Poker News Round-up

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Poker News Round-up: Week #21

By Adam Noone, 23/05/2008

Phil Hellmuth. It’s a name that has become synonymous with the World Series Of Poker following a record 11 bracelet wins, 63 cashes and the accolade of youngest world champion ever. Even when he’s not securing another victory he makes sure that he grabs the limelight whether it’s crashing a racing car in the Rio, arriving late for tournaments under the pretence that he needs the extra sleep or just generally slating his opponents’ poker skills. So it’s no great surprise to hear that Hellmuth is going to be everywhere at this year’s World Series whether people like it or not. Milwaukee’s Best Light will be featuring Hellmuth’s face on promotional cans of beer during June and July and as presenting sponsor of the WSOP, these cans are going to be seen in abundance in the Amazon Room. Each can will also carry a famous quote from the Poker Brat although obviously only the tamer ones have been deemed fit for public consumption such as “I can dodge bullets baby.” Sadly for him though stationary lamp posts seem to be too much for his dodging skills.

"Oops"

Whilst the poker world’s attention begins to turn towards the Rio as the WSOP approaches, there has been a significant development in the Asian equivalent of Las Vegas. Plenty of casinos have been sprouting up in Macau recently, and now the region has its first dedicated poker room. Online giants Pokerstars have entered the live poker market with the opening of Pokerstars Macau within the Grand Waldo hotel and casino in Cotai. The card room will open on May 23^rd with a charity tournament to raise funds for victims of the recent earthquake in China, and after that tournaments, sit n goes and cash games will be on offer. The only variant allowed at present is Texas hold’em, but if anybody is interested in going the games are said to be softer than a Didier Drogba slap.

Kid Poker Daniel Negreanu

Meanwhile one of Pokerstars’ high profile sponsored players, Daniel Negreanu, has been busy on a project of his own. Negreanu has set up a poker training site by the name of PokerVT (which stands for virtual training) which he promises will be a revolutionary way for players of all standards to learn more about the game. There is already some pretty stiff competition out there from other training sites but he is backed up by some good tutors including Paul Wasicka and Annette Obrestad. Many will be keen to see the WSOP Europe champion in action and discover her secrets, although curiously the write up on the site seriously undersells her with only $436,718 in online tournament winnings and a figure even further off the mark of just $302,343 for live events credited to her.

Ganesh Rao

The GUKPT takes a break over the summer whilst many players make the trip to Vegas, but there was time for one last festival in Newcastle before that. The £1,000 main event did not attract a particularly big field by GUKPT standards and the 189 runners made it the smallest event of the tour so far this year. Online satellites had offered players the opportunity to win seats via freerolls and two players who had arrived in Newcastle via this route actually made the final table. In fact one of them, Ian Farrell, nearly won the whole thing but came up just a little short after a long heads up battle against Ganesh Rao. The final table lasted in excess of ten hours and towards the end exhaustion seemed to play a big part in some of the action. Eventually Farrell moved all in on a bluff with five high, only to see Rao happily call with his pocket jacks. Rao’s pair held up and he collected £57,175 for his three days’ work plus a seat at the grand final in London.

And finally the old dispute between the USA and various other World Trade Organisation members that appeared to have been settled earlier this year seems to have been blown open again. You may remember that by refusing to comply with agreements it had signed up to, the US government decided that it would rather pay huge amounts of compensation to the likes of Canada, Antigua and the European Union than allow its citizens access to gambling sites operating out of these countries. The compensation agreement is thought to have taken the form of numerous trade services and to have been worth many billions of dollars, although full details of the settlement were never publicly released. Many Americans were understandable irked that not only was their tax money being spent on this, but also there seemed to be an air of secrecy about the whole deal.

Freelance writer Ed Brayton decided a bit of investigative journalism was in order and requested disclosure of the full details of the agreement under the terms of the Freedom Of Informtaion Act. His request was rejected by the US Trade Representative, as was his subsequent appeal on the grounds that it was classified in the interest of national security. As with the way that the UIGEA was smuggled into law within the SAFE Port Act, Brayton’s request for information was also denied under the pretence that it was all being done in order to keep the good people of America safe from harm.

Unfortunately for the US authorities, Brayton would not shut up and give in, and now his cause has been picked up by Public Citizen – a non-profit group which lobbies for government accountability and ethical practices within trade, science, democracy etc. Public Citizen has now announced that it has filed a lawsuit claiming that the US Trade Representative is acting illegally by withholding the details of the WTO settlement, and that it intends to force this out into the open. In addition to Brayton's request, a formal request was also made by Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio asking for full disclosure of the concessions granted as they were made without Congressional approval. It looks like the whole deal is going to come under scrutiny once again and there are even suggestions that this could invalidate the agreement with the other members of the WTO and the whole process of sorting out compensation would have to start again. But we mustn’t grumble – it is after all being done in the interests of national security and the world would clearly descend into hellish degeneracy if people were allowed to freely play poker on the Internet.

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