Poker News Round-upBrought to you every Friday |
Poker News Round-up: Week #31Unusual patterns of play leading multiple players to believe that opponents can see their cards, outright denials that any such thing is possible from support rather than proper investigation, hand histories being made unavailable for review and no clear record of who the site’s owners are. All of these were significant features of the investigation which eventually exposed cheating on Ultimatebet and Absolute Poker, and unfortunately all of these apply to another situation which is currently the subject of much debate as another poker site faces accusations of foul play. Numerous players have voiced their concerns over some of the play on Pitbull Poker, claiming that over a sustained period certain opponents were making decisions consistent with the ability to see opponents’ hole cards. It should be stated that at present no definitive evidence has been unearthed confirming that Pitbull have been cheating customers, but they have certainly been doing a pretty unconvincing job of reassuring the poker community. As well as failing to provide archived hand histories which would help to disprove these allegations, more recent hand histories have been made unavailable to view since this story broke on the internet, and further investigation has shown even more cause for concern. It appears that the site has no gaming license despite reassurances regarding its regulation on the Pitbull website’s homepage. The data containing hole card information is being transmitted unencrypted according to various people with the IT knowledge to examine this. Some players have claimed that they have received their cards face down or even been able to see opponents’ cards on occasions. In the past money has been skimmed from pots, although this was admitted by Pitbull and remedied after being explained away as a software bug. So can all these concerns be answered with innocent explanations? It’s not impossible and perhaps some of it is down to poor programming or mere incompetence but unfortunately at the moment this whole issue seems horribly reminiscent of what happened at Absolute Poker and Ultimatebet. Elsewhere in the online world it’s been a bad week for Italians who have found themselves unable to play on the international version of Pokerstars following changes to Italy’s online gaming laws which came into effect on Monday 27th July. The new rules mean that sites operating in Italy may only accept Italian tax payers as customers, and that the site’s servers must be located within Italy. Pokerstars have set up a dedicated Italian site to comply with these regulations but even then they are only permitted to run tournaments and not cash games. As a further annoyance to Italian players, a system is in place which tracks how long someone has been playing for and blocks them from exceeding a set number of hours at the tables. Pokerstars sponsored pro Dario Minieri gained some notoriety for becoming the first player to exchange player points for a Porsche, but from now on it looks as though anyone wanting to put in similar marathon sessions is going to have to find some resourceful ways of getting more playing time in. Here in the UK there have been a couple of live tournaments taking place to update you on starting with the Stockton-On-Tees leg of the British Poker Masters. The Gala tour hasn’t quite recaptured the success of the GCBPT (108 entries this year versus 212 in the 2008 GCBPT) but there was still plenty of money worth having for the top spots. Of that number the final four of James Gray, David Swan, Dom Mahoney and Mark Trett struck a deal for the majority of the money, with Trett subsequently going on to win the tournament and claim the trophy. He gets £12,650 plus a place in a play off at the end of the tour for a sponsorship package from Coral.  LPC superstack winner Nick Jenkins Meanwhile the London Poker Circuit was hoping that its revised tournaments would prove more successful than their first few attempts to break onto the live tour scene. A new £750 buy in event with 20,000 starting stack caught the attention of some decent players with Barny and Ross Boatman joining James Akenhead at the tables, but only 28 others joined these three for a pretty low turnout. However, this new super stack event certainly looks to have a lot more potential than some of the previous tournaments put on by LPC and this monthly event could well become a very popular fixture in future. Nick Jenkins finished top of the pile in this inaugural event for a £10,000 pay day, beating James Mitchell and Ross Boatman into second and third. As expected EPT Moscow has now been abandoned due to recent changes in the law, but contingency plans are in place and a new home has been found for the opening tournament of EPT season six. Spanning the same dates as Moscow was originally scheduled for, events have been shifted to the Ukrainean capital of Kiev – bad news for all but a few Russians who will now have to journey further than planned, but good news for those heading over from western Europe (unless flights and accommodation have already been booked in which case it’s a pain in the rear.) This comes at rather short notice seeing as the main event is due to start on 18th August, but looking at things from a long term perspective it might eventually prove beneficial for poker. Interest in poker seems to have taken off in recent years in Russia and now the touch paper has been lit it might be productive to move on and find a new market to stimulate growth in. Few countries in Europe are worse represented at poker tournaments than Ukraine and any home grown players who make the money at EPT Kiev will instantly find themselves towards the top of the Ukrainean all time money list with even the smallest of cashes in this tournament. The forthcoming week looks to be a bit of a quiet one for live poker but there’s always something going on online and over at Full Tilt it’s time for another FTOPS. Series XIII kicks off on August 5th with a $200 buy in event guaranteeing a $1million prize pool, and in total over $16 million will be paid out during the 25 events. Most events will feature a pretty late finish for Europeans but it’s got to be worth necking a few Red Bulls in pursuit a six figure cash, so good luck to all those taking part.
|
 Be a Full Tilt VIP and get 27% RakeBack!  |
