Italy is Latest Country to enact Strict ...

Last week we found out that Russia had imposed a law which would prevent its citizens from playing poker or any other gambling-related activity for money.  The only way Russians can play poker is if they travel to one of the few live casinos in the country which puts a major crimp on the nation’s growing poker population.

Unfortunately, Russia isn’t the only country to impose some stricter laws on its citizens’ gambling activities since Italy has become the latest to enact legislation.  In effect now, there have been severe restrictions put on how Italians can play poker and other online gambling games.  These new restrictions are aimed heavily at PokerStars which was specifically pointed out by the government in the laws.

Basically, Italians are not allowed to play poker on the international version of PokerStars and instead must play on the Italian version of the site (PokerStars.it).  PokerStars agreed with the new laws and will comply with the requests meaning that even PokerStars players like Dario Minieri will have to play outside the country if they want to gamble on the international site.

The laws that were recently enacted are actually revised versions of the law that was put into effect back in 2006 where Italy ordered ISP addresses from 600 different gambling sites to be blocked.  But the European Union stepped in and said that this violated trade laws so Italy had to relax their stance. 

What has spawned from this relaxed stance is the revised laws which were created to satisfy the EU.  They specifically call out PokerStars and impose a number of other weird restrictions which don’t make a whole lot of sense.  However, these regulations were good enough for the EU so I guess they’ll stand.

Seriously can’t wait for New WSOP ...

The other night I fell asleep on the couch only to wake up to the one millionth re-broadcast of the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event.  There was Tiffany Michelle becoming the latest hot girl to make a name for herself in the poker world by finishing high in a big tournament (17th), Joe Bishop became the poster child for wannabe hardass poker players who take the game way too seriously and have a habit of calling everybody “bro”, and there was short-stacked Kelly Kim going crazy every time Craig Marquis and Dean Hamrick went all-in against each other knowing the final table was within reach.

Re-watching the Main Event coverage yet again reminded me how much I hate Nick Sliwinski who was not only annoying throughout play, but also put on the biggest crybaby act ever after being eliminated in 13th place.  Even Johnny Chan piped up from the crowd and told his friends and family that Sliwinski should just get over it because he won over a half million dollars; at least Joe Bishop left with some dignity by congratulating Chino Rheem after he busted him out.

But honestly, if I even see another glimpse of the 2008 WSOP Main Event I’ll probably throw up.  Sure it was a great tournament with many excellent moments, and not so excellent moments, but I just can’t stand seeing it anymore.  Thank god that ESPN will be finally be airing some new WSOP events tonight beginning with the $40k No-Limit Hold’em tourney.

I’m also excited about seeing all of the Main Event episodes leading up to the November Nine as I know they’ll be entertaining.  Of course, I’m sure ESPN will play them to death throughout the year as well which will start the cycle all over again.

The Business of the Feature Table...

Every time I tune in to the WSOP, it seems like more and more players are covered in logos from different advertisers.  And I always just chalked this up to the sponsors of players making them wear certain logos for different things.  But after reading an article in the Las Vegas Sun, I found out a whole lot more about the advertising business that goes on at the WSOP feature tables.

This article was actually pretty cool as the writer, Steve Silver, went into a discussion about how ESPN selects their feature table in WSOP events.  Contrary to what many people think, ESPN doesn’t pick tables based on an individual or even just a couple of players.  Instead, ESPN picks its tables based on the entire make-up of the table which means they must select an entire group which will be entertaining.  If the table starts to go lame then they need to wait till a break until they can switch the spotlight to another table.

However, it is against a player’s best interest to have the spotlight moved because they often get paid as much as $10,000 for wearing logos of certain companies on their clothes if they’re on the feature table.  Most of the time these logos are from the biggest poker rooms in the world including Full Tilt, Ultimate Bet, and obviously PokerStars.

The only problem for players though is that they can’t change their clothes or sew patches onto their shirts right before heading over to the featured table.  Ian Schechter found this out the hard way when he was going over to the featured table, but wasn’t allowed to put on a PokerStars patch.  In the end, this rule cost Schechter an extra $10,000 which just goes to show how much it pays to be prepared.

Legal Action doesn’t scare America...

Anybody who has been paying attention to poker recently already knows about the legal actions taken in New York last month against online players.  The state decided to freeze the accounts of over 27,000 people who had received money from online poker sites.  The Poker Players Alliance claims that the money has been seized while New York simply says that the money is frozen until an investigation is completed.

Whatever the case may be, you’d think that online poker players would be extremely scared to play the game in America.  However, this isn’t the case at all and people are still playing poker like crazy in America despite the government’s attempts to scare them away.  This was revealed in a study done by Betfair where they found that only 35% of the players in their survey were really concerned about the freezing of poker assets.

This is very surprising to me since the incident was so widely reported on, and it kind of came out of nowhere too.  In fact, I don’t think anybody really had a good idea that a state was planning on freezing a bunch of poker money under the guise of a vague law.  At least when Kentucky began its crusade against online poker, and gambling in general, there were reports for several weeks prior about what was going to happen.

But still, I think it’s great that people in America aren’t letting these isolated incidents in certain states deter them from playing poker.  And if the UIGEA ever gets repealed then we’ll have even less of a reason to fear depositing and withdrawing our money from online poker sites.

Sunglasses are Overrated...

When poker first started getting big in the mid-2000’s after the Moneymaker Effect, the mainstream population began noticing more and more about the game.  And one of the first things many people noted was how a larger percentage of the players would wear sunglasses indoors.  Up until this time, wearing sunglasses indoors was seen as more of something that hip-hop stars or people who were desperately seeking attention (or a combination of the two) would do. 

But most poker players weren’t trying to look cool with their shades as they were instead attempting to conceal tells they might give off with their eyes or be able to stare at other people to get tells without freaking them out.  Of course there have been people like Greg Raymer who will wear crazy sunglasses at the table in order to try and look cool, but for the most part it was a strategical move.

However, some people today are starting to question the use of sunglasses in today’s poker game.  Poker pro Beth Shak is one such player as she’s said in the past that people who wear sunglasses at the table are cowards and losers.  Personally I wouldn’t go as far as to call them cowards and losers, but I do think that the use of sunglasses as a strategical tool is overrated.

Even if you wear sunglasses you’re still going to be giving off tells through other ways if you don’t have a good poker face.  And wearing sunglasses can even lead to more tells if you are constantly adjusting them or taking them off because it sucks so bad to wear sunglasses for such long period of time indoors.  Basically, I think most people only wear sunglasses in poker to look cool nowadays.