Poker Babe

From www.parttimepoker.com

Clonie Gowen, the now-defunct and former member of Team Full Tilt Poker, announced this past week that she is bringing forth a $40,00,000 lawsuit against FTP for breach of a contract. The lawsuit states the Gowen is owed her fair share of a 1% ownership stake that was apparently promised to her over a phone conversation with Full Tilt executives.  However, this not-so-apparent “oral” agreement was never signed into a legal contract, which unfortunately for her might prove troublesome when it comes to actually proving a breach in contract (note the keyword: contract).

The supposed oral contract took place in 2004 with several FTP executives, however, despite not having any legal backing put on paper Clonie still went on and promoted the Full Tilt brand on tournament circuit around the world.  The promotional ads she did for the company definitely increased fanfare not just among online poker players, but also women poker players.  She was 1 of only 2 faces on Team Full Tilt Poker who were women - the other of course being cash game legend Jennifer Harman - and she did an excellent job of making people aware of the online mega site, even though she was doing it for zero compensation.

In 2007, Howard Lederer supposedly offered Clonie Gowen a distribution check of $250,000.  For what ever reason or another, Gowen denied the check!  Other poker media outlets who have been covering the story still don’t have an explanation behind that, nor has Clonie herself commented on it as well.  In either case, she still went on and continued to once against dawn the FTP gear around every event she played - despited denying a supposed payment from the company and still not being paid a single cent since 2004!

After Full Tilt let go of Clonie Gowen on November 11th, 2008, she went and filed the suit just a few days later in a Las Vegas courtroom.  The suit itself will most likely be settled out of court, mainly because Full Tilt Poker most likely doesn’t want the financial information of their company to be a matter of public record, nor do they need any more reason to be under the close microscope of the U.S. government.

Peter Eastgate 2008 WSOP Champ

From ESPN

LAS VEGAS — A 22-year-old Danish poker professional won the World Series of Poker early Tuesday, turning a wheel straight on the last hand to become the youngest champion in the history of the no-limit Texas Hold ‘em main event.

Peter Eastgate hit an ace-to-five straight on the turn and instantly called an all-in bet from Ivan Demidov on the river to win the title and $9,152,416. Demidov held two pair, twos and fours.

The previous youngest champion was 11-time gold bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, who was 24 when he won the tournament in 1989.

“It feels good to beat Phil’s record,” Eastgate said after taking pictures with stacks of $100 bills and his new gold bracelet. “I was not focused on the record that I could break, I was just focused on the game.”

Eastgate said he got a call from Hellmuth wishing him luck before the more than three-hour session.

Eastgate built a 7-to-1 chip advantage before the decisive hand by sniffing out two bluffs by Demidov for big pots Eastgate, of Odense, Denmark, put Demidov on his heels by stopping the 27-year-old from bluffing a pot worth roughly 44 million chips with an ace high. Eastgate called with a diamond flush.

He won a significant pot four hands later with a full house and immediately began putting pressure on the final opponent standing between him and the title.

“My motivation was $9 million and a bracelet,” Eastgate said. “That’s what kept me focused.”

Demidov, a 27-year-old semiprofessional poker player from Moscow, took home $5,809,595 for second place.

“I’m someone who’s not going to cry,” Demidov said. “I’m disappointed, but I’m going to be happy. That’s the way it turned out.”

Demidov erased Eastgate’s initial 24 million chip advantage in their quest for the gold bracelet in less than 30 minutes to start the night.

But Eastgate regained his chips and then some by the first break - taking a 35.8 million chip lead after hitting two pair, aces and queens.

Eastgate took a nearly 2-to-1 chip advantage after calling a 7 million chip river bet with a pair of jacks. A queen was on the board, but Demidov turned over an ace high. The call indicated that Eastgate sensed his hand was good despite the large bet and plenty of cards that could have beaten him.

“He was playing me very aggressively so I was kind of looking to kind of trap him,” Eastgate said. “It worked out in different spots.”

One player had to collect all the chips in play — some 137 million — to win the tournament. Chips have no monetary value and each player started the no-limit Texas Hold ‘em tournament in July with 20,000 chips.

The players were deliberate in their decisions, not rushing to shove their chips in the middle early on. As Eastgate distanced himself from Demidov, it became apparent that Demidov would need to double his stack to keep his options unhindered.

“I learned that I need to improve my hands-on game,” Demidov said.

Blown Call Costs Gamblers At Least 100 million

From ESPN

PITTSBURGH — The first 11-10 game in NFL history shouldn’t have ended that way, referee Scott Green said after a last-minute touchdown was errantly taken away from the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday.

The officiating mistake didn’t affect the outcome since the Steelers still would have won, but the touchdown would have changed the score to 17-10 — or, more likely, 18-10, since the teams were lined up for an extra-point try that was never attempted.

On first-and-10 from San Diego’s 21 with five seconds remaining, Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers threw a short pass to LaDainian Tomlinson over the middle for 3 yards. Tomlinson turned and made a handoff-type lateral to wide receiver Chris Chambers, who attempted to pitch the ball to a teammate only to have safety Troy Polamalu scoop it up and score from the 12.

Both teams left the field on what looked to be a game-ending play but were called back by the officials for the extra-point attempt. At that point, the replay official called for a review.

NFL.com Video

Watch highlights from the Pittsburgh Steelers 11-10 win over the San Diego Chargers.

After watching the play, Green initially announced the ruling on the field was upheld and the touchdown counted. But the officiating crew huddled again before the extra-point attempt and changed the call, deciding that an illegal forward pass should have ended the play.

Green, in a postgame interview with a pool reporter, said that call was errant — even though his explanation for the confusion was almost as confusing as the play itself.

“We should have let the play go through in the end, yes,” Green said. “It was misinterpreted that instead of killing the play, we should have let the play go through.”

Green said the confusion occurred because there was a misunderstanding about which lateral was in question.

“The first pass was the one that was illegal, but it only kills the play if it hits the ground,” Green said. “That was incorrect to have killed it at that point. The ruling should have let the play go on. That’s just the way that it played out. We believe the second pass was legal.”

Green was asked why, since the ball didn’t hit the ground during any of the tossing, the officials decided after huddling that the play should have ended.

“We didn’t kill it on the field,” Green said. “After [the] discussion we decided … there was some confusion over which pass we were talking about and it was decided that it was the second pass that was illegal that did hit the ground and therefore we killed the play there.”

However, the officials realized afterward they erred.

“I know,” Green said. “The rule was misinterpreted.”

In an interview Monday on SportsCenter, Mike Pereira, the NFL’s vice president of officiating, said the league would look at “tweaking” its replay system, possibly before the playoffs, to allow officials to go back to replay a second time if an error is made. In the current system, officials cannot return to the monitor for a second look at a play if there is confusion about rules interpretation.

That the Steelers preserved their victory “doesn’t make us feel any better about the call,” Pereira said.

The score made a difference in the wallets of a lot of bettors on the Las Vegas Strip.

“Anyone who had a bet on the Pittsburgh side and thought they had won weren’t too happy,” said John Avello, director of the race and sports book at the Wynn resort.

Avello said there might have been $10 million bet on the game statewide and many times more than that in illegal bets around the country and in offshore Internet betting sites. There was more money bet on Pittsburgh, he said, especially in parlay bets.

Though the officials later said they made a mistake in calling back the touchdown, the official score remains 11-10, and even if the NFL changes it, Nevada sports books paid off on the final score from Sunday.

Asked about the officiating — the Steelers drew 115 yards in penalties to the Chargers’ 5 — Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin declined to comment.

“No, I have never seen a game ended with 13-to-1 in penalties [the official tally was 13 against the Steelers, two against the Chargers], but I am not answering questions about the officiating,” Tomlin said.

The call affected betting on the game since the Steelers were either a 4½- or five-point favorite and would have covered if the touchdown counted.

“It was weird,” Steelers receiver Hines Ward said, ” … but this game is about wins and losses, and we won.”

Obama’s Impact on Online Poker

Article from 4flush.com

Online Poker Community Rejoices; Barack Obama Wins US Presidency

Last night it was confirmed – Barack Obama has won the US Presidential election that will see him take office in January 2009. The majority of the online poker community is rejoicing over the outcome, though it is still unclear what his actions, if any, will be regarding the legalities of online poker in the United States.

It is the responsibility of the House of Representatives and the Senate to introduce new bills and work diligently to push them through congress, but it will be President-elect Barack Obama who gets the final say. Last night’s election came out in the favor of online poker advocates in this regards as well.

Congressman Barney Frank, the leading proponent of legalizing, regulating and taxing the online gambling industry in the United States, won by a landslide with 68% of the vote versus his Republican opponent Earl Sholley, who received only 25%. Just before the end of the 2008 congressional Session, the second revision of Barney Frank‘s bill, HR 6870 – the Payment Systems Protection Act – finally made its way past the House Financial Services Committee. HR 6870 seeks to clarify the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006 that was unscrupulously attached to an unrelated Port Security bill and dubiously passed in the wee hours of night by President Bush.

Congressman Robert Wexler, another avid sponsor of legalizing online poker in the US, also defeated his Republican opponent Edward Lynch by an overwhelming vote of 66% to 27%. Wexler introduced the Skill Game Protection Act, HR 2610, in an attempt to make skill games exempt from the current online gambling laws. According to HR 2610, skill games would include poker, chess, bridge and other online games wherein skill takes precedence over luck in determining the outcome of a match.

Other political victories for legal online poker advocates include Ron Paul, who helped co-author Frank’s original Payment Systems Protection Act (HR 5767); Pete Sessions, who introduced HR 6663 to clarify the UIGEA to focus on Internet sports betting; Representatives Shelley Berkley and Jon Porter of Nevada who strove to enact a study of online gambling; Congressman Jim McDermott who proposed two bills associated with the taxation of online gambling.

On the reverse side of the spectrum, Congressmen Bob Goodlatte and Spencer Bachus will both be spending another two years in Washington. Goodlatte played a key role in executing the UIGEA in 2006, while Bachus has become infamous for telling of a fictitious study whose results claimed that 1/3 of all college students who gambled online committed suicide. The study, said to have taken place a Canada’s McGill University, never existed.

While the future is still speculative at best, the future of legal online poker in the United States is certainly brighter than it has been in the past two years.

Our New President Plays Poker

From the New Yorker Magazine

Before his recent loss in the Nevada caucus, Barack Obama took heat (from the Clinton camp and from casino executives) for his history of opposing the expansion of legal gambling. His campaign people never pointed out, in his defense, that their man considers himself to be “a pretty good poker player.” (That’s what he told an Associated Press reporter who asked him to name a hidden talent.) This puts him in the company of Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Warren Harding, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon. And, like Teddy Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, Senator Obama seems to have played the game at least partly because it enabled him to form political alliances that he might not otherwise have formed.

Obama was greeted coolly by some of his fellow-legislators when, in 1997, he arrived in Springfield to take a seat in the Illinois senate. Perhaps realizing that both the Chicago machine pols and the downstate soybean farmers viewed him as an overeducated bleeding heart and a greenhorn, he decided to woo them with poker.

Along with another freshman senator, Terry Link, Obama started up a regular game in Link’s Springfield living room. It began with five players but quickly grew to eight and developed a long waiting list, which included not only Democrats but Republicans and lobbyists. “When it turned out that I could sit down . . . and have a beer and watch a game or go out for a round of golf or get a poker game going,” Obama told the Chicago Tribune last year, “I probably confounded some of their expectations.” But it was no Deadwood. Link, discussing the game over the phone the other day, said, “You hung up your guns at the door. Nobody talked about their jobs or politics, and certainly no ‘influence’ was bartered or even discussed. It was boys’ night out—a release from our legislative responsibilities.”

Obama’s analytical mind helped him excel at draw, stud, and hold ’em, and also at the sillier, more luck-based variants of the game that other players chose, such as baseball. Yet, even with the beer drinking and cigarette smoking, there were unspoken rules of conduct. When a married lobbyist arrived at a Springfield game with a person described as “an inebriated woman companion who did not acquit herself in a particularly wholesome fashion,” Obama made a face indicating that he wasn’t pleased. Link says that the lobbyist and his date were “quickly whisked out of the place.”

Obama never played for high stakes. Only on a very bad night could a player drop two hundred dollars in these games, typical wins and losses being closer to twenty-five bucks. Link describes Obama as a “calculating” cardplayer, avoiding long-shot draws and patiently waiting for strong starting hands. “When Barack stayed in, you pretty much figured he’s got a good hand,” former Senator Larry Walsh once told a reporter, neglecting to note that maintaining that sort of rock-solid image made it easier for Obama to bluff.

Many Presidents have been known to use poker lingo when they talk policy. Lincoln used a poker analogy to explain his decision not to apologize to Queen Victoria during the Trent Affair. Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal sprang from a poker sensibility. “When I say I believe in a square deal, I do not mean . . . to give every man the best hand,” Roosevelt explained. “If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall not be any crookedness in the dealing.”

F.D.R. played nickel-ante stud games—“an exchange of much conversation but little money,” according to Justice Robert H. Jackson, who played in them regularly—to unwind after his gruelling days managing the Depression and then the war. Truman had played as a doughboy during the First World War and kept up with war buddies at poker games, including during his years in the White House, where he played with chips embossed with the Presidential seal.

On the campaign trail, Obama has been known to play Uno with his daughters, but no card games involving chips. It may be that his advisers are being cautious. In some forms, poker, after all, remains illegal in much of the country. ♦

Giants vs Cowboys

I am a Giants fan and am lovin the way they have been playing so far this season.  Tomorrow they will face their NFC East rival the Cowboys who come into this game with a ton of injuries, most notably Quarterback Tony Romo and Tight end Jason Whitten.  Not to mention that the 2 starting corner backs are out for for tomorrows game.  Even without these injuries, the Giants would win, but I am picking a big Giants win.  I am betting heavily on the Giants giving 9 points to the Cowgirls.  Go big blue.

Understanding Parlays

When I bet on football, I always look for 2 or 3 games I like so I can bet the parlay and actually win some real money.  Straight bets are not much fun since you only win what you put up.  Heres a good article from bodog about parlay betting.

Perhaps you’ve heard that old chestnut about the wheat and the chessboard. Long story short, put one grain of wheat on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and keep doubling that amount until all 64 squares are covered. How many grains of wheat is that? 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. Even if you made the Earth a giant wheat farm, it would take 80 years to harvest that much grain.

That’s the power of parlays. Of course, your chances of picking 64 correct games out of 64 is frightfully small: (that number up there) to 1. So let’s start smaller. Let’s say you’re looking at this week’s NFL matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and the Cleveland Browns, and let’s say you like both the Ravens (+1.5) and the under on the total of 36.5 points (For current lines, see Bodoglife.com). You could wager $110 on each of them separately for a potential profit of $200, or you could place a single $110 parlay bet and earn $286 if both the Ravens and the under cash in. You pay half as much, and you win more.

You’ll already have noticed that’s $286 and not $330 on odds of 3-1. That factors in the juice the book collects for processing the bet. Every 2-team parlay (where the juice is –110 on each item in the parlay) is given odds of 2.6-1. Here is the full “fixed odds” list:

2-team 2.6-1
3-team 6-1
4-team 12-1
5-team 25-1
6-team 35-1
7-team 75-1
8-team 100-1
9-team 150-1
10-team 300-1
11-team 450-1
12-team 600-1

As you can see, those payouts can get pretty big – up to a maximum of $100,000. The more teams you parlay, the higher the risk and the juice as well as the payout. You can put together any combination of football and basketball games, using both pointspreads and totals.

There are a few simple things to know about parlays before making the plunge. The first is that every team in the parlay has to win to get paid. Four out of five is not good enough. However, if there is a push, that team gets taken out of the equation. Let’s say you have a 3-team parlay where one of the games ended in a push. That game is removed, and you proceed with your remaining 2-team parlay at 2.6-1 odds. If you started with a 2-team parlay and you get a push, the other team is treated as if it were an ordinary straight bet instead.

Get in on parlay betting with Bodog online sports betting.

An easy parlay strategy that many sharps employ is to bet the pointspread and the total on the same game, as we did in the above example. One important benefit is that you’re studying almost entirely the same handicapping information, so it’s a major timesaver – there’s a reason why they say time is money. You can also expect the underdog to have a better chance of covering if the score is low, particularly if the favorite is laying a ton of points. The underdog-under and favorite-over parlays are value bets following this line of reasoning. (Please note, however, that Bodog does not take action on correlated parlays.)

We’re into parlays so much that we’re pleased to be holding a special Parlay Promotion contest that earns you bonus points for all the parlays that you hit, all the way up to the end of the NFL regular season. There are weekly prizes available for the bettors who rack up the most points, and the more teams you parlay at once, the more points you get. Make sure to visit bodoglife.com to check out the rules and regulations, as well as the prizes you can win.

Congrats to the Phillies

I’m a Mets fan and hate the Phillies, but I have to give them credit for winning the world series.  Hopefully this will make the Wilpons and Omar Minaya go out and get some big time players, especially some bullpen help. 

Automated Poker Tables

John Liberty

Robots are taking over the world, even poker tables.

OK, so it’s not exactly the stuff of a sci-fi/horror film, but some people in the gaming industry think the future of poker rests with automated tables. In August 2007, Four Winds Casino Resort in New Buffalo installed 19 PokerPro tables, automated poker tables made by Matthews, N.C.-based PokerTek. At the time, it was the world’s largest poker room running exclusively on automated tables. Four Winds now has 14 of the tables as part of a redesign, and poker-room manager Glenn Arana said they will soon be commonplace in casinos around the country.

“Coming from a traditional background of poker, I immediately said this is the future of poker,” said Arana, who predicted they’d be mainstream within five years.

Since being installed in Four Winds, PokerTek, which started in 2005, has expanded into larger gaming markets with a dozen tables in Atlantic City, another dozen in the Excaliber Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, and at five properties in Montreal including Casino Montreal, which has 24 tables. There were 237 PokerPro tables worldwide as of the end of June, and there are almost 9,400 manual tables worldwide, according to PokerTek.

“Our experience at Four Winds has shown us we’re able to easily and successfully manage a PokerPro room in other markets as well,” said PokerTek vice president of marketing and product management Tracy Egan, who graduated from Mattawan High School in 1991 and Western Michigan University in 1996. “We definitely feel like we’ve proven the technology works and can take the place of manual tables completely.”

From a potential cost-cutting perspective, automated poker makes sense: Casinos don’t have to pay dealers or handle chips; the machines track the action; it’s faster, meaning more hands per hour; and there’s less risk of human error, either from players or dealers. Proponents also say it’s less intimidating for beginners or online-only players.

But will most players embrace the tables?

It appears to be a question of stakes (how much it costs to play) and player experience.

Blue Chip Casino vice president and general manager Ted Bogich said installing automated poker tables is “not in the immediate future.” While he thinks they will become more visible in more casinos, he doesn’t think they’ll replace manual tables. They appeal to low-stakes, “casual” players, he said. The players Bogich has talked to are more comfortable handling cards and chips. They also say some of the strategy and skill of reading opponents is lost on automated tables.

“For us at this point,” Bogich said, “we believe there is a strong preference for the live game.”

Poker pro and host of the “World Poker Tour” Mike Sexton seemed to agree with both sides. Sexton said in an August interview with Casino City Times that it’s the “wave of the future, at least as far as low-stakes games are concerned.”

How it works

With automated poker tables, there are no dealers, cards or chips. There is a main screen in the center of the table that shows chip stacks, betting order and the flop. Each player has their own screen and can reveal their cards by sliding their hands over the dealt cards. All the math is done by the table, and players are prompted when it’s their turn to bet. There also are audio cues to indicate when someone has bet.

PokerPro makers say their tables allow for 40 to 45 hands per hour as opposed to 20 to 24 hands per hour at manual tables.

Bad beat jackpots, free roll tournaments

Four Winds offers a couple of wrinkles to automated poker tables. There are bad beat jackpots, or a continually building cash prize for the victim of a “bad beat,” a hand in which a player appears to have strong cards but loses. As of Oct. 23, the jackpot for Texas Hold’em was $251,868 and $45,764 for Omaha. So it pays well to be the loser.

Also, Four Winds keeps track of the number of hands dealt in a calendar month. If you are in the top 100, you could qualify for a $5,000 Monthly Invitational Free Roll Tournament with a 20 percent payout structure. The tournaments are on the first Sunday of every month.

Big Money Tournaments

fulltiltpoker has announced its big money tournament schedule.  If you are a shark and want to swim with the big boys then these are for you.  Sign up on my banners for a 100% deposit match up to $600

Event #1 - 11/5 @ 9pm ET: $216 6-Max NL Hold’em - $1,000,000 GP
Event #2 – 11/6 @ 2pm ET: $256 PL Omaha/8 Knockout - $200,000 GP
Event #3 – 11/6 @ 9pm ET: $535 NL Hold’em 3xShooutout - $300,000 GP
Event #4 – 11/7 @ 2pm ET: $322 NL Hold’em 1 Re-Buy, 1 Add-on - $600,000 GP
Event #5 – 11/7 @ 9pm ET: $216 6-Max Limit Hold’em - $150,000 GP
Event #6 – 11/8 @ 2pm ET: $535 6-Max PL Omaha - $350,000 GP
Event #7 – 11/8 @ 4pm ET: $109 NL Hold’em Re-Buy - $600,000 GP
Event #8 – 11/9 @ 2pm ET: $256 NL Hold’em Knockout 6-Max - $600,000 GP
Event #9 – 11/9 @ 6pm ET: $322 NL Hold’em - $1,500,000 GP
Event #10 – 11/10 @ 2pm ET: $322 Mixed Hold’em - $250,000 GP
Event #11 – 11/10 @ 9pm ET: $1,060 NL Hold’em - $1,500,000 GP
Event #12 – 11/11 @ 2pm ET: $216 PL H.A. - $150,000 GP
Event #13 – 11/11 @ 9pm ET: $535 H.O.R.S.E. - $300,000 GP
Event #14 – 11/11 @ 9pm ET: $216 NL Hold’em Turbo - $500,000 GP
Event #15 – 11/12 @ 2pm ET: $216 PL Omaha/8 - $150,000 GP
Event #16 – 11/12 @ 9pm ET: $322 6-Max NL Hold’em Re-buy - $1,000,000 GP
Event #17 – 11/13 @ 2pm ET: $216 6-Max NL Hold’em 4xShootout - $250,000 GP
Event #18 – 11/13 @ 9pm ET: $322 Razz - $150,000 GP
Event #19 – 11/14 @ 2pm ET: $216 NL Hold’em - $400,000 GP
Event #20 – 11/14 @ 9pm ET: $216 Stud/8 - $100,000 GP
Event #21 – 11/15 @ 2pm ET: $535 Heads-Up NL Hold’em - $500,000 GP
Event #22 – 11/15 @ 2pm ET: $5,200 6-Max NL Hold’em - $2,000,000 GP (2-Days)
Event #23 – 11/15 @ 4pm ET: $109 PL Omaha Re-buy - $400,000 GP
Event #24 – 11/16 @ 2pm ET: $129 NL Hold’em Knockout - $500,000 GP
Event #25 – 11/16 @ 6pm ET: $535 FTOPSX Main Event NL Hold’em - $2,500,000 GP