Poker News Round-up

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Poker News Round-up: Week #32

By Adam Noone, 10/08/2007

The Four Winds Casino in Michigan will never again have to worry about dealer error or having too few/too many staff rostered for a shift in its poker room. That’s because they have taken the bold step of fully automating their operation with Pokertek electronic poker tables throughout the room. The Pokerteks, which were promoted heavily at this year’s WSOP, seem to be catching on and have been introduced alongside human dealt tables at some other casinos. The Four Winds though is the first to dispense with real cards and dealers completely, presumably hoping that the cost of installing the tables will eventually be more than offset in the long run by the reduction in their wage bill. Although there will undoubtedly be those who bemoan the demise of the old way of doing things, there are also benefits from a player’s perspective in that they will get to see more hands per hour and there are no dealer tips to eat into their hourly rate any more.

On 1st September the 2005 Gambling Act will finally come into effect, although the closer to that date we get, the more indecisive the government seems to be over their own regulations. Having had numerous months to clearly set out the regulations that will be enforced, minister for culture, media and sport James Purnell has moved the goalposts twice this week. Firstly several gaming industry operators such as casinos and gambling websites were pressured into adopting a new, allegedly voluntary, code of conduct relating to how they could advertise themselves. This policy, which represented a last minute change from that which had previously been communicated, was agreed to by gaming industry organisations who feared that by not conforming they were vulnerable to having more severe restrictions imposed on them.

Then the whimsical Mr Purnell announced that he had decided that thousands of offshore gaming websites would not be allowed to advertise in the UK after all. Websites based in Belize, the Dutch Antilles and Costa Rica are now banned from advertising over here, even if they are already licensed to operate in the UK. Both decisions will have disrupted or in some cases completely ruined plans that these companies had put in place to launch their advertising campaigns, and will have cost them a lot of time and money.

Still on a theme of disrupted plans, the Moscow Millions tournament that was scheduled for 20th to 22nd October has been postponed until 24th to 26th November. More seriously for tournament organisers though is the news that Full Tilt Poker have withdrawn their sponsorship of the event. Full Tilt have already had players qualify for the event via their website, who will now have the value of the entire package credited to their accounts as with their WSOP qualifiers. Whilst many players did go on to register themselves in Las Vegas, it is unlikely that anything like as many will make their own arrangements to travel over to Russia. Full Tilt have cited a clash of tournament commitments as their reason for pulling out – the original dates did after all coincide with a GUKPT event in London, the Swedish Open Poker Championships and the Perla freezeout in Nova Gorica and Phil Ivey will not be able to play in all of them.

Last week a story emerged on the internet regarding Phil Laak in which he was accused of putting a contract on another man’s life following a disagreement over a business deal. For those of you who haven’t been made aware of it yet, a brief synopsis begins with Laak in Thailand a few years ago trying to make a living playing backgammon. So the story goes he was stoned one night and was involved in a motorbike accident in which two children were badly hurt. Someone by the name of Tom Grant became involved by helping to pay off the families of the children and smooth things over with them. Laak and Grant then started up a business together exporting religious artefacts to the US, and whilst Laak was in America and Grant still in Thailand there was a dispute over money which resulted in Laak taking out a contract to have Grant and his wife killed. There was a picture produced by Grant of him confronting Laak at the Gaming & Lifestyle Expo at this year’s WSOP, when allegedly led to Laak fleeing the room with Jennifer Tilly.

The original claim made by Grant recently was not especially well articulated and was generally disbelieved by most as several parts of the story didn’t seem to add up. However, Grant then re-appeared and admitted that he had lied in his original account because the real reason that he and Laak were in business was that they were smuggling heroin.

When large amounts of money and possible death sentences for drug smuggling become involved, all of a sudden the motive for wanting a hit put on Grant seemed a bit more realistic. Some started to give a bit more credibility to Grant’s story and decided to dig a bit deeper, and a forum post from 2005 was found that had been made by someone discussing the time Laak shared a room with him when they lived in Thailand. In it the poster states “I know things about him [Laak] that no-one else does in the world. There are quite a few things actually I’m sure he would like to sweep under the rug and forget (Thailand, cheating, drug stuff etc)”

Then a moderator on the 2+2 forum confirmed that he had actually witnessed the incident at the Expo in July and confirmed that Laak had indeed fled the room via an emergency exit. Not exactly damning evidence of Laak being guilty of these accusations, but Grant’s story is now starting to hold up under scrutiny.

Internet blogger Bill Rini decided to email Grant with a few questions and his responses seem reasonable enough in that he states that for a long time he has had to dwell on the time when he and his wife feared for their lives. Initially he felt powerless to do much about it but as Laak’s celebrity increased, Grant saw an opportunity to exact some sort of retribution by bringing this story to the public eye and hopefully ruin Laak’s reputation.

Maybe Grant’s story is true and he just didn’t do a very good job of passing on his tale to the rest of us. Alternatively he could just be plain crazy and has been fortunate that various things he has said have proved impossible to pick apart. Either way it has livened up a bit of a quiet post-WSOP week, and the good news is that it is set to continue. The original web page on which Grant made his claim about the events in Thailand and the hit put on him now shows a message stating that he will be releasing new information very soon, so watch this space.

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