Casino Planet Cash

Sent from my BlackBerry

Sent from my BlackBerry

When it comes to “legal stuff” and online poker, I never feel entirely comfortable offering my opinions. Or even simply reporting what the hell is going on. I mean, I think I am a decent reader and even once in a while stumble on a good ideer or response to this or that. But when it comes to commenting confidently on this particular subject, my first instinct is usually to try to change it.

The fact is, current state and federal laws regarding online poker/gambling here in the U.S. are ambiguous at best, and the process by which new laws and regulations come to be is often also mysterious for most of us. Rarely does anything seem perfectly clear, and when it does, such moments of clarity are often frustratingly fleeting. There’s always an appeal, it seems. And an appeal of the appeal. And so forth. Never mind “running it twice.” These guys appear willing and able to run it a hundred times if they have to, with the rules changing each time along the way.

This week came a couple of stories regarding some of many ongoing legal machinations, neither of which necessarily offered any further clarity for us on this subject. Or comfort. One was a ruling from the Kentucky Supreme Court on the Commonwealth’s efforts to seize 141 domains hosting online gambling sites. Sounds like that one has turned the other way once again. For now, that is. (It’s always “for now.”)

If you recall, it was back in September 2008 that we first heard that a Circuit Court judge had granted Governor Steve Beshear’s order to “seize” the domains which hosted sites allowing Kentucky residents to gamble online. Seemed like a pretty obvious usurpation of authority, as though somehow Kentucky could rule the entire interwebs and take control of sites according to its own predilections.

A hearing was held the following month, and the Circuit Court ruled in favor of Beshear et al. If the offending domains didn’t start blocking Kentucky from accessing the sites they were hosting within 30 days, the domains would be forfeited to Kentucky. A “forfeiture hearing” was then scheduled, then delayed. Then the case wound up in the court of appeals, where it was determined Kentucky wasn’t king of the internet after all.

The sucker then went to the state’s Supreme Court — an appeal of the appeal — where it has been for the last long while. Finally, this week the Supreme Court ruled that, in fact, the ruling in the Court of Appeals didn’t hold “due to the incapacity of domain names to contest their own seizure.”

In other words, the owners of the domains — who remained “anonymous registrants” and were represented by others — have to come forward and defend themselves (says the Ky. Supreme Court). So the decision in the Court of Appeals has been reversed. (Full decision here.)

The Poker Players Alliance has commented, saying it “understands the technical nature of the decision” made by the Supreme Court, and that it “remains confident that, once that issue is cured, the Supreme Court” will see the light and uphold the previous decision of the Court of Appeals to deny Kentucky the right to seize the domains. I like the choice of metaphor there — what we are looking at here is in fact an illness than needs to be “cured” before we can go forward.

Is this incurable, though? Who knows?

The other item of special note this week concerned House Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) telling PokerNews that he did not anticipate another delay would be granted for implementation of the final regulations of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

Another story that sounds, well, a little sick-making.

If you recall, those final regs were set to go into effect on December 1, 2009, but the feds granted six more months to consider other legislation, meaning the current deadline for U.S. banks and financial institutions to start blocking transactions with online gambling sites is now June 1, 2010.

Earlier this year, Rep. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) — one of the first authors of the legislation that ultimately became the UIGEA — decided to use his standing in the Senate to start blocking the President’s nominees to fill positions in the Treasury Department. Frank told PokerNews that Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner has said he wouldn’t allow any further delays specifically because of Kyl’s tactics.

Frank remains confident, however, that even after compliance with the UIGEA becomes mandatory in June, its standing will be tenuous. “Once it goes into effect, banks are going to raise hell,” he told PN, anticipating the banks’ subsequent complaints will lead to the UIGEA’s repeal.

As I have written about numerous times here, even if the UIGEA is an ambiguous, murky law that probably couldn’t hold up to any court challenges, its going into effect is nevertheless going to have consequences on U.S. players of online poker, knocking many out of the game due to increased difficulties getting money onto the sites.

When I appeared on Lou Krieger’s “Keep Flopping Aces” podcast last month, he asked me what I thought would happen with regard to the UIGEA during 2010. I told him my sense was that I did not feel very confident that it would be repealed this year, nor did I think any other legislation would likely be passed.

By way of explanation, I said hoping for either a repeal or the passage of new legislation was sort of like pulling for a poor player in a poker tourney to win. He’d need a lot of breaks just to reach the final table, then still more examples of good timing and fortuitous cards to win in the end.

Of course, using that analogy served a particular purpose for me — it enabled me to avoid speaking more particularly about things about which I have little clue.

In fact, I suspect most of us are essentially short-stacked when challenged to understand “legal stuff” and online poker.

Sent from my BlackBerry

Sent from my BlackBerry

Found time yesterday to catch up on the first five episodes of “High Stakes Poker” of 2010. These mark the start of the sixth season of the Game Show Network series which first aired in January 2006. The format of the show has remained essentially the same from past seasons, although with a couple of changes this time around.

The show returns to the Golden Nugget where it began in Season 1 and had returned for Season 5. One big difference is the removal of A.J. Benza who had previously joined Gabe Kaplan in the commentary booth. With Benza gone, Kara Scott has joined the show to host short segments and interview players.

The removal of Benza from the show garnered a lot of reaction on the forums, including a still-ongoing “Online Petition to bring Back AJ Benza for HSP” thread on Two Plus Two. For those joining that cause, the thinking is the “HSP” hosting/commentating formula had worked well for the first five seasons, so there was no reason to muck with it.

I, too, liked Benza’s contribution to the show. Despite being a funny guy himself — Benza’s initial appearance on the Ante Up! show (in June 2008) was one of the funniest episodes of that podcast I can recall — Benza mostly played the straight man to Kaplan on “HSP.” The pair (both Brooklyn natives, actually) seemed to have great chemistry and added a lot of flavor to the proceedings, both with the poker commentary and the humor.

So I wasn’t necessarily happy either when I’d heard Benza wouldn’t be returning, although that doesn’t mean I’m not glad to see Kara Scott on the show. When I first saw Scott at the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event, I’d known she’d been a presenter or host on a couple of different poker shows in Europe, having worked on “Poker Night Live” and with the European Poker Tour. Scott made a deep run in that year’s WSOP ME, finishing 104th. I remember writing a little about her in a recap about one of the Day Twos here and having written a post about her late in the day over on PokerNews.

Scott does well, I think, in her somewhat limited role on “High Stakes.” I was surprised, actually, at how little screen time the producers give her, though in the short interviews both her poker knowledge and ease before the camera serve her well. This week, Jennifer Newell and I wrote a new “He Said/She Said” column for Woman Poker Player in which we discussed the subject of women and poker shows, and we both ended up remarking on how we thought Scott was underused on “HSP.” You can read those pieces here: He Said / She Said.

Meanwhile, Kaplan still gets to crack wise often enough. There do seem to be a few more quiet stretches with Benza gone, but Kaplan carries it well enough, and I remain a big fan of his humor and his poker commentary.

There are a couple of other small format changes to note. I’m noticing the frequent use of a graphic now and then to update us on stack sizes at the table — a plus. (The minimum buy-in for the game is $200,000, with two players, Phil Ivey and Tom “durrrr” Dwan, having bought in for $500,000.) Also, Daniel Negreanu is hosting a brief “Did You Know” segment that is interesting enough, I guess.

What remains most interesting — and the biggest reason why the show tops my list of faves on teevee — is the poker. Many fascinating hands already on these first five episodes. I’m not gonna rehearse them here, both because I’d rather not spoil ’em for those who haven’t watched and intend to, and because I can’t hope to provide real analysis, but just share the reactions of a poker player/fan.

The first episode was dominated by Phil Hellmuth’s swift downfall, a rapid sequence that kicked off the season with a delicious sampling of schadenfreude. Although Kaplan says something about prop bets being forbidden this season, there have been several discussed already, including that big one involving Phil Ivey going vegetarian for a year. Meanwhile, Ivey once again shows his incredible acumen at the table, Negreanu struggles once again on the show, and other players come and go.

This most recent episode (the fifth one) was probably the most entertaining to watch so far. There were several all-in hands, though with a couple of exceptions most were not caused by the stacks being short but rather were consequent to a series of postflop decisions. One especially interesting hand took place between Jason Mercier and Ivey, a hand which Mercier recounts in an article from yesterday over on PokerListings.

Of course, the big highlight was the hand between Phil Ivey and Tom “durrrr” Dwan that concluded the fifth episode — kind of a jawdropping hand on the order of the one from last year involving Dwan, Barry Greenstein, and Peter Eastgate. Ivey starts the hand with over $1 million, and Dwan with around $750,000. Watch and enjoy yourself:

I was saying last week how I hadn’t had a lot of time for watching poker on teevee. But if I’m only going to watch one show, this has got to be the one, yes?

Just an update on the status of the legalization of pro MMA in New York: There are currently two bills in play that could bring sanctioned cage fighting back into the Empire State, one penned by the embattled Governor Paterson and included within his 2010-2011 budget proposal, and one penned by the legislature. (As you may remember, the State Assembly came damn close to passing their MMA bill last year, but an unforseen senatorial coup derailed that train.) The status of both the Governor’s bill and the legislature’s bill? Who the hell knows. Governor Paterson’s budget proposal was supposed to pass final muster by April 1st, but the New York Daily News is reporting that no one - not the Governor, not the legislature, no one - believes that’s going to happen. Meanwhile, according to the legislative director of one of the co-sponsors of the Assembly’s bill, pretty much zero movement has taken place on that front, with the MMA bill languishing in the Tourism, Arts and Sports Development Committee - the Committee where it saw its most heated discussion last year. In short, if you want to see some live MMA here in New York, your options are to either cozy up to your local underground promoter or stare longingly through the window when your nearby martial arts school has sparring night.

The news of that WSOP Tournament of Champions got me looking at the schedule for this summer once again, something I hadn’t really done much since it was first announced back in December. You can check out the 2010 WSOP schedule in full here.

A few items of note here as I look over the sucker once more.

No Main Event on Fourth of July. This year Sunday, July 4 has been scheduled as an off-day for the WSOP — the Main Event this year begins on July 5. If you recall, in 2009 the Fourth of July (a Saturday) was one of the four Day Ones for the Main Event (Day 1b), and drew only 873 players, the lowest of any of the Day Ones. That helped create the fiasco that was Day 1d, when 2,809 players ended up playing while hundreds more were turned away.

Then again, it isn’t quite right to call July 4 “off-day” for the WSOP this year, as it looks as though two other events — Event No. 54, the last of the six open-field $1,000 no-limit hold’em tourneys & Event No. 56, a $2,500 NLH event — will be playing their final tables that day. And the TOC final table (also scheduled for July 4) will make three. Am glad, though, that the schedule-makers saw the problem with trying to get folks out to start a new tourney — esp. the Main Event — on the Fourth of July.

Everyone who wants to gets to play the Main Event this year. Preregistration is open for all 57 bracelet events, and those registering to play in the Main Event will find a section of the form noting how “you may request which First Day you prefer to start.” All four days are listed (7/5, 7/6, 7/7, and 7/8), and one is directed to rank the four days according to preference. “Placement in the event is not guaranteed and will be based on availability,” explains the form, meaning you don’t necessarily get your first choice. Also, if you don’t indicate a preference, “you will automatically be placed based on availability.”

Seems like not too much to ask, and a simple solution to last year’s problem. There will be those who complain about having not their first choice come July, but those complaints won’t be nearly as loud or significant as what we heard last year from those who were shut out of the Main Event.

The juice. Glancing at the structure sheets for this year’s events, the “juice” — that is, the amount taken out of the prize pool as “entry fees” and “for tournament staff” — appears to be the same for most of the events with just a couple of exceptions. For the $1,500 and $2,000 buy-in events, a total of 10% will be withheld this year as opposed to 9% last year.

Of course, those $1,000 events (eight total this year) also have 10% taken out, as will the Casino Employees Event No. 1 ($500 buy-in). The larger the buy-in, the lower the percentages, e.g., the $50,000 “Poker Player’s Championship” (Event No. 2) will have just 4% taken out, just like the $40K event last year. A total of 6% is taken from the prize pool for the $10,000 buy-in events, including the Main Event.

All those $1,000 events. The addition of those extra $1,000 buy-in NLH events attracted a lot of attention when the schedule was first announced. If you recall, there was one — called a “Stimulus Special” — last time around, while this time there are six. The Ladies Event (No. 22) and the Seniors Event (No. 34) also remain $1,000 buy-in events.

One might think that adding all of those low buy-in events — while still keeping the same overall total of 57 events — might have altered the WSOP landscape, class-wise. That is, are the low buy-in events taking over the schedule? Actually, no. In 2009, there were 38 events with buy-ins $2,500 or lower. In 2010, there are 37. And we’re looking at the same number of $10,000 buy-in events (10), too, plus once again a couple of biggies (the $25,000 six-handed NLH Event No. 52 & the $50K “Player’s Championship).

The clock is ticking. The other thing that TOC announcement has done is made me more aware that we’re only a little over ten weeks away from the thing kicking off, thanks to that Jack Link’s Beef Jerky countdown clock staring you right in the face on the WSOP home page.

Won’t be long. Jeez, I can almost smell the beef, water, sugar, salt, dried soy sauce, maltodextrin, fructose, monosodium glutamate, flavorings, hydrolyzed corn protein, sodium erythorbate, paprika extract, and sodium nitrate now.

The news of that WSOP Tournament of Champions got me looking at the schedule for this summer once again, something I hadn’t really done much since it was first announced back in December. You can check out the 2010 WSOP schedule in full here.

A few items of note here as I look over the sucker once more.

No Main Event on Fourth of July. This year Sunday, July 4 has been scheduled as an off-day for the WSOP — the Main Event this year begins on July 5. If you recall, in 2009 the Fourth of July (a Saturday) was one of the four Day Ones for the Main Event (Day 1b), and drew only 873 players, the lowest of any of the Day Ones. That helped create the fiasco that was Day 1d, when 2,809 players ended up playing while hundreds more were turned away.

Then again, it isn’t quite right to call July 4 “off-day” for the WSOP this year, as it looks as though two other events — Event No. 54, the last of the six open-field $1,000 no-limit hold’em tourneys & Event No. 56, a $2,500 NLH event — will be playing their final tables that day. And the TOC final table (also scheduled for July 4) will make three. Am glad, though, that the schedule-makers saw the problem with trying to get folks out to start a new tourney — esp. the Main Event — on the Fourth of July.

Everyone who wants to gets to play the Main Event this year. Preregistration is open for all 57 bracelet events, and those registering to play in the Main Event will find a section of the form noting how “you may request which First Day you prefer to start.” All four days are listed (7/5, 7/6, 7/7, and 7/8), and one is directed to rank the four days according to preference. “Placement in the event is not guaranteed and will be based on availability,” explains the form, meaning you don’t necessarily get your first choice. Also, if you don’t indicate a preference, “you will automatically be placed based on availability.”

Seems like not too much to ask, and a simple solution to last year’s problem. There will be those who complain about having not their first choice come July, but those complaints won’t be nearly as loud or significant as what we heard last year from those who were shut out of the Main Event.

The juice. Glancing at the structure sheets for this year’s events, the “juice” — that is, the amount taken out of the prize pool as “entry fees” and “for tournament staff” — appears to be the same for most of the events with just a couple of exceptions. For the $1,500 and $2,000 buy-in events, a total of 10% will be withheld this year as opposed to 9% last year.

Of course, those $1,000 events (eight total this year) also have 10% taken out, as will the Casino Employees Event No. 1 ($500 buy-in). The larger the buy-in, the lower the percentages, e.g., the $50,000 “Poker Player’s Championship” (Event No. 2) will have just 4% taken out, just like the $40K event last year. A total of 6% is taken from the prize pool for the $10,000 buy-in events, including the Main Event.

All those $1,000 events. The addition of those extra $1,000 buy-in NLH events attracted a lot of attention when the schedule was first announced. If you recall, there was one — called a “Stimulus Special” — last time around, while this time there are six. The Ladies Event (No. 22) and the Seniors Event (No. 34) also remain $1,000 buy-in events.

One might think that adding all of those low buy-in events — while still keeping the same overall total of 57 events — might have altered the WSOP landscape, class-wise. That is, are the low buy-in events taking over the schedule? Actually, no. In 2009, there were 38 events with buy-ins $2,500 or lower. In 2010, there are 37. And we’re looking at the same number of $10,000 buy-in events (10), too, plus once again a couple of biggies (the $25,000 six-handed NLH Event No. 52 & the $50K “Player’s Championship).

The clock is ticking. The other thing that TOC announcement has done is made me more aware that we’re only a little over ten weeks away from the thing kicking off, thanks to that Jack Link’s Beef Jerky countdown clock staring you right in the face on the WSOP home page.

Won’t be long. Jeez, I can almost smell the beef, water, sugar, salt, dried soy sauce, maltodextrin, fructose, monosodium glutamate, flavorings, hydrolyzed corn protein, sodium erythorbate, paprika extract, and sodium nitrate now.

Yesterday it was announced that there will be a “Tournament of Champions” at this summer’s World Series of Poker, reviving an event that last officially took place in 2006. The new TOC will be a 27-player freeroll tournament with a $1 million prize pool, $500,000 of which will go to the champions’ champion.

The field will include 20 players voted on via an internet poll. Only “living WSOP bracelet winners” are eligible as candidates. (No dead guys!) In his article about the event, Stephen A. Murphy notes there are currently 521 living bracelet holders.

Only one vote per email address, so ballot-box stuffing will only work to the extent that a person uses multiple emails. Voting is now open and will remain so through June 15. One can track how the voting is going by checking the current “Top 50” vote-getters (presented in random order) on the WSOP site. Should be interesting to watch that list over the next three months to see which players prove most popular.

Five more spots will be filled by the TOC winners from its last incarnation (2004-2006), Annie Duke, Mike Matusow, and Mike Sexton, plus last year’s WSOP Main Event winner Joe Cada and WSOPE Main Event winner Barry Shulman. The last two seats are being reserved for “wild card exceptions” — no word as yet what that means, although Harrah’s VP Ty Stewart has said it could be that those spots will be taken by winners of online tourneys.

Sounds like the TOC, like the Main Event, will have its own delay (of sorts) insofar as the tourney is set to begin on Sunday, June 27 and then conclude on the following Sunday, July 4 (an off-day for the Main Event). This will be a televised event, too (on ESPN, natch).

I’m referring to this as TOC 3.0 because the “original” TOC — the one envisioned by Mike Sexton in the late 1990s and run from 1999-2001 at the Orleans Casino — while not specifically connected with the WSOP, not only shared the same name but had a couple of features not completely unrelated to those of the new TOC.

That original Tournament of Champions lasted for three years (1999-2001). There was an entry fee ($1,500 the first year, and $2,000 the next two), but it was not an open tournament. Rather, one earned the right to enter by various means, including winning a WSOP bracelet, winning a TOC-sanctioned event, winning the TOC itself, or being a member of the Poker Hall of Fame.

Reading about the original TOC online, I’ve encountered conflicting reports on those qualifications, but you get the picture. The idea was to create a “champions” event involving the best of the best — sort of like the “Tour Championship” that comes at the end of the year in golf to which only the top money winners for the year are invited.

One other nifty aspect of the original TOC — it was a mixed-game event that featured different games throughout. The first two days players rotated between limit hold’em, Omaha eight-or-better, and seven-card stud. Then on the final day, the last 27 players played no-limit hold’em.

That first year, 1999, there were 664 entrants, and David Chiu was the winner, with Louis Asmo finishing second and Doyle Brunson third. There was a somewhat famous hand between Chiu and Asmo at the final table, one in which following some preflop action Chiu folded pocket kings face up, and Asmo revealed he held pocket aces. Click here to read Lee Munzer’s description of that hand, along with an interview with Asmo.

In 2000, 440 players entered the event, with a computer programmer named Spencer Sun taking the title. The great poker reporter Andy Glazer participated that year (as he did in ’99, I believe), and finished a respectable 35th. Glazer reported on the event for PokerPages, and you can read what he had to say here: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.

In 2001, there were 402 entries, and Brian Saltus won, defeating T.J. Cloutier heads up. Scotty Nguyen finished third, and Miami John Cernuto fourth. Lee Munzer wrote up the first day of action for PokerPages here (giving Andy Glazer a chance to concentrate on playing), then Glazer wrote up Day 2 and Day 3.

The TOC was discontinued, then the name was used again for that one-table, ten-player event won by Annie Duke in 2004. I mentioned this one last week — no entry fee, $2 million prize pool, winner-take-all. Harrah’s had recently acquired the WSOP, and as they donated the prize pool, the TOC became associated with the WSOP.

In 2005, 111 players earned their way into the event by winning either WSOP bracelets or WSOP Circuit events. A bit of a hubbub that year also as three additional players — Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, and Johnny Chan — were allowed to play as “sponsor exemptions,” and in fact all three did well, finishing 13th (Chan), 10th (Brunson), and third (Hellmuth). Mike Matusow won the event and the $1,000,000 first prize. The rest of the prize pool — another $1 million — was divided among the other eight players who made the final table.

In 2006, the TOC was reduced to a 27-player invitational tourney, with the nine WSOP Main Event final tablists and 11 WSOP Circuit event winners all playing along with seven other “exemptions.” Mike Sexton won that year, defeating Daniel Negreanu heads-up. Again, the prize pool — donated by Harrah’s — totaled $2 million, with half of that going to Sexton for winning.

Now, after a four-year hiatus, the TOC is back. Already seeing debates on Twitter and in the forums about the new format. Kind of a popularity contest, really, as far as who will primarily make up the field. But it should prove interesting nonetheless — another good buzz-creator.

I see Dr. Pauly has already shared his voting guide. Who is getting my vote? Billy Baxter FTW!