Poker News

According to PokerScout.com, the newly introduced French online gambling sites fare well on the worldwide market. Although players from the country are banned from foreign rooms, players from outside France are welcome on the .fr sites.

Last week’s most successful of the licensed rooms was PokerStars.fr with an average of 1520 plays daily and a 2823 peak, which were worth the 9th place on the listing. Right behind PS finished EverestPoker.fr with a 1280 daily average and a 2392 peak. These actually exceeded the results of the international Everest site.

The next French room, Bwin (Ongame.fr), was ranked 17th (750 average, 1381 high) while PartyPoker.fr was 20th (660/1219). FullTiltPoker.fr, a late addition to the licensed companies in France, was doing a little worse with 235 players per day and a 420 peak, worth the 25th place.

You can follow the changes of the rankings weekly at pokerscout.com.

’Think you’ve got the guts to break down the action with brutal honesty? Prove it.’ This is what WPT’s latest contest promo reads. Who are they looking for? Perhaps You to host ’The Raw Deal.’

WPT’s upcoming TV segment needs ’an opinionated and outspoken personality’, although Bill’s Poker Blog has aptly put it in a more... outright way. The expectation is not to be shy and call out anybody and everybody in the poker industry, including the most respected players. The audition is open; the only thing you have to do is watching a video (see below) and recording yourself in no more than 45 seconds, presenting your opinion on what’s happening. You only need to edit your performance and include the phrase ’World Poker Tour’ in it.

Full Tilt Poker’s traditional championship, the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) will be held between the 4th and 15th August.

The total prize pool of the 34 tournaments will exceed $19 million. The series feature a very wide range of tournaments, including No-Limit and Limit Hold’em, Omaha, Razz, HORSE, Stud and 7-Game.

The Frank bill, passed two days ago, is extensively supported by PokerStars, as we can read in the poker site’s official statement. Paul Telford, the general counsel of the US-facing poker giant, expressed his support concerning the HR 2267.

Below you can read extracts from PokerStars’ official statement:

In the past few days, Daniel Negreanu has been doing really well at the PokerStars high stakes tables, and has turned his balance positive by winning more than $300K.

Although the home for the best high stakes action is Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars had much more interesting high stakes cash games recently. This was mainly because Daniel ’KidPoker’ Negreanu has been very active, waiting for his opponents at his own online tables in Daniel’s Room. Many poker players attempted to drain his bankroll, including Tom “kingsofcards” Marchese, Jason Mercier, Bijan "Mr Zahmat" Zahman, Aaron “aejones” Jones, Will "molswi47" Molson, FiSHeYe1984, Justin “Boosted J” Smith, Rich "nutsinho" Lyndaker and Joel “Odonkor1” Nordqvist.

Daniel 'KidPoker' Negreanu

Negreanu has received a lot of criticism because of his worse-than-mediocre performance in the last season of the TV show High Stakes Poker. The Canadian pro himself confessed that he had played horribly, not being able to catch up with the pace of the young online players, and decided to polish his play online against high stakes regulars at PokerStars.

Sticking to his plan he has been playing $100/$200 NLHE 6-max, and, although seeing the list of opponents it might come as a surprise, he has only played winning sessions so far. Until Friday morning (30th July), his winnings reached $332,770, with which he has not only diminished all his previous losses at PokerStars, but also took hold of a $42,000 profit.

The Poker Players Alliance (PPA) has issued a press release stating that the HR 2267 has passed at the House Financial Services Committee, by a vote of 41-22-1.

HR 2267, the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act introduces a licensing and regulatory rule for online gambling in the US. The main aim of the Bill is to protect children and gambling addicts. Using modern technology as a tool, the Bill replaces the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGE), which has not been effective enough in solving gambling problems in the United States.

Unlicensed operators will face serious problems and will not be able to provide their services anymore. The new bill will also help the US collect taxes on Internet gambling, similarly to the recently introduced French laws.

In recent times, most of the nosebleed cash games at Full Tilt Poker are cap PLO games. Many people seem to dislike this, including Patrik Antonius and Phil Galfond. 

Patrik Antonius has earlier expressed his feelings towards cap PLO in a video made for Full Tilt Poker, and now Phil ’OMGClayAiken’ Galfond joins him, saying that he detests cap PLO games.

Phil ’OMGClayAiken’ Galfond

With summer drawing to an end, many-many poker players decide to visit Queenstown, New Zealand at this time of the year, where the PokerStars Australia New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT) has recently ended.

The buy-in for the tournament was approximately $2,500 in US dollars, and the number of participants reached 119 this year. The PokerStars trophy and $73,630 main prize was taken by Julian Cohen, who, after finishing day 2 with a royal flush, managed to start day 3 with a four of a kind.

The final hand included a real coinflip situation, and this time, not because of the odds, but because upon receiving his cards, Julian tossed a coin in the air to decide whether or not to go all-in.

To be honest, I don’t really believe this is any more of a poker-story than that of Joran van der Sloot. I also agree with Tao of Poker that relating crimes of ex-poker players to the (effects of the) game can do little good and is only a tool in the hands of anti-poker people. Yet here you are, because another person you might have once supported has drifted away from the harsh but peaceful world of poker.

Ron 'Mad Yank' Fanelli

The Treasure Island Casino, LA has been robbed recently by an armed person. Although he is on the loose, the loot was found in a bag in the garage of The Mirage.

Following the EPT Berlin and the Basel Grand Casino robberies, it begins to seem like some kind of fashion to raid casinos. This pattern is followed by the man who pointed a gun at the cashier of the Treasure Island the other night. He put the acquired money, which was reported not to be a ’huge’ amount, in a sportsbag and fled to the garage of the neighbouring casino The Mirage where he apparently left his loot. Although police searched the parking lot, the man himself is not yet identified nor captured.

Should you have any information on the case, please report it to Crime Stoppers.

French gambling authority ARJEL issued nine new licenses for online companies, five of which went to poker rooms. Sportsbetting sites CanalWin (a cooperation between TV company Canal+ and Ladbrokes) and Jeux 365, together with Geny Infos and Zeturf France with horse race as main profile were given the another four. Licenses are required to operate legally in France due to a formerly introduced regulation of online gambling.

The poker licenses went to Rekop (fulltiltpoker.fr), PKR France SAS (pkr.fr), FullFun (pokerxtrem.fr), LB Poker (barrierepoker.fr) and AD Astra (pokersubito.fr). Of the five, casino and hotel chain Barrière is a newcomer to online play, while AD Astra and FullFun are to join 888 and Microgaming in their network on the French market, according to EGR Magazine.
To date, 27 licenses were issued by ARJEL in all.

HR 2267, the bill to regulate online gambling in the US, including legalising and taxing online poker, was originally scheduled for markup on Tuesday, 27 July. While listed 3rd among the seven bills to discuss, it was eventually delayed and will be voted on today.

HR 2267: Shall it pass? (photo: lordoftherings.net)

After revealing security issues at Cereus in May, PokerTableRatings.com now uncovered a gap in the Cake Poker Network security encryption. The XOR system Cake Poker is apparently using can basically be breached by Windows’ built-in calculator, says PTR.

The gap allows a third party, positioned in between the Cake servers and the player, to steal account information, hole cards or even bankrolls (see the video below). Although PTR’s investigation was limited to Cake Poker and Doyle’s Room, they noted the security risk most probably applied to every member room of the Cake Network. Certain, however, is that both the current and the new Beta (v2.0.) clients are vulnerable.

The World Poker Tour Event #23, the ‘Legends of Poker’ NLHE Championship takes place between 20-25 August in The Bicycle Casino LA, CA.

With hundreds of players expected, including several of the biggest names of the poker world, the event Day1 has two parts, 1A and 1B. Even with a buy-in twice as high as this time, 279 players participated last year, so the 2010 $5000 championship is likely to attract even more entrants.

In 2009, Prahlad Friedman won the prestigious event that had a prizepool of $2,650,000, from which over $1 million went to Friedman. He defeated Kevin Schaffel, 2009 WSOP November Niner, in the heads-up phase after playing 127 hands at the final table in total.

Check out the WPT Legends of Poker 2010 schedule here.

ESPN has already released the schedule for the 2010 WSOP broadcast, which begins today, 27 July, with the Players Championship. Two more of the biggest events are to follow later.

116 players participated in the $50,000 PC for the $5,568,000 prizepool, with Michael Mizrachi eventually winning the event and a handsome $1,559,046. Next up is the Tournament Champions (airing on 3 August), followed by the Main Event a week later. On every Tuesday you will get your dose of the top poker event of the world up until 9 November, when the Main Event Final Table is broadcast.

See the full schedule: