Jennifer Newell Guest on My Radio Show This Thursday

Writer, reporter, and investigative journalist Jennifer Newell will be my guest this Thursday, April 30 on Keep Flopping Aces, which is webcast live on http://www.roundersradio.com/ at 6 p.m. Pacific Time (9 p.m. Eastern Time).

Jennifer was instrumental in reporting on and publicizing the Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet poker scandals last year, and has reported on poker cheating and player multitabling episodes this year. As a result of her appearance on Keep Flopping Aces last year, a senior level manager at Mohawk Internet Technologies, the data center that hosted Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, told us that the audit was finished, and would be released soon. In fact, the report—which succeeded in really opening up the scandal—was released the very next day!

It’s my opinion that Jennifer’s six part series for Poker Player Newspaper about the Absolute Poker Scandal, along with her radio appearance put enough pressure on the tribe to finally release what had been a long- and often-delayed report.Jennifer writes for Poker Player Newspaper and is Bluff Magazine’s political correspondent. She can also be found blogging at Pokerati.com under the moniker California Jen. She also does news reporting for PokerWorks.com, as well as occasional tournament reporting for the PokerStars blog.

If you can’t listen live this Thursday, you can hear the show rebroadcast on Friday, and it can be heard on demand at the Rounder’s Radio web site.

You can find Jennifer Newell online at these sites:
http://www.pokerati.com/

http://www.pokerworks.com/

http://www.bluffmagazine.com/

http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/

http://www.neverwinpoker.com/

http://www.pokerplayernewspaper.com/

For anyone listening live, you can call in and fire questions to me or Jennifer. Those call-in numbers are:
USA 1.810.496.3428

Canada: 1.519.913.2250

London: 02 07 993 6143

Can the Poker Player’s Alliance Overturn the Bans on Online Poker?

The Poker Players Alliance, now one million members strong, recently announced plans to spend $3 million on lobbying efforts aimed at overturning the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA—or at the very least—carving out an exemption for online poker.

While $3 million sounds like a tidy sum, it’s really not much in the lobbying game, and if the PPA buys in to Washington’s biggest game for only $3-mil, they will be short-stacked from the get-go. Three million dollars won’t buy much influence in Congress, especially when compared with the real deep stacks players.

To give you an idea of how much is spent annually to influence Congress, a list of 2008 lobbyist spending provided by the “Open Secrets” web site shows the real heavy hitters in the lobbying game.

US Chamber of Commerce, $91,615,000
Exxon Mobil, $29,000,000
AARP, $27,900,000
PG&E Corp, $27,250,000
Northrop Grumman, $20,743,252
American Medical Assn , $20,555,000
Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America, $20,220,000
American Hospital Assn, $19,652,914
General Electric, $19,418,000
National Assn of Realtors, $17,340,000

The PPA’s $3 million is a small voice straining to be heard as they howl into a raging wind. They are dwarfed by bigger spenders, and that should not be the case, because many of the leading European contributors to PPA can afford to contribute more—much more in fact—if they really want to overturn UIGEA.

The enemy isn’t sleeping either. The National Football League—instrumental in attaching the UIGEA to the Safe Port Act in 2006—is working hard to prevent the overturn of UIGEA and even hired a full time lobbyist to represent them in Washington. The NFL’s position is that online sports betting threatens their game’s integrity, and the league is committed to oppose efforts to repeal UIGEA. The Christian Coalition, another dedicated, well-funded group, will also lobby in favor of UIGEA.

If going up against the NFL and Christian Coalition is not daunting enough, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is adamantly opposed to online gambling, and has taken the position, “Not on my watch; not in my backyard.”

So far PPA lobbying efforts have not accomplished much, nor changed the aggressive landscape that surrounds online gaming. Companies have capitulated to pressure from the US Department of Justice and paid millions to the feds, and arrests have continued since passage of UIGEA. Even a change of administration doesn’t promise a kindler, more gentle approach to online gaming. After all, during his confirmation hearings Attorney General Eric Holder told Senator John Kyl that he was dead set on enforcing the provisions of Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA).

If money is the mother’s milk of politics, then a lot more will be needed for the PPA to have any real hope of overturning UIGEA. Even Barney Frank, who plans to introduce legislation to roll back UIGEA and is in a position of power in the House, will have a tough time moving his legislation forward as long as Nancy Pelosi is dead set against it. So will the passion and persuasion of the PPA’s Al D’Amato (pictured left). What’s needed is money, and more of it.

It’s tough to tell just how much money will comprise the critical mass necessary to overcome Nancy Pelosi’s stubbornness and the entrenched, anti-gaming positions of the NFL, Christian Coalition, and Eric Holder’s commitment to John Kyl—perhaps the staunchest anti-gaming member in Congress. What’s clear at this juncture is that $3 million won’t be enough to emerge victorious in this game, at least not without a lot of luck and skill going forward.

Durrrr Challenge Rolls Along As Antonius Takes Smallish Lead

The Tom "durrrr" Dwan versus Patrik Antonius challenge match is winging along right now as they played their fourth session in four days last Saturday night. After completing 11,949 of the 50,000 hand, multi-table match, Antonius holds a relatively small lead of $61,412.

Although Poker News is reporting on this match and providing card-by-card updates of the big hands, it seems to me that this match might not be decided on the big hands—where both players are all-in before the river—but on the smaller pots that are better played or better stolen by whichever player winds up winning this event.

After all, when both players find themselves all-in with hands that feature a big pair or top two pair, along with a draw to an even bigger hand, each of the competitors probably made a good decision to go all-in. In these cases, the turn of a card will decide the winner of each particular pot, and if these big, all-in confrontations even out in the long run, then the match will ultimately be won by whoever plays a better brand of small ball—snatching the antes, picking up small pots, and making the better decisions over the course of a lot of smallish hands where neither player has much of anything in support of a deep stack of chips.

I’m fascinated by the durrrr challenge, and can’t imagine how Tom Dwan really believes he has the best of it when he is laying 3-to-1 odds, and will have to beat Antonius, Benyamine, and Ivey to come out ahead—unless he thinks he will pick up so much more over the table that he can afford to win only two out of these three matches.

If he wins two of his challenge matches, he’ll pay out $1.5 million to the player who beats him while collecting $500,000 twice from the losers. That will put him $500,000 in the hole and to emerge a net winner, he’ll have to overcome this half-million dollar deficit by over-the-table wins during the course of the three events.

Stay tuned ... we'll see. I'd like to see a winner come out of each of these three challenge matches, although it wouldn't surprise me at all to see one or more3 of these matched "settled out" at some point. What do you think?

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Harrah's Hires Former Party Poker Head Honcho Mitch Garber

In what can only be called a show of confidence that change is afoot for online poker in the USA, the Times of London reported that Harrah’s hired former PartyGaming chief Mitch Garber.

Although the Times report says that Garber’s role is unconfirmed, he is rumored to be heading a new Harrah’s division that will focus on the internet gaming operations as well as operations related to the World Series of Poker. Party Poker, you may recall, was a WSOP sponsor before being forced out of the US market by UIGEA.

Although there’s plenty of support brewing for legalization and regulation of online gambling in the United States, it’s not a done deal yet. Nevertheless, Garber’s hiring puts Harrah’s out in front of the curve should UIGEA be set aside, and Garber’s presence would give Harrah’s a hand up the ladder in the US online poker market.

Even more important, this move could set the stage for a working relationship in which Party Gaming and Harrah’s would enter the US online gaming market together. The synergy is nice. With Party’s technology, online marketing and customer service technology teaming with Harrah’s brand recognition in the US, it would be a major player in the US from the outset.

Big Drop Off in Entries for Foxwoods $10K Event

Is this a sign of the times or something else? While some poker tournaments had astonishingly good turnouts this year despite dire economic conditions, Foxwoods saw only 259 players entering their $10,000 buy-in tournament.

That’s a drop of 22 percent compared to last year, when 333 players showed up for Foxwoods’ big event.

That’s too bad, and I’m not sure anyone has a good handle about why this is happening. I’m sure the economy has something to do with it. Over the course of the last year, America has turned from a nation of consumers to a nation of savers, so there’s certainly less discretionary money going around around, but there may be other factors at play too—though I have no idea what they might be.

Maybe some of you readers from the New England area can enlighten us. I’d be interesting in knowing what’s up with this big a downturn in this event.

June Field, Jan Fisher, and Cyndy Violette to be Inducted in Women In poker Hall of Fame

On Friday, June 5, the Women in Poker Hall of Fame (WIP HOF) will induct June Field, Jan Fisher, and Cyndy Violette (pictured right) as members. They will join Linda Johnson, Marsha Waggoner, Susie Isaacs, and Barbara Enright in the WIP HOF.

June Field, the founder of Card Player magazine, was the first person who published my writings, way back when it was a newsprint publication in the 1990s. June is also the founder of Card Player Cruises and Classic Poker Cruises. She launched Poker Digest, which subsequently merged with Casino Player magazine. Field also won a World Series of Poker bracelet in 1982 in limit 7-card stud.

Jan Fisher co-founded the Tournament Directors' Association (TDA) with Linda Johnson, Matt Savage, and David Lamb, and is currently a partner in Card Player Cruises and is a regular columnist for Poker Player Newspaper, where I serve as editor. Jan Fisher is active in the poker community and sits on the Board of Directors of the Poker Players Alliance, Ladies Poker Association, and Ladies International Poker Series (LIPS).

Cyndy Violette is a Full Tilt Poker sponsored pro who won a WSOP bracelet in a $2,000 buy-in 7-stud/8 tournament in 2004. Two years later, she took third in a $5,000 buy-in 7-card stud event for $102,000, and in 2005 she made three final WSOP tables, earning her even more exposure.

The induction weekend is marked by four events of interest to women in poker. On Thursday June 4, a $230 buy-in tournament with $50 rebuys at the Golden Nugget will benefit Poker Gives, a charity founded by Johnson, Fisher, Mike Sexton, and Lisa Tenner.

At 6 p.m. Friday, June 5, World Poker Tour host Mike Sexton will emcee the induction ceremonies for the WIP HOF.
On Saturday, June 6, LIPS will hold $175 satellites with winners receiving a choice of entry into the Golden Nugget Grand Series or the LIPS Championship in August.

On Sunday June 7, the $1,000 buy-in WSOP ladies-only event kicks off at the Rio—capping a four-day weekend for the poker-playing ladies.

Study Proves What We All Know ... That Poker is a Game of Skill, Not Luck

Washington D.C. consulting firm Cigital released findings of a recent study of 103 million Texas hold'em hands that provides statistical support for how player decisions determine the outcomes of games, rather than the luck of the draw and the turn of a card.

The study, based on data from play on PokerStars during December 2008, focused on how many times hands went to a showdown—where cards are revealed to determine the winner—compared to the number of hands that were not show down and the cards did not determine the outcome.

More than seventy-five percent of the time the outcome was determined when all players folded to a single remaining player. In the slightly-less-than twenty-five percent of hands that went to a showdown—where cards determined the winner—only half were won by the player who could make the best 5-card hand. The rest of the time showdowns were won by players with inferior hands, because the player with the best hand folded before the showdown.

A copy of the report can be viewed here: http://www.cigital.com/resources/gaming/poker/100M-Hand-AnalysisReport.pdf.

Paco Hope, technical manager at Cigital and co-author of the study, told the Wall Street Journal that the relatively few showdowns show poker to be a game of skill, because the winner could have won by making identical bets no matter which cards were drawn. "Most people think, you get your cards, and the best hand wins," Hope said, adding, "Whether or not you go to a showdown is determined by the decisions you make, which are determined entirely by your skill."

The Poker Players Alliance (PPA) praised the study in a press release that you can read here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/13710569/Poker-Players-Alliance-Lauds-New-Statistical-Study-Showing-Poker-is-a-Game-of-Skill-Not-Chance.

“As a poker player I can tell you that knowing when to hold or fold is not based solely on the cards that are dealt, but a series of decisions based on skill and the actions taken by the other players," said former Senator Alfonse D'Amato, the Chairman of PPA. "This study provides the raw data to back up the compelling arguments made by poker players around the world that it's skill, not pure luck, that determines the outcome of this game."

D’Amato noted that the results of this study are sure to assist members of the poker community with ongoing legal challenges to protect the game from being categorized as gambling.

PPA Executive Director John Pappas added, "In courtrooms across the country, judges and juries are finding that poker is a game of skill—not chance like lotteries or slot machines—and this study confirms that fact."