From OnlineCasinoAdvisory.com:
While the government keeps the online poker bank account seizures details under a tight lock and key, attempting to prevent residents from learning the illegal methods used against their money, some facts are drifting out. Account Services, one of the payment processors using the frozen accounts to pay Internet poker winners, has filed to force release of the stolen funds.
Details from the motion before the US District Court in California reveal that the mysterious filing of another warrant last week against a bank was not the onset of further seizures, but rather the attempt to follow legal procedure by the US Attorney’s Office after the fact. The second warrant, signed June 24th, gave permission to seize accounts at Union Bank which had already been seized on June 12th.
“As of the date of this filing, no criminal or civil action, including forfeiture, has been initiated with regard to this seizure,” says the motion by Account Services, according to Pocket Fives. “The Wells Fargo funds were seized pursuant to a warrant, whereas the Union Bank funds were seized without a warrant in the Southern District of California.”
At the beginning of June, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York arranged seizures of bank accounts carrying over $33 million in payments intended for players who had won at Internet poker. The government continues to act under a shroud of secrecy, avoiding due process rights while using an interpretation of the Wire Act discarded by the courts to validate the actions.
The legal action goes on to note that the seizure violates the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause and a valid warrant before any seizure could be conducted. Further, the motion says there is no probable cause that the funds are in any way connected with a crime.
Account Services says the government action is causing the company irreparable harm, and notes “its survival is threatened by the unlawful seizure.”
Read more from Pokernewsdaily.com:
Steve Schirripa, an actor on the popular “Sopranos” television series on HBO, will host “Face the Ace” on NBC. The grand prize on the poker meets reality television program is $1 million and airing begins on August 1st. The show represents NBC’s first venture into prime time poker programming.
Qualifiers for “Face the Ace” are currently running on Full Tilt Poker for one of seven episodes that will hit the airwaves on August 1st and occupy the 9:00pm ET time slot. The following Saturday, “Face the Ace” will air during the same time period; follow up shows will be beamed into households around the country on a schedule to be determined. The show’s concept is simple: A player will choose from among four doors. Behind each of them is a different professional poker player, appropriately dubbed an “ace.” They will then battle “mano a mano” on the green felts. If the contestant can beat the pro, according to a press release distributed by NBC officials this week, “They will have the opportunity to take the money they have won and leave or risk it all and choose another door and battle a different pro for a significantly larger sum of money.”
Successfully besting three of the game’s top pros in a row will earn a contestant the top prize of $1 million. Losing a match along the way means they’ll leave empty-handed. As the show is primarily sponsored by Full Tilt, the site’s pros make up the “aces.” They include Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, Erick Lindgren, Erik Seidel, Allen Cunningham, John Juanda, Jennifer Harman, Phil Gordon, Andy Bloch, Mike Matusow, Gus Hansen, and Patrik Antonius. The show’s official website states that winners will be put up at the Golden Nugget, which was also home to the first and fifth seasons of GSN’s “High Stakes Poker.”
Qualifying for the show involves winning a series of freerolls. The winner of each Round 1 freeroll (which take place constantly on Full Tilt Poker) moves onto Round 2. The second installment of freerolls occurs every Wednesday and Sunday at 9:15pm ET. Each winner earns entry into one of three “Face the Ace” Final Qualifiers. These take place at 9:15pm ET on May 25th, 9:15pm ET on June 8th, and 9:15pm ET on June 22nd. The top 10 in each of these tournaments takes home a prize package to head to Las Vegas to potentially compete “Face the Ace.” Each “Face the Ace” tournament is color-coded tan in the Full Tilt lobby. The prize package includes round trip airfare for two to Sin City, $500 in cash, accommodations for two at the Golden Nugget, and a chance to audition for “Face the Ace.”
Jon Miller, Executive Vice-President of NBC Sports, told Poker News Daily, “’Face the Ace’ gives us a chance to continue our great relationship with Poker Productions and provide people at home with an exciting opportunity to get in the game. We are thrilled to have Steve Schirripa on board as the host - with his fun personality we knew he was the perfect guy for the job.” The first Las Vegas filming is scheduled to take place on July 9th and contestants must be at least 21 years old to play.
Full Tilt Poker also serves as the official sponsor for the seventh season of the World Poker Tour (WPT), which is in the midst of airing on Fox Sports Net. Full Tilt received an on-felt presence as part of its package with the WPT. The World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas is fronted by Everest Poker, whereas its London version is sponsored by Betfair. Visit Full Tilt Poker for more information on qualifying for “Face the Ace.”
From NewScientist.com:
IS POKER a game of skill or luck? For regular players that’s a no-brainer, but showing that skill wins out has proven surprisingly difficult for mathematicians. Now two studies that tapped the vast amounts of data available from online casinos have provided some of the best evidence yet that poker is skill-based. Many hope that the results will help to roll back laws and court decisions that consider poker gambling, and therefore illegal in certain contexts.
Most players insist that poker is predominantly skill. “I depended solely on that skill for my food and rent,” says Darse Billings, a former professional player who co-founded the Computer Poker Research Group at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. In many jurisdictions, however, poker websites and organised games are heavily regulated or even banned under gambling laws, partly because chance is considered the dominant factor.
Previous attempts to quantify the relationship between skill and chance have involved building theoretical models or playing software bots against each other. However, Ingo Fiedler and Jan-Philipp Rock at the University of Hamburg’s Institute of Law and Economics in Germany argue that these methods fail to reflect real games, and this may explain why some courts and lawmakers have yet to be swayed by them. So over three months, the pair recorded the outcomes of 55,000 online players playing millions of hands of poker’s most popular variant, “no-limit Texas hold ‘em”.
They reasoned that if skill dominated, this would eventually show itself over many hands, so they chose two factors to define this threshold. Firstly, they measured how much each player’s winnings and losses fluctuated: the higher this variance, the greater the role of chance. Secondly, they measured the average value of a player’s winnings or losses: highly skilled or terrible players would do noticeably better or worse than would be expected by chance alone.
Based on these factors, they found that the threshold at which the effects of skill start to dominate over chance is typically about 1000 hands, equivalent to about 33 hours of playing in person or 13 hours online, where the rate of play is brisker. So although chance plays a role, they suggest that because most players easily play this many hands in a lifetime, poker is more a game of skill (Gaming Law Review and Economics, DOI: 10.1089/glre.2008.13106). “Our results should have greater impact on the legislators than the results of other studies; they refer to reality,” says Fiedler.
The threshold at which the effects of skill start to dominate is typically about 1000 handsHowever, Sean McCulloch, a computer scientist at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, says the results may fail to sway a judge or jury. “If you want to use a mathematical argument as the basis for legislation or court decisions, it has to be easy to explain, easy to follow and intuitive,” he says.
McCulloch used an alternative method to explore skill and chance in poker, also based on real games. Together with Paco Hope of the software consultancy Cigital of Washington DC, he looked at 103 million hands of Texas hold ‘em played at the PokerStars online site and calculated how many were won as the result of a “showdown” - in which players win thanks to their cards beating their opponents’ cards - versus those that were won because all the other players folded. They argue that the latter hands must be pure skill, because no one shows their cards. Their analysis, released on 27 March, revealed that 76 per cent of games did not end in a showdown, suggesting that skill is the dominant factor.
John Pappas of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) in Washington DC says both studies are badly needed to help properly define the law. In many US states, judges and juries use a so-called “predominance test” to gauge skill and chance, based on the opinions of expert witnesses. Although courts in Pennsylvania, Colorado and South Carolina have all ruled this year that poker is a game of skill, not all courts do. “It would not be wise for any of us to rest on our laurels,” Pappas says. The PPA expects the Cigital study will now be used as evidence to fight appeals against court rulings that decided poker is a skill game.
However, Preston Oade of law firm Holme Roberts and Owen in Denver, Colorado, who worked on a separate poker case in Colorado, cautions that the studies still may not persuade juries, as this is a “moral, political and social issue”, as well as a mathematical one.
Pappas hopes the studies will help to persuade the US Congress to grant poker an exemption from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, due to come into force in December 2009. The act will make it illegal in some states for banks to process transactions from gambling websites.
from Yahoo! News:
LAS VEGAS - Nevada gambling regulators have warned casinos in the state about a card-counting program that works on Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPod Touch that illegally helps players beat the house in blackjack.
Card counting itself is not illegal under Nevada gambling laws, but it is considered a felony to use devices to help count cards.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board sent a memo to casinos last week warning them of the program.
In blackjack, certain card counting techniques help players determine when they are likely to win a hand and adjust their bets accordingly.
Nevada learned of the program from gambling regulators in California, where officials at an Indian casino found customers using it and tipped state authorities.
thats a lot of cash… from mlive.com:
There’s now a World Series of Poker record out there that even Phil Hellmuth can’t break, although it used to be his anyway.
With his heads-up victory over Russian Ivan Demidov early Tuesday, Denmark’s Peter Eastgate became the youngest main event champion in history at 22 years old.
The 11-time WSOP bracelet winner Hellmuth won the main event in 1989 when he was 24. In addition to his first WSOP bracelet, Eastgate pocketed $9.1 million.
For his runner-up finish — one spot better than he ended up at the WSOP Europe main event — Demidov earned $5.8 million. Here’s how the rest of the final table broke down:
3. Dennis Phillips — $4,517,773
4. Ylon Schwartz — $ 3,774,974
5. Scott Montgomery — $ 3,096,768
6. Darus Suharto — $ 2,418,562
7. David “Chino” Rheem — $ 1,772,650
8. Kelly Kim — $1,288,217
9. Craig Marquis — $ 900,670
Here’s some basic strategy for becoming a better online poker player, from PokerQuiz.org:
This is NOT RECOMMENDED unless playing with close friends… Proceed with caution:
Here’s some good information on a play called “Floating”, from PokerChannelEurope.com:
Floating is another one of those poker terms that didn’t even really have a name a few years ago but is now a regular part of the modern players toolbox. Floating is, sometimes, actually just a bad players clever name for making a ridiculously fishy call but when done properly it is a bluff that is more profitable than just blindly raising and demonstrates multi-street thinking that exploits those who can’t imagine anything beyond the flop.
Floating is calling a continuation bet (usually) on the flop when your hand isn’t strong, with the specific intent to bluff at the pot on a later street. So you hold king-jack on a 2-2-9 flop and, even though you haven’t improved, you call a bet from a pre-flop raiser anyway. Now, if the turn comes a blank and your opponent checks or makes a smaller bet, you read it as if they have given up on the pot and fire a bet out to take the pot down.
The reason why floating is profitable is because there are so many aggressive players who will continuation bet on the flop 100% of the time regardless of what the board texture is. When you consider that most hands don’t improve 2/3s of the time then floating is the perfect way to extract more money from a pot where you are both stealing. It is a very difficult prospect to fire a second bet on the turn when you hold nothing, especially as the call makes it look like you have a hand, and a great deal of players will give up and check the turn, giving you a free pass to steal the pot.
The most important thing about floating is that you should only really do it in position because that is where you get the information, that your opponent has given up, from. Floating out of position can get very expensive. It doesn’t hurt to float with a hand that could actually suck out on your opponent, like ace high or a gutshot, which has the potential benefit of tilting your opponent if you do hit.
You need to know already that your opponent is capable of laying their hand down and also likely to give up on the turn. Floating does not work well against hyper aggressive opponents and makes the most money from tight-aggressive players. Be fully prepared to give up on the turn if your opponent bets as it gets very expensive trying to outplay them from that point on and make sure you don’t float too often! because you’ll just become a calling station and your opponents will start value betting you very thinly or check-raising you with nothing.
This is an interesting read, especially if you’ve watched the HBO show “Deadwood”. This is from PokerNews.com:
Wild Bill Hickok was far more than a poker player, even though many today remember him as the man who originated the famous ‘Dead Man’s Hand’ consisting of Aces and Eights - all black cards.
Wild Bill Hickok was born on May 27, 1837, in the small farming town of Troy Grove, Illinois. He was named James Butler Hickok and only much later in life acquired the nickname “Wild Bill” due to his expertise and fierceness as a gunfighter which began in 1865 when he killed David Tutt. This is where his reputation began as a gunfighter and gambler—the reason for the dispute with David Tutt — poker.
He worked on his father’s farm until 1855, when he turned 18. His first job was that of a stage coach driver on the Oregon Santa Fe stage lines. Two years later, in 1857, perhaps envisioning an early retirement, he homesteaded 160 acres of land in Kansas. Whatever thoughts he might have had about settling down ended when he was appointed as a Kansas lawman.
By 1861 his lawman career had placed him in Nebraska. There he first gained fame by capturing an infamous gang of outlaws by himself. His fierceness during this gun battle, and the many that followed, is believed to have earned him the nickname “Wild Bill”. The name “Wild Bill” was later to endear him to the public through a series of books by George Ward Nichols, a journalist who followed him around for a time and wrote adventure books based upon his exploits. Much of the writing may have had little basis in fact; nevertheless, it made Wild Bill Hickok into a legend, not only during his life time, but a legend that so far has lasted well over a century and has also given him a place in history as a poker legend.
In 1871 Wild Bill Hickok became Marshal of Abilene. He was paid a monthly salary of $150, a good salary at the time, plus a percentage on fines and fifty cents for every unlicensed dog he shot. He was dismissed from his position for spending most of his time gambling and not taking his job seriously. It seemed like a good time to change careers so he joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show in 1872 and 1873 where he teamed up with Calamity Jane and John Wesley Hardin in Deadwood, Dakota.
Due to his heavy drinking, Buffalo Bill was later forced to fire Wild Bill. Deadwood has since become a popular HBO series with Keith Carradine portraying Wild Bill Hickok. There is much dispute about which card he held in addition to his two pair. This is just one of many TV series and shows about him portraying that scene. In the Deadwood series, they show Hickok holding a 9 of Diamonds as his fifth card along with a pair of aces and a pair of eights when he was shot. In the town of Deadwood, South Dakota, they too display Hickok holding the 9 of Diamonds. In Ken Kesey’s novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” McMurphy has a “Dead Man’s Hand” tattoo. In fact, the fifth card is unknown, which could have been, as some sources claim, due to Wild Bill meeting his demise before the fifth card had been dealt or possibly after he discarded a card and had not yet received another card in its place. So the legend and confusion continues.
In the many articles about his death, all agree that he was playing poker at Nuttall & Mann’s Saloon in Deadwood on August 2, 1876, which was then part of the Dakota Territory on Indian land. Unfortunately, there were no empty seats in the corner against the wall, where he consistently sat to protect himself against sneak attacks from behind, but this time, eager to play, he chose to sit with his back to the door. This was a grave mistake for him because Jack McCall came in the back and shot him in the head with a double action .45 caliber revolver. Hickok had supposedly killed McCall’s brother. During his trial, McCall claimed he was avenging his brother’s earlier death; hence, he was subsequently found not guilty by a jury in Deadwood.
It didn’t end there though. Jack McCall was arrested again where he was later drinking at a bar in another town and was overheard bragging about killing Wild Bill Hickok. A new trial was held because it was not considered to be Double Jeopardy as Deadwood, at the time, was illegally settled on Indian territory thus it was not considered a legal town. Yankton, in South Dakota, was settled in American territory so a new trial was held in Yankton. During the second trial, it was learned that McCall did not have a brother at all. He was quickly found guilty and hanged for shooting Wild Bill Hickok. Although many contradicting articles have been written over the reason for his death, it was rumored that McCall, in a drunken state, may have become enraged over what he considered to be a condescending offer when Hickok offered him a few dollars to purchase breakfast after he lost all his money playing poker the previous day.
The saloon proprietor claimed, that at the time of his death, Hickok held a pair of Aces and a pair of Eights, all black cards. Since then the term “Dead Man’s Hand,” was created. Wild Bill Hickok holding a great hand must have felt triumphant at the time, but that feeling of victory was to be short lived.
Here’s a good interview with Doyle Brunson from PokerSuperstars:
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