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.

PartyPoker founder cuts ties, sells remaining shares in company

In many ways, the worldwide online poker boom can be traced back a single source: PartyPoker. Now one of its founders has made the last moves to sever his ties with the company that made him one of the richest men in India.

Anurag Dikshit, whose name we swear to you is pronounced “dix-it,” programmed the early software that powered PartyGaming’s poker and casino software. After Party pulled out of the U.S. market in the post-UIGEA days, he cut a 2008 deal with the U.S. Department of Justice that saw him agree to plead guilty to breaking United States gambling laws and pay a $300 million fine.

Dikshit began the process of selling off his shares in PartyGaming last year, and with yesterday’s sale of his remaining 38.8 million shares he no longer owns any interest in the company. He will most likely continue the charity work that he began after amassing his fortune, and he could still face a two-year prison sentence in December of this year in relation to his 2008 deal with the DOJ. Shares of PartyGaming were up slightly after yesterday’s news yesterday but dropped 5% today.

(PartyGaming founder Anurag Dikshit severs ties with company after £114m share sale - Telegraph.co.uk)

Daniel Negreanu: not the first guy you'd expect to see eating in a Waffle House.

Kid Poker at Waffle House

Daniel Negreanu may be a vegan, but that didn’t stop him from taking a trip to regional greasy-spoon favorite Waffle House with a group of poker players in Mississippi last night. World Poker Tour tournament reporter BJ Nemeth, well known for his love of WH, was there along with the group and tweeted their entire stay at the restaurant.

The only other patron in the joint just happened to be a fan of the second-winningest tournament poker player of all-time, but by the end of the night all the staff were as well - Negreanu apparently paid out more than $200 in “goofy freeroll prop bets” with them. He also won one of his bets when he offered $5,000 to one of the other players to eat 10 saltine cracker in one minute. Folks who’ve seen this one before - it’s a common prop bet, and at least one source says Negreanu learned it from John Juanda at last year’s LA Poker Classic - won’t be surprised to know that Nemeth says the cracker-eater didn’t get anywhere close to winning the five large.

Nemeth has video of the cracker bet, but he said he won’t be posting it publicly.

Who else is betting on crackers in Mississippi? Find out on our Poker Tweets page.

Pam Brunson Hired to Manage DoylesRoom.com’s Brunson 10

Doyle Brunson has decided to keep management of his hand-picked “future of poker” crew, the Brunson 10, in the family by naming his daughter Pam Brunson to handle the group.

The younger Brunson, who has been known to play a tournament or two herself, will be responsible for managing the group’s schedules and PR. The announcement comes on the heels of DoylesRoom.com hiring new top-level executives earlier this month along with others in the business intelligence and product management departments.

“Mark my words, 2010 will be the year of The Brunson 10,” Doyle said in a press release announcing the move. “I’ll be spending the next 11 months filling the remaining six spots with online poker players who’ve proven themselves. Thanks to the smartest people in the industry now on board at DoylesRoom.com to help, that task should be a really easy one.”

Around the Table

Phil Laak is now the proud owner of his own online poker room on the Cake Poker Network, Unabomber Poker; apparently “Laak Poker” was already taken … Watch the 2008 WSOP’s last woman standing, Tiffany Michelle, have a bizarre and ill-advised talk with FOX Business comparing the president’s national health care plans to poker strategy here … ESPN’s poker news web show, Inside Deal, returned for a second season today with world champ Joe Cada and the Poker Player Alliance’s John Pappas … Two minor online poker networks, Everleaf Gaming and the Universal Poker Network, announced a merger into a new network that will supposedly soon expand to include former Brunson 10 member Alec “traheho” Torelli’s new poker room … American pro soccer player Charlie Davies had a car accident last October that required doctors to peel off his face to repair facial fractures, but now he’s all healed up and playing $5/$10 NLHE at the Bellagio.

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.

“The Banker” spotted at Bellagio

If Andy Beal had the time to read the 2+2 thread about him at Bellagio, this is probably the face he'd make (Photo: Amy Calistri)

Andy Beal, the billionaire Texas banker who’s currently trying to buy Trump Entertainment and its Atlantic City casinos, was in Las Vegas for the board meeting of Beal Bank this weekend. Like so many other business travelers, Beal decided to spend a little time at the tables during his time in Sin City - but unlike almost all the rest of them, he spent his time in Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio.

Beal has been one of the biggest financial winners in the current economy and his battles with the Corporation are the stuff of poker legend, so it’s no real surprise that he was spotted playing playing with Jennifer Harman, Phil Ivey, and Eli Elezra. There’s no word on what the stakes were or whether Beal plans to start up another challenge, but that hasn’t stopped the 2+2 NVG thread on Beal being in Vegas from spiraling out of control with all sorts of speculation.

Take a look back at Beal’s second round against the Corporation with Michael Craig’s reports from the April & May 2006 issues of Bluff, archived here and here.

Senate aides say UIGEA sponsor holding up Treasury appointments

National Journal, the same political publication which not too long ago looked at the president through the prism of poker, reported this week that UIGEA champion Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the ranking minority member on the Senate Finance Committee, has used his position to put the kibosh on the president’s nominations for positions with jurisdiction over tax policy and international finance. According to Senate aides who spoke with the publication, the move is in retaliation for the administration’s early December 2009 decision to delay implementing the UIGEA regulations.

Fox Business correspondent John Stossel took note of Kyl’s actions on his blog a few days ago. “Yes, some people make mistakes in online gambling, but others gamble responsibly and enjoy it,” Stossel wrote. “It’s a mystery to me why politicians like Barney Frank understand personal freedom when it comes to things like gambling, but want the government to strangle economic freedom, and why politicians like Kyl get so much right but get hysterical about gambling. A good rule of thumb: if you were smart enough to earn your money, you know better than government busybodies what to do with it.

(Right-Wing Nanny State - John Stossel’s Take)

The more you win, the more you lose

A doctorate student at Cornell University has studied millions of hands of shorthanded no limit hold’em cash games online and come to an interesting conclusion: the more individual hands of poker you win, the less money you’ll win.

Sociology doctorate candidate Kyle Siler, himself a poker player, used PokerTracker to analyze hands from 27 million hands of six-max NLHE gathered at low, medium, and high stakes. He found that multiple small wins didn’t make up for occasional big losses, noting that the phenomenon “coincides with observations in behavioral economics that people overweigh their frequent small gains vis-à-vis occasional large losses, and vice versa.” Among the other interesting findings in the study: small pairs (from 2-2 to 7-7) were actually more valuable to small-stakes players than medium pairs (from 8-8 to J-J) because the players better understood their value.

“Riskiness may be profitable, especially in higher-stakes games, but it also increases the variance and uncertainty in payoffs,” wrote Siler. “Living one’s life, calibrating multiple strategies and managing a bankroll is particularly challenging when enduring wild and erratic swings in short-term luck and results…given the challenges of optimizing one’s mindset and strategies, both in the card game and the meta-games of psychology, rationality and socio-economic arbitrage which hover beneath it.”

(Online Poker Study: The More Hands You Win, the More Money You Lose - ScienceDaily)

Around the Table:

After going his entire career without a seven-figure score, Barry Shulman earned his second such result in the last six months yesterday with a third-place finish at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure worth $1.35 million … Financial publisher Kiplinger’s is using poker to help investors … Thomas Koral earned the biggest cash of his five-year professional poker career when he ran Q-Q into Ty Heiman’s A-A to bust in eighth place at the PCA final table, walking with $201,300 to top the $126,120 he won for a runner-up finish at the 2008 WSOP Circuit main event at Horseshoe Hammond in Indiana … Recently departed StoxPoker instructor Dusty “Leatherass” Schmidt has a new gig with online training site DragTheBar.com … A former Atlantic City poker dealer was returned to the U.S. from his home in Ghana this week by the FBI to face charges in connection with armed robberies at six casinos and a bank.

After a full year of waiting to see what would happen with regards to their favorite game’s legal status in the United States, online poker players received a big reprieve on the first day of the December when the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department agreed to push back implementation of UIGEA regulations to July 1, 2010. Rep. Barney Frank immediately held hearings on his two bills intended to legalize and regulate the game, and while there was no movement on legislation at the time the overall reaction to the hearings in the poker community was positive.

Jan Skampa became the EPT's second straight hometown winner when he conquered EPT PRague

On the live tournament trail, Czech sensation Jan Skampa pulled off another EPT hometown hero performance when he won the tour’s Prague main event. For outlasting the likes of six-time EPT final tablist Luca Pagano and two-time 2009 WSOP final tablist Anthony Roux, Skampa took home €682,000 ($1,015,000 US). Daniel Alaei won the Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic at Bellagio, overcoming a tough final table that featured Josh Arieh, Faraz Jaka, Shawn Buchanan, and Scotty Nguyen to grab $1,428,230 and add a WPT title to the WSOP bracelet he won earlier in the year. And WSOP Main Event/WSOP Europe Main Event final tablist James Akenhead finally grabbed a win after two ninth-place finishes in those high-profile events, overcoming Juha Helppi, Dag Martin Mikkelsen, and Luke “FullFlush” Schwartz to take down the Poker Million title and $500,000.

Online, high stakes mystery player “Isildur1” continued to dominate the headlines in December. He kicked off the month with a combined single-day loss of $2.5 million to Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, Brian Townsend, Patrik Antonius and Cole South, and then doubled up on that loss within two days. But just when everybody thought he was done, the Swede came roaring back with a combined $2.5 million win against Townsend and Sahamies. Then came the biggest bombshell in Isildur1’s short time atop the poker world: Cardrunners pro Brian Hastings took Isildur1 for a more than $4 million. Hastings talked to ESPN’s Gary Wise shortly afterward and let slip that he had benefited from analysis of hands Isildur1 played against fellow pros Townsend and South, though, tainting the win in some people’s eyes and costing Townsend his red pro status for one month on Full Tilt for breaking the site’s Terms of Service.

In other news, the WSOP announced its 2010 schedule; American player “joeingram1” broke a week-old record for most hands of poker played in a 24-hour period by logging more than 50,000 hands in a single day and won tens of thousands of dollars in prop bets on the feat; and poker book publisher 2+2 sued Dutch Boyd for trademark infringement.

This wraps up our look back at the year in poker. You can catch up on some of the recaps you might have missed below:

• January
• February
• March
• April
• May
• June
• July
• August
• September
• October
• November

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.

National Post interviews Bodog founder Calvin Ayre

Bodog founder Calvin Ayre has done pretty well for a guy raised on a Saskatchewan pig farm. He’s been living a cozy life of semi-retirement since the UIGEA passed in 2006, nestled in his Antigua abode and avoiding the United States like the government would come after him if he ever traveled there. Canada’s National Post caught up with the billionaire this week and talked to him about the UIGEA and his future plans, and the result makes for a pretty good read.

After talking about the other online gambling CEOs who were arrested upon entering the U.S., Ayre says he thinks he’s been left alone because he voluntarily exited the American market upon UIGEA’s passage. “I don’t think any of us are important in the big picture,” he says of the heads of online gambling firms. “The U.S. has a few other problems to think about these days. It’s flattering but there are much bigger issues right now.” As for the loss of his $320 million U.S. revenue stream thanks to the UIGEA, Ayre pretty much gave a Zen shoulder-shrug when asked about it. “It’s as if you owned an airplane and it crashed. You cannot cry about it. Things happen. You just have to deal with it. I have a nice life.”

Next year that “nice life” will include owning a new Bodog poker network open to American players, due to open by September; Ayre says that poker is a “grey area” in the U.S. but that “there are lots of American companies with poker sites.” He is also branching out into a Bodog-branded coffee business with a string of coffee bars throughout Latin America - “possibly with gambling too.”

(Calvin Ayre online gaming tycoon - National Post)

Harrah’s Atlantic City hosts WSOP Circuit

The WSOP Circuit is ending its 2009 calendar year with a stop at Harrah’s Atlantic City, and the East Coast poker community has turned up in droves for the first seven chances at a gold championship ring.

More than 4,700 players have competed in the first seven events of the WSOPC at Harrah’s, which has been marked by a few records for the now five-year-old tournament series. In the second event, $560 NLHE, Doug “Rico” Carli of Alliance, Ohio, cashed for the 40th time in a WSOPC tournament. He extended his lead in that category over his next closest competitor, Dean Shultz, who has cashed 21 times; unfortunately for Carli he missed out on the championship ring when he fell short in 2nd place. Then in Event 3, $340 NLHE, another record was tied when thoroughbred horse racer and breeder Mark “Pegasus” Smith won the tournament to capture his fourth WSOPC title, matching the previous accomplishment of Men “The Master” Nguyen.

Fans of 1980s action movies will give a little cheer for the latest WSOPC champion, Ronald Vitello, who took down last night’s $340 NLHE event. A 40-year veteran of the film industry, Vitello served as the editor on two 80s classics: the Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Bloodsport and Chuck Norris’ Missing In Action.

There are still 10 more events to come, including the $5,150 Championship Event, which begins tomorrow, and a super satellite to the 2010 WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas.

Winter Bayou Poker Challenge in New Orleans

While the East Coast goes poker-crazy in Atlantic City, the South’s rounders are gathering in New Orleans for a fourth straight year at the 2009 Winter Bayou Poker Challenge. Previous years have seen more than $8 million in prize money awarded, and with this year’s schedule expanded to include 15 events (compared to last year’s nine) that number is sure to jump by a good amount. The $3,000 Championship Event, which begins next Friday, will run for three days and is expected to draw several hundred players.

The official results for two events are already in the books, with Santiago Prats of Mandeville, La., claiming the top prize in Event 1 and Ali Jafari of Houston, Tex., taking top honors in Event 2. Both tournaments featured $300 buy-ins and the total prize money awarded between them was $76,908 - not a bad start to this year’s Winter BPC. Events at Harrah’s New Orleans continue through the 20th, when the $300 Seniors Event will wrap up the schedule.

UBOC schedule released

With $4 million in guaranteed prize pools, there should be plenty of action and more than a few big winners over the 12-day run of this year’s UB Online Championship.

The schedule runs the gamut of poker’s disciplines, from the omnipresent no-limit hold’em to events in stud, Omaha, and mixed-game formats, and UB’s full roster of pros will be hosting and playing in the events. Buy-ins for the series range from $109 to $2,600, while the concurrently running Mini-UBOC will feature most of the same games with buy-ins one-tenth the size. Probably the best bet in the entire series, though, is UB’s Bubble Buster promotion: anyone who cashes 11 times over the 18-tournament schedule will win $1,000,000, with smaller numbers of cashes earning other prizes ranging from a $10,000 freeroll entry to buy-ins to the 2010 Aruba and WSOP main events.

There are a few other promotions going on, too, so be sure to check out the UBOC website for full details and the series schedule.

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.

Pennsylvania poker’s fate caught up in political bickering

The debate over table games legislation in Pennsylvania that would let the state’s slot-machine casinos spread live poker games has halted once again.

Democrats, who control the state’s House of Representatives by a margin of 104-99, need 102 votes to pass their bill. But when several of the party’s members were absent for “personal, medical, or family matters” from this afternoon’s scheduled debate, the leadership knew it didn’t have the votes to pass the bill and instead called off the session entirely and then blamed the Republican opposition for holding up progress by refusing to compromise. The Republicans responded with a press conference accusing the Democrats of holding hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for three of the state’s universities “hostage.”

The House isn’t expected to return to a full voting session until next Monday, which means the hostage situation will continue over the weekend.

(Pa. Democrats delay gambling bill; GOP cries foul - Philadelphia Inquirer)

Record-setter: “I never thought this story would be so popular”

Last week Joe “ingram1” Ingram set the world record for the most hands of poker played in a single day with just over 50,000. More importantly, he made more than $32,000 in side bets from other poker players. The whole poker world took notice, but Ingram told Poker News Daily today that he never thought he would garner any attention from attempting the feat. “I never expected there to be articles around the internet and hearing about it on newscasts like PokerRoad,” he said. “There are sites in every language that have a story about my accomplishment. I never thought this story would be so popular.”

Ingram says people were “lined up” to give him action because he had previously finished in the red over a 25,000-hand session and also dropped more than 20 buy-ins over a single session. Despite those indicators, he managed to pull off his 50K session will a solid profit. Given that, he’s setting his sights even higher for next year: he wants to book a million hands of 6-max in a month while showing a profit, with the goal of booking $100,000 of prop bet action.

(Joe “joeingram1” Ingram Recaps 50,000 Online Poker Hands Prop Bet - Poker News Daily)

CNBC expose on online gambling to air next week

Last year more than a few poker people were worried about a 60 Minutes feature on the superuser scandals at UltimateBet and Absolute Poker causing problems for the poker industry as a whole, but the show put out a well-done report that ultimately did more to put poker in the public eye than anything else. Now cable network CNBC is tackling not just online poker but the larger issue of online gambling in general with a report set to air next week called “CNBC Investigates: The Big Business of Illegal Gambling.”

While the show looks at online sportsbooks and freelance bookies, online poker should get at least a little bit of attention in the segment featuring two Congressmen on opposite sides of the legalization issue: Jim McDermott (D-WA), who wants to regulate and tax games of skill like poker, and UIGEA scribe Bob Goodlatte (R-VA). It probably doesn’t bode well for online poker that the show’s title uses the phrase “illegal gambling,” but at least we have McDermott, who considers poker a game of skill, there to defend the game.

“CNBC Investigates: The Big Business of Illegal Gambling” will air next Wednesday, December 16th, at 9 p.m. ET on CNBC.

(CNBC Presents “CNBC Investigates: The Big Business of Illegal Gambling)

Hellmuth headed to Oregon

Phil Hellmuth is known to dress up like a general here and there, so maybe it’s most fitting to say that he’s invading Oregon this weekend for a series of strategy session and tournaments called Hold’em with Hellmuth.

The Poker Brat will host sessions in Eugene (Friday, 12/11) and Portland (Saturday/Sunday, 12/12-13) where for a modest $300 his fans can talk strategy with the man himself and then play in an invitational poker tournament with Hellmuth and other attendees. For a slightly higher price tag of $3,000, though, Poker Brat fans can upgrade to the Gold package, which includes a photo with the man, a special “Dom Perignon Dinner,” and a signed copy of Hellmuth’s new book, Deal Me In. It’s not going to be all Hellmuth, all the time; the 11-time WSOP bracelet winner is bringing a crew with him, too. Brandon Cantu, Mark “P0ker H0″ Kroon, Mike “Wisco” Murray, Gary “Debo34″ Debernardi, and Jordan “Octavian_C” Rich will also be on hand to share their tips with attendees and take to the felt at both sessions.

The full details are available on Hellmuth’s website, PokerBrat.com, under the “Tour Across America” banner.

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.

Online poker will kill us all, says Illinois professor

Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of legalized online gambling. Then there’s University of Illinois business and legal policy professor John W. Kindt, who campaigns against all forms of gambling like God told him to do it in a dream. If you believe Kindt, any sort of legal and regulated online gambling policy will pretty much be the end of the world as we know it.

In an article published yesterday in R&D Magazine, Kindt stops just short of saying that implementing Rep. Barney Frank’s bills to overturn UIGEA would trigger the Mayan calendar’s armageddon clause. But he does predict that the entire global economy would collapse because of a speculative bubble that would grow up around publicly-traded companies like PartyGaming. It sounds like the plot of a B-movie produced by Alabama’s Rep. Spencer Bachus, but the professor says it’s exactly what will happen if Frank gets his way.

“Money that should be spent on cars, refrigerators and other goods that build the economy and create jobs would instead be wasted on Internet gambling in every living room, at every work desk and at every school desk,” says Kindt. “Internet gambling is known as the crack cocaine of creating new, addicted gamblers.”

You know you have to take someone seriously when they call anything “the crack cocaine” of anything else, but unfortunately after that great start Professor Kindt never really gets going. He never explains, for instance, how legal online poker would be any different than, say, cheap online stock trading or forex, or the difference between “gambling addicts” (some 4 percent of young people, according to Kindt) and “problem gamblers” (which he says are between 8 and 12 percent of young people).

But hey, it’s probably hard to catch your breath when you’re so busy screaming that the sky is falling - so the professor gets a pass for now. If anyone starts taking him at face value, though, we’ll be looking for answers.

(Online gambling a threat to global economy, U. of I. Expert says - R&D Magazine)

Poker After Dark makes yearly top-ten TV list

Whoever said that non-poker people can’t appreciate an unfiltered version of the game on television never talked to the staff of the Baltimore City Paper. The alt-weekly released its “Year in Television” special today ranking the year’s top 10 television shows according to the City Paper staff, and making a surprise appearance at #9 is none other than NBC’s Poker After Dark.

“Seriously, originally we started watching NBC’s Poker After Dark weeknights because with the low voices and steady clinking of poker chips it’s a really good TV show to fall asleep to,” the review begins. “But now we’re in so deep we even understand the difference between this and the weekend Poker After Dark: The Director’s Cut, that’s how deep we are into this poker sh*t, and we’re practicing on the internet now so we can move to Vegas and play Texas Hold ‘em while we’re wearing sunglasses.”

Cheers to you, Baltimore City Paper, we’ll look forward to seeing you at the tables. And congratulations to Poker After Dark for connecting with the mainstream!

(The Year in Television - Baltimore City Paper)

Rousso branches out again - to Hustler

Vanessa Rousso has made more than a few high-profile mainstream media appearances this year, what with her GoDaddy sponsorship and her spot in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Now she’s branching out into a new forum that’s a little less mainstream, definitely less “niche” than poker, and definitely unexpected: Hustler Magazine.

Today Wicked Chops Poker posted the cover of the February 2010 issue of the Larry Flynt-published girlie mag, which declares that Rousso “shows her hand” on the pages inside. As you might expect, there’s absolutely zero indication that Rousso will appear nude in the magazine a la Jennifer “Jennicide” Leigh in Playboy. Instead the cover teaser appears to be a ploy to get you to think she’ll be nude and buy the magazine only to discover she’s talking game theory for two pages (or something else equally titillating).

At least when you receive that letdown you’ll still have articles on Great White rising from the ashes and the secret of being psychic to keep you busy. And then there are always the Girls of Facebook…

(Vanessa Rousso in Hustler Magazine - Wicked Chops Poker)

Mini-FTOPS XIV begins tonight

And finally, you won’t want to forget about the Mini-FTOPS XIV that begins tonight over at Full Tilt Poker. Running for the next week and a half, the tournament series features one $266 buy-in event and 24 others with buy-ins of $55 or less. If Full Tilt spreads a poker game, chances are it’s included in a schedule that covers everything from stud to Omaha to quadruple NLHE shootouts. All told there’s $4 million guaranteed, and given the popularity of these series there should be more than that up for grabs through December 20th.

The first event, a $22 6-max no limit hold’em tournament with $250,000 guaranteed, starts at 9:00 p.m. ET tonight.

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.

Phil Galfond's high-stakes absence is a "business decision"

Galfond, Dang brothers take a step back

Everyone who’s even remotely aware of high-stakes online poker has been abuzz for weeks now about the juicy matches between “Isildur1” and some of the game’s biggest names. But today Gary Wise at ESPN takes a look at some of the high-stakes regulars who have been conspicuously MIA at those nosebleed tables during the mystery Swede’s romp.

Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, Di “urindanger” Dang, and Hac “trex313” Dang haven’t been playing the biggest games online since Isildur1 showed up. And when it comes down to it, says Galfond, it’s all a business decision. “Every day, someone’s winning $1.5 million and I’d like it to be me, but the risks are bigger too,” he tells Wise in the ESPN piece. “I need to make sure I’m rolled for those games. I just don’t think it’s smart for me to play the best games right now.”

There might be some people who would criticize such a decision, but respected poker pro Barry Greenstein isn’t among them. “It’s good management to avoid the games right now,” he tells Wise. “Even with a small edge, with the volatility ‘Isildur1′ brings, it is way over everyone’s bankroll. We see the railbirds criticize anyone who isn’t a kamikaze pilot, but it’s a sign of maturity if nothing else. If you lose, that money may not be easy to make back again because the poker economy isn’t as good as a couple of years ago.”

The article is worth a read if you’re even remotely interested in the high-stakes goings-on of late, so check it out over at ESPN.com.

(Phil Galfond and other top online players take a step back - ESPN.com)

Australia, the land where the poker boom never died

American know all about the growth of poker in the United States throughout this decade, but relatively few of them know about just how much the game has grown in Australia during the same time. Luckily there’s an expert in the field - 2005 WSOP Main Event champion Joe Hachem - to tell us all about it with a column in today’s Sydney Morning Herald.

Hachem says that poker has only been spread in Australian casinos for the last 23 years, and that even the Crown Casino, which hosts the Aussie Millions every year and is widely regarded as the top poker room in the country, only started to spread poker in 1997. The champ never mentions how his own win in 2005 helped to push the game into a more mainstream spotlight - instead he credits online poker with helping to boost poker’s popularity Down Under. All that growth in the game’s popularity helped to start the Asia Pacific Poker Tour, which saw Grant Levy become the first Aussie to win $1,000,000 in a poker tournament on home soil.

“Obviously we are yet to reach the heights of popularity that the sport has achieved in America, where every major tournament is televised and attracts thousands of live spectators, but the popularity and the competitors continue to grow,” writes Hachem. Well, Joe, we Yanks just hope that the game stays as popular here in the States as it is in Australia - if it does, we’ll all be in good shape for years to come.

(Game’s growth has been great, and it’ll only get bigger - Sydney Morning Herald)

Full Tilt Sit & Go Madness promotion runs this weekend

Anyone who’s ever spent time grinding sit & go tournaments online will agree, there’s no better name for Full Tilt’s latest promotion than the one it already has: Sit & Go Madness. The online giant is offering up an incredible $125,000 in prizes this weekend to players who go crazy for single-table tournaments, from the micro-stakes all the way up to the high stakes, and the only thing required to take part is to play the games you’d already be playing anyway.

Sit & Go Madness is divided into 24 two-hour blocks, during which players’ performance in specially marked green sit & go tables is measured on a leaderboard. Players who finish in the top seven places for each two-hour block will earn cash prizes, with the amount depending on the stakes they’ve been playing; there’s $2,100 up for grabs across five buy-in ranges during each block. Players also earn tickets for the Sit & Go Madness Raffle with each win they book during the promotion, giving them a chance to win tournament dollars, satellite tokens, and items from the Full Tilt Store. And finally there’s the $50,000 Sit & Go Madness Freeroll, open to any player who wins two sit & go tournaments during the promotion, with a top prize estimated to be worth $5,000.

A handful of players already have a head start on you, since the promotion started today at 4:00 p.m. ET, but it’s far from too late to get in on the action. Just head over to Full Tilt and look for the special green sit & go tables for your shot at part of more prizes than you can shake a stick at. Full details are available at the link below.

(Sit & Go Madness - Full Tilt Poker)

A “foolish and futile attempt” to stop online gambling

The Washington Times took notice of the UIGEA and its many contradictions today in an opinion piece written by Reason Magazine senior editor Jacob Sullum. (Disclosure: I provide financial support to the Reason Foundation, which publishes Reason Magazine.)

Sullum characterizes the recent six-month delay in enforcing the UIGEA as a chance for Congress “to reconsider its foolish and futile attempt to stop Americans from betting in their pajamas.” That attempt, one with which online players are intimately familiar, is foolish because it attempted to enforce penalties against “illegal online gambling” without bothering to actually define what such activity was in the first place. As Sullum puts it: “In other words, figuring out which forms of online betting are illegal is so complex and uncertain a task that federal regulators did not even attempt it. Yet that is what they expect financial institutions to do.”

It’s great to see a mainstream source attacking the law that has hamstrung our industry since 2006. And it also warms my dark, poker-playing heart to read somebody in the mainstream call poker “a game of skill that, depending on whom you ask, may not even qualify as gambling.” We just have to hope that messages like Sullum’s reach the eyeballs of people who influence Congressional opinion, helping to shape the upcoming debate on overturning UIGEA.

(Bet Blockers - Washington Times)

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.

House Financial Services Committee hearing held today

The House Financial Services Committee held it hearings on two anti-UIGEA bills today and for poker players, the villain of today’s hearing was no doubt Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL). Bachus played the role of the exaggerating opposition perfectly, claiming that the UIGEA was the will of the American people despite its midnight passage as a rider on a security bill and then citing a letter written by Shawn Henry, Assistant Director of the Cyber Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which claimed that online poker. The letter said that the “technology exists to manipulate online poker games in that it would only take two or three players working in unison to defeat the other players who are not part of the team,” Henry wrote. “The online poker vendors could detect this activity and put in place safeguards to discourage cheating, although it is unclear what the incentive would be for the vendor.”

The Poker Players Alliance quickly released a statement lambasting the letter as another ill-informed attack on online poker that nonetheless demonstrates the need for legal, regulated online games. “Every concern the letter raises is better addressed by licensing and regulation than by prohibition,” said John Pappas, Executive Director of the PPA.  “The letter misconstrues much about the current state of online poker, but it does so in a way that clearly makes the case for why federal oversight is necessary.”

While the Republican Bachus argued fervently against Frank’s bills, the hearing never descended into partisan rhetoric. Other members of Bachus’ own party made statements in support of repealing UIGEA, most notably Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and former presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). A number of financial and gambling industry representatives also testified in favor of Frank’s bills.

Archived video of the entire hearing is available here. Or, for a full blow-by-blow account of the hearing without the pain of pesky video, you can check out Pokerati’s live blog here.

Poker Million final table set

After starting off with 72 players, weeks of preliminary heats, and a little but of downtime so those heats could be shown on television in Europe, the final table of the Poker Million is finally drawing near.

The event is set to be played out live starting at 7:30 p.m. GMT tomorrow. The final table lineup consists of Luke “FullFlush” Schwartz, Peter Vasiliou, Taylor “GreenPlastic” Caby, Dag Martin Mikkelsen, Juha Helppi, and 2009 November Niner James Akenhead. A mystery online qualifier will also be thrown into the mix at the beginning of play. Up for grabs is a top prize of $500,000, while the seventh-place finisher walking away with $50,000.

If you don’t already have someone to root for at the table, consider stopping by Truly Free Poker Training for their “Piece of Taylor” promotion that allows anyone who signs up for a free account to have a chance at winning 1% of Caby’s winnings. Full details are here.

APPT Grand Final continues, repeat High Roller winner

The Asia Pacific Poker Tour continues to wrap up its season at the Star City Casino with the APPT Grand Final, which drew a total of 396 players over the course of three starting flights. Just over half, some 226 players, survived to return today for Day 2, led by Anton Blagov with 166,800 in chips. Aussie WSOP bracelet winner Mark Vos isn’t too far down the standings before the second day begins, but his countryman Joe Hachem won’t be returning as he was eliminated near the end of Day 1C.

The real story of the moment in Sydney, though, is Jarred Graham’s win in the AUD $15,300 High Roller event. It’s not special so much because he won it this year as it is because he also won this event last year. In fact, Graham has now won four tournaments in Australia over the course of the last year and finds himself ranked third in that country’s online poker rankings as “flopnutsonyou.” In the Australian poker culture, Graham’s star is rising fast.

Two new additions to Million Dollar Challenge lineup

The PokerStars.net Million Dollar Challenge just got an added dose of star power thanks to the addition of WSOP Main Event champ Joe Cada and supermodel Joanna Krupa to the show’s lineup.

For those of you who don’t know how the show works, contestants play heads-up matches against a variety of opponents with prizes escalating in value for each consecutive match won. The first two matches are against one of several poker pros or celebrities, while the final two matches are against four-time WSOP bracelet winner Daniel Negreanu. There are prizes all along the way, but anyone who manages to make it through all four heads-up matches will win $1,000,000.

Krupa, who’s been busy this year on Dancing With The Stars, will be one of the show’s first round opponents along with former UFC Light Heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz. Meanwhile the young champ Cada will join his fellow PokerStars pros Chris Moneymaker and Vanessa Rousso as a second-round opponent. Fans will get the chance to see the two new additions in action on Sunday, Dec. 13th

(Supermodel Joanna Krupa, World Series of Poker Champion Joe Cada Added to “PokerStars.net Million Dollar Challenge” Lineup - Marketwire)

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.

New 24-hour record for American online poker player

Regular readers will remember that last week I told you about “innerspy,” the young Russian online pro who broke the world’s record for most hands of poker played in a single day when he logged just over 40,000 in under 19 hours. But just like every Cold War-era film involving a seemingly unstoppable Russian beast, a plucky American has risen to the occasion to declare “game on” - his name is “joeingram1” and he is the new owner of the world record after a 21-hour, with 50,470-hand session.

In online poker, as in Rocky movies, the Russian loses.

The new challenge started when joeingram1, who posts on the 2+2 forum as ChicagoJoey, set up a challenge on that forum which would require him to not only play the required 50,000 hands, but also to turn a profit while doing so. Only hands of no-limit or pot-limit hold’em played on tables with stakes of at least $.10/$.25 counted, and the entire session was broadcast over a webcam to verify that only joeingram1 was playing every one of the logged hands. Not only did he complete the challenge by booking a win of a little more than $800, but he won more than $32,000 in side bets from other 2+2 posters who booked action with him at a price of 2.5-to-1.

Like all records, this one is just waiting to be broken again - and in the fast-paced world of online poker, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see it cracked a time or two before Christmas rolls around. Let’s just hope that everyone who makes a run at the record has the proper equipment in place beforehand.

(Online Poker Player ChicagoJoey Cracks 24-Hour Hand Record - Poker News Daily)

Barney Frank’s anti-UIGEA bills get hearing tomorrow

The poker world was understandably elated last week when the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve decided to delay implementation of the UIGEA regulations by six months, but now it’s time to get down to the business of exactly what to do to stop UIGEA altogether. On that note, poker’s best and most powerful friend in Congress, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), is holding hearings tomorrow to try and move forward with two bills he has proposed that would counteract the infamous law that has turned online poker upside down since its midnight passage in 2006.

As Chariman of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank has called a hearing for noon tomorrow on the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act (IGRCPEA) and the Reasonable Prudence Regulation Act (RPRA). The first bill would scrap UIGEA altogether and create a framework for taxing and regulating online gambling with the United States, while the second bill would delay the UIGEA for another year. Witnesses both for and against the two bills will be given the chance to testify before the Committee as it considers whether to recommend that the bills be considered by the full House of Representatives.

Among those who will appear before the Committee are the Honorable Robert Martin (Tribal Chairman, Morongo Band of Mission Indians), Ms. Parry Aftab (Executive Director, WiredSafety), Professor Malcolm K. Sparrow (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University), Mr. Keith S. Whyte (Executive Director, National Council on Problem Gambling), Mr. Jim Dowling (Dowling Advisory Group), Mr. Samuel A. Vallandingham (Chief Information Officer and Vice President, The First State Bank on behalf of the Independent Community Bankers of America), and Mr. Mike Brodsky (Executive Chairman, Youbet.com).

No vote is expected at tomorrow’s hearing, but public testimony in favor of the bills would push them a little closer to becoming law. The entire hearing will be streamed live on the House Financial Services Committee website starting at 10 a.m. ET.

ESPN ranks the best poker players in the world (with a little help from their friends)

ESPN’s Andrew Feldman today published a new monthly feature called “The Nuts,” a list of the current top ten players in poker. It’s not so much a list of the game’s all-time greats as a list of who’s great right now; think of the “power rankings” that are so popular in sports like football and basketball and you’ve got an idea of what Feldman’s working with. Everyone in the game knows that choosing such a top ten is purely subjective, so Feldman asked our own editor, Lance Bradley, and a handful of other poker media types to help him compile the list.

There are plenty of familiar names in the top ten, including a November Niner and a certain online star whose name rhymes with “bur,” but like any such list there will be some controversy over its composition. More than a few players who you might expect to make the cut didn’t, and there might even be a name or two that you think doesn’t belong there. Luckily ESPN has reserved space for comments on the list - so make sure to let them know what you think of The Nuts.

(ESPN.com ranks the top 10 poker players - ESPN.com)

So when he said he was “grinding,” he meant something else entirely…

And finally, if you’re not supposed to play online poker at work, it’s probably a good idea to refrain from hitting the virtual felt while you’re on the clock. And if for some reason you decide to go ahead and multi-table instead of performing your assigned duties, it’s probably a good idea not to do anything to draw attention to yourself. And if you’re going to draw attention to yourself, you might want to consider doing via some other route than accessing pornographic websites on your work computer. Alas, not a single one of these things occurred to poor Anthony Stewart, 33, who was fired from his job as a sales manager at one of Britain’s leading real estate agencies for spending hundreds of hours over a number of years looking at porn and playing online poker instead of doing his job.

Stewart decided to pursue legal action against his former employer, Lloyd’s, claiming that he was unfairly dismissed. In his statement he said that the only reason he looked at porn while at work was to “distract him from his addiction to online gambling,” and he also noted that his bosses knew the staff accessed the internet for personal use and that the company had no policy in place against either poker or porn. The employment tribunal overseeing his case apparently decided that policy or not, Stewart was being paid to perform a job that didn’t involve either of his two favorite pastimes. Stewart now works at another real estate agency, where presumably he has either learned to curb his habits or is taking advantage of some very, very liberal policies on work computer use.

(Manager viewed porn for hundreds of hours - Bournemouth Daily Echo)

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.

Who is Isildur1? Not Viktor Blom

The poker world has been abuzz about unknown Swede “Isildur1” since he began his wild ride at the nosebleed-stakes tables on Full Tilt, and the more swings he takes against the world’s top pros the more everyone wants to know who this mystery man is. Tony G claimed yesterday that he knew for certain that Isildur1 was none other than Viktor Blom, but now Blom has come forward to say that the G-man is bluffing - because Blom is not, in fact, the masked man.

Bluff Europe caught up to Blom and he gave a flat denial when asked if he was the one driving the high-stakes economy at the moment. “I am not the one you are looking for,” he said. “Keep searching.” Very cryptic! But since nobody knows who Isildur1 really is, and since poker players lie all the time, don’t expect anyone to discount that the unknown player may in fact be Blom. Or Elvis, or Jim Morrison, or Kurt Cobain….

(Viktor Blom denies being Isildur1 - Bluff Europe)

APPT Grand Final, High Rollers underway in Sydney

It’s been another big year for the Asia Pacific Poker Tour and things are wrapping up in style at Star City Casino in Sydney, Australia, where this year’s APPT Grand Final and High Rollers events kicked off today.

Day 1A of the A$6,300 Grand Final saw 81 players take to the felt and only 51 remained at the end of play. Tony “Bond18” Dunst was the chip leader when all was said and done, bagging up 104,300 in chips to return on Day 2. Also surviving the day in the Australian dominated field were Aussie PokerStars pros Eric Assadourian and Lee Nelson, as well as former Absolute Poker sponsored pro Casey Kastle. Day 1B begins at 12:30 p.m. Sydney time tomorrow.

The A$15,300 High Roller event drew a slim field of 26 but among them were heavy hitters like 2009 WSOP Player of the Year Jeff Lisandro, current Bluff Player of the Year third-place man and Macau High Roller-crushing machine David Steicke, and WCOOP powerhouse Terrence Chan. Five players will cash, with A$156,000 for the winner.

Russian Poker Tour continues - outside Russia

When PokerStars decided to launch the Russian Poker Tour, our favorite game was warmly embraced by the Russian government as an official sport. But since then the big bear has done a complete 180, banning all gambling in the country outside of a handful of special zones that are near exactly nobody. Like an old showbiz pro, though, the RPT has decided that the show must go on - whether the tour’s namesake nation will have it or not.

The tour’s most recent stop finished yesterday in in Kiev, Ukraine, the some city that hosted the EPT event that had originally been scheduled to play out in Moscow before the abrupt government about-face. Vadim Kursevich walked away the big winner after four days of play, taking home $63,123 and the distinction of being a Russian poker player who won a Russian poker tournament that wasn’t actually played in Russia. The RPT’s next stop in two weeks is even further afield from the tour’s one-time home turf, this time in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

(Russian Poker Tour crowns new winner - mirror.co.uk)

Legalize it, don’t criticize it

In honor of the recent delay of UIGEA regulations that should have gone into affect today, here’s a post that you can use to convince all your friends and neighbors who don’t play poker to support legalization and regulation when they get to talking politics after Christmas dinner. Chicago blogger Chasse Rehwinkel has a solid piece up today with eight reasons not to ban online gambling, all of them well-reasoned and convincing. Tops on the list are regulation as protection against cheating and scams, protecting problem gamblers instead of pushing them underground, WTO compliance, and most important of all, the great big pile of tax revenue that the government is missing out on. If you can’t convince somebody using these rational arguments, chances are they’ve already got their mind made up.

(8 Reasons Not To Ban Online Gambling - Chicago Now)

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.

Experts: Legalized online gambling in U.S. unlikely in 2010

The online poker community has plenty of reason to celebrate with the recent Treasury Department and Federal Reserve decision to delay implementation of the UIGEA by another six months. But a panel of experts assembled by the American Gaming Association says that we should all curb our enthusiasm when it comes to the prospect of full legalization and regulation in the near future.

Of the 17 experts surveyed by the AGA, only one thought that passage of Rep. Barney Frank’s legislation to legalize and regulate many forms of online gambling, including poker, was “somewhat likely.” Even Sen. Robert Menendez’s bill, which would legalize and regulate online games of skill such as poker, only had five panel members willing to say it was “somewhat likely” to pass in the next year. Many of those surveyed said they doubted the United States would be able to lure online gambling operators to the United States because of the low operating costs and taxes in offshore havens like the Isle of Man. And all of them cited the number of pressing issues on Congress’ agenda such as health care, which are more likely to be worked out than any legislation legalizing online gambling.

Among those who doubt online gambling will become a reality is Harrah’s Entertainment senior vice president of communications and government relations Jan Jones, who said that Frank’s bill “has no chance of passage next year or maybe ever.” Jones held out some hope for Menendez’s legislation, though, since it would do wonders for the Harrah’s-owned World Series of Poker.

(Experts say online gaming in U.S. is still a long shot - Las Vegas Sun)

Washington State online poker foe pushes keno on the masses

There are few bets in any casino worse for players than the game of keno, but that’s not stopping Washington State Senator Margarita Prentice from sponsoring legislation that would expand the game’s presence within the state to help balance the state’s $2.6 billion budget shortfall.

Prentice, as you may remember, was the sponsor of the 2006 legislation that made playing online poker, a game that doesn’t benefit the Indian gambling concerns that help to fund her re-election campaigns, a felony on par with animal torture and possession of child pornography within the state of Washington. Now that the state’s books aren’t balancing she says that expanding gambling is “an absolute necessity,” but rather than give players a chance to win based on their own skill by allowing them to play poker, Prentice wants to make them guaranteed losers by only offering them bad bets like keno.

According to the Seattle News, the Prentice-sponsored keno bill currently before the governor “would allow tickets to be bought at all lottery retail locations…(and) monitors displaying the drawings every four minutes would be placed in restaurants, bars and taverns.”

(Gregoire considers 4-minute Keno games to fill budget gap - Seattle News)

Andy Beal looking to buy Trump casinos - without Trump on board

Andy Beal has broken away from Donald Trump and made his own offer to take over three bankrupt casinos in Atlantic City bearing Trump’s name.

Beal, the billionaire Texas banker whose battles with poker’s biggest stars were the focus of Michael Craig’s book The Professor, The Banker, and The Suicide King, had originally backed Trump’s attempt to regain control of Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc., which controls the Trump Marina, the Trump Plaza, and the Trump Taj Mahal. But last week Trump backed out of their compact and announced he was supporting the company’s bondholders in exchange for an ownership stake in the casinos. Many assumed the bondholders were favorites to win control of the company with their $225 million offer, but that was before an affiliate of Beal Bank offered to turn its $486 million mortgage on the three casinos into equity.

According to the Press of Atlantic City:

Beal’s mortgage on the Trump casinos makes his bank first in line among bankruptcy creditors. Beal attorney Thomas E. Lauria told U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Judith H. Wizmur that the bank’s offer was superior to the bondholders’ deal because it would leave the casinos debt-free once they emerge from Chapter 11. Lauria also said that bondholders and Trump Entertainment’s unsecured creditors would be given rights to invest in the casinos.

Kristopher M. Hansen, attorney for the bondholders, argued that Beal’s offer is nothing more than a delaying tactic designed to “squeeze” more money out of bondholders in buyout talks.

Judge Wizmur originally gave Trump and the bondholders until December 3rd to work out a deal, and she also set hearings for January 20th to decide on Trump Entertainment’s new owner. It’s unclear for now whether the Beal offer will derail that schedule.

(Bidding war erupts for bankrupt Trump casinos - Press of Atlantic City)

Online poker players have a little more to be thankful for today, as it appears the UIGEA regulations that were supposed to go into effect next Tuesday will be delayed for another at least another six months. While formal confirmation has not yet been issued, well-placed sources tell Bluff that the Poker Players Alliance’s petition to delay the regulations has been granted. That petition had gained the support of more than 50 members of Congress as well as nearly every leading banking institution in the country.

Rather than going into effect on Dec. 1, 2009, the new deadline for implementation of the regulations will be June 1, 2010. Our sources also tell us that there will be an option for an additional delay if the law hasn’t been sorted out in the first six months. An official announcement on the petition’s acceptance is expected soon. We’ll keep you updated on the situation as more facts become available.

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.

BC Poker Championship winner arrested for manslaughter

Sophon Sek, who just this Sunday won the British Columbia Poker Championship in Canada for $364,364, was today arrested on charges of manslaughter and breaking and entering in the infamous 2007 “Surrey Six” murders, one of the biggest news stories in the Vancouver area over the last two years.

Sophon Sek won the BC Poker Championship on Sunday before being arrested in connection with six murders. (Photo: BCLocalNews.com)

Sek appeared in Surrey Provincial Court today and was remanded to Nov. 30. He is the sixth person associated with the Red Scorpions gang to be arrested and charged in connection with the 2007 murders of six people in a Surrey, British Columbia, high-rise apartment building. Only one of the people killed that day, Corey Lal, was an actual target of the planned execution. The others - Lal’s brother Michael Lal, Edward Narong, Ryan Bartolomeo, Ed Schellenberg, and Christopher Mohan - were all in the wrong place at the wrong time. More background on the story can be found in this Vancouver Sun article from earlier in the year, when the other Red Scorpions were arrested.

Four of the other Red Scorpions - Jamie Bacon, Matt Johnston, Cody Haevischer, and Michael Le - are being held on charges with first-degree murder, while another associate is already serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder. According to the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team in Surrey, Sek could still face more charges in addition to manslaughter and break-and-enter.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police requested that the River Rock Casino hold Sek’s prize money from the BCPC, and the casino has complied with the request.

(Sixth gangster arrested for Surrey Six slaughter - Vancouver Sun)

Congressmen request delay in implementing UIGEA regulations

With a deadline of December 1st, time is growing short for Barney Frank, the Poker Players Alliance, and other opponents of the UIGEA to block implementation of the act’s regulations. But a late, unexpected source of support - letters from the Congressional delegation of the state of Kentucky - may help to nudge Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner toward blocking the UIGEA for another year.

Congressmen Geoff Davis (R), Harold Rogers (R), Ben Chandler (D), John Yarmuth (D), Edward Whitfield (R) and Brett Guthrie (R) wrote to Secretary Geithner requesting that the UIGEA be delayed because of the danger of financial institutions engaging in “overblocking,” or blocking transactions more transactions than required by the law, for fear of being prosecuted under vague federal anti-gambling laws. The letter specifically noted that popular credit card company MasterCard has begun overblocking transactions with a code used by the United States horse-racing industry, despite the fact that the UIGEA specifically gives bets on the ponies an exemption from the law.

Up to this point concerns about overblocking have mostly been academic, but UIGEA opponents are hopeful that a concrete example of the unintended consequences of the Act’s poor wording will convince the Treasury secretary to slam on the brakes. In order to stop the UIGEA regulations from going into full effect, Geithner would have to issue a ruling by next Monday; with Thanksgiving coming up at the end of the week, that leaves only a few business days for him to get things done.

(KY Congressional Delegation requests delaying enacting UIGEA - EOG.com)

Matt Sowash dodged death by rattlesnake but couldn't dodge the Colorado government. (Photo: The Denver News)

Amateur Poker Tour head gets five years in jail for securities fraud

Matt Sowash, the former head of the Colorado-based Amateur Poker Tour, was convicted today of securities fraud and sentenced to five years in prison and five years of probation.

Sowash and business partner Andrew Hicks (who has yet to face trial) ran the APT, which offered free poker tournaments in bars, before selling the business in 2008. The two men then solicited investors for a new venture, Royal Flush Group Incorporated, which was also to run free poker tournaments in bars. The only problem? The Colorado Bureau of Investigation determined that Sowash and Hicks were offering securities and promising significant returns on investment to eight of their potential investors, despite not being licensed by the state to sell securities. The two men also hadn’t registered their company with the Colorado Division of Securities.

You might not know Sowash by name, but you might remember that he was the target of a bizarre 2007 murder plot, one in which APT investor Herb Beck planned to kill Sowash by placing his legs into a box full of rattlesnakes and then removing his body and dumping it on a hiking trail so his death would appear to be accidental. The Denver News published a sprawling feature about that case, Free Poker Tour is a Dead Man’s Hand, back in 2007.

(Amateur Poker Tour head Matt Sowash sentenced to five years - Westword)

Hands up, Grandma!

Police on the tiny Mediterranean island of Cyprus recently staged a raid on a reputed illegal gambling den after being tipped off to its existence by neighbors upset by the noise coming from the house. Once inside the house in the town of Limassol, police must have disappointed to only find 42 elderly women and less than 100 euros ($149) in cash. According to the Daily Mail, most of the women arrested in the raid for playing poker and gin rummy were between 75 and 85 years of age. The oldest was 95, while the youngest was just 50. In addition to paltry cash sum, police also confiscated 830 playing cards and 536 poker chips.

Gambling is illegal in almost all forms in Cyprus, even for the tiny sums at stake in the raided home game. The only exceptions to the gambling ban come in the form of the state lottery, horse racing, and betting on soccer at licensed shops, which the Mail describes as being “as common as pubs in England.” The 42 women will likely face nothing more than a small fine if convicted, given the small stakes of the game and the fact that the press and public opinion are both on their side.

(Forty-two elderly women arrested for gambling after police raid in Cyprus - Daily Mail)

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.

Betfair’s Annette_15 ad banned in the UK

The United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has put the kibosh on a Betfair email advertisement using 20-year-old WSOP Europe champion Annette Obrestad’s image with a tagline of “Online experience is measured in games, not years. Join the new breed. Annette_15.” According to the ASA, the ad “was likely to have particular appeal to children and young people, and that, by representing a successful young poker player with the implication she was 15 years old, it could encourage young people to gamble and was therefore irresponsible.”

It’s a bit of a stretch to say that Betfair was “implying” Obrestad was 15 years old in referring to her as Annette_15; after all, she picked her own screen name and became successful playing under it, so it only makes sense for her sponsor to use that screen name in promotions. As Betfair noted in its response to the ASA, “Obrestad was featured in the ad not because of her age but because of her standing as a poker professional and champion who had had a profound effect on the game.” But it turns out Betfair would have run afoul of British advertising regulations even if the diminutive champ’s handle had been “Old_Granny_95”: in the UK any person appearing in gambling marketing materials has to be at least 25 years old.

(Annette_15 advert banned - BLUFF Europe)

“High Stakes Doubt” on 2M2MM tonight

G4TV’s reality series Two Months, Two Million gets back in action tonight with a new episode and a little bit of “High Stakes Doubt” courtesy of the high-stakes Pot Limit Omaha tables at Full Tilt Poker. I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say that the variance involved in 6-max $500/$1,000 PLO with the likes of Gus Hansen and Phil Ivey can be a little hard on the old self-confidence. Is it hard enough to make the guys reconsider the idea of going for two million dollars in two months? File that one under “things that makes you go ‘hmmmm’.”

2M2MM airs tonight on G4TV at its new time of 8 p.m. ET - so go ahead and turn on the TV while you read the rest of today’s Buzz. Or if you can’t get to a TV right away, check out a new preview of the episode here.

“Eastern Europeans are used to taking risks”

A Reuters article today spotlights the poker boom that’s taking place in Hungary. Anchoring the article is 2009 WSOP $5,000 No Limit Hold’em Shootout winner Peter Traply, who graduated from college this February but would have faced bleak career prospects without poker in a country whose unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 10% since the global economy took a turn downward. Traply’s live tournament winnings of just over $677,000 might seem modest when so many others have won millions of dollars, but in Hungary that sum is 88 times what an average person makes in a single year.

Of course, not everyone in Hungary is as good at poker as Traply. The risk of losing is a reality of playing the game, so how do young people in a relatively poor country justify putting their money on the virtual felt? According to Gergely Tatar, chairman of Hungary’s poker association, squaring off against the average donkfish is small change compared with the kind of crap his people have dealt with over the years. “Eastern Europeans are used to taking risks,” Tatar told Reuters. “They have always lived this way.”

(Hungarians play poker to make ends meet amid crisis - Reuters)

Nolan Dalla: Democrats, not Republicans, are online poker’s biggest political obstacle

From the “Running Against The Grain” department, respected WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla published a column this week warning the online poker community not to expect the promised land just because there’s a Democrat in the White House, arguing that organizations like the Poker Players Alliance need a shift in strategy if they plan to overturn UIGEA and make legal, regulated online poker in the United States a reality.

Dalla notes that while a lot of people within poker assumed that nothing but good would come out of the Republican party losing the reins of federal power, plenty of powerful Democrats are just as opposed to online gambling as their counterparts on the right. In particular he singles out powerful House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and Gov. Christine Gregoire (D-WA) for their opposition to the legalization and regulation of online gambling.

“While Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and Rep. Frank Wolfe (R-VA) continue to merit our universal contempt, the sad fact is that the ‘out-of-touch brigade’ now has plenty of company on the other side of the partisan aisle,” he writes. “These proud liberals march lock and step with the most repulsive elements of the religious right. These same Democratic women champion countless progressive causes and wouldn’t agree with the likes of Kyl, Goodlatte, or Wolfe on anything except, peculiarly enough, smothering the freedoms of millions of American citizens who want to play online poker. These Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans.”

(Legal Online Poker’s Biggest Obstacle: Nanny Democrats - Poker News Daily)

APPT Seoul event postponed

With the explosion of poker tours around the world, it’s not unheard of for the occasional tournament to be postponed or even cancelled entirely. The European Poker Tour, for instance, planned to start its sixth season in Moscow a few months ago but had to move to the Ukraine instead when the Russian government suddenly passed a ruling making the legal climate for poker tournaments a little, um, “less friendly.” And then there was the time when the Latin American Poker Tour had to deal with the Mexican government shutting down one of its tournaments after play was already well underway, despite the fact that the LAPT had filed all the proper paperwork well ahead of time.

Considering all the possibilities, the Asia Pacific Poker Tour’s postponement of the scheduled stop in Seoul, South Korea, turns out to be pretty pedestrian. The 7-Luck Casino in the South Korean capital has been renovating its third floor, where the tournament was to be held, but construction delays mean it won’t be ready by tomorrow’s scheduled start date. The APPT says they’re still planning to host the tournament at a later date and will announce new scheduling details in the near future.

After a two-year court battle, the Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association (iMEGA) was dealt a blow on September 1 when the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals rejected its arguments and upheld the premise of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). Though the judges made clear that the UIGEA does not render online gambling illegal on a federal level, as state laws do prevail, the premise of the 2006 U.S. law stands and does not intrude on the privacy rights of individuals.

After the passage of the UIGEA in 2006, the not-for-profit iMEGA took a stand against the law in the U.S. District Court with a request for a restraining order on the UIGEA per its case against the Attorney General of the United States, Federal Trade Commission, and Federal Reserve System. Judge Mary L. Cooper granted iMEGA standing in the case but ultimately dismissed it due to the fact that the UIGEA was passed in a constitutional manner. Ultimately, she ruled that the case should be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals. And nearly two years from its inception, iMEGA received a ruling on the case from the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

The court rejected the first argument by iMEGA that the law was vague, stating, “The Act prohibits a gambling business from knowingly accepting certain financial instruments from an individual who places a bet over the internet if such gambling is illegal at the location in which the business is located or from which the individual initiates the bet. Thus, the Act clearly provides a person of ordinary intelligence with adequate notice of the conduct it prohibits.” While acknowledging that the UIGEA does not prohibit any gambling activity, the numerous examples of ambiguity in the law were dismissed.

The second argument was that the law violated privacy rights via the internet, despite the District Court’s rejection of this claim. The Appeals Court denied this argument as well, noting that the cases cited for precedent are “misplaced” in this case.

However, there were some clarifications made, the most important coming from Judge Dolores Sloviter. “It bears repeating that the Act itself does not make any gambling activity illegal,” she wrote. “Whether the transaction…constitutes unlawful Internet gambling turns on how the law of the state from which the bettor initiates the bet would treat that bet, i.e. if it is illegal under that state’s law, it constitutes “unlawful Internet gambling” under the Act.” According to iMEGA’s response to the Appeals Court loss, this portion of the outcome is positive.

iMEGA Chairman Joe Brennan, Jr. stated, “The court made it clear - gambling on the Internet is unlawful where state law says so. But there are only a half-dozen states which have laws against Internet gambling, leaving 44 states where it is potentially lawful. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good start… We will turn out attention to the states to make the case that this industry can be properly regulated and produce badly needed tax revenue.”

With that, iMEGA is now in the process of consulting its legal team regarding a possible federal appeal.