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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:

November Nine chip leader Jonathan Duhamel is pretty confident that he is going to win the finale, according to what he told CardPlayer.com.

“I’m going to win, 100 percent. I’m the best. I’m going to play the best poker game I’ve ever played and win that thing,” he said. Indeed, the odds are in his favour, but can he cope with that pressure? He certainly believes so: “I like that pressure. I live on pressure.”

Jonathan Duhamel in EPT Prague

With satellite events available from as early as 2 August, The PokerStars Macau Millions takes place at Casino Grand Lisboa between 4-8 August. Its ‘main event’, the Macau Millions HKD $1,000,000 Guarantee is set to break a number of Asian records.

The HKD $2,200 event with a HKD $1,000,000 prize pool is “expected to be the biggest poker field ever in Asia,” according to PokerStars News. It has five Day1s with 7% of the players each day qualifying for the Day2 final and a guaranteed cash prize. In case you were eliminated during Day1, you were allowed to enter another, if there are any left.

Boxing legend Evander Holyfield, former heavyweight pro world champion, is taking part in the London Poker Festival, more specifically, in the ’Poker in the Park’ event on 2-3 September.

Evander Holyfield

One of the leading news in the poker world is the debate on HR 2267. As noted before, Congress also heard poker pro and WSOP bracelet winner Annie Duke on the matter, representing Poker Players Alliance.

Annie Duke

Duke stated before the House Financial Services Committee: "At its most basic level, the issue before this committee is personal freedom, the right of individual Americans to do what they want in the privacy of their homes without the intrusion of the government."

Considering the results of the hearings on the matter, a subcommittee will propose changes to the bill on 27 July, before it is referred to the House of Representatives. The bill must pass before the end of 2010 or it needs to be reintroduced. “This mark up demonstrates that Congress is serious about moving Chairman Frank’s bill forward and establishing a strict regulatory framework for Internet gambling activity,” Michael Waxman from Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative remarked.

PokerStars announced the PS Lamborghini Freeroll where anyone can win their own Lamborghini Gallardo, not to mention the total prize pool of over $1,000,000.

PokerStars organises 24 freeroll qualifiers and $1,10 and $11 cash satellites daily with $100,000 pool weekly finals to qualify for. The Gallardo and $250,000 cash waits for the winners of the Grand Finale in October.

PokerStars welcomes newcomers and hardliner sharks as well in the tournament. The freeroll and cash qualifiers are just starting this Sunday; check the schedule below.

In a radio interview for TapouT, Ultimate Fighting Championship speaker Bruce Buffer said Phil Ivey had more than $100 million and Tom ’durrrr’ Dwan had over $50 million net. As he is a close friend to several poker pros, I believe we can safely rely on his intel. Here is the 2+2 discussion on the topic, if you want to join in.

Bruce Buffer

Buffer, in addition to his career as a renowned speaker, is a big fan of poker and even has two WSOP and another two WPT ITM finishes, worth $147,023 in total. Since Ivey won $17,673,260 online and $13,545,959 in live tournaments in the past three years only, excluding any possible contracts, cash game winnings and investments, the figures can easily be valid. Durrrr, in the same period, earned $4,626,417 in FTP cash games and $1,583,502 live.

Eponymus’ Photoshop comic strip ‘The Godfather of Online Poker’ continues with Part IV, in which Patrik Corleone plans to take out Sebozzo. It’s nothing personal, of course, just poker…

Here is a video from PokerTube showing one of the occasional cases when a PokerStars table crashes. In this particular case, all players except one are frozen out.

Definitely awkward, and there is really not much to be done, except what ’shaftamasta’, from PokerTube commented: “Copy the tournament number and send a message to support. Tell them you were frozen out of the tourney and they will look into the hand histories of the tourney that you are complaining about. The only thing they can do is refund your buy in, but if it happens in a later stage of a match where dollar figures are involved, then they have to look at your position at the time of disconnection.”

If you happen to have come across a similar situation, I suggest you take shaftamasta’s advice; simple as it is, this might well be the best course of action. To see all the comments in full length, visit the discussion forum of the video here.