Poker Mom of the Year?

When the police walked into Woody’s Press Box at one in the morning in Wyoming, they were looking for the mother of three kids. The children, found waiting in a car in the parking lot, were without parental supervision but the police were not sure for how long. Ranging in age from five to fifteen, the kids were alone because their mother was inside, where the police found her in the midst of playing a Texas Holdem poker tournament. The woman was cited for child neglect and will now be persecuted by the state prosecutor’s office.

WPT stock closed at $1.26

The news simply doesn’t get any better on the financial side for the World Poker Tour.

WPT stock closed at $1.26 on Thursday, giving the company a value of $25.82 million. The WPT has assets and cash in hand totaling $31 million.

According to poker-king.com, WPT stock hit an all-time high of $29.50 in 2005, the high-water mark before a serious downturn:

They are getting much less per episode in their new deal with the Game Show Network compared to their previous deal with the Travel Network. They received 477k per episode in Season 5 - this year they are receiving $300k per episode. They posted revenues for their online gaming business of $1.2 million dollars for all of 2007, down from $3.2 million dollars in 2006. They posted a net loss of $9.6 million dollars in 2007. Revenues decreased $7.5 million dollars from 2006 to 2007.

Company executives are still painting a rosy picture with the future of worldpokertour.com and clubwpt.com as future cash revenue streams, although immediate relief from economic woes does not seem to be on the horizon.

Omaha at the 2008 WSOP

Are you an Omaha guru waiting for a shot at a coveted WSOP bracelet? Do you cringe when you only get two cards dealt to you instead of four? Are you a total action junkie and love getting your money in with a flush draw and a gutshot? Are you sick of Texas Hold'em?

If you answered yes to any of those four questions, then you need to check out the list of Omaha themed events at the 2008 WSOP. There are ten bracelet events in total and include two $10,000 buy-in World Championship events.

6 Tuesday, June 3, 2008 5:00 PM
$1,500 Omaha High-Low 8/b

10 Thursday, June 5, 2008 5:00 PM
$2,500 Omaha 8/b and Stud 8/b

16 Sunday, June 8, 2008 5:00 PM
$2,000 Omaha 8/b

19 Tuesday, June 10, 2008 12 Noon
$1,500 Pot Limit Omaha

24 Thursday, June 12, 2008 5:00 PM
$2,500 Pot Limit Hold'em/Omaha

28 Saturday, June 14, 2008 5:00 PM
$5,000 Pot Limit Omaha (Rebuys)

34 Wednesday, June 18, 2008 12 Noon
$1,500 Pot Limit Omaha (Rebuys)

37 Thursday, June 19, 2008 5:00 PM
$10,000 World Championship Omaha 8/b

43 Tuesday, June 24, 2008 12 Noon
$1,500 Pot Limit Omaha 8/b

50 Sunday, June 29, 2008 12 Noon
$10,000 World Championship Pot Limit Omaha

Most of these events start at 5pm and unlike last year, they will not be held inside the poker tent.

TI offers weekly Head Hunters bounty tournaments

TI (Treasure Island) in Las Vegas has a Head Hunters bounty tournament that runs every Wednesday at 11 a.m. and every Sunday at 7 p.m.

The tournament attracts about 30-40 players and 1st place averages $600.

Buy-in is $125 with a $50 bounty on each player (so technically a $75 tourney). If you bust someone out, you not only get their chips, you also get $50. If you win the tournament, you get your own $50 bounty.

Starting chipstack is 5,000 and levels are 30 minutes.

For more information, call (702) 894-7291.

Bellagio Pays Tribute to WPT Champs

In less than two weeks, the Bellagio will play host to the Ceremony of Champions, the World Poker Tour event will pay tribute to 96 champions from the tour's previous six seasons.
The World Poker Tour has even had infamous jewelers Tiffany & Co. design titanium and diamond bracelets, personalized for every champion.
"There are so many incredible stories to celebrate from the six World Poker Tour seasons and we are thrilled to pay tribute to each of our WPT Champions," said WPT founder, president and CEO, Steve Lipscomb. "The championship bracelet has become synonymous with poker as a symbol of achievement and respect, and we are honored to continue the tradition that Benny Binion began over 30 years ago."
All future World Poker Tour champions will receive a bracelet along with their cash winnings. Could you be the next World Poker Tour winner? Try your luck at a WPT online poker. That next bracelet could very well be yours.

No more hot food at Diamond Lounges?

With the closing of the 7 Star Lounge at Caesars Palace, there's been some talk about the downgrading of the Diamond lounges at Harrah's properties.

Diamond lounges are open to Diamond players, who are players earning 11,000 in base points in a calendar year (each point is equivalent to $5 in playthrough on slots).

The rumor is that hot food has been removed from all Diamond lounges in Las Vegas to match other like lounges in the midwest.

We wanted to check to be sure and stopped by Harrah's last Saturday.

We were there in the evening, and while we saw no traces of hot food, there were chips, salsa, cookies, and other snacks that seemed to corroborate what people in the message boards have been saying.

We spoke with a Harrah's host and were told that hot food is still being served, but just between 4 to 6 p.m. We were also shown a menu that listed the different hot food that would be set out over the next week.

Of course, the bar was as full as ever, and mudslides were still freely flowing.

So the rumors of the death of hot food has been exaggerated. As long as you're there between 4 and 6 p.m.

Daniel Negreanu: "I'm In That Killer Mindset, Like I Literally Want to Eat People's Brains"

Wow! In his latest blog posting on his site, entitled "Eating Brain", Daniel Negreanu begins by talking about how prepared he is for both the EPT Grand Final (currently taking place as we speak) and the upcoming Five-Star World Poker Classic event at the Bellagio. Negreanu goes on to say that he is eating extremely healthy, exercising and getting proper bed rest.
After getting some of the more boring details out of the way, Negreanu sends out a warning shot to all of the other players who may be unfortunate enough to sit at his table.
The 140 pound vegan says that he is in "that killer mindset", "like I literally want to eat people's brains."
If that isn't enough to send a cold chill down your spine, Negreanu continues:
"Just literally rip their brains to shreds after an appetizer of ripping their hearts out of their chests, taking a big bite out of them, and then spitting the blood back in their faces."
Negreanu finishes by stating that he is going to "pwn" the EPT Grand Final, if the cards co-operate.

ePassporte pulling the plug on U.S.?

While it seems likely that ePassporte is pulling out of the U.S. market, there is still a glimmer of hope for American online poker players.

Yesterday, rumors began swirling that the money transfer service ePassporte would no longer be able to serve U.S. customers, which seemed to be confirmed by Cake Poker. That site was telling players through their cashier screens that ePassporte could not be used in the U.S.
Here is what the message says, according to poker-king.com:

To all Cake Poker Customers:

We have received notice from ePassporte today that they are unable to continue to provide CakePoker with merchant e-wallet services. We have since confirmed that this situation is not unique to CakePoker and is, in fact, industry wide.

While we are disappointed with this decision, we want to reassure all players that there will be no impact to either your account balances or your account status at Cake. We are pleased to have launched earlier this week with a new payment processor and have already secured alternative processors/eWallets that we will be launching in the weeks to come. We are also in discussions with other providers that will be making their services available in the CakePoker cashier soon. Players are welcome to inquire with Customer Support for more details.

As always, we value your business and will continue to make every effort possible to make your poker experience a great one.

Regards,
The CakePoker Team

However, wickedchopspoker.com has a slightly more optimistic take on the situation:

PokerStars, Full Tilt, and other major sites all list ePassporte as “temporarily unavailable.” Calls to ePassporte customer service note that the issue is due to “technical difficulty.”

If ePassporte is pulling out of the U.S. market, it comes just a few days after the U.S. Congress introduced a bill that would lift the ban on online gambling and poker in America.

There still has been no official statement from ePassporte.

Poker Channel Launches in Holland

Dutch poker enthusiasts are in for a treat, as the Poker Channel has launched in the Netherlands on the UPC Digital Platform and the KPN Network.
The channel will provide coverage of a number of major poker tournaments including the World Heads-Up Championship in Barcelona, the European Poker Masters, the Million Dollar Cash Game, the Invitational from Monte Grand Casino, classic World Series of Poker coverage and the new 'All In' series from locations including Tallinn, Estonia, Bucharest and Romania.

Prosecutor Picked Up in Poker Raid

Nearly thirty poker players were arrested in South Carolina recently as part of a poker raid on a house in Hanahan, and among them was an assistant prosecutor for Orangeburg, Dorchester, and Calhoun Counties. Unlawful games and betting are the charges against Don Sorenson, who then tendered his resignation to his chief, David Pascoe. The chief prosecutor, however, decided instead to suspend him without pay, taking into consideration Sorenson’s 13 year history with the office. The raid was the culmination of a ten month long investigation. More than $40,000 was seized in the raid.

001 - Opponents Making Mistakes

Low Limit Poker: Opponents Making Mistakes - How to make money on bad plays for the donkey at low limit poker. How to reach me: lowlimitpodcast@gmail.com The Dick Line: 206-202-5608 http://lowlimitpodcast.blogspot.com Skype Me: lowlimitpoker

001 - Opponents Making Mistakes

Poker game leads to stabbing death in Atlantic City

A disagreement at a poker table led to a stabbing death Saturday at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City.

According to a story at majorwager.com:

Vicente Perez, 57, of Georgia, began arguing with another man at a Taj poker table, Vitale said. They stepped out of the casino and into the valet parking area of the garage near the Virginia Avenue entrance, where the argument descended into violence.

The victim, whose identity was not released pending the notification of his family, was pronounced dead at 4:05 p.m. at AtlantiCare Medical Center in Atlantic City.

Perez is in custody and faces charges of aggravated manslaughter and two weapons charges.

Kevin Federline partying in Las Vegas What's the Cost?

In the Britney Spears / Kevin Federline custody battle, court papers made public Federline's spending habits... including how much he tips and spends in Las Vegas.

Federline's average tab for nightclubs is $2,500-$3,000.

At the Scores gentlemen's club, he left a $2,000 tip on a $365 bill.

In fact, in an 8-month period of trips to Las Vegas, Federline spent over $43,000.

Money was generated from his music as well as personal appearances, such as $15,000 for celebrating his birthday at Pure (Caesars Palace).

'Course, he could always use more. And that's where Britney comes in.

But that's another chapter for a later court date.

How Would You Play This Hand

Full Tilt runs a daily $150+13 buy-in tournament at 3:00pm EST. You receive 3000 starting chips with the blind levels increasing every 12 minutes. This tournament gives you an extra 2 minutes more at each blind level over their standard tournament structure.
Today’s tournament began with 334 players. The top 45 finishers got paid with 1st place paying out $12,525, 2nd place paid $8,016 and 3rd place paid $6012.
This is one of my favorite daily tournaments on Full Tilt because of the structure and the size of the field. It’s not such a huge field, as many guaranteed tournaments, giving you a better chance to go deep. A 3000 chip starting stack and 12 minute blind levels allow you more opportunities to see flops and try to get lucky.
That’s my general philosophy in the early rounds of a tournament with a good structure,. I try to see a lot of flops cheap with drawing hands in multi-way pots from late position. If I hit the flop hard, I put myself in a position to take down a big pot.
After almost forty minutes into this tournament, I saw a lot of flops but didn’t hit much. I bled away about T$1000 chips from my T$3000 starting stack up to this point. But, I wasn’t discouraged. I knew if I could catch a couple of hands I’d get right back in it. This next hand came up.
Here are the chip counts going into the hand.
MP2: 3,460
CO: 2,095
BTN: 4,705

SB: 6,680
BB: 2,200
UTG: 3,660
UTG+1: 2,255
UTG+2: 2,895
Hero (MP1): 1,950
How would you play this hand? With the blinds at 25/50, I pick up J♠-10♠ and limp from middle position. The reason I limped here is I didn’t want to come out with a standard 3x raise and get re-raised from a couple of players with bigger stacks who were sitting on the Button and in the Small Blind. It’s very important to pay attention to player’s stacks that are left to act in the hand. I am willing to call a standard raise to see a flop especially from a player raising out of the blinds. I’d have position on them the rest of the way giving me an edge.
A player to my immediate left makes it 160 to go and everyone else folds to me. This player has been playing pretty straight forward without getting out of line. If I miss the flop completely, I can get away cheap.
The flop comes A♥–A♠–9♠
I flop a J-high flush draw and decide to check. Since, I’m playing this hand out of position I’d rather try to see a free card. If I bet out and get raised, I will probably have to let it go. I check and the player to my left checks. This made me a little suspicious but, he could’ve easily whiffed the flop. He may even think I’m slow playing with an Ace in the hole.
The turn brought Ks. The board now looks like this: A♥–A♠–9♠–K♠
I hit the second nut flush and bet out 250 into a 395 pot. The reason for this sized bet is I don’t want to scare my opponent out of the pot. If he has an Ace which is well within his pre-flop raising range, he’ll definitely come along. He may even re-raise me. If he has a King, he may just call due to my weak looking bet. He decides to call my 250 bet and the river brings a harmless 2c. I feel like I’m way ahead here due to the action up to this point and I size up a value bet I think will get paid off. With the pot at 895 I bet a little more than half on the river, 450. He instantly called.
What do you think he had? With two Aces on board, I couldn’t believe he’d call me all the way down with an Ace. At least a solid player would’ve re-raised me on the turn to see where he was at in the hand. The hand he flipped over was one of the two hands I figured he might have.
Results: 1,795 Pot
MP2 mucked K♦-Q♦ (two pair, Aces and Kings) and LOST (-860 NET)
Hero showed 10♠-J♠ (a flush, Ace high) and WON 1,795 (+935 NET)
Winning this pot brought my stack back up to T$2885 which is almost what I started with. Shortly after this hand I picked up Q-Q and doubled up before the 1st break. I took that stack deep into this tournament and finished 3rd overall for $6017.

PokerXFactor acquires PokerFox

PokerXFactor.com, the online poker training center, announced the acquisition of competitor PokerFox.net. The move means that Chris “pokerfox” Wallace and Adam “hatfield13″ Stemple will be joining PokerXFactor as instructors.

According to a press release from PokerXFactor:

The acquisition of PokerFox.net will add over 200 videos of advanced poker instruction to the PokerXFactor (PXF) Training Center library, plus numerous articles and blogs aimed at helping poker players win. In addition, Chris Wallace, who is recognized as a top poker coach today, will focus on teaching PXF subscribers bankroll building, cash games, poker software and tools, and general poker best practices. Adam Stemple will become PokerXFactor’s lead instructor on mixed games. Both instructors will play active roles in the PokerXFactor community.

Feds Admit They Have No Clue How To Enforce Anti-Online Gambling Legislation

In the fall of 2006, Congress (for reasons that have never been explained) put a clause banning online gambling into a bill supposedly about protecting our ports (so no one would vote against it). Since then there's been an ongoing legal effort to get that part of the law overturned. It's particularly upset financial institutions who are told they need to stop gambling operations from accepting money -- though, they're not quite sure how to do that. To top it all off, even the federal officials who are charged with enforcing this law are now admitting that they have absolutely no clue how to enforce it, noting that the legislation itself is incredibly broad and unclear. In other words, we have a law that almost no one wants and which those in charge of enforcing have no idea how to enforce or even why they should enforce it. So why did it get passed in the first place? Well, at least our ports are safe.

Devilfish Poker a Loser

The online home of British poker professional David "Devilfish" Ulliott post a six-month loss recently. PLUS-listed Devilfish Gaming Plc announced that Devilfish Poker Ltd saw a pretax loss of nearly 280,000 pounds. This is compared to 180,000 pounds lost last year when faced with higher administrative costs. The news continues to look grim as the report indicates that the room doesn’t expect revenues to increase during the next six months. This is when Devilfish Poker will be integrated into a new gaming platform by Entraction. The report does indicate that the room’s directors expect the six months past that to be a period of regrowth.

Knight Rider in Las Vegas

Fans of the recently cancelled "Las Vegas" television series may have noticed the casino set of the fictitious being used in the NBC movie-of-the-week (if they still had movies-of-the-week) "Knight Rider," based on the series with David Hasselhoff (above is a picture from the preview poster, though we don't remember the revamped car looking this good).

Ratings were high enough that NBC greenlit the show into a series, and who to run it other than Gary Scott Thompson, the creator of "Las Vegas."

While we thought the "Knight Rider" movie stunk on ice, we have hopes for Thompson and his penchant for action and soap opera.

Perhaps we'll see more of The Montecito. Maybe we'll at last have a pseudo-ending that the "Las Vegas" fans have been craving.

Hulu.com and NBC.com both offer the "Knight Rider" movie on their site, streaming for free (along with episodes of "Las Vegas," R.I.P.).

Playboy issue featuring Jennicide is on newsstands

  The poker community has known for some time now about Jennifer “Jennicide” Leigh’s appearance in the May issue of Playboy, and the wait is now officially over.

Cherry Club Las Vegas opens as only strip club with water park Archives

The new 116,000-square-foot Cherry Club Las Vegas opens tonight, hosted by Scott Baio and joined by various porn stars from around the country.

Baio (Chachi from "Happy Days") will serve as a judge for 21 amateur Cherry model finalists competing for the title of Miss Cherry Pie and $1,000 in cash. And they won't have to worry about Baio, since he married his longtime girlfriend last year (Baio was a frequent guest of the Playboy mansion before being banned from dating too many Playboy Playmates).

The first gentlemen's club to be located on the Las Vegas Strip, Cherry also boasts a waterfall and wave pool with cherry-shaped inner tubes big enough for two. Positioned on various water stages are Cherry dancers wearing white clothing designed to quickly turn dry to wet to dry again from water that's encouraged to be splashed.

In another first, Cherry is also the only club in the nation to be completely account-based: patrons can receive cards in the mail and add money to them via credit card or cash at the cashier. All transactions are cashless, including dances, where dancers will scan your card in advance. This conveniently addresses the problem of getting bills wet in the pool.

The "Breaking the Cherry" ribbon-cutting ceremony begins tonight at 8 p.m. Complimentary food will be available from area eateries, with an open bar of Three Olives cherry vodka the first two hours of opening.

Each night, Cherry will feature an anonymous dancer who's never danced before. The patron who correctly identifies her at the end of the evening will be randomly drawn and refunded of all his night's dances. Guesses can be made via card swipe at kiosks throughout the club.

Tonight only, locals with photo I.D. receive the first dance and first drink for free. After the grand opening, locals will always receive 2-for-1 cocktails, bottle specials, and a special whirlpool lounge.

Appropriately, the club is located south of Sahara Hotel & Casino in the old Wet 'n' Wild location.