Archive for the 'Poker' Category
Americans might have a hard time playing online poker these days, but they are doing well in live poker play.
Matthew Waxman this week became the first American poker player to win the World Poker Tour’s Grand Prix de Paris. This puts Waxman into the club of players who belong to the prestigious WPT Champions Club.
The event marked Waxman’s 11th WPT event, but this was his first final table and he played it well, taking home the more than $729,000 cash prize.
Entrance into the WPT Champions Club affords all WPT champions exclusive benefits, VIP treatment at WPT events and a WPT personal concierge. Waxman has also automatically won a seat to the Season X WPT World Championship at the Bellagio Casino Resort in Las Vegas in 2012.
Waxman, a 26-year-old player from Florida, outlasted an international field of 312 players, many of whom are former WPT champions.
Aside from Waxman, the other four top finishers included Hugo Lemaire, Fred Magen, Byron Kaverman and Mikko Sundell.
Players and casino affiliates haven’t heard anything from employees at rakeupdate and rakereduction. The lack of communication over the past few weeks has made them nervous. Most unsettling is that the poker software provider of the two sites discontinued services because the company wouldn’t pay up.
This has poker players wondering if the founder of the company has disappeared with the money he owes them. To date, it is thought that the companies owe over $1 million.
The company has been around for over six years. Concerns have been mounting over the past year:
Earlier this year, the company claimed to have issues with its payment processors. These issues seem to have stemmed from the changes in the employees running the firm. Players had to turn to other sites like Full Tilt Poker to get their money out of their accounts. Unfortunately, players had a number of issues with these real money poker sites as well.
The sites also had to keep paying back players even after Full Tilt Poker and other sites were shut down the FBI.
They were also stuck paying Full Tilt and Cereus Network for referrals they never received.
Rakeupdate.com and rakereduction.com are clearly being hammered by the financial woes they have experienced over the past five months. The potential scandal is likely to extend to other sites as well. Players on sites like Merge and Bodog are also likely to have trouble getting their money back. The issues facing Rakeupdate.com and Rakereduction.com could spread through the entire industry and its hard to know how far it will go.
The most successful affiliates have reason to be concerned. Some of them have earned tens of thousands of dollars. Affiliates are already concerned they won’t see their money back from Full Tilt Poker. Full Tilt has amassed a considerable amount of debt. Should the company ever open up again, it might not be able to pay back the money owed to players and affiliates.
All players know is the two sites are currently unavailable. Their homepages explain that the owner and marketing director of Elite Affiliate Software has discontinued the partnership with the rakeback company. The company have missed the deadline to renew the software.
This leaves players and affiliates what it intends to do. Some speculate the sites might be temporarily unavailable until they can make back some of the money they lost following Full Tilt’s legal battle. Failing to pay their affiliates just for a month might be enough to double their yearly income.
Everyone with a financial interest is wondering whether they will ever see their money again. Are these sites resolving their technical issues or are these the warning signs of a crisis?
California’s Senate Pro Tem announced this week that the state won’t move on approving a California online poker or any online casino gambling bill this year.
In a letter to both gambling interests and those opposed, Steinberg said that “significant, unresolved issues remain” and that “we believe that well thought out, fair solutions to these differences can be reached, but not before the end of this legislative year on September 9.” The letter was signed by Steinberg and Sen. Roderick Wright, a Democrat who chairs the state’s Governmental Organization Committee that oversees gambling regulation.
In general, California’s Indian tribes support online gaming but disagree on the bills that have been introduced so far.
For some time, online gambling proponents have been watching California because its legislation has progressed further than in many other states. The Indian tribes, however, control all of the gaming in the state and are bitterly divided over the bills that have been introduced and moved through the state’s congress.
After the Black Friday shutdown of online poker, there is more pressure for states to approve and move on online gambling of some sort, but California – like many other states – seems resistant to make a decision quickly.
PokerTek, a reputed gaming company known for its poker and blackjack gaming software solutions, recently announced that its blackjack offering Blackjack Pro was seeing much success in the market. It also recorded many blackjack installations last month in several brick and mortar casinos.
Mark Roberson the Chief Executive Officer of PokerTek commented on how well Blackjack Pro was doing. “Blackjack Pro continues to perform exceptionally well in the field, and player feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The successful launch of Blackjack Pro on the ProCore platform opens up tremendous new opportunities as we diversify our product line and expand our installed base,” he said.
“Demand has exceeded our inventory during this initial rollout phase with our available supply now fully absorbed. In response to the favorable product performance and customer demand, production is underway to provide additional inventory for second half installations,” he added.
Blackjack Pro is highly developed gaming software for blackjack players that works on the ProCore hardware created by PokerTek.
PokerTek is currently land based casino software but unlike online casinos they aren’t in the comfort of your own home. If you are looking to play and from the UK one of the best poker & casinos is PartyPoker.com. If you sign up it’s best to use a partypoker bonus code and get 100% on your first deposit up to $500.
The ProCore platform is a fairly new addition to the company’s offerings and launched blackjack as its first game. The blackjack game accepts six players and functions as an automated table game. Players will be able to set limits, bets and rules according tot her requirements
A new organization whose mission is to project poker players who play online announced its formation this week
FairPlayUSA said in a press release that its primary mission is to educate policymakers and the public on policy interests that are raised by current laws in the US that have led Americans to play online but often illegally.
The ambiguous laws also led to the government shutdown of all online poker play in the U.S. on April 15. The coalition intends to support Congress in defining what illegal gambling really is and providing strong law enforcement tools to ban it. In addition, the group supports the formation of a strict regulatory framework for online poker.
On its website, the coalition features a petition that calls on Congress to address the problems associated with offshore internet gambling, among other things.
“The website and online petition will be the focal point for recruiting and organizing supporters who will actively engage and make their voices heard by members of Congress,” said FairPlayUSA Executive Director Marisa McNee. “Outreach will be directed toward law enforcement officials, those who support internet consumer safety, and online poker’s strongest asset – the millions of Americans who enjoy online poker.”
FairPlayUSA is particularly concerned with making sure that Americans who play online poker are playing with law-abiding operators. It therefore supports the formation of licensing and regulation channels that will ensure Americans are protected when playing online.
“Americans are passionate about online poker. I respect their right to play games that are fair and on sites that are strictly regulated,” said professional poker player Greg Raymer. “I’ll do everything I can to support efforts that protect our rights to play this quintessential American game and to make it clear that every adult has the legal right to play poker online.”
The Epic Poker League has signed a television deal with CBS that will see the league show more than 20 hours of league play.
The Epic Poker League is a new league created by Federated Sports and Gaming and the agreement with CBS guarantees the league more than seven hours of airtime on CBS and another 13 on Discover Communication’s new network, Velocity.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the agreement is considered a “time buy”, which means that the Federated Sports and Gaming group will pay CBS to air the poker tournaments. The risk is therefore less substantial for the network and yet the new poker league gets national exposure.
NBC’s “Poker After Dark” used the same arrangement, but the show was sponsored by Full Tilt Poker and that site is no longer operating in the U.S. following the crackdown of online poker.
The Velocity Network is expected to launch on Sept. 25 and is billed as a network for “upscale men”. Many believe that the airing of poker tournaments perfectly fits with this emphasis.
The Epic Poker League began this past winter and is led by former World Series of Poker head Jeffrey Pollack and Commissioner Annie Duke. Players can earn membership cards to the league through a combination of lifetime and recent results. The membership roster currently sits are more than 200 players.
The first event for the Epic Poker League is set for Aug. 5 with a Pro/Am at a Casino Resort in Las Vegas. The tournament’s Main Event will be held Aug. 9 to 12. That tournament will also mark the first telecast of league play on the CBS/Velocity networks.
PokerStars might have been slowed down in the United States after Black Friday, but it’s still trucking along offering real money poker in other parts of the world.
This week, the online poker site dealt its 65 billionth hand to a player from New Zealand. That player, Christopher “yllams” Small, took home a big payout of $58,420 on a game of $0.10/$0.25 six-max No Limit Hold’em.
Smalls said he was playing late into the night in New Zealand, where it was snowing. At 1 a.m., he was hoping he’d be involved in the Mega Milestone game when he saw a pop-up telling him that he and the five other people at the table were being dealt the 65 billionth hand.
“I had A-K when I looked at the table,” Small said in a press release issued by PokerStars. “My reason was one of this must be a dream. I couldn’t believe it.”
The 24-year-old student is a Platinum Star player who has been playing regularly on PokerStars for more than three years. Total prize money in PokerStars’ Mega Milestone event was more than $770,000.
The World Series of Poker is officially over for now and will conclude in November; this week the players who will hit the final table in November were determined.
The November Nine, as the group is called, will take a recess until the tournament restarts on Nov. 5. The winner will likely be determined two days later as reported by best online poker sites.
The nine players represent nearly every corner of the world and will likely head home from Las Vegas as celebrities in their communities. By the time they return to Las Vegas to play those final hands, they will have been interviewed dozens of times and will be ready for the media onslaught that occurs during November Nine play.
The players who sit at that final table are each guaranteed no less than $780,000 in prize money. The ultimate winner will take home more than $8.7 million.
The nine players who will head back to Vegas in November are:
Matt Giannetti, who is from Las Vegas, Nev.
Badih Bou-Nahra, who is from Belize
Eoghan O’Dea, who is from Ireland
Phil Collins, who is from Las Vegas, Nev.
Anton Makiievskyi, who is from the Ukraine
Sam Holden, from the UK
Pius Heinz, from Germany
Ben Lamb, who is from Oklahoma
Martin Staszko, who is from the Czech Republic
Players in the U.S. who were affected by the U.S. government’s closure of online poker sites have until Friday to request a payout of their funds.
According to the indictment, players have until July 22 to request their money. Many players had tens of thousands of dollars in their player accounts when the government handed down indictments directed at several major companies in the online poker world, including PokerStars.com, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and others.
Players must make their claim in New York federal court if they haven’t yet withdrawn their money from the online poker rooms. Most of the sites re-opened briefly with permission from the government so players could withdraw money, but not all players did and not all the sites paid out. Now, players have to hope their court claims will be successful.
Some experts are suggesting that players will be lucky to cash out 10 percent of their money, now that they have waited this long.
On April 15, also known as “Black Friday” in the online poker world, the federal government shut down some of the largest poker sites, froze player monies and handed down indictments that include charges of money laundering and bank fraud.
Some believe that most of the sites don’t have the money to return to players.
The California State Senator who is backing a bill that will legalize online poker sites in california is urging state politicians to pass it before the end of the year.
Sen. Lou Correa (D-Orange County) spoke this week before a Senate Committee on government organization and told the committee that the passage of the bill could allow the state to generate as much as $250 million in revenues this year, perhaps allowing the state to prevent “deeper cuts to education and other public services”.
Correa indicated he was concerned that if the state delays in passing the bill, pending federal legislation will overrun the state’s bill and prevent the state from the full financial benefits that Correa’s bill brings.
Correa’s SB40 is a poker-only bill and puts great emphasis on making sure that players at online casinos are safe and that their money remains safe as well.
Jim Wise, a federal advocate and congressional expert, told the committee that the chance of federal regulation passing was “quite high, due to attractive potential revenues and minimal political opposition.”
