A lot of grinders will tell you that poker is an art form, but you gotta hand it to performance artist Zefrey Throwell, who has set up a live strip poker game in a Manhattan shop window in the name of art.
OK, so is it art, or just an excuse to try and get away with a little public nudity?
Personally, I’m on the fence, but thoroughly support the idea nonetheless.
Here’s a nice report from the New York Post.
Well, the WSOP has a new champ, 22-year-old Pius Heinz of Cologne Germany who outlasted 35-year-old Martin Staszko of the Czech Republic.
Heinz
For a rundown, here’s the AP story.
I managed to watch a couple hours of the final table last night on ESPN. What I missed more than seeing the hole cards was the editing out of uneventful hands. And nobody is going to be nicknaming Heinz “Speedy” anytime soon.
I didn’t make it to the end and went to bed.
Still, I imagine this live coverage, even with the info it gives to players despite the 15-minute delay, will probably be a hit. I mean nobody will wait until an edited broadcast to find out the winner and the WSOP main event is just too big to not go live.
Fortunately, most other tournaments on TV will stay the same.
So another young gun has just pocketed $8.72 million and proven again that Texas Hold’em is an international hit.
Congrats to all of this year’s players.
Barry Greenstein and Linda Johnson have been named as this year’s inductees to the Poker Hall of Fame.
Johnson
Johnson is only the second woman to be voted into the hall joining Barbara Enright.
Johnson was nicknamed the “First Lady of Poker,” and is known as much for her play as being an ambassador and promoter of the game. She was the publisher of Card Player Magazine for eight years in the 90s and has written three books on the game.
Greenstein is known as the “Robin Hood of Poker,” and has reportedly given more than $3 million of his earnings to charity.
You can get a nice rundown on their careers at wsop.com.
Greenstein
The other nominees this year, decided by popular vote, were: Annie Duke, Jennifer Harman Traniello, John Juanda, Marcel Luske, Jack McClelland, Tom McEvoy, Scotty Nguyen and Huck Seed.
Greenstein and Johnson will be officially inducted on Tuesday, November 8 at the Rio All-Suite® Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas just prior to the start of the final playing session of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event Championship.
Well, it’s another bad day for the Atlantic City market as the oft-delayed Aqueduct racino finally opens today, adding New York to the long list of competing casino states for the city.
And in another bad sign, it seems the whole place is automated, with 4,525 video slot machines and 475 electronic games. It’s the dealer-less automated games that are the most troubling.
It’s bad enough we lost all the slots jobs several years back when the machines all went to credits and vouchers. Now dealers livelihoods are on the line.
Let’s hope gamblers draw a line in the sand and insist on actual cards on their tables and grow suspicious of computer-generated deals. But they probably won’t.
It should be noted that The Tropicana wants these electronic games as well when it moves gambling into The Quarter.
Anyway, for more on Genting’s Resorts World New York Casino, (even the Resorts name is ripping us off), here’s a good rundown from The Star Ledger.
The World Series of Poker Circuit makes a couple of important stops in Atlantic City each year — Caesars in March and Harrah’s Resort in December — and it also has its final event in Las Vegas. But somehow, the biggest stop on the tour has become the Horseshoe Hammond in Hammond Indiana.
The Hammond Horseshoe
The casino is just a 40-minute drive from Chicago, a massive player base to draw from, and has become the circuit’s attendance champ.
Consider that the first tournament of the Hammond circuit stop, which was held Oct. 13 to 24, attracted 3,001 players, an obvious circuit event record. No tournament in Atlantic City has even come near that big a crowd since I’ve been blogging.
In March, the Caesars circuit event drew 742 for the first tournament and the Harrah’s Event last December drew 1,181. Even this year’s Borgata Open, which drew more that 1,700 for its opening event, is dwarfed by the Hammond figure.
Still, no event can maintain those figures through all the events. For the championship main event of the Hammond stop, however, another record was set as 1,615 turned out, creating a $2.3 million prize pool.
Robert Chow of Germantown Il. was the champ winning $393,548, by far his biggest win ever. By comparision, last year’s main event winner at Harrah’s won about $118K.
Hopefully, this year’s Harrah’s circuit event, Dec. 1-12, will at least put up a fight.
For a nice rundown on the Hammond event, go to ESPN’s poker blog.
Meanwhile, there some good news for those hoping to see online poker legalized in the U.S. A bill to do just that appears to be gaining traction after a House subcommittee held hearings on the bill Tuesday. Here’s a nice rundown of that story.
A couple of seasons out from Black Friday, it seems that it’s safe to line up on the online poker wagon again.
And none other than Donald Trump, whose name has always pulled a lot of weight around Atlantic City, is trying to get a seat at the table.
Bloomberg reports that Trump and New York hedge-fund manager Marc Lasry plan to form an Internet Gaming company should online poker ever be legalized in the U.S. The company would be formed through Lasry’s Avenue Capital Group and casino operator Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc.
Donald and Ivanka
Aside from the fact that there’s no telling if and when the feds may legalize online play, on the surface, this could be great news for Atlantic City.
Though the Trump brand isn’t what it used to be in the city, Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. still controls two A.C. casinos, the Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza (though they’re trying to sell the Plaza).
The news came through a regulatory filing and it’s pretty complicated corporate stuff. Avenue Capital actually took control of Trump Entertainment last year. Trump Entertainment, however, would own 10 percent of the online company, but how the other 90 percent would be distributed wasn’t disclosed.
Still, a brand clearly associated with A.C. would be at the front of the operation. (more…)
The 2011 nominees for the Poker Hall of Fame were announced earlier this week. The nominees come from a public nomination process at WSOP.com.
Annie Duke
It’s a pretty good list with some poker icons represented.
In order to be nominated, individuals have to meet these criteria:
• A player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition
• Be a minimum of 40 years old at time of nomination
• Played for high stakes
• Played consistently well, gaining the respect of peers
• Stood the test of time
• Or, for non-players, contributed to the overall growth and success of the game of poker, with indelible positive and lasting results.
The 18 living members of the Hall of Fame and a 17-person media panel will review the nominees. Only one or two will likely be named for induction.
Here’s the nominees as listed at ESPN.Com.
This blog covers live poker action in Atlantic City poker rooms, but there’s no question what the main topic of conversation is right now around the city’s rooms and at The Borgata Open.
Lederer
And that’s the accusations today by the U.S. Department of Justice that Full Tilt poker was essentially a massive Ponzi scheme that ripped off online players to the tune of $444 million.
The DOJ specifically named pros Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson, who were founders of the site in 2004, in the scheme, but the amount of poker pros who were involved with Full Tilt is hard to ignore.
Like we said, we haven’t followed the Full Tilt situation step by step, but thousands of online players are looking less and less likely to recover their online accounts.
Ferguson
Here’s the story from The Wall Street Journal.
By the way, there’s a sign at The Borgata Open asking players not to wear poker logos during the tournament.
This would be a good day to follow that rule
As expected, Day 1A of the Borgata Open brought out some big names as 460 players turned out for the first of two opening days Sunday. Day 1B for the $3,300 + $200 event is today.
Vanessa Selbst
Among the chip leaders after Day 1A is Vanessa Selbst at number two with 198,675 in chips.
Also among the day 1A chip leaders is Will “The Thrill” Failla, who won more than $750K at the WPT’s Legends of Poker Main Event last month, the first WPT event of the season. Failla is a common site at Borgata events and told WPT.com that he calls Atlantic City and the casino home.
He was in fourth on the chip count with 189K.
The chip leader is Abraham Korotki, of Bethany Beach De. with 260,100 in chips. Korotki is also an experienced A.C. player with numerous cashes in the resort and close to $700,000 in tournament winnings. Much of those winnings came form a 1st at the 2006 WSOP Circuit event at Harrah’s, where he won $433K.
Some other notables seen on Day 1A are Dwyte Pilgrim, Maria Ho, Roy Winston, Gordon Eng, Chris Bell, Steve Danneman, John Racener, Jeff Madsen … It’s kind of a long list.
Still, many of these pros, such as Pilgrim, will be re-buying today.
Even though the championship event is underway, there are still some other tournaments today including a $270 + $30 + $100 Black Chip Bounty NLH at 3pm and a $150 + $30 NLH at 6pm.
Meanwhile, The Tropicana’s bad beat jackpot apparently survived the weekend (unless it hit late Sunday) and is at $516,000.
So it’s a busy Monday in A.C.
The Trop’s bad beat jackpot has passed $500K, coming in at about $502,000 going into today’s play. And thanks to one of our sharper readers (thanks Allin), we’ve figured out why the rate of increase for the jackpot has slowed down noticeably.
Normally, the casino has a drop of about 70 percent towards its bad beat jackpot, 20 percent for its reserve jackpot (to be used to replenish the jackpot after a hit) and 10 percent for its 38 Special Jackpot (more on that later).
However, the casino changed that drop at about $300K. The bad beat jackpot is now getting only 20 percent of the bad beat rake, with 70 percent going to the reserve.
Trop officials say that with the jackpot this high, they know players will be coming to the room. Rather than worry about setting a record, they want to ensure that their bad beat will be in good shape when this jackpot hits, keeping the bad beat fun going.
If the jackpot were to hit today, the jackpot would be reset to about $200K, Trop officials said.
Still, even with the low rake, the jackpot is gaining about $2K a day. (more…)
