The Beginning of the End

Neteller is closing up in the USA, and I have to agree with Bill Rini: this is the beginning of the end for online poker in the USA.

I'm in shock, to be honest. I don't see how online gaming hurts ANYONE or does ANYTHING that is bad (mmmkay) and I just don't understand the jihad my idiot government is waging against online poker, while horse racing, dog racing, and state lotteries are still A-OK for anyone.

I'm worried, because though I don't make a ton of money playing online poker, I do make a significant portion of my monthly income writing about it and even though I'm not as good or well-known as everyone else on Team PokerStars, I've been a proud member of the team, and I've worked hard to be an ambassador to normal, every day players who don't play in the hard core 40-80 games. Now that the US market is rapidly closing up, I have this looming sense of inevitability that I'll lose that, too, and eventually I'll lose the ability to enjoy my evenings playing some low-limit SNGs or cash games.

See, I really like poker, but I'm not rich, and while I'm entirely comfortable risking the price of a night out for dinner and a movie to play cards and maybe even leave with more than I started, I don't see myself driving to Commerce or the Bike, or making a special trip to Vegas to play in a B&M room for higher stakes, with the associated
costs of travel and the extra investment of my time.

There are a lot of reasons to loathe my idiot government now, and this is right up there in my top five: they're telling me what I can do in my own home, and they're negatively impacting my ability to support myself and my family . . . and for what, exactly? So Bill Frist can pander to a minority of ultra-conservative whackos, and then not even follow through on his presidential bid?

This sucks. It makes me angry, and it makes me depressed.

(BoDog Girls tearfully included to remember the good times.)

2007 WSOP Schedule Released

I'm in Vegas for CES, but I'm staying just down the hall from where I lived during the 2006 WSOP, so it was a little surreal for me to read at PokerNews that the 2007 WSOP schedule had been released.

Really? Already? It seems like I was just here. In fact, I am here. Okay, I'm freaking myself out.

But enough about me, let's get to the poker. Dr. Tim says that the series will kick off 55 events on June 1, running for seven weeks before the Main Event begins on July 6th. Yeah, you read that correctly; we're going to have to be in Vegas for the 4th of July craziness.

They say that there will be several events other than Hold'Em (possibly responding to criticism from players after the 2006 WSOP was pretty much the World Series of Hold'Em) , including three different HORSE events, a SHOE event, and several different mixed games. There are lots of different buy-ins, as low as $1,000 and running up to $5,000 with the Main Event still being a $10,000 event.

Speaking of the Main Event, they plan to have three day ones, pushing through 3,000 players a day.

Uhm. Yeah. If they're stopping the online poker sites from running satellites and putting players into the Main Event, how in the world to they expect to get even 5000 players?

Dr. Tim has the full schedule of events including their buy-ins, at PokerNews.

A Poker Tournament Guide and The Patience Factor

I recently asked the BARGE list if anyone knew of a site that displayed tournament structure and payout in addition to the standard information about buy-ins and times.

BARGEr Mark T. pointed me to the exact resource I was hoping to find, Arnold Snyder's Las Vegas Poker Tournament Guide.

What makes this guide so incredibly useful is Snyder's Patience Factor Formula, which looks at the depth of the starting stacks, the time of each level, and assigns a number between 1 and 10 for how patient you can be when selecting the strength of your starting hands. Tournaments with high numbers tend to be longer and reward (in the long term) the most skilled players, while tournaments with low numbers tend to be faster and introduce a much greater luck factor.

This guide is one of (if not the single) most useful tournament guide I've ever seen. If you want to really test your skill, you find one with a high patience factor, like Bellagio's $540 2PM Monday tourney, which comes in at a very challenging 9. If you want to gambool it up and take your chances against an army of pushmonkeys, you may want to check out the Aladdin's $55 11AM tourney, which has a Full Tilt Poker $2 Turbo rating of 1.65.

So next time you head to Vegas (or any of the other cities linked in the guide, including Los Angeles and Atlantic City,, if you're honest with yourself about your skill level and know how much money you're willing to risk on your buy-ins, you can use this guide to find where your EV is theoretically the most positive.

30 year-old Canadian Wins Moneymaker Millionaire

When PokerStars introduced the Moneymaker Millionaire during the 2006 WSOP, everyone in the company was really excited about the chance to let someone follow 2003 WSOP champion Chris Moneymaker into history. While Chris turned his $40 satellite into a main event bracelet and 2.5 million dollars. (Chris also started the current internet poker boom, which in turn started the overall poker boom, but don't tell anyone at the World Poker Tour that.)

The Moneymaker Millionaire was a simple idea: enter a free tourney, and just outlast over 800,000 other hopefuls, through three rounds of tournaments, ending in a three table tourney at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure this week.

The eventual winner is Canada's own Quillan Nagel, who took a break from preparing to defend his master's thesis next week to head down to Atlantis for the tourney.

His story is great, and is covered in greater detail by Brad and Michelle Willis at the Official Pokerstars Blog, but I'm quoting my absolute favorite bit right here:

When a reporter asked why he thought Canadians are better at poker than Americans, Quillan said, "It's because when it's cold and there's nothing better to do than play poker."

That explains so much, now that I think of it . . . right Hoy and Joanne?

PokerStars Voted Best Online Poker Room

BLUFF Magazine's Readers Choice Awards were just announced, and I was ecstatic to read that PokerStars was voted the Best Online Poker Room.

Though I'm not the most impartial observer, since pretty much everyone at PokerStars is a friend of mine, and I play for Team PokerStars -- you know, come to think of it, I'm about as far from an impartial observer as you can get -- I'm not surprised at all. I've spent a lot of time with members of the support and marketing teams, and I am constantly impressed with their passion for poker, their respect for their players, and their desire to give everyone the best customer service and playing experience possible.

So congratulations to everyone at PokerStars, and thank you to the readers at BLUFF!

Winter Poker Open Final Table

Bluff has announced the final six players who will be moving on to the televised World Poker Tour final table tomorrow at the Borgata Winter Poker Open. Players and their chip counts are as follows:

1. Joe Simmons 5,500,000
2. John Gale 4,830,000
3. John Hennigan 3,255,000
4. Chuck Kelley 1,610,000
5. Michael Sukonik 1,305,000
6. John James 535,000


The four players who rounded off the top ten but didn't make the final table were:

7. Joseph Cappello $221,548
8. John Racener $166,161
9. David Redlin $110,774
10. Davidson Matthew $72,003

For a detailed recap of today's play, as well as a look at the final six players, check out Bluff Magazine's coverage.

Lips Tour Grand Championship Scheduled

The Lips Tour (Ladies International Poker Series) has announced the details for the upcoming Grand Championship. The event will take place at the Orleans Casino in Las Vegas between July 20-22nd, 2007. In addition to the regularly scheduled games, they will be adding a H.O.S. event this year. If you are interested in participating, the Orleans is offering special room rates for the event.

Also, the Lips Tour will be making their next stop at the Commerce Casino for the World Poker Tour Ladies Event on February 3rd. The buy-in for this event will be $1060, and the first place winner will also receive a $25,000 seat into the WPT Championship at the Bellagio.

More information click Read.

Women's Ultimate Poker Challenge

Speaking of Ladies events, Woman Poker Player magazine and The Ultimate Poker Challenge have teamed up to create the Ultimate Women's Poker Challenge.

The event will be held on February 9th at Binions in Las Vegas, Nevada. The final table is scheduled for February 10th and will be televised for a future episode of UPC. Buy-in for the event is $200, though according to their website, Binions will be holding single table satellites beginning on February 8th.

For more details on this event, you can visit the UPC website.

SE7EN Magazine Launched

Bluff Media, along with Publications Services of America, launched their newest magazine SE7EN at the Sundance Film Festival. The publication is geared towards men whose interest lay in sports, gaming, and an affluent lifestyle. According to Bluff:

The premier issue of SE7EN magazine boasts Hollywood icon and man's man Ray Liotta on the cover. Inside, he speaks to readers about his much anticipated upcoming film 'Smokin' Aces' due out at the end of January. Other features include exclusive stories with top athletes, such as Michael Strahan and Oscar de la Hoya, as well as SE7EN's selection of the sexiest female athletes, the SE7EN Guide to the Well-Rounded Man, and an entire section on gambling aptly named JUICE.

For more info on the magazine, you can visit their website.

Borgata Winter Poker Open Final

I was absolutely thrilled to see that the winner of the 2007 Borgata Winter Poker Open was none other than John Hennigan. He's always been one of my favorites (even back in his pool playing days) and it's been far too long since he has placed first in a tournament. The final table had some pretty crazy hands, especially the very last one that resulted in Hennigan taking down the title. If you have time, go read the play-by-play over at Bluff.

The final six players and their prize money were:

1. John Hennigan $1,606,223
2. Chuck Kelley $849,082
3. John Gale $443,096
4. Joe Simmons $387,709
5. Michael Sukonik $332,322
6. John James $276,935