2007 Ladies Champ Sally Anne Boyer Sues Harrah's and WSOP Academy

2007 WSOP Ladies' Event winner Sally Anne Boyer (pictured right) filed a suit against Harrah's and the World Series of Poker Academy for misusing her name and image. Boyer alleges they used her photograph for marketing and promotions without her permission.

Her suit claims she attended the academy for only one day but did not graduate, although in an interview with Lianna Shen for Poker Listings, Boyer is quoted as saying, “I attended the Academy, the World Series of Poker Academy—it was very helpful … I changed up my strategy a bit, and, it worked!”

She added, “The Academy is sponsored by the World Series, it's for ladies only, and they limited to 100 women, and Annie Duke was one of the instructors! I played with her and it was just wonderful. I highly recommend it. She was a mentor to all of us. So great, very encouraging, and I was thrilled just to play with her.”

That interview is available in its entirety here: http://www.pokerlistings.com/poker-player-interviews/wsop/2007/sally-anne-boyer-queen-of-poker-2007-wsop-ladies-event-champion

Despite what seems to have been a ringing endorsement of the Academy in her Poker Listings interview, Boyer now claims that the WSOP academy had nothing to do with her performance. No comment from Harrah's.

This is another story that’s still developing, and we’ll bring you more news as it happens.

Congressional Committe Cites $42 Billion in Available Revenue thru Legalized Online Gaming

The Wall Street Journal reported that an analysis by (pictured left) Rep. Jim McDermott’s (D-WA) Joint Committee on Taxation found that—HR 2267—introduced by Representatives Barney Frank (D-MA) and Jim McDermott (D-WA), would generate nearly $42 billion over 10 years.

"This analysis further reinforces the fact that a regulated environment will generate billions in new revenue to offset the costs of health care reform or other vital government programs," said Michael Waxman, spokesperson for the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative. "With the completed analysis, and support for Internet gambling regulation growing daily, it's only a matter of time before Congress acts and begins allocating the billions in new revenue sitting on the table to one program or another.

"We believe this tax revenue analysis will encourage immediate discussions and consideration of pending legislation to regulate Internet gambling," added Waxman. "With everyone acknowledging that attempts to prohibit the activity have failed, this provides even more incentive for Congress to act."

Since its introduction in May, House Committee on Financial Services Chairman Frank’s bill has attracted a bipartisan group of more than 60 co-sponsors has signed onto the bill.

Chairman Frank's legislation would permit licensed gambling operators to accept wagers from individuals in the US, while putting a series of consumer protections into place. These include safeguards against compulsive and underage gambling, money laundering, fraud, and identity theft, along with the right of each state to determine whether to allow Internet gambling within their state.

Rep. McDermott's Internet Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement Act (HR 2268), a companion bill, raises revenue through individual and corporate taxes and license fees on regulated Internet gambling. This potential revenue—millions US-based players wager more than $100 billion online annually—is currently uncollected.

Mandalay Media Makes Enormous, Last-Minute Offer to Buy World Poker Tour

Has the ugly duckling World Poker Tour turned into Cinderella? Earlier this year Gamyina Limited offered $9.08 million to purchase the World Poker Tour Enterprises. That was topped recently by an offer of $12.3 million by Peerless Media. In fact, Tour’s board of directors was preparing to vote on Peerless Media’s offer. In case you’ve never heard of Peerless Media, their subsidiary is PartyGaming.

But wait! Stop the presses! WPTE received an eleventh hour offer from Mandalay Media worth $36.5 million. This is an enormous increase by any standards over the original Gamyina offer of slightly more than $9 million as well as the offer of $12.3 million from Peerless that was under serious consideration by WPTE’s board of directors.

WPT is now looking at something that’s four times larger than the original deal, plus Mandalay Media is offering what they’ve referred to as “significant cash and stock” to WPTE shareholders.

Mandalay Media is hoping to meet with the WPTE Board of Directors as soon as possible, so this is a story that has yet to play out. Even so, one has to wonder why, and how, suitors are now finding such increased value in a company that was reportedly foundering just last year.

Mike Sexton to guest on my radio show tonight!

Mike Sexton, the only candidate to be inducted to the Poker Hall of Fame in 2009, will be my guest Thursday, October 29, on my radio show, Keep Flopping Aces.

The show is webcast at http://www.roundersradio.com/ at 6 p.m. Pacific Time (9 p.m. Eastern Time), and can be heard worldwide at corresponding times. Listeners can call in with questions for Mike, or questions can be posed by anyone in the Rounder’s Radio chat room during the broadcast.

If you can’t listen live, the show will be rebroadcast Friday. Just check the Rounder’s Radio web site for the time.

If you can’t listen live, you can also hear it on demand a day or so after it airs live.

Hope you can tune in tonight, and every Thursday evening for the very best in poker talk radio at Keep Flopping Aces.

the durrr challenge is turning into a slumber fest

The off again-on again nature of the durrr challenge is causing it to lose steam—at least I’m beginning to lose interest in a match that will seemingly never be finished—but they did play yesterday, during four choppy session that comprised a total of 2,040 hands.

Tom Dwan won almost $82,000 for the day, and now holds a lead of $1.2 million over Patrik Antonius. However, what should have been an exciting, bigger-money-than-anything-ever-played-for-before poker game, is dragging on and on and on. At this point, they’ve played slightly more than 27,000 hands, and have something less than 23,000 left to play. At their current pace, most everyone will have another birthday or two before they are finished.

What would have made this match special—and clearly the equal of the Johnny Moss vs. Nick the Greek match that took place in the window of Binion’s Horseshoe and was responsible for popularizing poker in Las Vegas oh so many years ago, was that Moss and the Greek played every day and the match was a daily drama.

This one is turning into coitus interruptus, and while the sums wagered are still enormous, the drama has morphed into glacially-paced boredom. They can still bring back the excitement by playing out the remaining hands on a daily, or almost daily basis, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. And with this match taking forever to complete, it doesn’t seem like the other challenge matches durrr had planned will come to fruition either. And that’s sad. This had all the makings of the greatest poker match of all time. Instead, it seems to be dying on the vine.

Mike Sexton Elected to Poker Hall of Fame

Kudos to Sexton
Congratulations to Mike Sexton on his selection as the 38th member of the Poker Hall of Fame. In 1989 the 62-year-old Sexton won a WSOP title, and won the WSOP Tournament of Champions event in 2006. He has 47 WSOP cashes and more than $3 million in tournament winnings, making him eleventh on the all-time list, though these are not the primary reasons he was selected for enshrinement in the Poker Hall of Fame.

It's What He Did Away From the Table That Mattered Most

But it is his stunning list of contributions away from the poker table that propelled him into the HOF. He’s been the announcer for the World Poker Tour and is one of the founders of pokergives.org, one of poker’s first charitable organizations.

More than anything, Sexton has been an ambassador for the game, and many who have taken up poker during its boom years cut their teeth listening to Sexton explain that Texas hold’em “…takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.” Sexton has been a fighter for poker’s legal rights both behind the scenes and testifying in court cases as an expert witness.

Nine Nominated ... Only One Chosen Nine finalists were nominated this year, with selections made by a panel of 15 Hall of Fame members and 15 media representatives. Sexton was the odds-on favorite for selection, and as it turned out, he was the only nominee who garnered the required 75 percent of the votes needed for election. Others on the ballot included Tom McEvoy, Dan Harrington, Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, Men “the Master” Nguyen, Erik Seidel, and Scotty Nguyen.


I'd Have Chosen Sexton, Harrington, and McEvoy
If I were one of the electors, I would have voted for Sexton, Harrngton, and McEvoy. In my opinion each of them meets the criteria for selection. Of this group, I firmly believe that Ivey, Negreanu, and Greenstein will eventually be selected for induction. Seidel appears to be on the bubble, while Men Nguyen and Scotty Nguyen probably carry too much negative baggage to ever be chosen for induction.


Induction Ceremony Set for November 7, at the Rio
Sexton’s official induction into the Poker Hall of Fame will take place in Las Vegas, at the Rio, on November 7—a part of all the glitz and glamour surrounding the conclusion of the 2009 World Series of Poker main event.

Poker Players Alliance Asks For 1 Year Delay in Enforcing UIGEA

A petition sent by the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) to US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner included a warning that enforcing the provisions of UIGEA would put “an unreasonable burden on regulators and the financial services industry at a time of economic crisis.”

This refers to banks and designated payment systems that will be required to block the movement of funds in and out of online poker sites.

The petition sent to Geithner asks for an extension of one year, from the December 1, 2009 date of compliance to December 2010, before the provisions of UIGEA are to take effect.

The U.S. Treasury Secretary now has 180 days to reply to the petition.

The PPA’s petition was filed jointly with the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and American Greyhound Track Operators Association. Nineteen Congressmen also wrote to Geithner and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke in support of this petition.

The group of 19 Congressmen includes such heavy hitters as Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank (D-MA.), Homeland Security Committee ranking member Peter King (R-NY), Financial Institutions Subcommittee chairman Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL), Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee chairman Melvin Watt (D-NC), Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee ranking member Ron Paul (R-TX) and Oversight Subcommittee ranking member Judy Biggert (R-IL).

Poker Pages Folds its Hand

“It is with sadness and regret that we must announce that Poker Pages and all of its related services will be closed on October 31, 2009.” So goes a headline at the Poker Pages website, and I’m really saddened to see them go.

For years a few mouse clicks to http://www.pokerpages.com/ brought up the latest, most up-to-date tournament results, as well as access to a variety of poker information, strategy articles, a directory of cardrooms, a variety of blogs, poker players ranked by money won, videos, galleries of photographs, interviews, book reviews, and assorted other markings from poker’s recent history.

Poker Pages also started and ran Poker School Online, one of the first online poker learning centers, and I was the school’s first Dean, way back before the poker boom actually hit and took hold. I wrote articles for the school, monitored conversation and questions in the school’s forum, recorded some poker lessons, interacted with students, and that sort of thing.

But the site always operated close to the financial edge, and in recent years its financial burdens were exacerbated by the general economic woes we’re all suffering. Finally, Poker Pages simply slipped off the slippery precipice it had occupied for a while, and is closing its virtual doors at the end of October.

Their web site says, “For many years Poker Pages has enjoyed providing the best source of poker related content, arguably the Internet's largest and most complete live poker tournament results and listings database, as well as a place to play poker for free. These services will certainly be missed, but we realize that the most appreciated benefit of our products and services has been the community created by our user base. We thank you for the many great years you allowed us to provide you with the best poker content on the Internet and wish you all the best in your future poker endeavors. It has been a pleasure and a privilege serving you over the years!”

I always had a fond spot for Poker Pages and Poker School Online, and now they’ll soon be gone. I’ll miss them.

Brit Paul Zimbler Breaks World Record for Continuous Poker Session

Englishman Paul Zimbler broke a world record for the longest recorded continuous poker session during the World Series of Poker-Europe, when he played 74 hours, 20 minutes, and 21 seconds straight.

Challengers were asked to donate a minimum of £10 to play against him, with proceeds going to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Betfair Poker added a £5,000 donation and Zimbler raised close to £35,000 during his sleepless saga.

He began on a Monday and finished three days later after playing Mike Matusow. Zimbler had to be helped—and partially carried—from the table.

During the nearly 75-hour session, he played a total of 183 matches. Zimbler won 102 of them.
"Thankfully I had a lot of support and I'm very happy I did it," said an exhausted Zimbler. "I was very close to stopping right at the end. I wasn't doing it for the world record and all that rubbish. It's just a great thing to do good things for those who are less fortunate."

Who's In Bed With Whom on the Online Gaming Issue?

Speaking at the recent International Masters of Gaming Law conference in Amsterdam, attorney Tony Cabot (pictured left) believes that PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker—sites attracting most of the US online poker players nowadays—will be major players in keeping Frank's legislation from passing.

Cabot, who is based in Las Vegas, believes that because Poker Stars and Full Tilt currently accept US players, they would be low on the list of sites to receive licenses in a post-UIGEA environment. To prevent that from happening, Cabot opined that the sites would work to ensure the defeat of Frank’s legislation.

Could this be true? Aren’t Poker Stars and Full Tilt the major sources of financial support for the Poker Player’s Alliance—the major lobbying effort to repeal UIGEA? Could they be working both sides of the street, and if so, why?

I don’t know the answers, and I don’t have a clue why they might do this. So if you do … lemme know.

Regardless of this speculation, not all the stars are aligned in favor of Frank’s legislation, because some Las Vegas land based casino owners are against Internet gambling, although others support it. Reports say that Steve Wynn has reportedly hired lobbyists to fight against the Frank Bill, while just down the Strip, Harrah's is pushing for Internet gambling regulation.

Cabot’s opinion isn’t universally shared either. Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr believes Frank's Bill—now with 60 co-sponsors—is gaining traction in Washington. Barr believes the revenue from taxed and regulated online gaming is too great for lawmakers to ignore.

Nothing is certain about any of this except that politics does make for strange bedfellows.

Rep Barney Frank Adds 60th Co-Sponsor to Bill

Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) recently added his sixtieth co-sponsor for his proposed legislation that would tax and regulate online gaming in the US. Representatives Bennie Thompson and Adam Smith became co-sponsor numbers fifty-nine and sixty.

Frank’s proposal has been on hold in Congress while the Financial Services Committee—chaired by Barney Frank—deals with the economy. But that hasn’t stopped Frank from working behind the scenes on this issue.

Frank, along with Peter King (R-NY) and seventeen other bipartisan lawmakers, sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, asking that the implementation of UIGEA’s rules be delayed by one year. The letter stated that they “… believe this is an unreasonable burden on regulators and the financial services industry at a time of economic crisis."

The rules are set to take effect on December 1, but the lawmakers hope to delay the law to give them time to overturn UIGEA.

Former BetOn-Sports Boss David Carruthers Drops Guilty Plea

Remember David Carruthers? He’s the Edinburgh-born former CEO of online bookie BetOn-Sports who spent the past three years under house arrest in a Missouri hotel, pending a court appearance for violating the Wire Act, a 1960s prohibiting sports wagering over the phone.

He pled guilty to racketeering charges—part of a deal by which Carruthers would be sentenced to 33 months—but just a few days before he was to be sentenced, he opted out of his plea. The timing is a little strange to say the least, because his attorneys were planning to argue that he served his time and should be released.

Now Carruthers has a change of plea hearing scheduled October 14. His defense team gave no reason for his change of mind, and the prosecution was also mum.

Carruthers was arrested in July 2006 on charges that he headed a company that accepted unlawful sports bets on the web from Americans. The arrest occurred when he changed planes in Dallas Airport on his way to Costa Rica, where the company was headquartered. Since his arrest, Carruthers has been confined to a hotel in Clayton, Missouri.

I’m wondering why he decided to drop his plea at the eleventh hour, especially when he stood a chance of being released for time served? Could it be he just wants to fight the bastards? Maybe so. We’ll see.