Poker News Round-up

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Poker News Round-up: Week #05

By Adam Noone, 01/02/2008

The world’s largest casino operation changed hands this week as publicly traded Harrah’s sold their chain of 50 casinos to private investors Apollo Management and Texas Pacific Group Capital for $17.1 billion, with an associated debt of a further $10.7 billion.

Over the course of 70 years Harrah’s expanded from a bingo hall in Reno to the largest gaming company in the world, acquiring such famous properties as Caesar’s Palace, Paris and the Rio in Las Vegas. The new owners are now set to add to the estate with a $4 billion expansion plan which some believe may well be focussed on the European market.

Binion

Meanwhile the former property which saw Harrah’s become so heavily involved in poker has also been in the news. Binion’s Horseshoe was briefly owned by Harrah’s but when it was sold on in 2004, they saw the value in retaining the rights to the World Series Of Poker and kept that separate from the sale of the property. Since then the WSOP has grown in popularity massively whist the casino, under the new name of Binion’s Gambling Hall And Hotel, increasingly became seen as a relic of Vegas past which was losing money. That may be set to change though as current owners MTR Gaming have had approval for the sale of the iconic casino to TLC Casino Enterprises where it will once again be in the hands of a Las Vegas operator. TLC Enterprises owner Terry Caudill seems to be under no illusions as to how far Binion’s status has slipped in recent years, but says he plans to turn things around almost instantly with $10 million worth of renovation and improvements. His track record in Vegas is not bad, having more than doubled profits at the Four Queens since taking it over in 2003.

Poker has unfortunately been embroiled in far too many legislative matters recently, and this week there is further legal wrangling with the EU initiating action against Sweden and Germany. Taking a similar line to when the EU clashed with the USA in the recent World Trade Organisation case, Sweden and Germany have now also been pulled up for the restrictive measures they have introduced in attempting to block citizens from using online gaming sites based in other EU countries. On Jan 1st Germany banned virtually all forms of online gambling as well as online payment processing with a treaty similar to America’s Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. State run games of chance are still permitted however. In Sweden’s case, the government has ordered that all online poker play must be restricted to the one official state run site Svenska Spel.

The EU seems to have acted reasonably swiftly as these sort of matters go, demanding that the two countries explain how their actions are consistent with Article 49 of the EC Treaty, which guarantees the free movement of services. As the European Commission press release rightly states “a member state cannot invoke the need to restrict its citizens' access to these services if at the same time it encourages them to participate in state games of chance.”

Over in Atlantic City, the second World Poker Tour champion of the month has been crowned at the Borgata casino’s $10,000 Winter Open main event. The 507 runner tournament saw some crazy action right from the off when in the first level Nick Schulman hit a massive flop of K 5 5 whilst holding 5 5. It’s not unreasonable to think that this is a situation where he could allow his opponent an opportunity to improve before getting his chips in, but to his horror by the time all the money was in the middle on the river Stephen Freda’s A 3 had improved too much when 2 and 4 had brought the runner runner straight flush. As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one day Freda then went on to lose those chips to David Williams shortly afterwards on a board of 10 8 7 8 4. Freda showed 7 8 but Willams flipped over 10 8 for the bigger full house.

Gavin Griffin

Building a big stack from some way out was David Tran, who managed to keep his place as chip leader all the way to the final table. Close behind him was Gavin Griffin, and the two chip leaders steadily wore down the others until it was just the pair of them heads up. This put Griffin in a pretty special position – having won a WSOP bracelet in 2004 and the EPT grand final in 2007, he was on the verge of becoming the first player ever to achieve what is often referred to as the Triple Crown by adding a WPT event.

A slight chip lead for Tran was wiped out in the first few hands before the decisive moment came when both players were all in pre-flop in a classic race situation. Tran’s 9 9 was a slight favourite over Griffin’s A Q but a queen on the flop was enough to win the hand for the youngster, who established a more than seven to one chip lead. A timely pair of aces in the hole allowed Tran to double up and stage a fight back, but for all his efforts he could not overcome such a big lead. Two straights in quick succession for Griffin saw him win all the chips and pick up another $1.4 million to add to an extremely impressive record. When he won his WSOP title he was at the time the youngest ever winner of a bracelet event, and now he is the only player ever to record wins at WSOP, EPT and WPT events. Just as well for him that the emergence of the Aussie Millions as a major tournament creates the possibility of a Quadruple Crown or he’d be running short of career goals at the age of just 26. It might not be a bad idea to put a bet on him come January 2009.

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