Poker News Round-up

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Poker News Round-up: Week #35

By Adam Noone, 31/08/2007

Having been established in 2004, Bodog Poker has quickly cemented its place as one of the major poker sites. The Bodog sportsbook had already been trading successfully for nearly a decade, and Jamie Gold winning the 2006 WSOP main event representing Bodog put their poker room firmly on the map. With the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act, Bodog chose to continue serving US customers whilst others like Party Poker chose to pull out. This added to Bodog’s share of the market and in the space of three years the poker room had become one of the top ten in the world in terms of player volume.

Any customers logging on to the site on Monday or Tuesday this week though would have found Bodog in disarray as the sportsbook, online casino and poker room were all inoperative. Unbeknownst to players at the time, Bodog had just lost a patent infringement court case over the use of the domain name www.bodog.com. A company called 1st Technology LLC had previously filed a case claiming that software used by Bodog customers to play online infringed upon one of 1st Technology’s patents. Bodog and owner Calvin Ayre were of course aware of this claim but failed to respond in their defence, resulting in this week’s default ruling against them. It seems that their decision to continue operating with US players may have meant that Ayre was unable to represent himself in America for fear of arrest. The US Department of Justice has already made a series of high profile arrests of online gambling executives in their crackdown on internet gambling, and since that time Ayre has not set foot on American soil, basing himself in Canada these days.

As well as the order to cease use of the Bodog.com domain name, the company has also been instructed to pay over $49 million in damages to 1st Technology. Calvin Ayre claims he will be disputing this decision, but in the mean time a way was needed to get the online gaming services back up and running as quickly as possible. Their answer was simply to repackage their whole offering under a different name, www.newbodog.com, and for now the new site is running exactly as the old one did.

At the famous Bicycle card room in Los Angeles the World Poker Tour has been hosting the Legends Of Poker event, which as you might expect saw some of the biggest American names take their seats in the $10,000 main event, although both Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu decided not to play this tournament. 485 runners were split into two separate starting days and at the end of day 1a a remarkable situation occurred when hand for hand play had to be introduced. Although nowhere near the money in this five day event, some amateur players were stalling so that they were able to say that they had made the second day and tournament directors had to step in to ensure fair conditions for the whole field.
WSOP main even champion Jerry Yang was playing his first major tournament since his massive win last month and there was much interest in how the new world champion would fare. Yang’s prayers went unanswered on this occasion though as he was eliminated early on day 1b.
After four days of battling through a tough field, the televised final table of six was headed by WSOP player of the year and double bracelet winner Tom Schneider. Two big pots lost to David Pham though, one of which was a massive failed bluff with just ten high, and Schneider was eliminated in fourth place. Pham went on to eliminate Thu Nguyen in third and met Dan Harrington heads up for the title with the chip lead. His great achievement to get this far will not have been lost on Action Dan, as Pham arrived at the final table as the short stack with a Harrington M of just 7. Chips flew back and forth between the two during a long heads up battle, but eventually Harrington’s two pair had Pham drawing dead for all his chips and the title was indeed won by a true legend of poker. Without a cash at the WSOP this year, Harrington returned to form in style here and now moves up to 15th on the all time money list with over $6.5 million in tournament winnings.

Since Macau was returned to Chinese rule it has become the Asian version of Las Vegas and last year in fact generated more in gambling revenue than its American counterpart. That figure is now set to increase yet further as the largest casino in the world has just been opened there. The Venetian Macau Resort is in fact the second largest building in the whole world and is large enough to hold 1150 gaming tables and 7000 poker machines. It is twice the size of the Las Vegas Venetian with 3000 suites and even has a 15,000 seater sports stadium. Macau is obviously drawing the punters in successfully as the construction work is set to continue with another 20,000 rooms planned within several new hotels by 2010.

The European Poker Tour is once again underway and despite the higher buy in this time round, the main event of the Barcelona Open has seen a larger turnout than last year with 543 players paying €8,000, compared with 480 runners at last year’s €5,000 event. Now in its fourth season, the tour has been steadily expanding both in terms of field sizes and number of venues. Having already announced earlier this year that the EPT will head to the Bahamas for the first time, at a press conference in Barcelona tour organiser John Duthie revealed that another leg had been added to season four. Shortly before the grand final takes place in Monte Carlo next year, Duthie has managed to squeeze in one more leg at San Remo in Italy. This will be held in the first week of April and now brings the total number of stops on tour to eleven. Details of the winners and losers at the Barcelona event will be covered in next week’s news report.

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