A good bit’s been on lately, the Norwegian invasion and the Irish Open being the highlights. The Vikings visit was a little disappointing for me, I was kind of hoping for bigger games, there was loads of 1-2 and some of them really kicked off but I seemed to run bad when they did. We were hoping for some juicy 2-5 and 5-10 games but these never materialized. You have to say fair play to them though, they really know how to have a good time, all of them boozing hard and gambling even harder. There was one time I was in a game and a 5er chip just bounced in the middle of our table and hit a guy.

Full post…

Full post…

How to Host the Perfect Poker Home Game is a 13-part series on how to run the superlative poker night for all your friends and coworkers.

We’ll cover everything from what game of poker is easiest to play, what hand beats what and even what drinks and food to serve. F

Full post…

By Pauly

“Is it true? No Gringos can play online poker?”

Roberto Brenes, also known as Robertito among his fellow Costa Ricans, is the youngest son of Humberto Brenes, a.k.a. the Godfather of Poker in Latin America. The shark shtick might have worn out its welcome north of the border, but in Central and South America, Humberto commands the respect and reverence of Doyle Brunson with the added cult-like following of Johnny Cash. Robertito is regular on the LAPT and unfortunately, he was the bubble boy at the LAPT Lima. Full post…

Caesars Bingo will be making Tuesday’s even more exciting throughout May, by giving their members the chance to win an additional £5 bingo bonus every hour between 9.00am and 9.00pm on Tuesday 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th of May.

The chat hosts on duty will be revealing which bingo rooms and the exact time that each additional £5 online bingo bonus will be given away and Caesars Bingo players just need to make sure that they pick up some tickets in the next game for a chance to win. Cae

Full post…

The last days action at the $1,600 Main Event saw John Nelson exit in 11th and then Rex Clinckscales in 10th to get the official nine man final table underway. Aggressive player Tuan Phan (10s-5s) then lost ground after shoving on an Ad-Js-4s flop only to be called by Ken Silverstein with pocket aces.

Full post…

Now you have taken in all this Grand National trivia maybe its time to pick the horse you think will win this year. The

Full post…

It took only nine hours for the players at the World Poker Tour’s Bay 101 Shooting Stars to determine the final table, with a historic occurrence once the final six were determined.

Twenty men returned for battle on Thursday, looking for one of those coveted seats at a WPT final table. Leading the way was Scott Baumstein’s 1.3 million chip stack, but hot in pursuit were 2010 World Series of Poker Championship Event winner Jonathan Duhamel, top pros Joseph Elpayaa and Erik Cajelais and a short stacked J. C.

Full post…

For many people who begin playing online poker, the microstakes cash games are where they choose to start. These are among the most widely populated limits played on the internet, and for good reason.

You can cut your teeth in the game at a limited cost. Losing 5, 10, or even 25 bucks in a hand is not enough for most people to worry about. However, these limits are also widely played because many people get stuck playing them with breakeven or worse results for years.

Nathan Williams  

Many people scoff at the idea of the micros being difficult but the reality is that online poker has changed a lot in the last 5 years and these games are not a walk in the park anymore.

However, they are definitely beatable.

Full post…

Full Tilt is beginning an Image Makeover with the AGCC Image from fulltilt.com

As promised, a busy week of Full Tilt-related news continues with the publication by the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) of a report which essentially absolves itself of any serious responsibility failures in the handling of Full Tilts licensure by that selfsame regulatory commission.  The report does suggest some modifications for the ways in which the AGCC operates, but in essence declares that the AGCC was itself victimized by the actions of Full Tilt and its attorneys.

Does the AGCC presser hold water, or is it a whitewash?  Its a bit of both.  One problem here is the AGCCs continuing failure to recognize that by asserting itself as a regulatory body of real consequence, that the AGCC then must assume an element of looking after the public trust.  The AGCC doesnt want to be seen as being a rubber-stamp front designed only to protect a massive server/pipeline business, as is the case with the rival Kahnawake Gaming Commisssion [KGC], but its learning the lesson that it really cant have it both ways.

The evidence indicates that the AGCC cut plenty of its corners in finding ways to keep the UK-based Full Tilt operation running under its sheen of official regulation, and therefore bears at least a small portion of the blame for the totality of what the Black Friday / Full Tilt fiasco would become.  The lions share of the fault remains Full Tilts, but the AGCC dropped the ball, regardless of what this press-based missionary work might suggest.

Lets start with the press release issued by the AGCC, and a couple of quotes attributed to Andre Wilsenach, the AGCCs Executive Director:

If youre feeling that the AGCCs defense amounts to We wuz lied to, then youve got the gist of it.  The real question then becomes: Did the AGCC do all it could to ensure the public trust?  Isnt that the purpose of any worthy regulatory regime?

Lets dig into that 12-page report, wherein the AGCC details the evolution of its relationship with Full Tilt.  The report consists of 63 bullet-point entries which define the licensee/regulator relationship, and a small handful of these are relevant to the questions being posed.  Heres how the processing of license began for Filco, Ltd., holders of one of the FTP operational licenses:

Okay, lets examine that much, as its chock full of holes.  First, the AGCC is trying to finely parse the UIGEAs passage and the FTP owners unwillingness to self-identify as separate and discreet events.    The two were inherently intertwined, given that the American ownership of Full Tilt and a few other sites was a widely cited industry issue at the time.

And orally?  With anonymous certificates of ownership whose only purpose for existing would be to hide said ownership from the potentially telescoping eyes of US authorities?  With hundreds of millions of dollars in play?  Thats not regulation, thats contributory negligence.  And as you can see, the obfuscation continues to this day, with the perpetual failure to name the other two key certificate holders, who are almost certainly Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson.

Earth to AGCC: Lawyers lie.  Particularly business lawyers, who most often view their degrees as  license to cash fat paychecks while obscuring truth by whatever means necessary.

Then theres this laugher:

Ummm, no.  No American federal authorities have ever allowed, during the timeframe mentioned, that poker is a game of skill (despite the fact that it is).  For the AGCC to create this false attribution is another indication that theyre looking to pass the Euro in this matter.

Lets move on.  Following the April 15th, 2011 Black Friday indictments, heres a rather succinct version of how the fallout went:

[The other was FTP's Nelson Burtnick, who seems to have been involved in the day-to-day work of helping the company process payments, a task at which he utterly failed.]  [ ] 

That timeline is factual, but it glosses over several key components.  First is that the amount of the seizures announced by the DOJ should have raised immediate concerns over FTPs ability to pay back its customers, and nowhere in this latest report from the AGCC does the regulatory body assert it made such an effort.  That hundreds of millions in liquidity was missing from the FTP equation was news that was, for all real intent, immediately and readily available.

So what did the AGCC do?  They allowed FTP to continue accepting deposits from the rest of the world, despite no indication that they possessed evidence as to FTPs financial viability.

But they did launch an investigation.  Except, despite seemingly being in regular contact with both FTPs executives (or lawyers) and DOJ authorities, they waited an additional ten weeks to drop the suspension hammer.  Thats far too long for such a situation.  The AGCC should have dropped into some form of emergency mode and been able to reach a decision to suspend in a much shorter period of time, perhaps two or three weeks, even assuming that they had any cause at all to let Full Tilt resume operations.

The AGCCs willingness to accede to Full Tilts demands demonstrated itself again at the July hearing in London, where granting FTPs request to make the hearings private (in camera) denied hundreds of aggrieved customers their day.  Another poor AGCC decision, even if that one had no great financial ramifications of its own.  It again showed whose interests the AGCC was serving, and it wasnt the publics.  Granting FTPs request was instead described in the detailed AGCC report as supporting advanced commercial negotiations, indicating FTPs immediate attempts to look for a white-knight bailout.  But the AGCC had no business placing FTPs future viability ahead of its present-day concerns, given the companys ongoing lies and obfuscations.

As it was, the lies continued.  Despite the granting of the initial delay request, FTP refused to appear at the subsequent September hearing at which the license suspensions were formalized.  According to the AGCC report, FTPs attorneys even accused the AGCC of bias and suggested that the tribunal members recuse themselves, with FTP indeed skipping the hearing when the AGCC finally refused to cave.  By that point, of course, Full Tilt was in tatters.

Another self-serving statement from the AGCC concerns the topic of Player Protection:

caveat emptor

That tacit admission is as close as youll find to a statement that the AGCC never bothered to make sure FTP player funds were segregated.  Its also couched in language as to make that failure seem perfectly reasonable, that caveat emptor (let the buyer beware), even in the extreme, is an acceptable stance in a regulated market.

This is never the case.  This is instead an attempt by the AGCC to carve itself tons of wiggle room when the regulatory agency was itself close to complicity in allowing FTP to run its financial games virtually unencumbered by supervision.

Has the AGCC had its fingers burned?  Most definitely, and it might emerge the better for the experience.  But that does not mean the organization should not be held under a cold light and its mistakes properly exposed.  Its failure to do its job properly is a contributing factor in how the FTP shortfall reached such a massive scale, roughly $300 million.  It has to do a better job, or it has to disappear.  Nothing else will do.

With his victory in Switzerland, the Danish pro with over $1 million in tournament cashes online has now taken his live tournament winnings to $1,241,886, and commenting later on his remarkable result, said:

Everyone was tough actually, it was a sick final table. I cant compare it with any other wins not yet. It

Full post…

Full post…

Yes, PPAs lobby efforts tend to be focused at the federal level. But we see an interesting corollary when that happens a lot of efforts flow downhill. For example, a lot of the federal momentum is driving everything that is happening at the state level right now. When the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act (UIGEA) passed in 2006, we didnt see any a lot of the federal momentum is driving everything that is happening at the state level right now.states looking at doing any type of intrastate licensing of online poker.

Full post…

Full post…

This is an incredible feeling, I have loved playing this event and I am just so elated to have come through such a tough field, said Gordon as his supporters led him away to celebrate a hard fought victory.

Gordon Huntly, a native ofScotland who is based inThailand was delighted with his first major tournament victory. After coming second in APPT Manila Chairmans Cup 2010 he has been able to go one better here tonight.

Today began with 27 players, hopeful of taking the title. After five h

Full post…