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Poker News Round-up: Week #34Since the broadcasting of the WSOP $50k HORSE final table, one of the main talking points of the week has been Scotty Nguyen’s behaviour as the night wore on. Nguyen is generally regarded as one of the fans’ favourites, but the recently aired footage from that night in June will have left a bad taste in the mouths of many viewers. From a fairly subdued start, Nguyen started off with a slow roll of Barry Greenstein then found his rhythm during a prolonged bout of picking on youngster Michael Demichele. Having built up a head of steam, the so called prince of poker was then able to diversify and found time to abuse the waiting staff and try to initiate a spot of collusion with Erick Lindgren. The extent of his ungentlemanly conduct appeared to be directly proportional to the frequency of his calls for cocktails (an American misnomer for any alcoholic drink rather than necessarily the sort of fare guzzled on a hen night in Yates’s), although he has since stated that he was certainly not drunk that night.  Scotty Nguyen That claim was made as part of a written response made by Nguyen when the extent of this widespread condemnation became apparent to him. However he appears to have completely misjudged quite why it is that people have reacted as they did. It was not the worst behaviour ever seen at a poker table but it seems to be the fact that it was such a high profile player acting with such a lack of class at an occasion supposedly meant to remember the late Chip Reese that has really got people’s hackles up. Nguyen’s response seems only to care about the fact that his standing with the fans may have suffered and there is a remarkable lack of self awareness and humility for what is supposed to be an apology. Take for instance the following quotes from him:
Jade Goody’s snivelling televised apology after her run in with Shilpa Shetty might have been painful to watch but it did at least get a job done from a PR perspective. Scotty Nguyen’s rather less contrite response however actually seems to have had the opposite effect and he now seems to have alienated himself further from many of the fans that he says he cares about so much. Also causing controversy this week have been the folks at Poker Trillion, who have fallen out very publicly with their former hosts at Boss Media. Back in April the two parted company, with Boss claiming they had kicked Poker Trillion off the network for rakeback violations, but Poker Trillion in turn stating that they had left due to fraudulent activity on the part of Boss Media. Poker Trillion made a claim at the time that a lawsuit it had brought would mean that Boss Media’s funds would be frozen, leaving players at the various member skins unable to access the funds in their accounts although withdrawals have continued to be processed as normal since then. The row re-surfaced again this week when Poker Trillion released a statement that a court in Malta had enforced the seizure of Boss Media’s servers, which would cease to be active from 18th September. According to Poker Trillion’s CEO Andy Pyrah “Today’s decision will in effect bring down Boss Media’s operation in their licensed jurisdiction of Malta on September 18, and any partner still on the Boss (IPN) Poker Network at this stage will see their service closed down too.” Not so, according to Boss though. They claim that these are groundless rumours being spread by Poker Trillion in retaliation for being ejected from the network. So someone is obviously not telling the truth and soon enough we will find out who it is. If the likes of Paradise Poker and Virgin Poker are still operating on September 19th Andy Pyrah is going to be left looking a little like Iraq’s Comical Ali with his wildly inaccurate claims. If however the whole Boss network comes tumbling down it will be a highly significant moment in the history of online poker. One site that definitely has gone under is Chan Poker, the site fronted by former world champion Johnny Chan, which ceased operations on August 21st. The site launched in 2006 but seems to have joined the bandwagon a little late when the novelty of the poker boom was wearing off. The implementation of the UIGEA later that year hit the site hard and now it is set to join the likes of Jet Set Poker as a fatal casualty of the Act. Chan Poker insists that all account withdrawals will still be processed, and that it is looking for another site to take on board its customer base if they will honour players’ loyalty points that they have built up. This bank holiday weekend sees a number of domestic festivals taking place up and down the country so for those of you who like a bit of live poker action there is plenty to choose from in the next few days. If anybody is feeling a little more adventurous then the Asian Poker Tour will be following up on their previous Manila event with a $5,000 buy in tournament in Macau. Plenty of well known players are set to make the trip and there is a guaranteed prize pool of $1.5 million up for grabs so this could be worth keeping an eye on.
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