitoring process involving the network’s transaction records and its software has been remarkable.  Going forward, we are confident that the network’s adherence to our standards and best business practice requirements will prevent any reoccurrence of the unfortunate incidents of the past.”

Obviously excited to hear the good news, Paul Leggett, CEO of CEREUS’ parent company Tokwiro Enterprises, conveyed his feelings about the certification in the official eCOGRA press release: “Doing everything possible to reassure the poker community that our operation and software are completely safe and secure is a priority for us. This is why we decided to work with eCOGRA and apply for the Certified Software accreditation seal,” Leggett explained.  “Their inspection team was extraordinarily thorough, looking at a wide range of elements in our software. We are proud that our product passed the tough requirements to achieve this important accreditation. We have learned a great deal from eCOGRA and we respect and support their ongoing efforts to make the online poker industry more accountable.”

This announcement is not the first time that an outside organization has commended the company for its efforts to improve the safety and fairness of its online poker rooms following the Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet cheating scandals.  Earlier this year, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC) issued its findings on the scandal and stated that no one at Tokwiro was aware of the impropriety or was involved in the cheating.  Despite not finding Tokwiro liable for any of the theft, the KGC instituted a list of requirements for UB to retain its CEREUS-issued license, including KGC testing, independent testing, internal audits, and KGC approval on new employee hiring.

Cake Poker Announces Gold Stacks Rewards Program

You’ve heard of Gold Chips and Gold Cards on the popular USA-facing site Cake Poker, but now the room has shaken up its rewards program by introducing Gold Stacks. Instant bonuses will be automatically placed in players’ accounts.

While accumulating Gold Chips on Cake Poker, customers will also be building Gold Stacks. Every time a stack is completed, a player will take home a prize. A total of 50 levels of Gold Stacks are available and each requires a certain number of stacks and a specific number of chips in each stack. For example, in a graphic posted on Cake Poker’s website, Level 20 requires 11 Gold Stacks to advance to Level 21 and 40 Gold Chips are required for each stack.

A guaranteed instant reward is available regardless of how long it takes a player to fulfill the requirements for one level. However, if players advance quickly, they’ll earn additional bonuses. Cake Poker explains, “The faster you fill each stack, the more rewards you’ll reap. If you want to play against the clock, visit My Account while logged into Cake Poker to the view time remaining to earn Turbo and Super Turbo rewards.” Once players reach a Gold Stack level, they can only fall back if they fail to rack up three Gold Chips in back-to-back months.

In a press release distributed by Cake Poker on Friday night, the site’s Card Room Manager, Lee Jones, commented, “This is a great new program for Cake players. It rewards them simply for playing in our ring games, tournaments, and sit and gos. Furthermore, it does it automatically. The player doesn’t have to do anything; they’ll just see extra gold chips or cash drop into their account.” In an interview with Poker News Daily, Jones stressed the automatic filling of bonuses as being one-of-a-kind compared to other sites, where players must take action to reap rewards.

Additional Gold Chips, pending bonuses, and cold hard cash are available for Gold Stack fulfillment. Jones explained, “We’re also proud to have a program that doesn’t keep the player on a treadmill to maintain a level. With just a negligible amount of play, a player maintains the level that they’re at. We understand that our players have lives outside of poker and if they need to be away for a month, we respect that. When they come back at the end of the month, they’ll be at exactly the same level as when they left and can pick right back up from there.” Players cannot fall back a level below #11 and, according to Jones, just “showing up for a little bit” should be enough to earn the three Gold Chips required to maintain a player’s current level.

Last weekend, the Cake Poker Network, of which Cake Poker is the flagship site, ran its monthly $250,000 Guaranteed. The $268 buy-in tournament attracted 1,286 runners, boasting a $321,000 prize pool. In the end, “PIIIGEEEOOON” earned the $63,000 first place prize, while “thepokerkinq” earned a sum of $44,000 for second. The top 180 players finished in the money, while the top six earned at least $10,000.

According to the traffic ranking site PokerScout.com, the Cake Poker Network is the 10th largest worldwide with a seven-day running average of 1,900 real money ring game players. Other sites that join Cake Poker on its namesake network include DoylesRoom, Lock Poker, Players Only, and Poker Host. Its traffic is on par with that found on Boss Media’s International Poker Network and the Microgaming Network. The Cake Poker Network is the fourth largest to accept players from the United States.

The Gold Stacks rewards program kicks off on December 9th on Cake Poker.

Pitbull Poker Scandal Continues Unresolved

When we think back to the major poker headlines of 2009, one of the very first ones to pop into our heads is the Pitbull Poker scandal.  It all started with a single post from a disgruntled prop player on the TwoPlusTwo forums and snowballed into one of the largest scandals the online poker industry has ever seen.  When the dust settled, a small Flash-based poker room had disappeared and hundreds of thousands of dollars in player funds had vanished.

An individual who goes by the moniker “JC Hawk,” who has fought to uncover this story, owned one of the major affiliates for Pitbull Poker.  He had contact with site’s Network Manager, Dave Brenes, and Pitbull Poker owner Kevin Baronowski during his business relationship with them.  JC Hawk estimates that he is owed over $100,000 from his affiliate site NLPT.tv on top of the cash investments he made.

In October, JC Hawk brought his case before the Costa Rican government and since then has worked with officials to resolve his dispute with Pitbull Poker ownership.  He stated that the government had been great to work with and showed a genuine interest in helping him resolve the matter.  With both the U.S. Embassy and Costa Rican government working with JC Hawk, he hoped to prosecute the guilty and recover what assets he could.

Poker News Daily received an update from JC Hawk in the last week that stated, “They are still working on it (CR) but Kevin Baronowsky has gone back to hide in Canada and Dave Brenes is hiding like the coward he is. We are now hunting Mr. Baronowsky and will find him, he needs to answer a few questions face to face. This will be done soon. His party days with my money are over.”

It’s admirable that JC Hawk continues to pursue justice in the light of being shafted over $100,000 in affiliate dues.  So many of the players on Pitbull, even ones that have lost tens of thousands of dollars, have simply said good game and moved on with their lives.  There’s something to be said for the tenacity behind Hawk’s actions and his unwavering confidence that something can be done.

In the past six weeks on the TwoPlusTwo forums, the fire behind the entire Pitbull Poker scandal has died down to a large degree.  The long threads diving into the debate of whether there were actually superusers playing on the site seem to have gone by the wayside.  Other players, like chesterboy, who was the original person behind the allegations, have moved on in life never to be heard from again.  There was even a thread created in the rumors section of TwoPlusTwo asking to close the Pitbull-related threads because the entire controversy had died.  Many responded by agreeing that the situation was pretty much over, but felt that the threads should remain open for those who wish to discuss the matter.

At this point, it seems the story of Pitbull Poker is finally being put to rest.  There has been no comment from Brenes, who has on multiple occasions vehemently denied being part of the ownership group.  There’s no trace of Baronowski or anyone else that has represented Pitbull Poker.

In the end, we may never really know the intricacies of what really went on behind the scenes at Pitbull Poker or ever know what happened to the missing funds.  Were they burned up trying to keep the site afloat amid overhead and marketing costs?  Were they simply stashed away and hidden in offshore accounts?  With any luck, we know JC Hawk will not rest until these questions are answered.  As any news breaks in the case, we will be sure to report it here at Poker News Daily.

BetClic Signs Isabelle Mercier

Mercier will act as a consultant for the site, which is a part of the Mangas Gaming group, and will be involved with developing a strategy for BetClic Poker.

“I am delighted to be working with BetClic and the Mangas group,” Mercier said.

“I am super impressed by the energy and ambition of this young company which is really going places. As with poker I’ve always made decisions based on both analysis and instinct, and this project has a great feel to it. I know it will be really exciting.”

Mercier brings years of experience from the poker industry, where she originally started as a poker room manager at the Aviation Club de France.

She was also a successful player and her big break came in 2004 when she won the WPT Ladies Night Out II event. Since then she has won over $1 million on the tournament circuit including a final table in the 2006 WSOP where she finished fifth for $175,404.

 “We are proud to welcome Isabelle to our team as an ambassador and advisor,” said BetClic managing director Nicolas Béraud. “She will give us new vision and excitement in this fast growing sector.”

Although Mercier will be a consultant for the company she will also continue to play poker, joining the rest of the sporting ambassadors at BetClic including footballers Marcel Desailly, Deco, Arrigo Sacchi, Mateusz Borek and Stefan Effenberg.

BetClic was created in 2005 and has grown from a start-up to a major player in the online gaming world. The company operates across 15 countries with over 1.5 million customers.

Although the site is known primarily for sports betting it has started to push its poker offering. BetClic also recently acquired Bet-At-Home and Expekt, both of which offer online poker rooms.

Mercier was rumored to have joined BetClic back in September, but she denied the claims at the time.

RIP Binion’s Horseshoe Hotel by Lee Jones

The news has just come out that, as of December 14th, there will no longer be a hotel at the Horseshoe Hotel-Casino in Downtown Las Vegas. Of course, it used to be Binion’s Horseshoe, the site of the World Series of Poker for 35 years and the center of the poker world for that long.

They’re also closing down the coffee shop. Sic transit gloria mundi.

For those of us of a certain age who remember the old days, this is a sobering moment. We’re told that they will keep the poker room, but it’s like saying, “Don’t worry, we’re keeping the statue of Lincoln; we’re just tearing down that big building around him.”

I first stepped into Binion’s back in the early 90’s, almost 20 years ago. It was during the WSOP, which used to be in May. I remember because it fell right over Mother’s Day; the fathers among our poker degen crowd could no more get away to Las Vegas that weekend than they could flap their arms and fly over the Grand Canyon.

It was just two to three years later when I first stayed at the hotel there. It was with the BARGE group, which has produced some of the luminaries of the poker world (Andy Bloch, Greg Raymer, Phil Gordon, and Bill Chen are all proud BARGErs). Our group took over Binion’s annually and they treated us like royalty. They comped us to breakfast in that glorious coffee shop; we’d leave tips amounting to half of what the meal would have cost.

Many of us stayed in the hotel rooms that are about to be boarded up and forgotten. They were not, let’s be honest, luxurious. At least one BARGEr was known to bring his own sheets and blankets to ensure their cleanliness. But by God, we were staying and playing poker in Mecca. No walking through a labyrinth of expensive shops and spas to get from your room to the casino and then a further schlep to find the poker. No, you came down one of two elevators and stepped out into a tiny hall. From there, it was literally half a dozen steps into the poker room. During the WSOP, you could hear the poker crowds while you were still in the elevator.

These were the same elevators that Stu Ungar, Doyle Brunson, and Jack Strauss had ridden to their suites to celebrate their WSOP victories. Heck, Johnny Moss lived in one of those rooms for the last few years of his life, an honored guest of the Binion family. He’d come down every day and play $20-$40 Limit Hold’em, riding around the casino floor on his little scooter.

Me, I never won a WSOP bracelet at Binion’s Horseshoe, but in 1998, I was fortunate enough to win the Main Event tournament at BARGE, which was held there. BARGE basically took over the entire property. I recall the thrill of walking into the coffee shop and getting a standing ovation from probably two-thirds of the tables in the place. That was one of the highlights of my poker career. Going back to my room, with its view to the wall of the casino next door, to call my wife and tell her that I’d just won.

Both during the WSOP and BARGE, Binion’s became poker heaven; the poker players greatly outnumbered the “civilians” and the air was electric. Part of that was because it was self-contained – we ate breakfast in the basement coffee shop, came up to the main floor to play poker, went up to the second floor for the buffet or Benny’s steak house, back for more poker, and then (maybe) make it up that elevator in the pre-dawn to get a few hours of sleep. If you were a veteran, you knew the Clue-like secret passage from the front lobby area that took you through a delivery alley and popped you out right next to the registration desk and at the poker room. You ate, slept, and played poker at the Horseshoe and for a period of time, that’s really all you wanted to do.

Sometime I’ll tell you about the time that Nick Behnen, Becky Binion’s husband, had a series of wee-hour heads-up No-Limit Hold’em matches against members of the BARGE crowd. When everybody got hungry, he ordered dozens of hamburgers sent out from the kitchen, but that’s a story for a different time. For now, let’s all take off our online poker logo baseball caps for a moment and say goodbye to a piece of poker history.

Lee Jones is the Cardroom Manager of Cake Poker. He has worked in the poker industry for over six years and been associated with professional poker for almost 20 years. He is the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which has been in print for almost 15 years.

Are Poker Players a Good Fit for the Business World?

Perhaps focusing on a subject that many in the poker community would view as obvious, many news outlets have recently begun to discuss the skills of top poker players not only on the tables, but also in the business and financial worlds. They have also analyzed the pros of regulated internet gaming, reflecting that the added revenue could reduce strain on the budgets of state and federal governments.

One of the members of the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event November Nine, Steven Begleiter, was a guest last week on Bloomberg Financial News. The sixth place finisher in the WSOP Main Event, who had a previous career on Wall Street as an employee at the now-defunct Bear Stearns stock firm, entertained questions from Bloomberg news hosts Mark Crumpton and Lori Rothman and stated that there were many players he met during his run who were qualified to work in the business field.

“I got to meet a lot of people in their 20s who were very good card players that, were we still at Bear Stearns, I would have tried to get them to come join the firm,” Begleiter opined. He especially pointed out that the overall skills of his coach, former World Poker Tour (WPT) Player of the Year Jonathan “FieryJustice” Little, would have made him an excellent businessman: “People like him would do very well here on Wall Street.”

In a November 25th article in the Newark Star Ledger, the discussion of poker players in the business world was discussed. In an interesting point, it was brought out that a number of hedge fund companies and brokerage houses were looking to the younger players in the poker world to be potential analysts. In the article, former poker pro Aaron Brown, who now works on Wall Street as a risk manager at AQR Capital Management, said, “Someone who has made a successful living as a poker player for a few years would more likely be a good trader than someone who hasn’t. They know to push when they have the edge and they know how not to bust, and that’s a tough combination to find.”

Meanwhile, another cable business program, CNBC’s “Closing Bell,” discussed what the world of poker could do for the country’s financial state. During a discussion last week on the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), two analysts, Andrew Parmentire of Height Analytics and David Katz, an Oppenheimer gaming analyst, agreed that the online poker world, if regulated and taxed by the government, would be a boon to the business world. The duo focused on tax benefits, stating that the extra revenue could be put towards several problematic issues and increase activity in the markets.

These thoughts are well-known by many in the poker community due to the number of players who have come from the business side and been successful in the world of poker. One of the top female players in the world, Kathy Liebert, graduated from college with a business and finance degree and worked with Dun & Bradstreet before embarking on a highly successful poker career. Phil Hellmuth and Howard Lederer are a couple of players who have been able to parlay their business acumen beyond poker.

Perhaps the success of not only the “Old Guard” of the poker world, but also its “Young Guns” is best explained by Brandon Adams, who teaches behavioral finance at Harvard University’s Department of Economics. In the article in the Ledger, Adams explains, “They’ve essentially been the survivors in the system, a very difficult system where 95 percent of people lose money. Anyone smart enough and disciplined enough to survive that system is probably going to do very well in the trading world.”

Taking the Underground by Lee Jones

The poker media industry is an interesting beast. It spends a lot of time covering tournaments because, well, tournaments are fairly straightforward to cover and people like to know who’s winning what. You have a starting day and an ending day and the tournament promoters have an interest in providing information to the media. You can show chip counts, the big winners and losers for each day, and more.

However, there’s a lot more to poker than tournaments and one of the reasons that I’m writing for Poker News Daily is that they understand that. While these other aspects of the poker world are not as easy to cover, they’re still interesting and important.

Recently, I was traveling and heard about an underground poker game. I suggested to my editor that it would make an interesting piece – including ideas about strategy changes one makes for such games. Let me pause here to say that I define an “underground” poker game as one that (1) runs fairly regularly, (2) is a for-profit enterprise, and (3) is illegal or quasi-legal in its jurisdiction.

Underground poker games are, of course, a long-standing tradition throughout the United States – simply the commercial version of home games that have made up the backbone of poker playing today. Most of the poker luminaries of the last generation – Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim, T.J. Cloutier, and Bobby Baldwin – built their bankrolls playing underground games. In fact, well-known blogger, geek, writer, and actor Wil Wheaton got his start in the poker world by writing a delightful piece about an underground game in Hollywood.

The venue of my underground game experience was not in Hollywood, but I won’t be more specific than that. One simply doesn’t give out the GPS coordinates of underground poker games. The host told me a general area of the city to go to and then asked me to call him; he gave me directions from there. I found myself at a nondescript, unmarked warehouse in a nondescript light industrial area. The description fit the instructions I had gotten on the phone and there were eight to ten cars parked where he told me to park. I immediately noticed one thing: the cars were all parked facing outward, as if people here had succumbed to the British passion for backing into parking places… or thought they might be leaving quickly.

I got to the unmarked door and pushed the doorbell. A few seconds later, an electric latch buzzed open and a young man in jeans and a sport shirt welcomed me in. “Lee? Hi – I’m Rich [names changed here]. Come on in.”

The warehouse had been minimally decorated, but as a functional poker room, it had everything you needed. There was a bar (everything is complimentary), a couple of big screen televisions showing sports, and Mexican food. There were a couple of couches in the middle of the room, but even with all the accoutrements, including the two casino-size poker tables, there was still plenty of room for a three-on-three soccer game.

The owner/host, Jerry, came over and greeted me warmly. He may have been running an illegal poker game, but Jerry was a consummate businessman and host. He worked tirelessly to ensure that his customers were taken care of.

There was a tournament that evening with a very reasonable fee and extraordinarily generous blind structure. Everybody was able to play a lot of poker and nobody busted out for at least an hour. Once eight or nine people were out, they started the cash game, which was really the centerpiece of the operation. On his busiest nights, Jerry had two tables going, but with the tournament, just one cash table went the night I was there.

The cash game is where Jerry made his money and this is where we’ll switch to discussing strategy changes for such games. First, the rake in Jerry’s games (and virtually all underground clubs) is high. Jerry’s price is 5% of the pot with a cap at $20. Basically, you’re paying Jerry’s insurance premiums. I note that while this would be considered usurious in any U.S. casino poker room or California card club, it’s actually less than people routinely pay elsewhere in the world to play poker.

Two important lessons come from this high rake:

Rule #1: Play Fewer Pots.  When the pot is being raked that heavily, splashing around and picking up small pots on the flop costs you a lot of money. You’re never getting quite the price you think you are and you’re basically just “churning” your money like a stock day-trader paying commissions on dozens of trades every day. It means you have to be that much more profitable just to break even. For instance, with Jerry’s structure, the rake isn’t capped until the pot reaches $400, which is an all-in coup between two players with $200 buy-ins (a typical amount).  Your goal should be to play fewer pots, but try to make those pots larger. In a perfect world, you want the pot to be over $400, reducing the actual percentage of rake that you’re paying.

Rule #2: Watch Out for Winning Regulars. As I played in the cash game ($1-3 No Limit Hold’em), it became clear that most of the players were regulars. I also quickly figured out who the tougher players were. Now, these guys are not only beating the game, but they’re also beating the crippling rake. So, they have a pretty good idea of what they’re doing, not only in general, but also in the specific context of Jerry’s game. They know who the fish are and the mistakes the fish are making. In fact, somebody who may be a fish with respect to the sharks in that game might have an edge on you simply because he knows these people and plays with them all of the time. Many of the players in these games battle against each other in home or underground games three to four times per week or more. That kind of intimate knowledge can make the difference between being a shark and being the target; it’s unlikely that you’ll be a favorite the first time you sit in Jerry’s game.

With that said, underground games certainly have their appeal. I will admit that it would have been fun if Jerry had a John Malkovich-inspired Russian accent, but poker is pretty much the same around the world. Once we settled down to play, both in the tournament and the cash game that followed, it could have been the Bellagio or my home game. There were cards and chips, blinds, raises, and bad beats. Some of the players were good and many were bad. There was certainly plenty of EV for a solid No Limit Hold’em player.

I’ll leave with just one very important disclaimer: when you play in an underground game, you have stepped out of the realm in which most of us live our lives. There is a reason why there’s a heavy door with an electronic lock and video cameras watching every outside corner of the building. The place could be busted by the police at any time or, much worse, held up. You are also almost certainly breaking the law. Think about all that before deciding to try out the underground poker scene.

Lee Jones is the Card Room Manager of Cake Poker and has worked in the poker industry for six years. He has been associated with professional poker for almost 20 years. He is also the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which has been in print for over 14 years.

Malta Police Investigate Eurolinx and BetOnBet Closures

The ongoing Eurolinx and BetOnBet sagas continues, as the investigation of the now-defunct online poker rooms has left the jurisdiction of Malta’s Lotteries and Gaming Authority (LGA) and is now in the hands of the Malta Police Department.

The LGA first became involved in the case following the sudden announcement that former Microgaming sites BetOnBet, Eurolinx, and Linx Casino were shutting their doors in the wake of the liquidation of the parent company, Linx Media Company. Shortly after Linx Media announced its intentions to liquidate, the Microgaming Network terminated its relationship with the company and instructed customers with money on the site to contact “the relevant liquidator” once that information became available.

In the wake of this announcement, a number of forum threads on the popular poker forum TwoPlusTwo cropped up discussing the avenues of recourse available to the players affected by the sudden shutdown. As Poker News Daily reported previously, the tone of these threads were pessimistic regarding the chances that players would be able to recoup their losses. One suggested course of action was to sue former Eurolinx manager and owner Jo Remme of Norway, but one poster, “ditou26,” warned that a private investigator told them that Remme was broke and would be financially incapable of reimbursing players even if successfully prosecuted.

There is still a chance that those behind the Eurolinx debacle will be caught and punished. Government officials in Malta are currently investigating the company, which was based in the small European Republic. The LGA posted an update on the pending investigation on its official website, informing interested parties that “the company Eurolinks Ltd is not and has never been a licensed operator with the LGA. The LGA also notifies that the sportsbooks of Alpine Malta Ltd (BetonBet and Eurolinx) are not and never were licensed by the LGA.” While those entities were not properly licensed, Alpine Malta Ltd possessed Class 1/4 and Class 3/4 licenses for BetOnBet, but the LGA posted reports that those licenses have since been suspended.

As part of the LGA investigation, it accepted complaints via e-mail from those whose money on BetOnBet was never returned. More information about how to contact the LGA to file a complaint can be found on its official website. However, when Poker News Daily sought an update on the investigation, sources said the investigation is no longer an LGA-run matter and has instead been passed on to the Malta police.

The source informed Poker News Daily that the LGA’s portion of the investigation has come to a close and it is waiting to hear the results of the police department’s inquiry before proceeding any further in the matter. The source also stated that the results of the police investigation will be made public and those who have inquired about the case will be filled in on the situation as soon as possible.

No details about either the LGA or police investigations were available at this time, but it appears that the Maltese government does not intend to drop the issue any time soon. Poker News Daily will continue to keep tabs on the investigation as it develops.

Two more take Pokerstars’

The show's debut, which saw a poker-playing-priest win $100,000 and U.S. Army National Guard sergeant walk away with $25,000, drew four million viewers, making it the most successful poker show in television history.

This week, Oluwasegun "Big Mike" Odumuyiwa, a 35-year-old music manager from Northville, Michigan, is hoping to get a chance at the $1 million grand prize.

Odumuyiwa, who played basketball and football at Eastern Illinois University says he will use the money to take care of his late brother's family.

Also taking his shot at the cash will be Brian Barboza, a 31-year-old wine and liquor salesman from Raynham, Massachusetts.

Barboza says he's hoping to win enough money to buy his way into the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event.

But to get to the cash, both Barboza and Odumuyiwa will have to first beat one of the show's celebrity defenders, including Super Bowl Champion Jerome Bettis, four-time NBA Champion John Salley, UFC champion Tito Ortiz or Playboy Playmate of the Year Jayde Nicole.

Round two will then see them take on a Team PokerStars Pro, either WSOP Main Event Champion Chris Moneymaker, Barry Greenstein or Vanessa Rousso.

The contestants will have Daniel Negreanu's help the whole way, but then they will have to decide whether to take $25,000 and walk away or take on Negreanu heads-up for $100,000 and a chance at the $1 million grand prize.

The show will air on FOX Sunday, Nov. 22, immediately following the network's NFL coverage.

Jean-Robert Bellande Out as Bodog Sponsored Pro

Former “Survivor: China” contestant Jean-Robert Bellande is no longer a sponsored pro of Bodog, according to a representative from the online poker room. His current agreement expired at the end of October and was not renewed.

Only three sponsored pros currently appear on Bodog’s website: Evelyn Ng, Justin “ZeeJustin” Bonomo, and David Williams. The runner-up in the World Poker Tour’s (WPT) Ladies Night Event in 2003, Ng also took 11th in the Season IV Borgata Poker Open for $64,000. That same season, Ng grabbed 39th in the WPT Championship for $73,000.

Bonomo is one of the industry’s top online poker players, but has also dominated on the brick-and-mortar felts. Bonomo won the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Circuit Event Championship at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in April for $227,000. One month later, he final tabled the $40,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em tournament commemorating the 40th running of the WSOP for a colossal $413,000.

Rounding out the shrunken crop of Bodog pros is Williams, who boasts the only bracelet of the trio. Williams captured his piece of hardware in 2006 by virtue of taking down a $1,500 buy-in Seven Card Stud tournament for $163,000, defeating a talented final table that also included “Miami” John Cernuto and 10-time bracelet winner Johnny Chan. Text found on Bodog’s website still refers to “four pros,” but only three profiles appear.

“Jean-Robert Bellande’s deal with Bodog Poker expired at the end of October and the decision was made not to renew the deal. It has been an absolute pleasure having Jean-Robert as one of Bodog.com’s Poker pros and we wish him all the best,” the room’s Poker Manager told Poker News Daily. In February, Poker Royalty, which represents Bellande, boasted that the pro had renewed his sponsorship agreement with the USA-facing site. At the time, Bellande commented, “I am thrilled to continue my relationship with Team Bodog. Bodog is a fantastic organization and I am excited to continue with such a select team of world-class poker players.”

During the 2008 WSOP, Bellande finished as the runner-up to Matt “mattg1983” Graham in a $1,500 buy-in Limit Hold’em Shootout for $173,000. The final table of the marathon tournament wrapped up after 7:00am at the Rio in Las Vegas. In 2005, Bellande grabbed third in the Rio’s WSOP Circuit Event Championship for $210,000 in a contest that saw Doug Lee and Full Tilt Poker pro Jennifer Harman battle heads-up.

Bellande was one of 16 contestants to head to China for the 15th cycle of the CBS reality series “Survivor.” Bellande was the eighth player voted out of the popular program and became the second member of its jury, the group of seven castaways who selected flight attendant Todd Herzog as the show’s $1 million winner. Bellande was on the Fei Long tribe both before and after a tribal switch-up; the group then merged to become Hae Da Fung.

In 2006, Bellande made waves by competing in the WPT’s Bad Boys of Poker against the likes of Tony G, Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, Phil Hellmuth, Men “The Master” Nguyen, and Gus Hansen. In the end, Tony G triumphed over the invite-only six-handed table and earned $25,000. All told, Bellande owns over $75,000 from WPT felts.

According to the tracking site PokerScout.com, Bodog is the 14th largest site or network worldwide with a seven-day running average of 930 real money ring game players. It features a 24-hour peak of 1,411 cash game players and, at the time of writing, which is around 8:30pm ET on a Sunday night, 1,359 combatants have taken to its ring game felts. Bodog is the fifth largest site or network that accepts U.S. action, trailing PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, CEREUS, and the Cake Poker Network.

Third Bullet Merges with Cake Poker

This week, Third Bullet Poker, a site on the popular Cake Poker Network, announced that it was merging its player base with the network’s flagship site.

In an official e-mail sent to its players earlier this week, Third Bullet Poker stated that the move had been in the works for some time and that, from today on, the company would be a part of Cake Poker: “Cake Poker has been operating and hosting our games for quite some time now. I’m sure you will agree that they have done a fantastic job. We are happy to announce that we are merging our players with Cake Poker.”

When players log into Third Bullet Poker, they will be directed to download the update that will move them to Cake Poker. A player’s login information will remain the same as what they had at Third Bullet and any funds that a player has on the site will also transfer over. If a player has an account already on Cake Poker, their Third Bullet Poker funds will be merged with their previous funds and the customer can play on Cake without any setbacks.

The reasons given for the switch to the new network are many. According to the e-mail message from Third Base Poker management, “You will have access to an increased technical and marketing support team that will make your play experience even better.” It adds, “We have full confidence that you will find continued play on Cake Poker to meet or exceed the level of professionalism and customer service you have come to know at Third Bullet.” The e-mail finishes with a statement that Cake Poker personnel will be contacting players within days and that any future inquiries should be directed to Cake Poker’s support team.

Cake Poker is currently in the middle of a revamping of its tournament offerings. Led by legendary Poker Room Manager Lee Jones and assisted by poker professionals Serge “adanthar” Ravitch and Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Cake Poker has instituted longer late registration periods, de-emphasized rebuy tournaments, and added new tournament schedules to their product. The poker tournament lineup is undergoing many other changes that should be completed by April of 2010.

Cake Poker currently has some excellent choices for players in the tournament arena and in their cash games. Besides offering satellite events for stops on the European Poker Tour and a chance to play at the Aussie Millions in January 2010, Cake Poker also has cash games that give players a chance to take on some of the biggest names in poker. These “Pro Tables” draw players such as Doyle Brunson and his son Todd, Phil “The Unabomber” Laak, and Ilari ‘Zigmund’ Sahamies to take on all comers at the 5$/$10 and $10/$20 limit cash games starting at 7:00pm Eastern Time Monday through Friday.

The Cake Poker Network encompasses 43 different poker rooms. The most prominent jewels in the network are arguably DoylesRoom, the site sponsored by the legendary Doyle Brunson, and PokerHost, both of which joined the Cake Poker Network earlier this year.

Eurolinx Poker Liquidation Update

This year, we’ve seen two major stories break on Poker News Daily involving small poker sites shutting down and player funds disappearing in the midst of scandals involving shady ownership groups.  Pitbull Poker was shut down amid dwindling player numbers and a superuser scandal, with many players out tens of thousands of dollars.  Perhaps the bigger story was the surprising shutdown and liquidation of Eurolinx Poker.

On September 17th, Poker News Daily interviewed sponsored pro and official affiliate Marc Karam.  His affiliation with Eurolinx went back to 2006 and he not only was a sponsored pro, but he also referred hundreds of players to the poker site.  Karam was made a lot of promises by Eurolinx manager and owner Jo Remme.  In mid-2008, Remme asked Karam to borrow $200,000 and in return, Eurolinx was supposed to cover all expenses related to launching a new poker skin just for Karam.  In the end, Karam lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and stated that he’s trying to put the situation behind him and get a fresh start in the world of poker.

On the TwoPlusTwo forums, there are two main threads dedicated to the Eurolinx scandal. The first was started by Karam, who recapped his Eurolinx story.  In September, several players made posts in this thread to the effect that they wanted to pool their resources together to help in the recovery of their funds.  This particular thread died in the end of September with most transitioning to the one entitled “Eurolinx w/d problems > UPDATE: Eurolinx seeks to put business into liquidation.”

This new thread, posted around the same time the previous one died, is where a lot of the actual discussion about bringing up charges against Remme in his native Norway takes place.  In the middle of September, a post was made allegedly posting a comment from MicroGaming itself.  The statement read that they were shocked and saddened that “this has happened to one of our licensees” and they were awaiting further information.

On September 23rd, a post was made by “ditou26” that came from a private investigator from Norway.  The message from the investigator said that it would cost someone €2,000 to hire him to find Remme and make a claim on the client’s behalf.  The investigator did warn that Remme has no more assets and is broke, in which case there would be nothing to take back from him.

On October 5th, an interesting post was made by “jdredd,” who claimed to be ‘Negativity’ on Eurolinx and had over $75,000 on the site.  On behalf of himself and an associate, they hired a lawyer in Malta, but moved the investigation to Curacao.  They moved an order of liquidation from the court, which was never responded to by Eurolinx.  Eventually, they moved the court so that they had to be paid if Eurolinx wished to keep its license.  Only a few days later, Microgaming wound up shutting them down.  For all of his international legal efforts, jdredd and his associate were out over $125,000.

In the most recent weeks on the same thread at TwoPlusTwo, it seems the steam has been taken out of this case and the cold reality of the situation has set in.  If a high-stakes player like jdredd, who searched all avenues and used his legal expertise couldn’t get a dime, chances are nobody else would either.  For the most part, it seems that nothing has changed with the Eurolinx scandal.

It goes without saying that the two major shutdown stories of 2009 involving Eurolinx and Pitbull Poker are tales of warning to internet poker players.  All players really have to assure them that their funds are safe are the historical reputations of the poker sites.  For now though, the players that are out funds on Eurolinx continue to search for any way to recover just a fraction of their lost funds.

United States Poker Championship Signs New Television Deal

After a two-year break from television coverage, the United States Poker Championship (USPC) at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey will be broadcast on television for the next five years.

The USPC, after the deal brokered between executives at the Trump Taj Mahal and the Las Vegas television production company Compass Entertainment, LLC, will be broadcast on the cable channel SpikeTV. As of press time, no broadcast dates had been firmly announced. In addition to the broadcast of the $5,000 Championship Event, officials with both organizations are preparing for a major televised event, which will tape other contests during the November 2nd to 24th schedule.

Tom Gitto, Director of Poker Operations at Trump Taj Mahal, stated during the announcement, “It’s hugely exciting to have the USPC back on national television again. We knew that, in order to ensure that the USPC would be more attractive to poker players, we would need a solid television deal. The entire Trump organization is firmly committed to doing something special each year to make the USPC sizzle.”

As a part of the attempt to draw more players to the entirety of the tournament schedule, some of the other events will also be taped for broadcast, Gitto said. “We’ve added a $2,500 buy-in Pot Limit Omaha Championship Event, which is a part of the television broadcast schedule. The Taj is also organizing high-stakes cash games on Sunday, November 15th, and Sunday, November 22nd.”

Trump Taj Mahal Casino Manager Frank Leone believes the new deal with Compass is a “no-brainer” and commented, “We look forward to a long and successful partnership with the Compass Entertainment organization. They have the capability to capture the excitement of the USPC in a fresh and exciting way, which will differentiate this marquee event from other televised poker tournaments.”

The USPC has been considered one of the prime tournament poker stops due to its longevity and history of champions. When it was created in 1996, players held it in high esteem because of the dearth of high buy-in tournaments. As time wore on, however, the USPC began to lose some of its luster.

After the explosion of the World Poker Tour (WPT) in the early part of this decade and the increased importance of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and its Circuit events, the USPC began to lose players. Although ESPN had the broadcast rights to the USPC, the cable sports giant stopped airing it after the 2006 tournament. Last year’s festivities drew only 52 players for the $10,000 Championship Event and this year’s will have a $5,000 buy-in.

From the first final table in 1996 and the crowning of the late Ken “Skyhawk” Flaton as its champion (with Surinder Sunar and Phil Hellmuth also at the final table), the USPC Championship Event has featured many players who have gone onto poker immortality. Poker Hall of Famers Dewey Tomko and T.J. Cloutier headline a list of players who have appeared at USPC final tables that includes 2009 November Niner Eric Buchman, Erik Seidel, and John Juanda. Past champions include Daniel Negreanu (1999), Men “The Master” Nguyen (2001), John “World” Hennigan (2002), Alex Jacob (2006), and defending champion Robert Ford.

Sally Anne Boyer Sues WSOP Academy and Harrah’s

2007 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Women’s Champion Sally Anne Boyer has filed a lawsuit against Harrah’s Entertainment, the WSOP Academy, and other related companies for misuse of her image for advertising purposes.

According to a report in the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, Boyer filed the lawsuit on Monday against the casino giant and the poker training school alleging that her name and likeness have been used in advertising without her permission and that the WSOP Academy states she endorses the school. Also named in the lawsuit were Post Oak Productions of Toronto, Canada (managers of the WSOP Academy) and Post Oak owners Brandon Rosen and Jeff Goldenberg.

After winning the 2007 Women’s Championship during the WSOP, earning slightly over $260,000 and her first WSOP bracelet, Boyer appeared in ads for the WSOP Academy with the byline, “The quickest way to your WSOP bracelet,” and was billed as a graduate of the school. These ads, alleges Boyer’s attorneys Bowler, Dixon, and Twitchell, LLP, appeared in poker magazines, on the WSOP’s website, and in the Academy’s newsletters. The bone of contention between the companies is whether Boyer acquiesced to allow use of her name and image for such purposes and whether she completed the Academy’s classes.

The stakes could be high if Boyer’s attorneys can prove that her likeness was misused. The lawsuit is seeking restitution from the use of her visage and unspecified damages. The WSOP Academy, which has been in existence since early 2007, charges participants anywhere from $1,899 to $2,999, depending upon the intensity of the training, what type of instruction is being conducted, and the instructors involved.

According to sources inside of Harrah’s who requested anonymity due to policies on pending litigation, Boyer’s litigation team contacted the company earlier this year regarding these issues. As Harrah’s and the WSOP do not have any ownership of the Academy, the issue was forwarded onto Post Oak Productions.

As reported also in the Sun, an e-mail dated August 30th, 2007 is a discussion between Rosen and Boyer as to the advertising that would feature Boyer. In the e-mail, which was obtained by Poker News Daily, Boyer states that the ad “looks fine” and offers to send “better” pictures in her “poker… attire” for future advertising. According to sources, Boyer’s attorneys were unaware of this e-mail when the suit was filed and, as of press time, had not returned calls to Poker News Daily.

Poker professional Mark Seif, who is one of the instructors for the Academy, stated to Poker News Daily, “With respect to the recent Sally Anne Boyer filing, I think its best to refer you to a statement Jeff Goldenberg, the CEO of Post-Oak Productions, made yesterday regarding the case.” In that statement, Goldenberg was quoted as saying, “I would like to comment in detail, but our attorneys won’t let us. Suffice it to say we were absolutely shocked that this suit was filed. The suit is entirely baseless and we look forward to being entirely vindicated when all of the facts come out in court.”

Boyer’s lawsuit is reminiscent of the lawsuit filed by seven top poker professionals against the World Poker Tour (WPT) a few years ago. In 2006, the seven players – Andy Bloch, Annie Duke, Chris Ferguson, Phil Gordon, Joe Hachem, Howard Lederer, and Greg Raymer – alleged that the WPT’s standard release forms required for participation in its tournaments were a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

The seven players argued that the forms were anti-competitive and conflicted with their contractual obligations to other companies and organizations. After a great deal of posturing, Hachem and Raymer dropped out of the lawsuit (with Hachem notably going on to win the 2006 WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic) and the remaining five players eventually settled out of court in April of 2008.

Phil Ivey Appears on the Cover of ESPN: The Magazine

2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) November Nine member Phil Ivey graces the cover of the November 2nd issue of ESPN: The Magazine. The expose, entitled “4 Days, 3 Nights, $1 Million,” chronicles Ivey’s jet-setting exploits at the craps tables in casinos around the world.

Chad Millman followed Ivey from Foxwoods to Austria, with his article explaining Ivey’s stature in the industry: “Phil Ivey is a poker pro, but to call him that limits the scope of his game. It’s like saying Jay-Z is just a rapper. Ivey is an all-around player, a man with the need and nerve to wager obscene amounts on poker, pro and college sports, craps, or his own golf game.”

The tale began at Foxwoods in Connecticut, where Ivey, a whale, was put up in the Mashantucket Suite, a two-story gem. Instead of heading to play poker, his bread and butter, Ivey hit the craps tables in a private room, ordering the most expensive bottle of wine in the house (worth $2,100) to get the evening started off on the right foot. After 25 minutes at the table, Ivey was up $185,000, betting $30,000 to $50,000 per place bet. The wine didn’t even arrive until Ivey was ready to head out, leading Millman to comment, “We [got] it to go.”

After Ivey’s personal jet was grounded in Groton-New London Airport, the facility’s manager came out armed with a magazine featuring Ivey on its cover. On aviation officials questioning Ivey’s erratic flight pattern, he noted, “I guess they don’t know you.” Ivey signed the airport manager’s magazine copy before the poker pro and November Nine member tipped him $1,000 for having “to stay open so late.”

In Montreal, the crew headed to the local casino, where Ivey cashed a check for $1 million to seed his bankroll. Shortly after the start of his craps session, Ivey had bled $360,000. Then, Chris “Gotti” Lorenzo, his manager, took to the felt and rolled point after point, number after number, boosting Ivey’s arsenal of chips to $2.5 million after just 20 minutes of play. Then, Millman stepped up and lost Ivey $240,000 after hitting a seven with several place bets out. Ultimately, Ivey left Montreal up $752,000, or nearly $1 million after just 24 hours on the trip.

Ivey and company then headed for Amsterdam, where Millman painted a picture of Ivey’s social life: “Now that he’s made the WSOP’s final table, Lorenzo has pushed him to pull back the curtain a bit. He’s an A-list celeb among A-list celebs, texting with Michael Phelps about attending D.C. charity events, going backstage with Jay-Z, golfing with Michael Jordan.”

Millman also recapped the source of some of Ivey’s wealth, explaining that he took $16.6 million off of billionaire Andy Beal as part of the “Corporation” three years ago. He continued, “Last year, [Ivey] reportedly won more than $7 million online. And while he has already won $1.2 million for making the final table – and stands to earn $8 million more if he wins it all – he’s made side bets worth another $4 million with people who doubt him.”

The article also spotlighted several aspects of Ivey’s unique high-stakes lifestyle. Besides jet-setting around the world seemingly at will, Ivey drives an SLR McLaren worth $500,000 and a Rolls-Royce Phantom worth $400,000. He lives on a golf course in Las Vegas and put his sister through law school. He’s one of the key faces behind Full Tilt, the second largest online poker room in the world. Ivey’s “office,” so to speak, contains three computer monitors, five flat-screen televisions, and the arcade version of Pac-Man.

The journey ended with a Full Tilt Poker function in Salzburg and the poker pro having earned a crisp $1 million over the course of four days. Check out the November 2nd issue of ESPN The Magazine featuring Ivey.

Spectator Smacks The Tournament Manager At Irish Winter Festival

According to Bluff Europe there was an incident during the Irish Winter Festival where the Tournament Manager got hit by a microphone.

Some drunken spectator and the Tournament Manager got into a fight during the tournament. After the fight was over the Tournament Manager had a bloodied up wound in his head. Security staff managed to throw the drunken spectator out after the fight.

When the security staff was carrying the troublemaker out, he was still trying to save the situation by yelling “He hit me first!”, but nobody would listen to him.

The Tournament Manager went back to his work, even though his wound was still bleeding. If the tournaments get rough for the players, sometimes even the staff can have rough times.

Source: Bluff Europe

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Spectator Smacks The Tournament Manager At Irish Winter Festival

Pitbull Poker Players and Affiliates Chase Losses

Oftentimes at a poker table, a good player will suffer a bad beat at the hands of an inferior opponent for a stack of cash.  If it’s one of those sessions, it might happen two or three times and even more if it’s really a doozy.  What follows is that some players quit, while others stand firm until they recoup as much as they feel is possible.  The same can happen in real life away from the virtual felts, as affiliates and players victimized by the sudden shutdown of Pitbull Poker can attest to.  As the months have gone by covering the story, we’ve seen a small post on the TwoPlusTwo online poker forum lead us to witnessing the closure of a poker room with hundreds of thousands of dollars missing amid a superuser scandal.

A major affiliate who goes by the moniker “JC Hawk” has led the charge in seeking justice and not just accepting his losses as a bad beat.  He was an affiliate with Pitbull Poker and the Flash Poker Network and was also in contact with Network Manager Dave Brenes and Pitbull Poker owner Kevin Baronowski.  When asked if there were any indications that something might be awry at Pitbull before the closure, Hawk said, “There were lots of red flags. When I told them [my lawyers and I] were coming down to Costa Rica in late September, they stopped talking to me.”

JC Hawk estimates that he is owed well over $100,000 from his affiliate poker site NLPT.tv on top of cash investments into Pitbull Poker directly.  Through the article comments here at Poker News Daily as well as by private messages on TwoPlusTwo, he has put together a list of people claiming losses against Pitbull Poker and brought his case before the government in Costa Rica.  “The government has been great to work with so far.  They don’t want to see people from other countries scammed, as it hurts their trade market worldwide and scares investors away.  The U.S. Embassy and the Costa Rican government are working hard to prosecute this and get any recovery they can.”

The debates rage on in the forums about which accounts were superusers, with many regulars agreeing that there’s solid evidence in support of the theory.  “Chesterboy,” the original poster who started the discussion about the issue, has decided to quit poker altogether and recently joined the U.S. Army.  Brenes, the former Network Manager for Pitbull Poker, has stated multiple times that he is no longer employed by Pitbull, never handled player funds, and is not to be considered a principle for the ownership group in any way.  He has declined further comment on the issue.

All that exists now on Pitbull Poker’s website is a message stating that the room is now closed.  The item of note on the site is a message informing visitors, “To cash out your balance, please email support@pitbullpoker.com,” which appears at the top of the page.  Since the closure of the poker room, there seem to have been no players having contact with the accounting department at Pitbull, much less receiving payouts on their outstanding balances.

There have been no statements from current or former Pitbull Poker employees or management and the forums continue to rage on about the superuser scandal.  With Chesterboy off to serve in the Army, “BCloud,” who has pinpointed a number of highly suspicious accounts, has raged the main argument in the superuser debate.  Through replaying Pitbull hand histories and compiling a list of activities, he’s certainly raised some eyebrows in recent weeks.

The legal battle begins to ramp up in Costa Rica through the efforts of JC Hawk and numerous high-stakes players who believe they can recover funds.  Stay tuned to Poker News Daily as more develops.

Ultimate Bet Announces Live Tournament Series in Germany, Czech Republic

On Tuesday, leading online poker site Ultimate Bet announced the launch of UltimateBet.de, a dedicated German language information website that will outline the company’s all new series of live poker tournaments to be hosted in Germany and the Czech Republic.

The inaugural event will be hosted in Cologne, Germany on October 24th and one lucky player will walk away with an unusual prize. Exclusive to Ultimate Bet account holders, this specific tournament has a low-limit buy-in (€25) and will award the winner with a Mercedes Smart Car, known as much for its fuel-sipping, Earth-friendly efficiency as for its styling and superior safety.

Ultimate Bet has scheduled another tournament on November 11th that will take place in Aulendorf, Germany. Prizes have yet to be determined, but the online poker site will be giving away two free seats to its weekly $100,000 Guaranteed tournament as well as Ultimate Bet vouchers.

“We want our German players to feel as welcomed and as much a part of the Ultimate Bet community as their North American poker peers, and our live events will help create familiarity with the UB brand and the company that we are today, with an emphasis on security, safety, and the welfare of our players,” said Stephan Reschke, Ultimate Bet’s Marketing Manager for Germany.

The series of brick and mortar Texas Hold’em tournaments will bring in a new level of support and rewards for Ultimate Bet’s growing German population. The live tournaments in Germany will shift host venues throughout the country each weekend, with a range of affordable buy-ins and attractive prize pools. Monthly $10,000 guaranteed tournaments will be held at the Casino Flamingo, located conveniently close to the German border with the Czech Republic.

Ultimate Bet recently put on its signature land-based tournament, the Aruba Poker Classic, which concluded on October 10th. Brandon “AreTheseUtz” Hall bested a field of 475 players to claim the title after defeating Robert Mizrachi heads up. A first-place prize of $753,330 was awarded to the winner of the event. The tournament was formerly a stop on the World Poker Tour (WPT).

While Ultimate Bet’s new series expansion into Germany and the Czech Republic certainly won’t create a comparable prize pool just yet, the site is excited about meeting with some of its northern European players. The live venues will also provide a way for Ultimate Bet’s German players to meet each other face-to-face rather than just in the online poker room. Ultimate Bet is a USA-friendly online poker site and its traffic tends to peak during North American evening hours, but the development of a live tournament series in Europe should create a considerable amount of growth for the company in the future.

The WSOP Main Event on ESPN: Meet Darvin Moon

California casino offers chance to play Nguyen

"Scotty Nguyen is one of the biggest names in poker, so we are obviously thrilled to have him in our Poker Challenge," said Robert Paull, General Manager of Spotlight 29.

"For our poker players to go up against a World Series of Poker Champion, is exciting."

The $560 buy-in Texas Hold'em event, set for Oct. 24-25, will feature 10k starting stacks, 30-minute levels and over $50,000 in prize money.

Players can also win a free entry by getting 10 full houses playing in the Spotlight Poker Room in advance of the event.

Dubbed "The Prince of Poker", Nguyen has more than $10 million in career earnings and five WSOP bracelets. In addition to his world title, Nguyen also won the prestigious $50k H.O.R.S.E. event at the 2008 WSOP.

The tournament will be capped at 120 players.

For more information on Spotlight 29 head to the casino's website.

Industry Reacts to Poker Hall of Fame Nomination of Mike Sexton

This week, the industry learned that World Poker Tour (WPT) Host Mike Sexton would become the 38th member of the Poker Hall of Fame and the lone representative in the Class of 2009. Poker News Daily sought the reaction of some of poker’s greats.

Sexton bested eight other nominees for the Poker Hall of Fame this year, a group that included Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, Men “The Master” Nguyen, Scotty Nguyen, Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, Tom McEvoy, and Dan Harrington. GreasieWheels LLC President Lisa Wheeler, who has worked with Sexton on several charity endeavors, told Poker News Daily, “I’ve worked with Mike Sexton for many years and can honestly say that he lives up to his nickname, ‘The Ambassador of Poker.’ After learning he’d been elected into the Poker Hall of Fame, I was surprised at first. I just assumed he had already been inducted. He’s a staple in the industry and has done so much for its image and evolution. Mike was a shoe-in from the start.”

Sexton serves as the Host, Consultant, and Ambassador for the popular online poker room PartyPoker. In his role, he’s influential on the direction of the site, which has served as his main cheerleader for election to the Hall of Fame. Also central in the industry is Cake Poker Card Room Manager Lee Jones, who explained to Poker News Daily, “Mike Sexton is one of the great gentlemen of poker and he always has a friendly word for everybody. He’s been a powerful influence to help bring poker out of the Dark Ages and into the future. I’m delighted that Mike was chosen for the Poker Hall of Fame; they couldn’t have picked a more deserving person.”

Sexton earned 75% of the vote of a 30-member panel, each of whom was allowed to select up to three players for enshrinement. This author was privileged to be on the voting panel and selected Sexton, McEvoy, and Harrington. On the world’s largest online poker forums, the reaction has been largely positive to Sexton’s nomination. TwoPlusTwo member “venice10” explained, “Well deserved. Mike Sexton has done a great deal to try to lift the game up and is a class act.” TwoPlusTwo member “RadcliffePoker” added, “He has probably done more for poker [than] the whole of 2plus2 put together. He was a driving force behind getting Party Poker off the ground. He has done brilliantly with the WPT in getting a hell of a lot more fish into the game.”

ESPN “Inside Deal” Host Bernard Lee told Poker News Daily, “It’s very well-deserved. Mike has had a tremendous impact on the world of poker. Most people know him from the WPT, but even before then, he was a tremendously accomplished player with a WSOP bracelet. No one deserves it more than Mike.” “Inside Deal” is released every Tuesday on ESPN.com.

Poker pro Kathy Liebert, who rooted on McEvoy throughout the final table of the WSOP Champions Invitational, wrote on Twitter that she expected more than one candidate to be enshrined in 2009: “Seems to me there should be more than one poker player put into [the] hall of fame each year… With so many qualified candidates 75% of vote is too high. Especially with media being 50% of vote.” 2009 marks the first year since 2004 that only one person will become a new member of the Poker Hall of Fame. Dewey Tomko and hole card camera inventor Henry Orenstein were elected last year.

Full Tilt Poker pro Andy Bloch countered why Sexton was worthy of the only nod in 2009: “Arguably, any of the nine players nominated fit the qualifications and most will probably make it to the Hall of Fame in due time. Why was Mike elected before all the rest? Quite simply, he fit the qualifications for the Hall of Fame as both a player and a non-player much more so than any of the rest. I hope more of the others take a cue from Mike Sexton’s induction and do even more to promote the game of poker.” Tournament Director Matt Savage added, “Mike is and always has been the greatest ambassador for the game of poker and the Tournament of Champions was and idea clearly ahead of its time. I am very happy to see someone that has worked so hard to promote our great game receive this prestigious award!”

Finally, what would be an industry reaction article without a comment from the man of the hour? Sexton told Poker News Daily, “I’m truly honored to be inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. It’s really special because for the first time, there is now a process of being selected that includes the fans, the media, and the living members of the Poker Hall of Fame. The most satisfying part to me is to be accepted and welcomed into this exclusive club by the current members of the Hall of Fame.”

Congratulations to all of us to Sexton for his Poker Hall of Fame election.

End the WSOP Arms Race

Well, we’ve winnowed the WSOP Big Dance field down to nine survivors who will compete for The Bracelet in November. But one race that started earlier in the event is still going on, and presumably will continue right up until November.

I’m talking, of course, about the arms race among the various online poker sites to get their brand on the shirt and/or hat of as many of the final table participants as they can.

As you may be aware, as the field narrows in the WSOP main event, some online poker sites approach the remaining players with offers of money (cash, tournament buy-ins, etc) in exchange for advertising on the player’s shirt. Depending on the site involved and the point in the tournament, the deal may be for a single day, the remainder of the tournament, or as much as a year.

It is a bizarre bazaar, with the sites proffering their offers, the players shopping those offers to competitors, and so on. It is expensive and time-consuming for the online sites, and I’m sure they’d rather not be doing it, but they’re all but forced into the situation.

This is just craziness; no other sporting event does this. Can you imagine Nike and Calloway running around toward the end of a PGA event trying to get the board leaders to wear their hats and shirts? A giant pause in a NASCAR race while the guys winning by a bunch of laps change the patches on their firesuits?

I worked on the European Poker Tour for a year and we never had that problem. If a player came into the tournament with a sponsor, then he “danced with the girl what brung ‘im.” If he entered the tournament without a sponsor, then he didn’t have a sponsor at the final table.

Instead, at the WSOP, we have online sites competing for the attention of players who are already guaranteed six-figure paydays, and harboring legitimate dreams of much more. That means that it costs big bucks to get any traction in this marketplace. And the way in which it’s done means that the players can play the bidders against each other to get the best deal.

The current system favors exactly one tiny population: the talented and lucky few who have made it down to the final handful of tables. It certainly doesn’t favor the online sites, which are in a very costly financial arms race to sponsor these players. Nor does it favor the thousands of players who didn’t get that far in the event.

Finally, it breeds a mercenary and cynical relationship between the online sites who have sent their satellite qualifiers to the event and the players. Players blithely ignore the online sites’ terms and conditions regarding wearing the sites’ logo-wear, hoping to get a better deal in the Day 5 scrum. The online site responds by virtually ignoring its qualifiers, knowing that it will have to offer a great deal more later on if it hopes to keep deep-going qualifiers in its stable.

What’s particularly sad is that this is all completely avoidable. The WSOP could simply institute (and enforce) an EPT-like rule: every player must declare his or her allegiance (if any) at the beginning of the tournament. No changing horses in mid-stream. In fact, such a rule existed some years ago, if my memory serves. It’s high time that rule came back.

This would force the sites to compete for the players before the event began. Perhaps they’d choose to offer deals to any player who decides to play in the event, effectively providing a small rebate on the buy-in. It might well lead to more attractive WSOP packages offered by the online sites, since they’d be assured of carrying any of their qualifiers to the final table, should those qualifiers be so lucky.

Furthermore, the status quo is certainly a mess for the ESPN people. What does the TV audience think when they see Bob Smith sporting a SuperPoker shirt on Day 3, but then TopNotchPoker gear on Day 5? It makes it harder for a casual poker fan to know who’s who, and if he’s paying attention to these things, probably confuses him some. “Wasn’t that guy wearing a SuperPoker shirt in the last show?”

Here’s the thing: I know every person who sits down with his 30,000 in chips at the WSOP is thinking about reaching that final table and everything that goes with it. But the truth is that from an EV standpoint (and that’s what we poker players should think about), virtually every one of us would be better off getting a little something up front, rather than what we might get should we survive to the last three tables.

Now, having said all that, I must issue a couple of important disclaimers:

1. I am the cardroom manager at Cake Poker. We had qualifiers in the WSOP main event, though regrettably, none of them made the final nine (or anywhere near it, truth be told).

2.  The suggestions I’ve made would probably create a more opportunity for smaller sites (such as Cake Poker) compared to the 900-pound and 800-pound gorillas in the room, to wit, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. But I claim that my proposal is good for both a large majority of the players and the poker sites. I hope that argument resonates.

One final note: I’m tickled that we knew, from the start, what logo one of the final nine would be wearing. Call me old-fashioned, but there was Phil Ivey, wearing his company’s logo on Day 1. And on Day 5. And he’ll be wearing it at the final table. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could say that about all nine?

Lee Jones is the Card Room Manager of Cake Poker. He has worked in the poker industry for over six years and been associated with professional poker for almost 20 years. He is the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which has been in print for almost 15 years.

Dream Team Poker headed to the Bike

Every tournament will take place in conjunction with the Monday Night Football parties at the Bike and the grand prize is cash and tickets to Superbowl XLIV at Miami's Dolphin Stadium on Feb. 7, 2010.

The Dream Team scoring system allows players to compete on an individual basis while collecting points as a team.

The league will utilize a unique leaderboard scoring system to assess each team's progress throughout the 11-week season.

"We're excited to incorporate Dream Team Poker into our Monday Night Football Parties & Poker Tournaments," said Bicycle Casino manager Zaven Esmaili.

"We think it's a perfect fit with Monday Night Football and the sports team concept and we think players will like playing with their squad as a team in an event that gives them more ways to win."

Entry into each event will cost $67 per individual or $201 per three-person team. The league starts Monday, Oct. 19, and runs through Monday, Dec. 28.

The Bicycle Casino will also play host the first "Ho Ho No-Limit Hold'em Dream Team Poker Main Event" on Dec. 12 at 2 p.m. in the casino's new event center.

The buy-in is $420 per team, which works out to $140 per player.

To learn more about Dream Team Poker or register for the event go to www.dreamteampoker.com.

PlayersOnly Opens its Doors to the World

At a time in the online gaming industry when internet casinos and online poker rooms are shutting their doors to American players, one site has gone the opposite route and started to accept players from around the world.

It was announced recently that PlayersOnly, which in the past had only offered its wares to online poker players in the United States and Canada, would start to accept customers from the remainder of the world. PlayersOnly, part of the Cake Poker Network, apparently found that limiting itself to just the action from North America kept the site from achieving its full potential. With the change to accepting players from the rest of the world, PlayersOnly should be able to improve its market share.

PlayersOnly has been in existence since 2006, or just about the time that the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was passed in the United States. Its move at the time to accept only USA players probably enabled it to garner a great deal of traffic, as players, unable to access sites such as PartyPoker or 888, looked for new places to deposit. It was also a pleasant surprise for many that PlayersOnly accepted credit card transfers, which were virtually shut down after the UIGEA’s signing.

As part of the Cake Poker Network, PlayersOnly offers several of the standard games that you will find online. For No Limit cash games, Texas Hold’em and Omaha High-Low are the two disciplines that can be played. For those who have a penchant for taking to Limit tables, a full slate is featured with Texas Hold’em, Omaha (both High and High-Low), and Seven Card (both Stud and High-Low). When it comes to Pot Limit games, Texas Hold’em and Omaha (both High and High-Low) once again step to the forefront.

Tournaments are plentiful on PlayersOnly.com as, with its association with the Cake Poker Network, there are sizeable paydays at stake. In a previous article on Poker News Daily, changes that multi-table tournaments on the Network will undergo over the next six months were laid out. These changes, according to Poker News Daily Guest Columnist and Cake Poker Room Manager Lee Jones, will encompass more freezeout tournaments and fewer rebuys and also feature better scheduling. Check out the recap of Cake Poker Network tournament changes.

Of the top ten online poker sites or networks in the industry, there are only four that accept action from the United States. The two at the top, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, have long been among the leaders in the industry and those that are arranged behind them will have sizeable problems trying to knock them from that perch. The third place slot belongs to the iPoker Network, which features Titan Poker, Chili Poker, and Mansion Poker, among others. The fourth place site or network worldwide is the former industry leader, PartyPoker.  Both do not accept American players.

The CEREUS Network, the third network that accepts all players, encompasses Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker and has been battling to regain its past momentum after the Russ Hamilton-led scandal and ownership change. The CEREUS Network, according to PokerScout.com, is the ranked sixth in the industry in terms of the number of real money ring game players. The Cake Poker Network, with over 40 rooms, currently sits in tenth place with a 24-hour peak of around 2,700 cash players (versus the 45,173 players in the same 24-hour period for PokerStars).