Poker Guru Blog

Zynga, the most successful application creator has signed another five-year contract with Facebook. Zynga has countless other successful applications available on Facebook, including titles, such as Mafia Wars, Farmville and CaféWorld. Over 65 million people play their games every day, and this is only the Facebook users.

Developers like Zynga are able to write any software and application for Facebook, which gets easily publicised through the enormous and ever-growing community of people on the biggest community network. For example, if we install the Zynga Texas Hold’em application on Facebook, we will be able to challenge not only our friends, but also relatives overseas and the friends of our friends.

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.

On the 29th July, Bwin and PartyGaming have officially announced that they are about to merge, thus creating the largest online gambling company in the world.

Bwin, with its main headquarters in Austria, and PartyGaming, the company that owns PartyPoker, have been negotiating on a possible fusion since summer 2009. Although this year many sources have reported that the deal would never come off, the two giant companies have now announced that they have managed to agree on all details, signed the papers, and will be listed together on the London Stock Exchange.

With this fusion, the biggest gambling company in the world is born. Bwin has an estimated value of €1.4 billion and PartyGaming is worth around £1.1 billion.

In the newly merged business, Bwin will take a share of 51.64% and the remaining 48.36% will be owned by PartyGaming. From now on, the leaders of the two companies (Jim Ryan of PartyGaming and Norbert Teufelberger of Bwin) will control the company together, sharing the title of Co-Chief Executive Officer.

“This is a transformational opportunity for both our companies to create the world’s largest listed online gaming business,” Jim Ryan says, “With market leading positions in poker, sports betting, casino and games – in particular bingo – the new company will have a winning formula to exploit the growing online gaming market, supported by a strong balance sheet, significant cash flow generation and a highly experienced management team.”

Jim Ryan

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

Jon Friedberg hosts a show on CardPlayer Tv, called Under the Gun. In this episode, he interviews two of the best female poker players, Liv Boeree and Lauren Kling at the time of the WSOP.

Following a short discussion that resembles a speed date, Jon decides to take the girls out to shoot shotguns in the desert.

Pretty Heavy Metal!  

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.

Finally, to finish the day with some funnier and lighter stuff, here is JimmyLegs’ Felt Wars pt. 2. You can see the first part here.
Be safe, have a nice day!

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)

iGamingBusiness.com reported that Bwin Interactive Entertainment AG, leader in the online betting market, experienced a significant increase in its betting incomes during this year’s FIFA World Cup.

The 260,000 customers per day produced a total of 900,000 bets (213,000 of which made by newcomers and 90,000 by ‘reactivated’ users) and an average daily revenue of over €1.1 million. This means a record sum in comparison with previous soccer tournaments of the kind. In its bulletin, Bwin stated that “compared to the Euro 2008, Bwin increased its sportsbetting gross gaming revenues by nearly 40 percent (...) This figure was almost doubled by comparison with the 2006 FIFA World Cup. A sportsbetting margin of around 9.1 percent was an improvement on both the Euro 2008 at 8.3 percent and the 2006 FIFA World Cup at 6.7 percent.” The most popular match to bet on was the Germany v. Spain semi final.

The company also seems to prosper in France, as upon introducing its services in the country on 8 June, it was the “only international online gaming provider to enter the French market with a sportsbetting and poker license.” Bwin is thus among the few companies that are “in a position to meet the exacting demands of this regulated market.”

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.