Charity Poker Room Not Immune To Gambling Laws

Well there you have it, no one is safe.

I predict in 5 years we’ll only be able to play poker against ourselves, in a basement with the lights off covered in a blanket.

Ok, I may be overreacting here. But with Visa and MC jumping ship I’m getting a bit paranoid.

In actuality a Michigan charity poker company was bilking charities out of user fees buy inflating the cost of using their charity poker services. So, ya, it’s not a witch hunt, its just authorities shutting down some shady faux businessmen.

The reason I think this is newsworthy is because it is newsworthy…as in…”IN the news”. And a debate sprung up amongst my poker playing buddies about how this affects the current political online poker climate.

On one hand, it reiterates and draws attention to the vast  amount of criminal behavior that comes along with any type of gambling, on the other hand, it established how badly strict regulation is needed throughout all facets of gambling, be it a shady Michigan charity poker room or the best poker web sites on the internet.

At the end of the day, we have a poker room that not only provided entertainment but millions of dollars in charitable contributions being shut down permanently, and once again a spotlight directed at the individuals in a position to regulate a hobby for millions that has a relevant role in our culture, as well as the ability to provide funding for those in need.

What’s Up with this Poker Ambassador Thing?

There are a few terms I hate to continually hear.  One of them has to be when people call poker “pokes” as I don’t understand this at all.  Seriously, can people not just say poker?  Or is that one extra syllable just too much for them?  Another thing I hate to hear is donkey.  This isn’t annoying in terms of sound like pokes, but rather because it’s so overused by people who have no idea what the hell they’re talking about.  They’ll call people donks for sticking in a hand where they were only a slight underdog (ex. Q-Q vs. K-K).

All of this aside, my new most hated poker word is ambassador.  I just don’t understand why the phrase poker ambassador is used so much these days.   You can’t go a week without somebody writing an article about how we need more poker ambassadors.  Now I know the game needs help in legality terms and maybe some players actions can give poker a bad name.  However, there are certain things that just make poker fun to watch like Scotty Nguyen getting drunk or Hevad Khan acting like a complete jackass. 

To me, this is the kind of stuff that makes poker entertaining.  I want to see Layne Flack hated by 80% of the poker population because he’s rude and an 8 o’clock drunk.  I like watching clips of Tony G berating other players for challenging him in a hand.  Poker is a game of personalities and emotions; not a gentlemen’s club where everyone is sipping tea and talking politics.  Thousands of dollars are on the line for all of these players so they’d be betraying themselves if they sat there and acted like a “poker ambassador”.  I honestly hope I never hear this phrase again!

The Saturation of Poker Shows

I love poker shows and am really glad that they’ve experienced so much success on the television market.  Poker After Dark, High Stakes Poker, and several other shows have been successes which has prompted a lot of other TV producers to create more new shows.  Face the Ace is one such instance of a new poker show which has spawned from the success of others, and what’s good about this one is that it’s in a primetime slot on Saturday, 9:00 pm ET on NBC.

What’s not so good about this show is that its debut was a big failure since Face the Ace placed last in ratings among shows at this time slot with 1.54.  Even worse is that a rerun of the tired-assed show on CBS called Numb3rs beat out Face the Ace by over 2 million viewers.  Now I’m no TV executive, but when a rerun beats your debut then it can’t be considered a success.  All of this has me wondering if there are too many new poker shows on the market now.

I mean Face the Ace has a good premise in that it involves a contestant playing against poker pros for $40,000 in the first round, $200,000 in the second round, and $1,000,000 in the third round.  And they can walk away with the money at any point during play which adds the game show element.  However, there are only so many ways which you can spin poker, and the way Face the Ace just spins it just isn’t drawing viewers.

But with Full Tilt Poker as a major sponsor for Face the Ace, it may survive long enough to attract new viewers.  But I don’t see it gaining many more viewers if the debut show can’t even peak people’s interests.

More Drunken Scotty Nguyen Antics

The 2008 WSOP H.O.R.S.E. Championship showed the height of what can happen when Scotty Nguyen gets drunk.  Nguyen’s legendary drunken antics in this event had him yelling about getting a cocktail, arguing with Erick Lindgren because he wasn’t playing on “Team Scotty”, and giving the worst of it all to Michael Demichele who was his heads-up opponent in the end.

But Nguyen has been fast at work over the last year trying to upstage this drunken rant, and a new video I saw may come close (though I don’t think it quite does the job).  In this video that surfaced just before the 2009 WSOP, Nguyen is obviously cooked and talking about how he will quit poker if he doesn’t make at least $4 million.  Nguyen repeatedly says that “not too many people say this” but he WILL quit if he doesn’t pull in at least $4 million.

If you happen to check Nguyen’s results in the WSOP you’ll see that he’s not too close to that $4 million goal and it has some seriously wondering if he’ll quit.  However, I don’t think there’s a chance of him quitting as this was just another drunken rant by him, and I don’t think that Nguyen even knew what he was saying when he was on video (at the end he kisses the lens).

Nguyen did offer to play people for $1,000 and they only have to put up $100 (a deal I would have gladly taken if I were around then).   In the end, I think we’re in for many more years of Scotty Nguyen, and I also think that we’ll see more antics like this in the future.

The Advantage of being Unknown at the WSOP

The advantages of being a poker superstar are obvious: you get huge sponsorships deals from poker rooms and industry-related companies, you get recognized everywhere you go by the fans, and you make unbelievable amounts of cash even when you’re away from the poker table.  However, there is an obvious downside to being a famous poker player too – especially at the WSOP!

When you’re famous, other players like to gun for you at the tables meaning they’ll challenge better players a greater percentage of the time than they would challenge fellow unknowns.  And when an unknown knocks out a poker superstar, it’s almost a feeling of, “Yeah!!  I knocked this major pro out and everyone saw it!!”  At some points, there are players who care less about their overall tournament finish rather than about the pro they just knocked out.

And, in regards to the Main Event, it doesn’t help the fact that there are only about 250 players who are considered top pros playing against a field of around 6,300 non-top pros.  Considering the sheer numbers disadvantage, it seems highly unlikely that we’ll see a top pro win the Main Event for quite some time.

This also brings up the argument of what exactly is a top pro.  As defined by the media, top pros are people who’ve been playing for a while, and have become household names like Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, and Phil Hellmuth.  Really though, there skill level is not that much higher than many of the online grinders who’ve been jumping in live tournaments as well to practice up for the WSOP.  Last year’s WSOP Main Event champion Peter Eastgate definitely showed what an online grinder can do.

As we sit now with two days down at the Main event, Ivey is 6th in chips while Hellmuth has a decent-sized stack as well showing that some top pros still have a chance.  However, we’ll have to see where they stand when everything is said and done.

When will Congress look at Legalizing Online Poker?

We’ve heard for months that Congress is finally going to take a look at legalizing online poker yet nothing ever seems to happen.  Instead, we are bombarded by news articles going back and forth declaring that online poker will never be legal and also that the UIGEA is about to be repealed any day now.

Obviously, it’s tough telling who to believe and I only know one thing: this decision is taking a whole lot longer than anybody expected.  Sure I’d rather have Congress wait and make a good decision, but I would also like them to eventually look into the matter again.  Unfortunately, you can bet that Congress won’t be settling this issue at any near point in the future since they’ve decided to delay the vote on Barney Frank’s bill once again. 

This was announced a couple of days ago when Congress said that they have more important matters to deal with right now and probably won’t take a look at Frank’s bill until at least September.  What’s worse is that it could even be later than that since the House doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to resolve this issue.  This is especially bad timing considering New York’s decision to seize over $34 million belonging to poker players in one of the most baffling law moves in history.

All I know is that I’d like this injustice to be put to a halt sometime soon so that people can start playing online poker again without fear.

Should Parents teach their Kids Poker?

There are many things that parents would like to pass on to their kids some day.  A few notable things that come to mind right away are a good work ethic, important life skills, and a sense of what is right and wrong.  But I doubt that you’d find many parents ranking poker up there with the things they want to teach their kids as they’re growing up.

This subject recently came to my attention when I saw a forum thread asking whether or not parents would teach their kids the game of poker.  Since this was a poker forum, there was a high rate of people who said they would teach their children poker since the game offers many values beyond just winning money.

One value poker teaches kids is discipline since every successful poker player must exercise discipline at the table or they’ll bust out quickly.  Along with discipline players must also be patient too since you must pick your spots in every cash game and tournament where you can make a big move.

Overcoming adversity is another great virtue of poker since every player is going to come across hard times where plays just don’t seem to be going their way.  Tilt is definitely an underlying theme here too because players must control emotions during rough stretches as well or they risk losing a significant amount of their bankroll.  There are plenty of other great things kids can learn from poker as well.

The only problem is that parents who don’t understand poker will quickly dismiss it as gambling and try to steer their kids away from it.  And I don’t blame parents for doing this since plenty of people don’t know how to control themselves at the poker table.  But I still think poker teaches children some worthwhile life skills in the end.

Why is Poker On TV So Mesmerizing?

I can seem to figure it out. I mean baseball is boring to watch on TV, Tennis sucks too. Even some football and Soccer gains are like watching paint dry.

But every time I walk by a TV with ANYthing poker on it, I stop dead in my tracks. Whether its some charity poker crap or WPT finals, I stuck there watching.

It’s really confusing, its not like Phil Helmuth is very charasmatic in any way, or that the majority of pro poker players are great to look at…If you put some WPT tour members in a police lineup with a NASA scientist, a math teacher and a meter maid, there’s no way I could tell any of them apart.

So this begs the question – Why do I LOVE watching it?

Pretty soon, I’ll have to sell my TV, and never go into Best Buy again.