Five Years of the UIGEA

Today marks the fifth anniversary of George W. Bush signing into law the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. Or as many call it, the Awful Internet Gambling Act.

It was a Friday, as some of us remember -- an unlucky Friday the 13th for online poker players all over, but especially here in the United States.

What then-president Bush actually signed was something called the Security and Accountability For Every Port Act of 2006, a.k.a. the SAFE Port Act. There were a bunch of similar bills in Congress at the time designed to strengthen security at U.S. ports. A lot of that had to do with the fact that a few U.S. ports had been sold to a company in Dubai earlier that year, causing some to fret over whether or not national security might be put at risk.

Yeah, I know. What does online gambling have to do with that? A lot of people were wondering the same thing at the time.

Of course, fears about terrorist acts on U.S. soil had remained on a high level for more than five years since the attacks of 9/11. And so the SAFE Port Act -- like other legislation pushed through just before the 109th Congress closed up shop there at the end of September 2006 -- was viewed by many as "must pass" legislation.

We all know how Bill Frist, the Republican from Tennessee who was then the Senate Majority Leader (and who harbored presidential hopes as well), managed to tack on the UIGEA as "Title VIII" of the SAFE Port Act just before it was rapidly rushed through both houses literally minutes before Congress had finished its legislative business.

Today I found myself thinking back to that sequence of events from five years ago, and how many hadn’t necessarily expected to wake up on Saturday morning, September 30, 2006, to discover the damn thing had actually been passed.

Frist had tried just a week before to attach H.R. 4411 -- a UIGEA-like bill that the House had voted on and passed back in July 2006 -- to a defense spending bill, but several senators had stopped him from doing so. That I think gave a lot of us reason to believe such shenanigans weren't going to work should they be attempted once more.

But by the end of that week we were starting to hear some rumblings that Frist might try something similar again, perhaps pulling a "midnight drop" and adding the sucker to a bill at the last minute. The guys at Up for Poker were on to it, with Luckbox posting about the possibility during the day on Friday.

It was close to midnight that night when the SAFE Port Act was pushed through with almost no opposition. The vote was 409 to 2 in the House. Meanwhile over in the Senate they just affirmed it via a procedural maneuver. Such is the sketchy, not-always-fair-or-even-rational-seeming process by which bills can become laws.

Like I say, I think a lot of online poker players were surprised to learn of this development. I wrote a post that Saturday titled "Deals in the Dead of Night" describing both how I'd played a ton on PokerStars the night before and how the signing of the UIGEA into law had given me a bit of apprehension about what the future might hold.

But really, at the time we had only a faint idea of how what was to come. Over the next couple of weeks we studied up on the UIGEA. I wrote three posts as a kind of initial attempt to try to sort it all out (Part I, Part II, Part III). I had only started the blog a few months before, having no idea when I did how much time I would end up spending trying to parse bills and other legislative jargon.

In any case, while we still weren't too sure about it all, we knew it wasn't good.

That is to say, by the time Friday the 13th rolled around we knew that the UIGEA was kind of a BFD.

Some of us soon became further convinced of this fact when we were made to cash out from our PartyPoker accounts. I remember having a phone conversation with PartyPoker support sometime the following week, and the two of us kind of lamenting together how our relationship was coming to an end.

It really looked as though PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and everyone else might follow suit shortly thereafter and leave the U.S., too. But as we know that didn't happen. Indeed, nothing really happened for a long time, as it would take until mid-2010 for the UIGEA's "final regulations" to be established and compliance finally be made mandatory.

That’s when, of course, things got especially tricky for the sites that had chosen to continue to serve U.S. customers. Then came all those extra-curricular maneuvers by the biggest sites to keep Americans on board, including the bank fraud and money laundering that became part of the Black Friday indictment along with the allegations about violating the UIGEA and the Illegal Gambling Business Act.

I guess I still feel like we might not have seen the U.S. government go after the online sites for the UIGEA alone. That is to say, the bank fraud and money laundering charges gave the DOJ plenty of leverage to proceed with the indictment and civil complaint. But that’s hard to say, really.

You could say the UIGEA is being challenged on a couple of fronts at the moment. Just last night the Merge network of sites reopened its doors to U.S. customers. While not every Merge skin is on board here, it sounds like many are, and so we’ll see whether the DOJ will be moved to try to bring down the UIGEA hammer again or not.

Also, a couple of those indicted back in April -- Chad Elie (a payment processor) and John Campos (Vice Chairman of that bank in Utah that processed payments) -- recently filed to have charges that they violated the UIGEA (and the IGBA) dismissed. As some had pointed out before, the UIGEA's vagueness about what exactly is unlawful (a "game subject to chance") is being highlighted by these two as grounds to absolve them. (See Subject:Poker’s report on their challenge for more.)

Might be sooner than later, then, for us to see how the UIGEA will continue to affect us going forward. Safe to say, though, that it has had plenty of influence during its first five years.

They Called It the World Series of Poker

The 2011 World Series of Poker Europe is off to what appears to be a successful start in Cannes. Seven “open” bracelet events this time around, plus a ladies-only event, too. They are getting good turnouts thus far. And the early buzz from players seems positive with regard to the move from London to the south of France.

The WSOPE began back in 2007 and has steadily grown ever since. This year’s Event No. 2, a €1,090 buy-in no-limit hold’em event, drew a whopping 771 entrants, the most of any WSOPE event thus far. (The previous high had been 608 for a £1,000 event in 2009.)

I was thinking this morning about the early days of the WSOP, those initial few years back at Binion’s Horseshoe when only a handful of players, many from Texas or other southern states, made their way over to Fremont Street each spring.

You’ve probably read that story somewhere before. About how a fellow from San Antonio named Tom Moore staged what he called a “Texas Gamblers Reunion” at his hotel up in Reno in 1969. Moore decided not to bother the next year, partly because all of the players he’d invited did nothing but play poker and thus it had failed to produce much revenue for him.

So Jack Binion asked Moore if they could do something similar the next year, and Moore said sure. And thus the WSOP was born.

Most accounts suggest that at that very first WSOP there were a total of 38 different players who kind of came and went during the playing of five different games. However, usually only a small percentage of those names ever get mentioned as having participated, a list that usually begins and ends with Johnny Moss, Amarillo Slim Preston, “Sailor” Roberts, Doyle Brunson, Puggy Pearson, Crandall Addington, and Carl Cannon.

In his autobiography, The Godfather of Poker, Brunson notes that “about thirty different players” were there playing in the games, mentioning Jack Straus and Titanic Thompson as being among them, too.

In any case, it was a modest-sized event by any stretch of the imagination, thus making it seem all the more audacious for the Binions to have named it the “World Series of Poker.”

The following year they’d stage some tournaments, including three prelims and a $5,000 buy-in Main Event in which just six played. If you hunt around the internet you’ll find all sorts of different line-ups listed for that 1971 WSOP ME, but I trust Brunson’s memory: himself, Moss, Pearson, Roberts, Straus, and Jimmy Cassella.

That’s four Texans, a Tennessean (Pearson), and a New Yorker (Cassella). And yet they called it the World Series of Poker. And following the lead of major league baseball, the Binions would add the Poker Hall of Fame in 1979, the year the Main Event would exceed the 50-player mark for the first time. Still a pretty small “world,” really.

It would take a few decades, but the WSOP would eventually literally evolve into an international event. Players from 105 different countries participated in WSOP events in Las Vegas this summer. In the Main Event, just about 33% of the field were non-Americans coming from 84 other countries. And as usually happens whenever the WSOPE gets going, we’re hearing some chatter about the possiblity of staging WSOP events on other continents, too, like Australia or Asia or Africa.

Was a bold thing dubbing that first get-together the “World Series.” Yet, if you think about it, calling it such allowed for growth -- without limit, really -- in a way that could never be the case for, say, something like the “Texas Gamblers Reunion.”

So, yeah... I guess that turned out to be a good call.

More on Skill-vs.-Luck

In yesterday’s post I talked about that recent New York Times piece that in my opinion did only a so-so job bringing readers up-to-date regarding the current mess that is online poker in the U.S.

Among the problems I had with the piece was a wildly incomplete presentation of the skill-vs.-luck argument in poker. Actually that was an especially grievous aspect of the article since the author ultimately promoted that very debate to a high level of importance, noting how its resolution “may well set the course of the multibillion-dollar business of online poker.”

In addressing that aspect of the article, I quoted from the author’s own presentation of the debate, pointing out not only that it was lacking, but it appeared to be partly borrowed from an argument made by the Focus on the Family folks. I won’t repeat the passage here, but basically the poker-is-all-luck side of the argument was covered by a statement that since royal flushes and four-of-a-kinds occur very rarely, poker can’t be regarded as a skill game. (Yeah, I know.)

Later on in the article a representative of Focus on the Family, Chad Hills, is quoted making similarly specious statements that supposedly dismiss the skill element in poker. “Not even the best players ‘can tell you what the next card flipped over is going to be,’ Mr. Hills says” (for example) in an effort to debunk the notion that poker involves any skill whatsoever.

I suppose there’s a problem with the NYT writer presenting this as a rational position (there’s no disclaimer or explanation for why Hills isn’t making sense here). But in any case I figured my list of problems in the piece was already long enough to leave this one out.

However, there was one writer who didn’t overlook Hills’ bit of nonsense when responding to the NYT article. The correspondent “J.F.” over at The Economist wrote a brief, thoughtful response to Hills yesterday that I would assume some reading this blog would enjoy.

J.F. quickly points out that since poker players don’t simply play a single hand, talking about the turn of a single card really has little significance when it comes to the debate, one which J.F. helpfully frames as “not whether luck has any role at all, but whether poker itself is principally a game of luck or skill.”

He then alludes both to “common sense” (which notes that there are, indeed, poker pros who win consistently) and to that Steven Levitt/Thomas Miles study from last summer in support of the idea that skill does in fact matter in poker. (I wrote about the Levitt/Miles study here.)

J.F. also brings up that Cigital study from 2009 about how lots of hold’em hands actually get folded before the showdown. I found that study interesting but not entirely persuasive. Still, it helps show that if you want to go on about the turn of a single card, well, sometimes people fold before that card gets turned at all.

He then concludes with that point that you can deliberately lose at poker, an observation often made as proof that it is a game in which skill matters. The idea there is that if a game is wholly subject to chance, you can’t really lose on purpose because there is nothing you can do to affect the outcome. Except not play, I guess.

Anyhow, I thought some might be interested to know about J.F.’s post, and so wanted to pass it along. The comments over there are also above-average interesting, if you’d like to pursue the debate even further.

I guess whatever you want to say about poker, building an effective argument is most certainly a skill game.

(By the way, the image above was made by Michael Irving. Michael has a cool site where he creates and posts similar “ambigrams,” and he graciously allowed me to post this one here. He just posted a bunch of neat horror film-themed ones for Halloween, too -- check ’em out!)

NY Times Online Poker Piece Misplays Hand

Saw that piece in The New York Times over the weekend titled “Poker Inc. to Uncle Sam: Shut Up and Deal.” Appeared in the “Internet” part of the “Technology” section where one finds articles dealing with various web-centric issues.

Kind of been looking forward to this article, ever since the reporter, Janet Morrissey, first created an account over at Two Plus Two to ask posters for opinions regarding Black Friday. After some prompting, she let 2+2ers know she wrote for the NYT and how she wanted “to put a human face on the issue by talking to long-time poker players who can talk about their experiences -- especially if they were affected by the crackdown in April.”

While Morrissey did end up sharing a couple of insights from players in her piece, the article as a whole doesn’t offer most of us anything new to consider, especially if we’ve been following the several legal debates about online poker that have been going on since well before Black Friday, as well as all of the various fallout since then, including the Full Tilt Poker craziness of the last few weeks.

While going over familiar ground regarding online poker’s potential as a revenue source, moral objections to its legalization (such as have been voiced by Focus on the Family and others), and the whole skill-vs.-luck argument, Morrissey’s main purpose appears to be to suggest that we may be closer to some sort of movement on the legislative front thanks to the events of the last six months.

But really the article offers nothing concrete to indicate that possibility is at all imminent. Jim Ryan, co-CEO for the Bwin/Party group is quoted saying “it’s no longer a question of if... [but] when it will be passed.” But we’ve been hearing that same line for years, haven’t we? (And really, what exactly is such a statement saying if the “when” can’t be determined with any specificity?)

In fact, an article in today’s Las Vegas Sun -- “Timing, legal woes make legalizing online poker less attractive” -- pretty strongly suggests the opposite is the case. That is to say, we’re no closer, and probably even further, from seeing any sort of federal legislation now than we were before Black Friday.

So perhaps the overall slant of The New York Times piece is leaning the wrong way when it comes to the reality of the situation. That’s arguable. But within the piece there are quite a few specific items that gave me pause for being either off-base, misleading, or even inaccurate.

And I’m not just talking about the suggestion early on that we ever considered Howard Lederer “the strategic Kasparov of Texas Hold ’Em” in our “cultish world of online poker.”

To point out a few of the potholes that gave me trouble on my journey through the piece...

Morrissey calls the news contained in the Department of Justice’s amended civil complaint (from September 20) a “bigger bombshell” than Black Friday was. That’s a judgment call, of course, but was all that “Ponzi scheme” stuff from a few weeks back really a bigger surprise to you than what happened on April 15?

Speaking of Black Friday, there Morrissey says the DOJ accused the sites of “money laundering and fraud.” That’s not quite it. Specifically the charges in the indictment included money laundering, bank fraud (a distinction worth making), violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, and violating the Illegal Gambling Business Act.

Elsewhere Morrissey tries to summarize the skill-vs.-luck debate, but betrays a pretty serious misunderstanding of the game when she writes the following:

“In five-card poker, there are 2,598,960 possible hands. A four-of-a-kind is dealt once in about 4,000 hands, a royal flush once in 650,000. And yet aficionados say poker isn’t really a game of chance. Instead, they argue, it is a game of skill -- of mathematical probabilities and human psychology, played with artful direction and misdirection.”

Morrissey is only implying a position -- she doesn’t take a side -- but she’s not shaping the debate here very well here at all. What does the relative rarity of a royal flush have to do, really, with how much skill poker requires? (Holes-in-one are rare in golf, yet golfers insist on saying it is a game of skill....)

Furthermore, as a poster over on Two Plus Two noted in a thread about the article, Morrissey appears to have cribbed at least part of this bit from the Focus on the Family folks whom she talks to later in the piece, although there is no attribution given here. (Here’s a page from the FOF affiliate CitizenLink that contains the “Royal Flush” argument -- you have to scroll down to the section that begins “Sen. Menendez Joins Frank in Pushing Irresponsible Policy” to find it.)

Later in the piece there’s reference to online poker being legal in the District of Columbia currently, a statement that also oversimplifies the situation there considerably. While legislation has been passed, a cloud of uncertainty hangs over both the process by which it became law as well as the prospects of the online game ever going live in D.C.

Oliver Busquet is mentioned in the article reporting that “he had about $100,000 in his Full Tilt account and about $50,000 in PokerStars on Black Friday.” But in the 2+2 thread started by Morrissey he says he had $150,000 on FTP. (Perhaps when Morrissey spoke with Busquet later he told her a different amount, but that seems odd.)

Finally, there’s a line casually dropped early on stating that “Absolute Poker and PokerStars are reimbursing American players.” That statement actually appears in parentheses, indicating the author probably didn’t realize how newsworthy it really was to be saying that AP was paying back U.S. players.

As I imagine most of us know, this statement is false. PokerStars has allowed U.S. players to cash out. But AP and UB are not reimbursing American players. Not those who live in the U.S., anyway.

Apparently there was a longer version of the article in which Morrissey quoted an AP executive saying “they’re about to roll out a program ‘shortly’ to reimburse US players.” This Morrissey shared over in a post at 2+2, where she adds “the exec. emphasized this several times.” Yet, somehow, when the piece was edited down that rather important distinction got lost, thus making it sound as though AP was currently reimbursing U.S. players.

All of which is to say, while the piece does more or less collect many of the important issues in online poker over the last few months, it doesn’t offer us much that’s new. And, unfortunately, in its review of what many of us already know, I’m afraid it fuzzes over facts often enough to mislead a lot of the non-poker folks picking it up.

2011 Poker Hall of Fame: How Would You Vote?

Not much time for scribblin’ today. I did, however, want to mention that announcement this week of the nominees or “finalists” for this year’s Poker Hall of Fame. And also to pass along that I’ve been given the honor of participating in the voting once more.

The finalists are Annie Duke, Barry Greenstein, Jennifer Harman-Traniello, Linda Johnson, John Juanda, Marcel Luske, Jack McClelland, Tom McEvoy, Scotty Nguyen, and Huck Seed.

Not a simple task, this.

The way the voting works, we are allowed to vote for as many as three of the 10 who have been nominated. We can also vote for two, one, or none. Each voter gets 10 points to distribute among the individuals for whom we wish to vote. Then all of the votes are tallied, and the top two get in (as long as each gets a certain minimum of points, I think).

I’ve written a piece over on Betfair poker that goes over the criteria and voting procedure more thoroughly. I also talk about all 10 of the nominees a bit over there.

We’ll be voting next week. I assume the winners will be announced shortly thereafter. Then later they will be honored at the Rio as part of the whole November Nine shindig.

So, let me ask here the same question I asked over at Betfair. How would you vote?

To Bot or Not to Bot

You might’ve noticed something this week about a brouhaha having cropped up involving the William Hill poker site, one of the skins on the iPoker network. Did you hear about that? ’Bout bots?

Checking over at PokerScout, iPoker is currently challenging PartyPoker for second in terms of online poker traffic worldwide, though both remain well behind PokerStars. (Like PokerStars and Party, the iPoker sites don’t allow U.S. players.)

From what I’ve gathered, the fuss appears to have begun following a weird exchange between a player and customer support at William Hill, an exchange that led the player to believe the site not only allows “bots” -- i.e., the running of software programs that can play the games without further human input -- but in fact that the site used bots themselves sort of like “prop” players to help get games going and fill empty seats.

It appears the support person was well off the mark here, although could be partly forgiven since the William Hill Casino site does in fact apparently reserve the right to employ “bots” in some of its other games. In fact, the terms and conditions over on the WillIam Hill Casino site explicitly state how “in games offered via the Website which benefit from more players or greater liquidity we may deploy electronic players (known as robots, and whose usernames will be ‘bot’) who are pre programmed to play and join in with the game in order to assist the liquidity or the number of players gaming.” Meanwhile, over in the poker TOC, “the use of automated players (sometimes known as ‘bots')” is expressly forbidden.

Having read the statement in the Casino TOC, a player who thought it might have applied to the poker games asked about it, and it sounds like the not-too-well-informed support person mistakenly confirmed that the site was in fact filling out seats in the poker games with its own bots.

The story blew up surprisingly quickly, with many rushing in to damn the site, the iPoker network, and online poker, generally speaking. Eventually iPoker responded with a statement clarifying the matter, although some continue to harbor doubts about the existence of actual bots (not “in-house” ones) on the site.

Had a couple of thoughts about all of this as I read about the controversy. One was to note how so many immediately assumed that an online poker site was in fact using its own bots. Then, when some of the accounts with “bot” in their usernames were scrutinized and it was discovered some among them were winning players, that fueled even more outrage. Not only was the site using bots, said some, but beating its customers with them, too!

Assuming that it really was all just a misunderstanding -- and setting aside the possibility that there really are some folks getting away with using bots on the site -- it definitely says something about our collective experience with online poker over the last decade or so when such a possibility can be so readily believed by so many.

We’ve been screwed in every way imaginable so far, think many (understandably). Why not this way, too?

The other thought I had kind of anticipated a question I saw @InfiniteEdgeKim ask on Twitter earlier today: “What's so bad about bots in online poker?”

To be more precise (and honest), my earlier thought was to think about the idea of having “prop” players, and wonder whether or not it would really matter in the online environment if those props were bots rather than humans. It didn’t take long for me to decide it would be quite wrong for a site to do so. Players are already forced to trust sites aren’t “rigged” in other ways; having non-human props at the table would only cram a further wedge of doubt into the proceedings.

In response to Kim’s question, I chimed in to point out that online poker was already less than 100% human interaction, with the introduction of bots only lessening the human element even further. Thus, a person’s answer to the question would probably be swayed by how important the human element is to him or her.

To me, the human element is quite important, though I have to admit not so essential that I cannot enjoy the mediated type of interaction the online game allows. Still, I know I don’t want to play against bots. Not for real money, anyway.

Still following the Twitter conversation Kim began. Hoping perhaps a post comes out of it over on Infinite Edge. (EDIT [added 10/10/11]: Kim did write an interesting post on the subject, collecting a lot of what was said in the Twitter conversation and presenting his own argument that there may well be some instances where bots might have a place in online poker.)

Meanwhile, what do you think about playing against bots?

And please, no automated spam replies.

The Perils of Learning As You Go

I’ve written here before about David Hayano’s 1982 book Poker Faces: The Life and Work of Professional Card Players. It’s an anthropological study of professional poker players (of many different varieties) who populated California card rooms during the 1970s and early 1980s.

While the book’s conclusions regarding that particular generation of players are dated in some respects -- having been drawn well before the “boom” and the full-blown revolution that followed -- there remain a number of relatively timeless observations and insights that still readily apply to poker players today.

For a detailed overview of what Hayano covers in Poker Faces, click here to see that earlier post. Today I just wanted to share one observation Hayano makes early on in his study, something I came across earlier this week while rereading. Something about this particular point Hayano makes resonated a little differently with me when I read it this time.

The point comes up in a section titled “Background to a Gambling Career,” a short prelude to the categorization of different types of professionals Hayano subsequently makes. Here Hayano talks about how frequently those who become full-time pros often do so by happenstance, sort of “falling” into the profession after perhaps growing up with the game and experiencing some success during early trials as an adult.

There are a few early “catalysts” -- “adolescent gambling,” “work dissatisfaction,” and a wish for the “freedom to control their own time and money” among them -- that often characterize those who become full-time players. But in most cases, Hayano notes, there isn’t really any sort of formal decision or plan to become a pro. It just kind of happens.

To put it in the anthropologist’s terms, somewhere along the way the pros “have self-socialized themselves into full-time playing with little outside help and almost no deliberate anticipatory socialization.”

That was the observation that struck me this time around, this idea that people who become full-time players generally do so without a lot of forethought, without a lot of guidance, and without a lot of formal “training” or the kind of apprenticeship that characterizes many other professions. And perhaps unsurprisingly, many find themselves struggling down the road when subsequently faced with situations for which they are necessarily ill-prepared.

This is one of those ideas Hayano advances in his study that I think still applies more or less today. And I guess when I think about the utter mess online poker has now become in the U.S., highlighted of late by the Full Tilt Poker fiasco, it is interesting to think about the role played by the pros who started that company. And how it was probably the case for many of them that they hadn’t any real preparation for managing their own lives as professional players, let alone other entrepreneurial ventures such as creating and running an online poker site.

Bill Rini wrote an insightful post yesterday exploring in particular “How Things Became So Screwed Up At Full Tilt Poker.” He speculated some about how it happened that a bunch of smart folks (in his opinion) allowed things to go as wrong as they did there. As he notes near the conclusion, he doubts those who ran FTP “specifically set out to defraud anybody of their money,” adding “it just doesn’t fit with their personalities.”

But it appears that’s just what they ended up doing. (Like Bill, I'll acknowledge the “alleged” qualifier here.) And while doing so perhaps didn’t fit with their personalities, it does kind of fit with the idea Hayano presents of poker pros often having to learn as they go -- a kind of modus operandi that often characterizes the early stages of their playing careers, the self-tutelage required to manage their professions afterwards, and beyond.

Rush Poker, Multi-Entry Tourneys, and Now... “Equity Stakes”!

There’s a new item in The Wall Street Journal regarding last Friday’s news that Groupe Bernard Tapie has signed an agreement to acquire Full Tilt Poker, an agreement that has many conditions, one of the foremost being the site successfully negotiating its way out of the various legal troubles it faces with the U.S. Department of Justice.

The article specifically addresses another significant hurdle that must be overcome for the deal to occur -- taking care of the $300 million-plus the site currently owes its players, money which FTP doesn’t appear to have on hand.

Sounds like an idea being considered is “offering equity stakes” to some players. You heard that right. Thought it sounded funny that someone might actually want to buy Full Tilt Poker? Well, now it sounds like they’re thinking of selling some of FTP to you, too.

Gotta admit, that is inspired.

You’ll recall how the amended DOJ civil complaint described the site owing players “approximately $390,695,788” on March 31, 2011, yet only having “approximately $59,579,413 in its bank accounts.” The amended complaint also shared some internal communications from over the summer in which both Ray Bitar and Howard Lederer suggested the site couldn’t handle even $5 million worth of withdrawals.

The amended complaint went on to allege that nearly $444 million had been funneled into those several “FTP Insider Accounts.” No way to know how much of that money remains in those accounts, although a few days after the amendment the DOJ also issued warrants to seize accounts belonging to Lederer, Bitar, Chris Ferguson, and another Swiss account reportedly connected to Rafe Furst. Late last week Bitar filed a claim against the seizure of that particular account as well as against the seizure of a couple of other accounts that occurred back on Black Friday.

Then came last week’s report by the Alderney Gambling Control Commission -- the one they offered as an explanation for their decision to revoke Full Tilt Poker’s licenses to operate -- which also made mention of FTP’s financial woes, including referring to considerable sums seized by the DOJ from FTP -- “approximately $331 million” from June 2007 to June 2010.

All of which is to suggest what we already knew, namely, that anyone considering buying Full Tilt Poker also must have some idea about how to deal with the big ol’ debt the site currently has to its players.

In an interview last Friday, Laurent Tapie noted how the group “want[s] to find ways where we don't have to put in all the money and will be talking to the US Department of Justice next week.” Many took that to indicate that perhaps the group was going to try to get the DOJ to offer some of the seized funds to help pay players, an idea the DOJ had itself suggested as a possibility in its statement last week. There the DOJ said that “the return of forfeited funds to victims of the alleged fraud may be possible, but will depend on several factors,” among them the successful resolution of the indictment and civil complaint, just how much money there is available, and everyone involved cooperating with the DOJ at each step of the way.

In this new WSJ article, an attorney for Laurent Tapie is said to have confirmed that the group “may address Full Tilt’s liabilities by offering equity in a revived company to poker players owed the most money.” I’m guessing I wouldn’t be included among that group, given that Full Tilt Poker only owes me $279.85. (Not that Americans would ever be part of this discussion, anyhow.)

Other conditions mentioned in the piece include securing a new license to operate as well as having the existing owners also investing in the “revived company” (although not participating in its management). One wonders how, exactly, the old owners are going to be investing in the new company, if not with money that already should be considered as belonging to the players.

Oh, and the DOJ will have to give its blessing to all that, too.

Seems a little wacky to imagine a new “revived” Full Tilt Poker going forward with the players owed the most money having equity in the site -- being, in a sense, part-owners of the sucker. As Seth Meyers would say on SNL, “Really!?!”

To me it all sounds like we’re in the dizzying realm of hypotheticals within hypotheticals here, with the likelihood of this “equity stakes” idea ever getting to the table being necessarily slim. Posters over at Two Plus Two are understandably befuddled by it all, with most expressing well-founded skepticism.

My favorite comment over there I’ve seen so far comes from the poster “bingobars”. He says that “As an investor in FTP I for one will be overpaying myself by an incredible margin.”

Hard to come up with an analogy to describe the scenario.

How about I run a red light and smash into your car, damaging both to the point that neither can be driven. They aren’t totaled, though, as both can be repaired and gotten back on the road at considerable expense. Well, maybe. I mean we’ll have to see once they get in the shop.

I have no insurance, nor any means to pay for the repairs. But I can promise to let you drive my car if and when it gets fixed.

Sound good? No?

Epic Poker League Makes Television Debut

Was home Saturday night and happened to be in front of the teevee when the debut of the Epic Poker League popped up at 10 p.m. Actually I think this might have been a “preview” show, not the official “premiere” which I believe is slated for this coming weekend. Here’s the full schedule, if you’re curious.

I’d seen a few references to the show coming up here and there, although I can’t say I made specific plans to watch. I wasn’t even sure the channel was included among the ones we receive, but a quick search just before ten o’clock revealed it was, and so I took a look. I was curious to see it, not just because I am writing that “Community Cards” column for the EPL blog (although feel free to take that for what it’s worth, if you like, when reading my evaluation of the show).

This first hour-long program introduced the EPL, filled in details regarding the early days of the first Main Event which drew 137 players, then picked up the action with 18 left gathered around three six-handed tables. Over the course of the hour the field was trimmed to 10, at which point I assume the next broadcast will pick things up.

I’ve seen no ratings numbers, but I’m guessing the show couldn’t have attracted a huge audience. It aired on Discovery HD theater, a channel which I believe will be redubbed Velocity sometime this week. Didn’t really notice a lot of chatter on Twitter about it while I was watching, although to be honest I’m not seeing much talk lately on Tuesday nights, either, during ESPN’s WSOP shows.

Televised poker most certainly lost its novelty for many long ago. And I think among U.S. players and viewers, the sudden unavailability of the online game (for the most part) has probably further muted a lot of folks’ excitement over the idea of watching others play cards. Thus has the impact of a new poker show lessened considerably.

Nonetheless, I did find the hour’s worth of poker entertaining, and so thought I’d share just a few impressions.

The overall look and feel of the show was excellent, the signature style of 441 Productions -- who had presented the WSOP on ESPN prior to this year -- evident throughout. The shots, the sound, the editing, the graphics, and everything to do with the presentation was top-notch, and I think might well make some wish 441 was still involved with the WSOP.

Pat O’Brien and Ali Nejad did fine with the commentary. O’Brien’s sports background kind of furthered the idea that we were watching a sporting event, an impression I think the EPL would like to encourage. There wasn’t much goofing or Norman Chad-style joking around, but rather what seemed like a mostly no-nonsense, efficient approach to the way the pair described the action.

There were a couple of interesting hands, strategy-wise, along the way. I liked the way stack sizes were incorporated into the graphics, with adjustments made as each bet was made. The numbers appeared in a subtle way beneath the players’ cards, meaning if a viewer didn’t care about such stuff, he or she could easily ignore it.

There were a few segments presenting backgrounds on players -- “human interest” stuff that worked well enough, I thought. I found it interesting that O’Brien and Nejad did allude to David “Chino” Rheem’s money troubles, explaining how he had over $4 million in career earnings (prior to this event) but had lost it all and then some. Also noticed how there were plenty of PokerStars patches to be seen, but no Full Tilt Poker ones (as far as I saw). (The event took place in early August.)

I’ll make one last observation. References to the Global Poker Index were made frequently, and especially toward the end of the hour it felt a little like an “argument” (of sorts) was starting to be advanced about how these rankings and the EPL should be regarded as heralding a new chapter in professional poker.

Much was made of the fact that three of the top four ranked players at the time -- Jason Mercier, Eugene Katchalov, and Erik Seidel -- were among the final players left in the event, the implication being that the tourney was proving, in a way, that the best players tend to win out in the end.

Was kind of weird, actually, to see these rankings brought up while hands were being played. Thus, say, when a hand arose in which Gavin Smith (ranked 101st at the time) was up against Katchalov (then ranked 3rd), it was a little like an underdog-favorite situation was being suggested such as when a lower-ranked team plays a top five team in college football, or a lower seed is matched with a top seed in tennis.

I guess the rankings do help bolster that feeling that it’s sports we’re watching, but most of us -- and by “us” I mean semi-serious or serious poker players -- know that such stuff doesn’t matter, really, when a hand is playing out. Still, I guess I’m curious to see how the GPI evolves and whether or not it really can effect some sort of alternate way of thinking about professional poker.

Like I say, it’s hard even for us poker fanatics to get too up for a poker show anymore. Still, it was an engaging hour of poker television. Not wholly absorbing or riveting, but engaging. Enough for me to try to find the sucker on the menu once the next episode rolls around.

It’s Alive

Ended yesterday’s post with that pic of the Full Tilt Poker zombie, coming for our brains. Was intending to refer more to the story of FTP than FTP itself, a story that just... keeps... heaving forward... step by staggering step.

Then today comes yet another FTP-related headline, this one the announcement of an agreement between the Board of Directors at Full Tilt Poker and Groupe Bernard Tapie -- a French group of companies headed by its namesake -- for the latter to acquire the company and its assets.

Not dead, insists the embattled site. Don’t be closing the book just yet.

The news again came as an “exclusive” delivered by FTP to the affiliate site PokerStrategy.com. Can only surmise that Full Tilt Poker might owe the site something for which it is now paying in press releases. Who knows? In any event, the agreement apparently has “several conditions” attached to it, the only one mentioned being the “favorable resolution” of FTP’s considerable legal troubles with the U.S. government.

Reactions to the news quickly barreled through several phases.

First came the expressions of hope. Then, guarded optimism fueled by the statements of Laurent Tapie (son of Bernard) about paying back players and actually relaunching the sucker by January 2012 (outside the U.S., natch).

Next were the cautious reminders of those not insignificant “conditions.” Soon after came skepticism, mostly directed at the tycoon Tapie for having a past marked by various controversies, among them serving jail time for fixing a soccer match involving a team he ran and tax fraud.

Before long I think most of us had pretty much returned to our previous postures of extreme cynicism from which any news regarding Full Tilt Poker is taken with a 26 oz. cylinder full of salt. After all, this announcement of a possible sale comes just one day removed from FTP saying their licenses being revoked “makes it more difficult to execute the sale of the company and hence repay its players.”

Introducing a character like Tapie into the story at this late juncture seems about right. In truth, anyone stepping in here to buy the site a day after its licenses to operate were revoked and a week after the DOJ’s amendment to the civil complaint was necessarily going to appear something of a wild card, thereby fitting neatly with the already assembled cast.

As Bill Rini tweeted just a little while ago, “I wonder if Tapie has spotted the sucker at the table yet.” Or for more grins, check out Otis' inspired tweet from earlier listing some other projects being considered by Groupe Tapie.

For me, I’m going to put the book of Full Tilt down for now and do something else for a while. Maybe watch some baseball. Or start studying chess. Or perhaps I’ll just pop in Young Frankenstein...