Bally's bad beat - slow growing, but impressive

Another week gone and another about 13K gets added onto Bally’s bad beat. The jackpot now sits at about $373,000 as of 4pm Friday. With a smaller 20-table room, the bad beat has been growing like a bonsai tree, but hey, $373K is nothing to sneeze at.

As always, we point out that Bally’s offers a unique split of 30 percent to the bad beat winner (or loser of the hand), 20 percent to the hand winner and the remaining 50 percent split between all players in the room, not just at the table where the bad beat happens.

This weekend also starts Borgata’s latest Double Play poker tournament, which runs from Sunday (Aug. 1) to Tuesday. Double plays basically allow for re-entry if you should wash out on the first day. Day one is split into two days. Go out on the first (Day 1A), and you can buy in again on the second (Day 1B). The tournament is a $1,000 + $100 No Limit Hold’em tournament.

Players start with $15,000 in chips. Each level is 40 minutes. Day 1 action ends after level 12.

The Borgata is also offering some satellites for the tournament as $220 + $30 buy-in satellites are scheduled for today (July 30) at 5pm, Saturday, July 31, at 11am and Sunday, August 1, at 4pm.

Players start with $10,000 in chips with 20-minute levels. One in five players wins a stake in the Double Play.

The Sunday tournament is presumably only good for Day 1B, since the Double Play itself begins at 11am Sunday.

Wednesday’s approval of Rep Barny Frank’s Internet gaming bill has set off a world of discussion with some pundits, like Philadelphia Inquirer writer Joseph DiStefano, arguing that Congress may pull a few tricks to fast track this bill in order to get some new tax revenues flowing in.

But considering that there is still a companion bill about exactly how to tax online gaming — which means poker — that has to be passed as well and then merged with the Frank bill, we’re still leaning towards a slower timetable.

In the Senate (which has to OK all this too), the online bill is sponsored by New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez. His bill defines poker as a game of skill, but hasn’t even moved to the hearing stage. The NY Times has a nice story about the whole situation.

Look, this is an Atlantic City poker blog and we never claimed to understand Washington. But online poker could still be a boon to Atlantic City if efforts by state politicians to make New Jersey the first to OK online gaming make any progress. And it’s interesting that New Jersey’s Menendez is one of the sponsors of these bills.

Who knows, one day A.C. could find itself a double threat; an online poker hub and a competitive live poker market. Worse things could happen.

Online poker in the U.S. got a big boost Wednesday when a bill, sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to regulate online sites in the U.S. was approved by a congressional committee. But keep in mind that it’s just one step in a long process before the bill can become law.

Barney Frank

Still, recent events concerning software problems at Cake Poker and growing worries about “hot seats” at popular online sites like Full Tilt Poker, have a lot of player’s yearning for some oversight from Uncle Sam. Online sites are usually based outside the U.S. and have little, if any, regulation.

The proposed bill is the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act, which would replace the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act passed in 2006. The earlier law pretty much outlawed Internet gaming in the U.S., but leaves it up to financial institutions — you know credit card companies — to block transactions. So far, it hasn’t worked very well.

The new bill was passed by The House Financial Services Committee Wednesday, but getting that vote required a lot of changes and amendments to the bill.

One of the amendments would exclude sites considered to be breaking current laws such as Full Tilt or PokerStars, from ever being granted business licenses in the future. There’s some debate, however, whether these two online poker giants would really be excluded.

Other amendments require online players to be at least 21 years of age and would prevent online gaming sites from advertising to minors or problem gamblers.

And then finally, gamblers couldn’t use credit cards to make bets, but could use debit cards.

The final amendments proposed the creation of a statistics database, and that all sites licensed by the US would be located and stay within the country.

The bill is also tied up with other legislation to tax online gambling, which also must be passed before the entire bill goes to The House. And remember, we have a Senate and president that will probably want to weigh in on the bill as well.

So while it is movement, don’t expect much change any time soon.

Bloomberg News has a nice rundown on the vote.

Sometimes bad beat jackpots get on a run and right now, The Borgata’s jackpot is hitting.

Life before bad beat jackpots

Just 10 days after the last time it hit, the casino saw another bad beat hit about 5pm Sunday July 25.

In this partial rundown from The Borgata, player Matthew Grant saw his quad deuces fall to the quad queens of Joel Levine. And once again, slow playing the lower pocket pair seems to have been a factor.

Grant had his quads when a flop of seven, deuce, deuce came out. But Levine stayed in long enough to see running queens on the turn and river.

Grant wins $60,994 and Levine gets $30,474.

The casino left us to do the math on what the remaining eight players at the table won. Since the casino offers a 40 percent for the bad beat winner, 20 percent for the hand winner and 40 percent for the table split, we’ve got like an algebra problem we can handle here.

We’re guessing about $7,600 per player, rounding off.

The jackpot is back to about $74,000.

The Borgata has announced a Deepstack  Turbo event for Aug. 15 that includes a chance at winning a seat at The Borgata Open Championship Event in September.

The Deepstack event is a $260 + $40 event that, when you think about it, shouldn’t take very long to play.

The blinds are set at $25/$50 and double every 15 minutes. Hence the Turbo name. A $25 ante also kicks in on the 5^th round and that also doubles every time the blinds go up. Considering that you’re starting with $25,000 in chips, a smoke break in the middle rounds could kill you.

The Borgata has not announced a schedule for the 2010 Borgata Open yet, but last year’s championship was a $2 million guaranteed, $3,000 buy-in. The year’s open is from Sept. 8-23 with the championship event beginning Sept. 19.

Meanwhile, The Borgata has a $1,000 buy-in Double Play tournament starting Sunday.

After a couple of months of doing this blog, it’s pretty clear that  The Borgata is leading the way in poker action in Atlantic City.

Thank God somebody is.

Any  reporter will tell you that July and August are the slowest times of the year for news coverage. Everybody’s on vacation, taking it easy or just caught in a general summer malaise. Seems it’s that way for poker as well, and the Monday headlines are a  little skimpy this week.

A much happier Young

But one story that’s generating some interest comes from poker pro Jason Young, who picked up a World Series of Poker bracelet a couple of year’s ago in a shootout event. Young, 28 is a regular A.C. Player with numerous cashes at The Borgata and Caesars including a first place in a no limit event at the Borgata winter open in 2009. He’s closing in on $700,000 in total tournament winnings

And maybe it’s the sand in the shoes, but Young’s a live poker player, meaning he goes to actual brick and mortar poker rooms, and has some pretty strong words about online poker.

Like maybe it’s fixed.

Young, who blogs for cardplayer.com, had some pretty bad luck playing online recently and really gives it to online poker.

Here’s some excerpts, unedited:

“told you guys I’m going to tell you how it is, for better or worse always…WELL RIGHT NOW IM FUCKING STEAMING so bad. I’m not going to be one of these fake F*CKS On here who always has everything work out for them….I have always been a live player…never really played much online…I’ve really put in a lot more hours online trying to improve my game over the past year or so..and I have improved a great deal. I recently had my biggest online cash for 51K and went on a nice run playing super high stakes sit n go’s.

I’ve always felt like whenever I cash out any money, I’m going to get insta-fcked as soon as I do that, and it always happens, but I just chalk it up to me playing bad or whatever…In the last 2 days I’ve felt like Tim Robbins entering Shawshank. I mean they are trying to jam it in me around every corner. The biggest joke ever….I’m deleting the word (FUCK) as often as I can, but I’m literally steaming while I right this…Broken computer and all…I’ve been playing 500-1k heads up holdem, o8 and Omaha Hi the past 2 days I have lost to 2 outters no less than 50 times. Im not kidding….I’ve had a swing in 2 days where I went from being up close to 30k since my last night in Vegas and maintaining while being home for 10 days, to down 5K. -35K in 2 days?! GO FCK YOURSELVES.”

There’s more, but you get the point. This stuff doesn’t happen in a live room.

Bally’s bad beat jackpot went another week without hitting and was sitting at about $360,000 at about 3pm Friday (July 23). Bally’s offers a unique split of 30 percent to the bad beat winner (or loser of the hand), 20 percent to the hand winner and the remaining 50 percent split between all players in the room, not just at the table where the bad beat happens.

Sunday (July 25) action includes a satellite for The Borgata’s Aug. 1-3, $1000 + $100 buy-in Double Play Tournament.  The satellite is a $110 + $20 tournament where one out of 10 players wins a stake in the Double Play. The tournament starts at 11am. Players start with $7,000 in chips.

Speaking of the Borgata, the casino is offering a $200,000 guaranteed poker drawing.

You know, they draw a name and give out some money. It happens a lot in casinos, but is a little unusual for a poker room.

Sunday through Thursday, the casino will have random drawing at noon, 2:30pm, 5:00pm 7:30pm and 10:00pm in the poker room. One lucky winner will be awarded a guaranteed cash prize of anywhere from $500 to $5,000. The Borgata will give away a total of $200,000 in cash throughout the promotion. The drawings run to Aug. 26.

ESPN has announced a little more about it’s World Series of Poker coverage this year, and even though the event happens in some little Nevada backwater, we know Atlantic City players are probably interested.

Coverage will start next Tuesday, July 27, with the Players Championship (spoiler alert, skip down if you don’t want to know who wins) won by Michael Mizrachi, who also happens to have made the November nine final table at the main event. The championship had a $5.5 million prize pool.

The WSOP Tournament of champions will be telecast starting Aug. 3. (spoiler alert again). Huck Seed won the tournament.

Main event coverage starts Aug. 10 and runs to Nov. 9. Though ESPN calls it main event coverage, you have to figure their talking about the entire 57-event World Series. As big as the main event, even ESPN can’t stretch it out over three months.

The WSOP coverage will air 8-10pm Tuesdays until Aug. 24, then switch to 9-11 pm for the rest of the run.

Annie Duke testified before a U.S. House of Representatives Committee Wednesday in favor of allowing online poker in the U.S. And her star power seems to have made an impression.

Annie Duke at Harrah's A.C.

The hearing was before the House Financial Services Committee about a proposed bill from Congressman Barney Frank, D-Mass. called the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act. The bill would make online poker legal in the U.S. and set up regulations overseen by the federal government.

Duke was one of several speakers at the hearing and made a strong case for online poker.

Duke in her testimony said the following:

“At its most basic level, the issue before this committee is personal freedom — the right of individual Americans to do what they want in the privacy of their homes without the intrusion of the government. From the writings of John Locke and John Stuart Mill, through their application by Jefferson and Madison, this country was among the first to embrace the idea that there should be distinct limits on the ability of the government to control or direct the private affairs of its citizens. More than any other value, America is supposed to be about freedom. Except where one’s actions directly and necessarily harm other people’s life, liberty or property, government is supposed to leave the citizenry alone in this country. In fact it was Ronald Reagan who once said ‘I believe in a government that protects us from each other… I do not believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.’”

Wow, Jefferson, Madison and Reagan, pretty impressive.

Still, the bill faced serious opposition from law enforcement representatives, casino executives and even from congressmen within the committee.

The big news, however, is that Congressman John Campbell (R-CA) will discuss adding an amendment to the bill (called a mark-up meeting) requiring the use of sophisticated technology and including a loss limit on gamblers.

We’re not entirely sure why that’s the big news, but it apparently means the bill is moving forward, not backward. Cardplayer.com has a nice write-up.

The Borgata has announced some satellites for its Aug. 1-3, $1000 + $100 buy-in Double Play Tournament. The Double Play format splits day one into Day 1A and IB. Players who bust out on Day 1A can buy in again on Day 1B.

The satellites get you one buy-in.

This Sunday, July 25, a $110 + $20 tournament where one out of 10 players wins a stake in the Double Play will beheld at 11am. Players start with $7,000 in chips.

The next group of satellites will be $220 + $30 buy-in on Friday, July 30 at 5pm
Saturday, July 31at 11am and Sunday, August 1 at 4pm.

Players start with $10,000 in chips with 20-minute levels. One in five players wins a stake in the Double Play.

The Sunday tournament is presumably only good for Day 1B, since the Double Play itself begins at 11am Sunday Aug. 1.

For a full rundown on the Double Play tournament go here.