DAILY BUZZ: EPT Berlin, Million Dollar Man, Pa. Poker Politics

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DAILY BUZZ: EPT Berlin, Million Dollar Man, Pa. Poker Politics

Jason Kirk | December 23, 2009

Welcome to the BLUFF Daily Buzz, where we scour the entire internet for all the latest news in and around the world of poker. If it involves chips and cards, or people known to associate with chips and cards, we’re there.

Germany prepares to go poker-crazy with new EPT stop next spring

EPT Berlin will play out in this very German, futuristic-looking all-glass structure built specially for the event.

The European Poker Tour today announced a major new addition to its Season 6 schedule: the German capital of Berlin.

The EPT will visit Germany’s largest city from March 2-7, 2010, for a €5,300 main event with a guaranteed first-place prize of €1,000,000. The tournament will be played out in an all-glass building on Marlene-Dietrich-Platz constructed especially for the event; with a capacity of 1,000 players, the new building should be a sight to behold once the tournament is in full swing. The new venue will make EPT Berlin’s capacity the second-largest on the tour, behind only that of the tour’s next stop, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas.

With the explosion of poker’s popularity in Germany in the last few years, the move to a new, larger venue in the country’s capital seems like another bright move from the innovative poker minds at the EPT. The industrial city of Dortmund has played host to the EPT for several years now but the growth in demand meant a new venue was necessary. All of the European poker community’s eyes will be on Berlin in March to see what will be the largest poker tournament ever held in Deutschland - and plenty of people in the U.S. will be paying attention, too.

Full information on EPT Berlin is available on the official tournament website.

“I saw the opportunity and I said I wanted to make the best of it”

On Monday I told you about Mike Kosowski, the 21-year New York Police Department veteran and 9/11 first responder who defeated Daniel Negreanu heads-up for the top prize on the PokerStars.net Million Dollar Challenge television show. Today ESPN’s Andrew Feldman posted a more poker-centric feature on Kosowski, talking to him about his experience leading up to appearing on the show and eventually playing conquering the four-time WSOP bracelet winner for a million dollars.

Despite only being initially selected for the Million Dollar Challenge as an alternate, Kosowski made the journey to Los Angeles for the show’s taping and took advantage of a fluke to win his way to the final. “When one window closes, another opens,” he said. “I saw the opportunity and I said I wanted to make the best of it. It was a now or never deal and it was my shot. Later, on the finale and about to face one of the poker players he most admires, Kosowski was nervous - “I was afraid to pick the [cards] up with my right hand since my hands were shaking due to nerve damage from 9/11,” he said - but the nerves disappeared once the match got going and in the end the former lawman came out on top.

For his part, Negreanu was thrilled to see Kosowski win. “The final episode is without a doubt the greatest poker show experience I’ve ever been involved with,” he told ESPN. “It is real, life changing drama for a guy who wouldn’t have an opportunity to win money like that in a tournament. You couldn’t have scripted the finale any better if you tried.”

(Mike Kosowski wins $1 million by beating Daniel Negreanu heads-up - ESPN)

Poker still caught up in Pennsylvania politics

The future of a table games bill that would allow for live, legal, regulated poker at casinos in Pennsylvania is as clear as mud right now while the state legislature continues trying to hammer out differences between various interested parties - parties whose interests cross standard political party lines and who can seemingly agree on nothing, not even how close the bill is to passing.

Governor Ed Rendell, the Democrat who has been one of the bill’s big proponents, says the chance of it passing by his Jan. 8th deadline to avoid laying off state employees is “nil.” “I have waited and waited and waited on this. Right now I am not sure we will ever have a table games bill,” he said. Meanwhile, Democratic State Rep. Dante Santoni, the chairman of the House Gaming Oversight Committee overseeing the bill, is “hopeful” that continuing House-Senate talks to reach a compromise bill will resolve the differences that have prevented the bill from being passed into law.

The original 2004 law that allowed the slots casinos to be opened in Pennsylvania provided two licenses for small “resort casinos,” which would each have some 500 slot machines and also offer table games and poker. With one of those licenses already awarded and a second up in the air, some members of the House have apparently been trying to increase their chances of landing the remaining license by pushing for the new table games bill to allow a third resort casino license. The third casino license was included in the bill that the Democrat-controlled House passed, but the Republican-controlled Senate rejected that bill and sent it back to the House, leading to the talks that have Rep. Santoni so hopeful.

There’s more than just poker hanging in the balance, of course. Some $250 million in expected revenue from the table games bill was figured into the 2009-10 state budget, and the governor says he’ll have to lay off 1,000 state workers if the bill doesn’t pass. And even if the bill passes, current disagreements over how to divvy up the tax money that’s designated for the local areas that host the casinos suggest that in the end somebody will end up being unhappy with the outcome. For instance, Philadelphia, which is slated to get two casinos, wants the money generated by the table games bill to be given directly to its city government; the state, however, wants one of its departments to dole out the money through grants to various government agencies and non-profit organizations.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette talked with the governor about the table games bill’s chance of passage in this article, while the Philadelphia Daily News covered that city’s struggle with the state over control of the projected revenue from bill in this article.

Does the president really draw to gutshot straights?

In a post yesterday at Washington publication The Hill’s Pundits Blog, John Feehery played on President Barack Obama’s reputation for being a poker player in his days in the Illinois legislature to look at the president’s attempts to pass a national healthcare bill through the lens of common poker mistakes he’s made along the way. According to Feehery, the president has a number of leaks in his game that have been exposed when he overplayed hands both strong and weak, fell in love with his cards, and drew to the inside straight.

Whether you agree with his analysis or not, it’s clear that Feehery has some knowledge of the game. That puts him a step ahead of journalists all over the English-speaking world, who tend to be more loose-passive with their poker metaphors - and even the occasional Hollywood production.

(Playing healthcare poker - The Hill’s Pundits Blog)

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