Jamie Gold will always be remembered for his massive $12 million win at the World Series of Poker in 2006.

Gold after his WSOP win

But “champ” might not be the first word that comes to casino exec’s minds if they were to see him in Atlantic City.

(hint: the first syllable rhymes with red).

Seems Gold is on the hook for more than $50,000 he may owe the Borgata after allegedly bouncing a check in 2010.

TMZ, which has been getting a lot of good poker stories lately, reports that:

“According to papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court earlier this month, the owners of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, NJ won a default judgment against Gold for $52,279.47 back in 2010 — after the casino claimed Gold bounced a check there.

The casino won the judgment against Gold in New Jersey, but he lives in California — so the casino has now filed papers in California to get the judgment enforced there. A judge has yet to rule.”

It should be pointed out that there were reports after Gold’s 2006 win that a number of entities sued him claiming Gold owed them money. Those cases were reportedly settled out of court.

I can never resist posting “big check” pictures, even if they come from a slots hit. Of course, this one was for $1.2 million.

Judith Buckridge, 63, of Lake Grove, N.Y. hit a slot jackpot worth $1,263,122.69 at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino on Tuesday, June 29 at 4:30pm. Buckridge was playing a 25 cent Wheel of Fortune machine.

That’s pretty much the whole story, but look how happy she is with her big check.

Ah, bliss.

Legalizing Internet poker is back in play on the federal level.

U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) has introduced legislation that would allow for the licensing, regulation and taxing of Internet poker.

The bill also seems to carry some compromises from earlier attempts, allowing individual states to opt out of the plan and barring the use of credit cards to deposit funds.

The bill was introduced with a non-partisan list of both Democrats and Republicans as co-sponsors.

“Poker is an all-American game, and it’s a game that requires strategy and skill. Millions of Americans play poker online. Although it’s legal to play for money, it’s illegal to process the transactions that allow players to collect their earnings,” Barton said in a press release.

“We want to have an iron-clad system to make sure that those who play for money are playing in an honest, fair system where they can reap the benefits of their winnings.”

The U.S. Department of Commerce would draft the regulations.

The news was welcomed by Internet gaming advocates and gets the issue back on the front burner, well, some kind of burner, after efforts to approve Internet poker in Congress failed last year.

Here’s a look at the AP story.

And some more news has filtered down about the high stakes celebrity poker ring that has led to a lawsuit against Tobey Maguire.

The games were all-nighters, deadbeats who didn’t pay got expelled for life, and apparently everyone took things very seriously.

The games included celebs such as Leonardo Di Caprio, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

Maguire is being sued for allegedly being paid some winnings from one player that had illegally obtained the funds through a Ponzi scheme.

Believe is or not, TMZ has the story.

The final Borgata Summer Open event was held today, a $200 + $30 Deepstack event, and things should settle down to normal in the city’s poker rooms for the next few weeks.

One thing that has become pretty normal is bad beat jackpot hits. And we had two this week.

The Caesars combined bad beat hit at Harrah’s Resort for about $268,253 Wednesday at about 10:30pm.

A straight flush to the nine tripped up quad nines. The bad beat winner/loser took home $80,721.76 while the hand winner won $53,814.30. Of course, the real selling point is that 315 poker players in the four Caesars rooms — Caesars, Harrah’s, Showboat and Bally’s — won $424.50 just for being there.

The Caesars bad beat is back to $144,186 with quad queens the minimum.

That leaves the highest bad beat in the city at the Taj Mahal, which has climbed to $318,634, just beating out the Tropicana, where the bad beat was at 307,485 Friday.

That’s actually a pretty lofty figure for the Trop.

The Borgata bad beat is at $171,216 with the small bad beat at $42,804.

The Borgata saw another small bad beat hit last Sunday for about $41,000, continuing a trend of small jackpot hits (quad deuces to nines the minimum) that’s keeping their jackpot totals low.

By the way, the winner/loser of that bad beat won $16,651. The hand winner won $8,325 and five other players made $3,330. Quad kings won over quad threes.

So you see, there’s always bad beat jackpot money just waiting to be grabbed.

The Champ

And we have a winner of The Borgata Summer Open Championship as Tyng Low, 27, of Flushing N.Y. claims the crown and $211,484.

“Good, great, tremendous, fabulous,” Low told The Borgata’s tournament blog. “It means a lot. I’ve been trying to hit one like this for five years.”

Haven’t we all.

The final heads up play came between Low and Farid Jattin of Miami, who has racked up about $155,000 in tournament wins in Florida .

Low played a seven and three of hearts and actually flopped a straight  when five, six, four came out. Jattin was playing six, two of clubs, which gave him top pair, but went down to Low after failing to hit a straight flush draw. He wins $117,481.

Low finished 19^th at last year’s open championship (and spent some time as chip leader), winning about $3700, but took the the trophy this time.

Apparently Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire has some serious poker skills and is caught up in a gambling scandal in California.

Maguire is being sued as part of a number of lawsuits revolving around illegal underground games at upscale Beverley Hills Hotels and seeking to recover about $4 million in winnings.

According to The Associated Press, Maguire is being sued for $311,000 he won in the unlicensed games.

The lawsuits were filed by a bankruptcy trustee attempting to recoup money for investors who were duped in a Ponzi scheme.

Apparently the guy who ran the Ponzi scheme took some of the money from the scam to pay off his debts at these games, which reached $25 million.

The more gossipy take on this, according to Cardplayer.com, is that these poker games featured some of Hollywood’s elite, including Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Leonardo DiCaprio. Others connected to the game included Nick Cassavetes, Gabe Kaplan, Rick Salomon and wealthy businessmen such as Alex Gores and Andrew Sasson.

The games were played in their homes of swanky hotels.

However, Maguire is the only player named in the lawsuit thanks to a series of recovered bank transfers.

Some reports have Maguire winning $30-$40 million at these games.

Just for fun, we looked up his record at legal tournaments and he has about $200K in winnings.

So if he did win $30 million, Affleck, DiCaprio  and Damon are fish.

Maguire is maintaining that the games were legal. We don’t know about California, and it’s way too much work to look it up, but most states allow home poker games as long as “The House” doesn’t get a cut.

It’s hard to get an exact handle on the turnout for Day 1A of the Borgata Summer Championship event, but apparently, it wasn’t huge.

Only 31 players survived the day.

Woods at the Summer Open

Traditionally, Day 1B today, should draw better as most players keep their Sunday free, but the tournament will be hard pressed to match the 321 players it drew last year. That tournament was  $2,000 + $200 buy-in,$500 cheaper than this year’s.

One player that didn’t survive Day 1 was actor James Woods, who actually is a regular at the casino. Woods player three tournaments at the open, two $1k buy-ins and the championship, but finished out of the money for all three.

Meanwhile, in more of a national story, there’s another move afoot to legalize online poker. (more…)

More info has come from Don Johnson about his recent streak of high roller luck that allowed him to take $15 million off three A.C. Casinos between Dec. and April.

Not the right Don Johnson

This time it’s Johnson himself doing the talking, which he’s now done a couple of times. Johnson (not pictured here) says he’s decided to go public after there was some early speculation he may have cheated or counted cards (which really isn’t cheating in itself) while playing blackjack. (In fairness, he was still unidentified at the time.)

Johnson says he just played basic strategy.

But the interview, reported here by the Pittsburgh Tribune Review (Johnson is from Bensalem) raises some interesting questions about how to court, and not court high rollers.

The discussion centers on the Tropicana giving him a 20 percent discount on losses, which doesn’t seem too smart as Johnson took $5.8 million off the casino.

And again there’s some interesting tidbits, such as his winning $700,000 after splittings pairs and splitting them again for a total of four hands.

And he also says he has been threatened by the state to pay income taxes on the money, even though he’s not from New Jersey.

The tax stuff is way over our heads, but it all makes for a good read.

And while not the right Don Johnson, we’re sick of not having a picture of the guy we can run legally. This one is at least in the public domain.

The Borgata Summer Open kicks into high gear this weekend starting with a $1,000 + $90, Six Max No limit Tournament on Saturday at 11am. A $400 + $50 Six Max Tournament on Thursday drew 142 entries, so who can say with the Saturday tournament? It’s a higher buy-in, but on a better day.

Fortunately, it’s a one-day tournament because Sunday kicks off Day 1A of the Summer Open Championship.

The $2,500 + $200 event carries a $500,000 guarantee.

Last year’s championship event was only a $2,000 + $200 buy-in which attracted 321 players. We’ll have to see how that extra $500 kick affects things.

The tournament has a Day 1B Monday and plays until Wednesday.

For a breakdown on the structure go here.

As for the bad beat jackpots, they’re beginning to climb again. The Caesars combined bad beat jackpot is up to $241,562, while the Taj Mahal’s bad beat is up to $282,935. The highest jackpot in the city is at the Tropicana at $289,931.

Just a hunch, the Trop is probably due for a hit, even with a quad eights minimum.

Finally, coming off a hit this week of its small bad beat, The Borgata’s full jackpot is at $158,287.

Here’s hoping everyone, especially me, feels a lot better after the weekend. (And takes a lot less cold medicine.)

Sorry for the slow pace of posts this week, but your faithful blogger’s been a little under the weather as of late.

Still, that doesn’t even remotely affect the city’s action and the Borgata, even with the Borgata Summer Open going full blast, has seen another hit of its small bad beat jackpot (quad deuces to nines minimum).

The $47,767 hit brings the total Borgata bad beat pay outs to over $10 million. This is the 80th time the casino has seen a bad beat jackpot hit.

Of course, bad beat jackpots are progressive, so it’s player’s money being paid out, but still, it’s a lot of cash

This hit came Thursday morning.

Here’s the rundown from the casino:

Thomas Davenport (South Amboy, NJ), was holding pocket 4’s, while Kenneth Weliczka (Gansevoort, NY) held pocket 6’s.  Two 6’s on the board allowed Kenneth to win the pot.  However, Thomas’ quad 4’s were good enough to win $19,108 of the Bad Beat Jackpot.  Kenneth picked up an additional $9,553.

The remaining five players at the table each took home $3,821.