Young Gun Joe Cada stops by the Deal bringing his own brand of Michigan madness to Bristol.
Good news for Poker fans! From USAToday.com:
Poker’s biggest tournament and ESPN have cut a new deal.
The World Series of Poker and the cable TV network will formally announce Tuesday they have a new seven-year broadcast agreement through the 2017 World Series.
ESPN has aired the WSOP since 2003. The current contract runs through next year. The new deal begins in 2011. ESPN will pay a rights fee. Terms were not disclosed.
Taped coverage of the World Series airs on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPN International and more.
“This long-term agreement ensures that our content will continue to reach sports fans around the world through a wide variety of platforms,” says Jeffrey Pollack, president and commissioner of the World Series.
This year’s WSOP was a series of 57 poker tournaments begun May 26 in Las Vegas. The final tournament, the Main Event, is being held in two stages.
In stage one, played July 3 through July 15, the field of 6,494 players was reduced to the final nine. On Nov. 7-10, the final table (the “November Nine”) will be played. Top prize is $8.5 million.
ESPN’s 32 hours of coverage is running on Tuesday nights. It began July 28 and goes through Nov. 10 (same-day coverage of the end of the final table).
After devoting earlier coverage this year to other events in the WSOP, the ESPN programming will be pegged to Main Event coverage this Tuesday night through the rest of the TV schedule. There will be an all-time high 24 hours of Main Event coverage
This Tuesday night’s coverage will focus on the first day of the Main Event and feature such pros as Phil Laak, Mike “The Mouth” Matusow and Johnny Chan, as well as poker-playing actor Jason Alexander from the TV show Seinfeld.
Norman Chad and Lon McEachern call the action. “It’s an event that lends itself to early-round coverage, and I think that’s where a lot of the memorable moments come,” says McEachern.
News from PokerNewsDaily.com:
In breaking news from Capitol Hill, Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) will introduce legislation to license and regulate online poker in the United States on Thursday, according to Dow Jones Newswires.
During National Poker Week, which occurred from July 19th to 25th, it was revealed that Menendez would likely drop legislation during the festivities or the following week. Then, Poker News Daily learned that a bill similar to last Congressional session’s S 3616 would likely be introduced this week. Poker Players Alliance (PPA) Executive Director John Pappas stated during a working dinner to open National Poker Week, “Pushing poker will be an immediate lift and will be easier than [legalizing] other things.” He also reminded over 30 of the PPA’s State Directors, a handful of poker pros, and media in attendance, “Poker has always been played in people’s homes. We are the Poker Players Alliance. We aren’t the Roulette Alliance. We love the Menendez bill because it focuses on our core beliefs.”
The PPA had a draft of the bill in mid-July. Menendez’s S 3616 was introduced last September and dubbed the Internet Skill Game Licensing and Control Act. The bill’s definitions specifically included online poker, explicitly legalizing the game in the United States: “The term ‘Internet skill game’ means an Internet-based game that uses simulated cards, dice, or tiles in which success is predominantly determined by the skill of the players, including poker, bridge, and mahjong.” The bill called for the legalization of skill games not backed by the house, meaning that the action was primarily player versus player. Online poker rooms like PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker raise revenue by taking a percent of each pot or tournament buy-in, dubbed the “juice” or “rake.”
In order to apply for a license to operate a skill game online and solicit customers from the United States, complete financial information was required. Also required were an outline of an organization’s corporate structure and the “names of all persons directly or indirectly interested in the business of the applicant and the nature of such interest.” Background checks of individuals and directors associated with each licensee would have been conducted and betting on sports was specifically prohibited. S 3616 vanished from the record after the 110th Congress adjourned.
According to the PPA, the legislation to be introduced by Menendez on Thursday will be similar to S 3616. The Dow Jones report notes, “It would establish a regulatory framework that would allow online poker companies to register in the U.S.” A 10% tax on deposits would be added, 5% to State Governments and 5% to the Federal Government. During the last Congressional session, Congressman Robert Wexler introduced a similar measure in HR 2610, the Skill Game Protection Act, which exempted poker and other skill games from existing internet gambling legislation.
At the beginning of May, Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced HR 2266, which would delay industry compliance with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) by one year to December 1st, 2010. In addition, the Massachusetts lawmaker unveiled HR 2267, which establishes a comprehensive licensing and regulatory framework for the internet gambling industry in the United States. HR 2267 currently boasts 54 co-sponsors, while HR 2266 has 35.
We’ll have full details on Menendez’s new Senate bill as soon as it’s released right here on Poker News Daily.
From PokerNewsDaily.com:
With only scant days remaining until the start of the $10,000 Main Event at the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP), the race for the remaining bracelets is heating up in the Amazon Room at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
The final table of the $1,500 Limit Hold’em Shootout, Event #50 on the WSOP schedule, played out deep into the evening on Sunday. A total of 571 players started the event on Friday, with the final eight survivors having won their way to the final table by winning two sit and gos over the previous two days. As with the shootout format, the players all started with the same number of chips (450,000 at the final table) and there were plenty of strong players in the mix.
Bodog’s David Williams, who famously finished second to Greg Raymer in the 2004 Main Event and has since captured his own WSOP bracelet, was joined by two other bracelet winners from this year’s play. Marc Naalden, who won only the second bracelet in WSOP for his home country of the Netherlands, and Full Tilt Poker’s Greg “FBT” Mueller, the former Canadian hockey player who picked up his first bracelet this year, led a contingent of players from around the world. Millie Shue, who was the runner-up in the Ladies’ event in 2004, the Netherlands’ Joep Van Den Bijgaart, Argentina’s Jose Barbero, Italy’s Flaminio Malaguti, and the United States’ Matt Sterling rounded out what was truly an international table.
The three bracelet winners got off to fast starts and, within two hours, had separated themselves from the pack. Mueller pulled into the chip lead when he drew the first blood at the table with the elimination of Barbero in eighth place. Prior to the table taking the dinner break, the two Scandinavians battled it out, as Naalden took out Van Den Bijgaart in seventh place.
After the dinner hiatus, Williams tried to mount an attack on Mueller’s chip lead. He vanquished Malaguti in sixth when he turned a five to match his A-5 against the Italian’s Big Slick, but couldn’t seem to find any traction after that point. He slowly slid down the leaderboard and was eventually eliminated by Shue in fourth place. Even with the knockout, Shue, who played conservatively through the final table, was eventually ousted in third place.
Heads-up play began between Mueller (who had dismissed Sterling from the tournament in fifth place) and Naalden, with the Canadian holding a 4:1 lead over the Scandinavian. With the two men reaching heads-up, it also guaranteed the fourth double bracelet winner of this year’s WSOP, setting a new record for most multiple bracelet winners.
Naalden attacked Mueller from the start of heads-up action and, through skillful play, was able to pull to even within 30 minutes of play. Over the next hour and a half, Mueller and Naalden, who both won their bracelets in Limit events this year, would swap the lead approximately a half dozen times before Mueller was able to go on a run. That run enabled Mueller, once his five kicker played over Naalden’s deuce after both paired a King on the final hand, to capture his second WSOP bracelet and the $194,854 top prize.
Most of the attention of the crowd at the Rio was focused on play in the Players’ Championship, the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. tournament. A total of 53 players came back to attempt to work down to the cashout level (the final 16 players), but were unable to do that as 19 remained by the time play ended for the day.
Vitaly Lunkin, who captured the title in the $40,000 Anniversary Event, leads the field with 1.5 million in chips. He is joined by internet legend Erik “Erik123” Sagstrom, 2007 H.O.R.S.E. champion Freddy Deeb, and David Bach as players who have all eclipsed the million chip mark. Lurking just under that level is Ville Wahlbeck, who captured his first bracelet earlier this month in the World Championship Mixed event. They are joined by such professionals as eight-time WSOP champion Erik Seidel, former World Champion and current National Heads-Up Champion Huck Seed, 2009 Pot Limit Hold’em World Champion John Kabbaj, and Gus “The Great Dane” Hansen, who has no WSOP jewelry in his career. The 19 remaining players returning for Day 4 will play through to a final table tonight and a champion determined tomorrow.
A championship will be determined tonight in Event #51, another $1,500 No Limit Hold’em tournament. Thirty-five players remain from the 2,781 who started the tournament, with newcomer Durand Thibaud holding the chip lead. He is joined by Owen Crowe as the only players over the million chip mark, with Josh Schlein on the verge of cracking that mark.
Two tournaments enter into Day 2 action today, the $3,000 Triple Chance No Limit Hold’em tournament (Event #52) and the $1,500 Seven Card Stud High-Low tournament (Event #53). Jeffrey Lisandro, who has already captured three WSOP bracelets this year, is looking for an unprecedented fourth in the Triple Chance event, although there are still 149 players left. Currently Lisandro holds a healthy stack of 113,800 and is in pursuit of Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari, who has 127, 900. In the Seven Card tournament, Marcel Luske, Daniel Negreanu and Annie Duke are a few of the top names that have survived to play Day 2, with Allie Prescott holding the lead over the 143 runners remaining.
Two events will kick off action with their Day 1s that begin at Noon today. Event #54, another $1,500 No Limit Hold’em tournament, should draw a sizeable crowd and Event #55, the $2,500 Deuce to Seven Triple Draw Lowball tournament, should be stocked with top professionals. Poker News Daily will be on top of this and all of the rest of the action at the Rio as the poker world prepares for the start of the Main Event later this week.
From OnlinePokerWebsite.net:
This week Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank introduced a set of bills designed to freeze the UIGEA and allow US residents freedom to play poker on the Internet. Frank’s bill establishes the Department of the Treasury as the licensing and regulating authority, and provides for the consumer protections the gambling ban does not offer, including age and identification verification, responsible gaming systems, and measures against money laundering and cheating.
Alphonse D’Amato, chairman of the Poker Players Alliance, praised Frank and his efforts.
“Online poker is a legal, thriving industry and poker players deserve the consumer protections and the freedom to play that are provided for in this legislation,” said D’Amato. The ex-Senator said he promised to “activate the alliances grassroots army made up of over one million members to help him drive legislation”.
The bill grants states the right to opt out, meaning states that don’t allow land-based poker do not have to accept online play. Licenses will only be awarded to operators that respect the laws of individual states, so such non-gambling states as Hawaii and Utah will likely be blocked by regulated poker rooms.
Also, players used to pocketing winnings on a regular basis without reporting them to Uncle Sam will now find their take a little lighter. Frank includes clauses that require the online gambling operator to set aside taxes against winnings before paying patrons.
Still, the legal gray cloud may be lifted if the bill can pass through Congress. Monitoring for cheating will ease the minds of many online players, and security of personal information may bring thousands of new players to the Internet.
“The government should not interfere with people’s liberty unless there is a good reason,” said Frank in a press conference on Capitol Hill. “This is, I believe, the single biggest example of an intrusion into the principle that people should be free to do things on the Internet. It’s clearly the case that gambling is an activity that can be done offline but not online.”
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 BluffMagazine.com:
The word is being spread that Rep. Barney Frank plans to introduce pro-gaming legislation in the days ahead. And with that news has come speculation from the poker media and beyond as to the viability of a standalone bill in favor of online gaming passing through Congress. The response from the Poker Players Alliance on the issue has been brief but strong. They have support in Congress and $3 million to lobby everyone else.
Once Frank divulged his plans to reintroduce H.R. 2046, the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act, when Congress returned from their spring break this week, many applauded the upcoming effort but wondered aloud if it even had the support to break through a committee. One of the publications who posed such questions was The Hill, a Washington D.C. policy publication, which brought a fervent response from PPA chairman and former NY Senator Alfonse D’Amato in the same publication.
On April 14, 2009, D’Amato wrote, in part:
“Liberals and conservatives in and out of Congress are opposed to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act for a number of reasons: It does nothing to prevent children and problem gamblers from playing online; it overly burdens the banks, making them, not the federal government, policemen of the Internet; it costs the taxpayers billions in unearned revenue, not to mention the loss of capital and jobs when these companies are forced to move out of the U.S.; and it’s simply unenforceable… As House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and many Democratic and Republican members know, now is the time to do what’s right for all interested parties, not based on party politics. That means protecting Internet freedom and the public interest through taxation, licensing and regulation - not prohibition.”
Days later, the Associated Press reported that D’Amato said the PPA has $3 million to lobby Congress during the upcoming session. Some of the funds have been collected through the memberships of its one-million-plus member base, and more is coming from the Interactive Gaming Council in Vancouver. The Canadian trade association represents a number of online gaming websites and looks to gain from a possible U.S. pro-gaming law.
While the opposition to the yet-to-be-introduced legislation consists of a number of groups, conservative religious groups as well as sports organizations like the National Football League among them, the PPA hopes to let people know that there is widespread support for the legislation as well, and that backing spans both major political parties. And what the opposition may fail to realize is that there is more money where the Interactive Gaming Council funds came from, as the online poker industry alone has quite the investment in seeing Frank succeed.
For now, all eyes are on Rep. Frank to take the first step in the process, but the PPA, led by Chairman D’Amato, is waiting to lobby for its passage with strength that may not be underestimated for long.
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.
Poker is growing in popularity around the globe! With its global appeal someone can incorporate a poker game into any vacation. Here are the top spots to play a hand.
1. Las Vegas, Nevada
2. Melbourne, Australia
3. Paradise Island, Bahamas
4. Monte Carlo, Monaco
5. London, U.K.
6. Macau, China
7. Barcelona, Spain
8. Los Angeles, CA
9. San Jose, Costa Rica
10. Dublin, Ireland
PLAY
