Cake Poker is now qualifying players for the World Poker Tour event coming up in Paris this September. Qualifiers for the WPT Grand Prix de Paris start on the 4th of July and go through August 28, 2011. On two of the dates in that period – July 31 and August 28, Cake Poker will give away at least one prize package valued at $12,500 into the WPT Paris main event.
These WPT Paris $12,500 Final satellites have a direct buy-in of $268 and will give out one prize package for every $268 in the pot. Each prize package includes the €7,500 seat in the WPT Grand Prix de Paris main event along with some expense money to spend as you like.
Instead of paying the $268 direct buy-in into the Final, you could win your seat there through a WPT Paris Semi-Final costing only $30 to buy-in. These take place thrice daily and award one final seat for every $268 in the pot. Alternatively, you can win your seat in the Semi-Final through a WPT Paris Satellite, costing only $5.50 to buy-in. These take place six times daily and give out one Semi-Final seat for every $30 in the pot.
Or you can win your seat in the Satellite through a WPT Paris Super Satellite costing only $1 to enter. These take place every four hours and give out one Satellite seat for every $5.50 in the pot. Lastly, you can win your seat in the Super Satellite through a WPT Paris Super Super Satellite costing only $0.20 to enter. These take place every two hours and give away one Super Satellite seat for every $1 in the pot.
We are all familiar with the real estate saying “Location, Location, Location” with legislation the saying is “Timing, Timing, Timing”. Will this be the right timing for the legalization, licensing, taxing, and regulation for online gaming? We can all hope so.
It seems each week we hear of more politicians willing to put their vote behind bill HR 1174. To date it has 28 co-sponsors with representatives from both major political parties. We could see more bills attached to HR 1174: Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act such as HR 2230 which specifically addresses the taxation of the gaming industry and has three sponsors. Future attachments could outline legalizing, licensing, and regulation. Republican Joe Barton of Texas is preparing a bill that would establish a new federal regulatory agency to oversee the websites. HR 2366: To establish a program for State licensing of Internet poker, and for other purposes. This bill has eleven cosponsors. But this bill would only apply to online poker. Our government officials seem to be motivated at this time with stimulating the U.S. economy and a H2 Gambling Capital study showed that online gaming could bring billions of tax dollars in the first five years and add 25,000 much needed jobs to the U.S. market.
California, Florida, New Jersey, District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Iowa are all looking at how to make online gaming profitable for their depleted state coffers. Allowing their residents to gamble through state lottery web sites or allowing residents to gamble online through tribal casinos, are only two ideas that are in discussion. A bill already signed by Nevada’s governor directs the Nevada Gaming Commission to prepare regulations and grant licenses to casinos so they can be ready when the federal government approves online gaming. Many states are anticipating that the federal government will pass legislation that legalizes and regulates online gaming and each state wants to ensure they will get their taxes from their residents.
We hope to see momentum pick up as more elected officials see that their constituents do indeed want to have the choice to gamble in their own homes. One way to get momentum started is by contacting your elected officials and to let them know where you stand on these pieces of legislation. You can call their office, send them an email or meet with them face to face. If you are a member of Poker Players Alliance they will usually contact you via email when important policies are being brought up.
The U.S. gaming community is in need of good news and though legalizing and regulating online gambling may take some time, what we are seeing now is a move in the right direction. We will continue to monitor news from all fronts and report the facts as we get them.
In the midst of all the political hullabaloo happening at Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars, both sites are still doing all they can to continue improving the player experience at their tables, as evidenced by the recent release of new player software for both sites.
Full Tilt Poker has added a color-coding feature that allows you to tag different players with any of 15 different color codes for conveniently recalling at a glance each player’s playing style and personal weaknesses or tells.
There are a whole bunch of new poker variants in the FullTilt repertoire with this new update as well, including Cap variants of 7-Game through 10-Game mixed game tables. There are also Pot Limit tables available on 2-7 Triple Draw, with antes. And there’s now mixed limit versions of all HA games.
Both Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars have introduced new automatically table closing features; at FullTilt it’s on sit and go tables and at PokerStars it’s at cash game tables after your next big blind passes.
Other additions to the player experience over at Poker Stars include a completely redesigned sit and go lobby including new Hyper-Turbo Cash Sit & Go tables. It’s now easier at Poker Stars to change your table layouts on the fly. And for easier reference while in the throes of a game, especially helpful when multi-tabling, Poker Stars now posts the name of the tournament and blind info in the title bar.
Poker Stars has also introduced a feature that allows you to subversively type in the chat or take down player notes without “stealing notice”.
Full Tilt Poker can’t win for losing, it seems. First one of its leading spokesmen and biggest draws, Phil Ivey, soured to the site, quitting its team of pros and suing the site’s parent company, Tiltware, for $150 million. Now one of its former leading spokeswomen, Clonie Gowen, has revived a formerly defunct lawsuit she had previously brought against the site.
So we know what Phil’s beef with them is. He says he’s upset because the site hasn’t yet managed to give US players the money back from their FullTilt accounts that they are no longer allowed to use or access. So what’s Clonie’s beef with the site?
She says they promised her a 1% ownership stake in the company that they failed to make good on. Had they done as they promised, Clonie asserts, she would have been paid around $40 million that she never ended up seeing. In February 2010 a US district judge dismissed her case, saying it lacked merit. He even gave her lawyer three chances to rewrite the complaint to provide sufficient detail to prompt the judge to change his mind but failed to be convinced by any of the attempts. A recently successful appeal, however, has revived that lawsuit, allowing Clonie to proceed with her case.
Between Ivey’s $150 million claim and Gowen’s approximately $40 million claim, it seems doubtful, were they to both be successful, that Full Tilt players (and former players in the US) would be the ones to suffer right alongside Full Tilt Poker itself, which lacks enough available funds to pay out its own players as it is.
Poker Stars has just beefed up its Saturday Line-up, and as of this Saturday, June 25, 2011 will be offering 7 new tournaments with low buy-ins and high prize pools. The low buy-ins for these new Saturday tournaments at Poker Stars vary from $2.22 to $55. The high buy-ins range from $20K to $50K.
The 7 new tournaments in the PokerStars Saturday Line-Up are as follows:
• Saturday 6-max at 7 am ET, a NL Hold’em 6-max event with a $22 buy-in and a $30K prize pool
• Saturday Micro at 8 am ET, a NL Hold’em event with a $3.30 buy-in and a $30K prize pool
• Saturday Omaha at 9 am ET, a Pot Limit Omaha event with a $55 buy-in and a $30K prize pool
• Saturday Eliminator at 10 am ET, a NL Hold’em event with a $27 buy-in and a $40K prize pool
• Saturday Splash at 11 am ET, a NL Hold’em, 3x Turbo rebuy event with a $2.22 buy-in and rebuy and a $50K prize pool
• Saturday Duel at 3:30 pm ET, a heads up NL Hold’em event with an $11 buy-in and a $20K prize pool
• Saturday Speedway at 7 pm ET, a NL Hold’em Turbo event with a $33 buy-in and a $50K prize pool
In honor of this inaugural running of the new Saturday Line-up, Poker Stars is holding a special No Lose offer in which all players who bust out of the event before making the money will get a free entry to that same tournament any future Saturday Line-up event by July 16. Players can only get 1 No Lose ticket, so if you play in more than one event this Saturday and don’t cash in at more than one, you’ll get a No Lose ticket worth the value of the highest buy-in you paid for a single event.
888 Poker is sending players to the upcoming World Poker Tour event in Paris, France, and you could be one of those lucky players going.
Players have two different ways to win WPT Grand Prix de Paris seats. One is the Work Your Way To The Top satellites running every 2 hours for buy-ins as small as $1.20. Winners of these satellites land seats in one of the Qualifiers being held every other Sunday starting on July 3, 2011. Players who don’t feel like going through all these steps to get to the 888 Poker WPT Grand Prix de Paris Qualifier can get Straight to the Point at pay the $500 + $25 direct buy-in into the event. Registrations for the first of these qualifier events starts today, Monday, June 20, 2011.
Each WPT Grand Prix de Paris prize package from 888 Poker is worth $14,000 and includes the €7,600 buy-in into the main event as well as 6 nights of accommodations from September 4 – 10, 2011, $1,000 in travel expenses paid directly into your 888Poker account and an 888Poker live merchandise kit.
Satellites start out with two options, both known as WPT Step 1. One is a $1.20 + $0.15 buy-in rebuy/addon event awarding 1 player for every $25 in the prize pool a seat in WPT Step 2. The other is a $5 + $0.50 buy-in event awarding half of the player pool seats in WPT Step 2. Both of these options run every two hours at the site. WPT Step 2 then runs once daily for a $25 direct buy-in and WPT Step 3 runs three times weekly for a $115 direct buy-in.
888 Poker is offering players a chance to win extra for their efforts every day of the week. With the Daily Challenge Series, 888 Poker invites players of all types of action and all sizes of bankroll to participate in 7 weekly tournaments, one on each day of the week, with a total weekly guaranteed prize pool of $210,000. What’s more, there are two Daily Challenge tournaments on Mondays, known as the Monday Twins, worth $10,000 each, and three Daily Challenge tournaments on Sundays, offering $5,000, $10,000 and $100,000 guaranteed respectively.
Every Daily Challenge tournament has a trio of low buy-in satellites leading up to it, awarding free seats in the day’s big event. Two satellites are Sit and Go tournaments, one of which is always a rebuy/addon event, both of which run every two hours. The third satellite is always a 15-seat guaranteed event starting at 17:35 GMT. All Daily Challenge Tournaments start at 19:35. Direct buy-ins vary depending on the prize pool.
The Tuesday Challenge and Thursday Challenge each have a $12,500 guaranteed prize pool; the Wednesday Challenge has a $10,000 prize pool; the Friday Challenge has a $15,000 prize pool; and the Saturday Challenge has a $25,000 prize pool.
The Monday Twins is a special kick-start to the weekly series, with a pair of $10K tournaments each preceded by its own three satellites (the third satellite for the “second” Monday Twin event starts at 17:55 GMT).
Winding up the week with a bang is the $100,000 Sunday Challenge and its satellites, as well as two Sunday Challenge Starters scheduled prior to it with staggered start times so 888 Poker players can enjoy all three Daily Challenge events that day.
A local police department in Maryland is celebrating after participating in a federal sting operation which shut down major internet gambling operations. The Anne Arundel Police Department received a check for $470,000 after helping the feds seize online gaming companies that processed over $33 million dollars’ worth of transactions through the undercover processor. The money comes from a case handled by federal investigators in Baltimore and the operation was suitably named “Operation Texas Hold’em.”
William Winter, the agent in charge of the Department of Homeland Security in Baltimore, made a statement earlier regarding the seizure and explained how the feds set up a phony processing company and allowed the undercover agents contact with the online gaming operators. It’s illegal in the United States of America for companies to accept and/or process gaming transactions; which gave the feds ample reason to go undercover.
Through the sting operation the federal agents negotiated contracts with online gaming operators and began processing funds for the companies. The agents could easily track the payments to numerous operations and bank accounts in the United States and abroad. The accounts were seized in the recent bust and the monies were shared among the agencies that participated in the sting. The amount given to the Anne Arundel Police Department was based on the number of agents from the force that helped take down the online gaming operators.
The Anne Arundel County Executive John Leopold made it clear that this was the biggest asset distribution in the history of the county, and the police department will use their share of the funds to buy equipment needed for the force. The police chief, James Teare, also made a statement regarding their share of the funds by saying:
“This is huge, especially in these economic times; we just went through a very tough budget where we’re getting vehicles taken away. This infuses money to be able [to buy] vehicles, weapons that are less lethal and to do training that is much needed for these officers to do their job.”
Some industry insiders believe this is just the beginning. It’s obvious that the government in the USA is serious about taking down online poker and this is proof. Time will tell how many operators will shift and take their business out of the USA, and as of now the bigger names in online poker have already done so. Poker players in the United States can still play online at selected sites, but with operations like these going on who knows what is in store for online poker sites in the near future.
For those of you who had your Quicktender – UseMyWallet Funds seized. This is the case that led to those funds being seized.
Since Black Friday, much of the poker world has been closely following the dramatic, divergent stories of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker/UB, the three sites targeted by the Department of Justice’s indictment and civil complaint. However, there has been significant drama over recent months involving three other sites, too — DoylesRoom, Victory Poker, and the Cake Poker network. Targeted them selves, by a later Department of Homeland Security action (unsealed on May 23), DoylesRoom has seen its dot-com domain seized. However, prior to that action deals between DoylesRoom and Cake Poker left the latter in severe financial straits, with one consequence being the hastened demise of another, prominent site on the Cake network, Victory Poker.
The DoylesRoom-Cake Partnership — Two Years, Four Million +
Founded in 2004, DoylesRoom originally resided on the Tribeca Network before moving to Microgaming in 2007. Then in late January 2009, DoylesRoom moved once again to the Cake Poker network. At the time of that move, DoylesRoom borrowed $15 million from Cake Poker in order to settle its debts to Microgaming as well as to fund marketing campaigns going forward. (Note: Figures associated with the DoylesRoom-Cake partnership are close estimates of amounts given to us by several associates close to DoylesRoom, Cake, and Victory Poker.)
DoylesRoom remained part of the Cake Poker network for two years before moving once again, this time joining the Yatahay network in late January 2011. At the time of that move, DoylesRoom still owed significant money to Cake Poker.
Incidentally, while the exact nature Doyle Brunson’s previous involvement with the site that bears his name is unknown, a Twitter message from @TexDolly sent on January 10, 2011 noted he was “off to Cosra Rica for three days” (sic), suggesting a trip to DoylesRoom’s headquarters in Costa Rica. On May 13, 2011, a week-and-a-half before the DOJ domain seizure of doylesroom.com, Brunson announced he was terminating his endorsement contract with DoylesRoom.
Of that original loan of $15 million from Cake Poker to DoylesRoom, $2.5 million had been kept on deposit by Cake. Meanwhile, DoylesRoom had paid back approximately $9 million, with about $6.8 million still being owed. Minus the amount kept on deposit, DoylesRoom still owed Cake Poker about $4.3 million at the time of the move to Yatahay. Of that amount, DoylesRoom paid back 10 cents on the dollar to Cake, or about $430,000.
In other words, Cake Poker’s two-year relationship with DoylesRoom cost the network about $4 million plus altogether, a big hit for a relatively modest-sized network. To their credit players were always paid on time and the network continued to function as always. But there have been consequences.
As Cake Crumbles, Victory Suffers
Some of those consequences affected Cake Poker’s internal operations. According to a former Cake Poker employee, almost half of Cake’s staff were laid off. While the network’s operating budget was severely affected, it should be noted that at no point have player funds on deposit been at risk, although that situation remained tenuous for a couple of months.
Another consequence of the DoylesRoom-Cake Poker separation concerned Victory Poker, the site headed by 28-year-old CEO Dan Fleyshman. Launched in February 2010, Victory Poker began as part of the Everleaf Network before moving to the Cake Poker Network (CPN) in August. While never a large site in terms of player traffic, Victory did manage to earn a lot of attention thanks to the availability of CEO Fleyshman and the signing of high-profile pros like Antonio Esfandiari, Andrew Robl, Jonathan Little, and others.
Soon after joining Cake, Fleyshman recognized the network was potentially heading toward some financial difficulty and thus arranged a meeting between individuals who had invested in Victory Poker and Cake Poker brass in an attempt to find backing for the struggling network.
That meeting took place in London on January 5, 2011. Before the meeting Fleyshman posted on his Facebook page that he was “Walking into one of the top 5 biggest meetings of my life with ‘Big Boy’ executives who flew in from 6 countries.” However, despite such excitement, the meeting did not meet with the success Fleyshman or Cake envisioned.
In fact, once the potential backers got a look at the status of Cake Poker’s balance sheet and the unpaid debt from the DoylesRoom loan they not only declined to invest in Cake, they allegedly pulled their backing from Victory Poker as well. Fleyshman returned to his Facebook page to express his frustration: “I rarely curse,,. But today I calmly cursed 3 dozen times… Negativity & rudeness makes me :#€£¥%*•~# Grrrrrrrrr.”
Victory Nearly Turns Cereus, Then Folds
Left in a somewhat desperate situation in their own right Victory Poker made a decision to leave the Cake Poker Network and join the Cereus Network. Reactions in late March of this year to news regarding that impending move were mixed, with many wondering why Victory would choose to join embattled Cereus. At the time, Fleyshman spoke of the opportunity to join to the third-largest network as a primary incentive, although other factors — including the need to separate from Cake — were likely in play as well.
Then came Black Friday, two days after which Victory Poker announced it was no longer accepting U.S. players. In fact, on April 15 representatives of Victory Poker already had plane tickets in hand, ready to fly to Costa Rica to meet with Cereus, sign contracts, and finalize their deal. Given what the Black Friday indictment and civil complaint alleged regarding the Cereus network’s operations, one could say that Victory Poker’s having been prevented from completing its deal to join Cereus is a silver lining of sorts amid an otherwise dark scenario for the site.
While no longer serving U.S. customers, Victory Poker remained open as part of the Cake Poker Network until June 1 when it announced it was ceasing its poker operations altogether and that all of its players would be transferred to the Cake site. Victory Poker now plans to continue as an affiliate site offering news and strategy, but no games.
Cake in the Wake
While Victory Poker’s poker room has gone silent, DoylesRoom has moved its operations over to a new domain, doylesroom.ag, where it continues as part of the Yatahay network. Meanwhile, the Cake Poker network has survived.
A “strategic partnership” between PokerListings and the Cake Poker Network was announced in March of this year, essentially a partial selling of a majority stake in the Cake Poker Network to PokerListings, which has ensured Cake is at present and going forward financially secure. Previously — before Victory Poker’s involvement with CPN and well before Black Friday — attempts were made by Cake to sell the network in whole or in part to both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker according to our sources, though both of those major sites turned down the offer.
Cake now appears to be adopting a strategy whereby it maintains a lower profile in the U.S. than it had previously as far as advertising and promotion is concerned. Such an approach may well be recommended, given the attention being paid other sites that are seeking a more conspicuous U.S. presence.
Several attempts were made to contact representatives of Cake Poker and DoylesRoom for comment on this story. Neither site responded.
According to a post on QuadJacks.com the person who has been keeping the poker community informed of what’s going on with US player cash-outs from Full Tilt Poker is none other than Full Tilt Poker PR representative Michelle Clayborne posing as “FTPDoug” on the 2+2 Poker Forums. As source close to Full Tilt Poker claims that “the real FTPDoug left the company a long time ago and they just use the name since he had some credibility on 2+2.”
According to the same source claiming to be very close to Full Tilt Poker, “Ms. Clayborne is/was the personal assistant to Howard Lederer, among other Full Tilt pros. Another source reported in late May that she had also worked closely with Phil Ivey, but that he had since terminated their professional relationship.”
Most US online poker players have lost faith in Full Tilt’s ability to pay and as time passes players from other countries are beginning to as well. According to Pokerscout.com Full Tilt’s traffic is now down over 52% since April 15th, 2011.
Now that the “FTPDoug” account has been outed, we have no idea how Full Tilt will try and get a message out to players but we’ll keep an eye out for the next puppet show.
We are all familiar with the real estate saying “Location, Location, Location” with legislation the saying is “Timing, Timing, Timing”. Will this be the right timing for the legalization, licensing, taxing, and regulation for online gaming? We can all hope so.
A local police department in Maryland is celebrating after participating in a federal sting operation which shut down major internet gambling operations. The Anne Arundel Police Department received a check for $470,000 after helping the 
Since Black Friday, much of the poker world has been closely following the dramatic, divergent stories of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker/UB, the three sites targeted by the Department of Justice’s indictment and civil complaint. However, there has been significant drama over recent months involving three other sites, too — DoylesRoom, Victory Poker, and the 
According to a post on QuadJacks.com the person who has been keeping the poker community informed of what’s going on with US player cash-outs from Full Tilt Poker is none other than Full Tilt Poker PR representative Michelle Clayborne posing as “FTPDoug” on the 2+2 Poker Forums. As source close to Full Tilt Poker claims that “the real FTPDoug left the company a long time ago and they just use the name since he had some credibility on 2+2.”