Curly-haired New Yorker Ylon Schwartz is a career hustler: he started playing chess on the streets in Manhattan when he was 13 before widening his repertoire to pool and horse betting. A friend suggested that if he wanted to be a real hustler he would have to master several games, so he also took up poker and backgammon. Read more »
Tiffany Michelle has many aces up her sleeve: poker player and commentator, actress, singer and even certified massage therapist – there seems to be nothing she can't do. Michelle made headlines for being the last woman standing in the 2008 WSOP Main Event (she was knocked out in 17th place) as well as for allegedly ditching her sponsors (Poker News) for Ultimate Bet. Read more »
The brightest stars burn out faster and Russ "Dutch" Boyd's story reminds many of Stu Ungar's tragic poker legend. A child prodigy who graduated from law school at 18 and won his first WSOP bracelet at 26, Dutch Boyd has lifetime live winnings of over $1,300,000 – yet in his blog he says is looking for a sponsor to buy him into a $15,000 event. Read more »
Poker News Daily: When did you realize that poker could become your career and now just a hobby? Ramdin: I was always in some kind of sport. I used to play pool for a while. I won a couple of championships. I used to play darts. I used to short-distance sprint. I started playing poker in November of 2002. I played in small tournaments. My first big event was the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2003. I finished 29th. Read more »
Looking for something to do this weekend? Are you in need of some entertainment? How about winning a trip to Aruba? On Saturday, Ultimate Bet is offering a tournament that gives away 50 prize packages to its annual Aruba Poker Classic, which starts on September 27th from the Radisson Aruba Resort and Casino. All you'll need to pack is your sunscreen. Get ready for the white sandy beaches of this island paradise. It's hard to believe that this is the seventh year that the Aruba Poker Classic has been played. Previously a stop on the World Poker Tour circuit, it's one of the top tournaments offered today that's held outside of the United States. Read more »
Playtech (AIM: PTEC), the international designer, developer and licensor of software to the online and land-based gaming industry, today announced its Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) for the quarter ended 30 June 2008 and also provided an update on current trading. Read more »
Poker News Daily has learned that the World Poker Tour, which is currently without a television partner for Season VII, will announce that it has found a new broadcast outlet on Thursday, July 17. A press release and media interview opportunity will occur and PND will be in the middle of the fray bringing you the latest from this developing story. Read more »
Internet gambling has been thrown under the bus by the Republican leadership in the United States. Congressman Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who has been directing the opposition to the return of the industry to the United States, has claimed that allowing online poker to exist will do nothing more than bring this social ill right into our children's bedrooms. Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) has struck back, introducing HR 6501 on Wednesday. The bill offers up to $40 billion over the next ten years to individuals currently or previously in foster care as well as workers in declining economic industries. With this new money, these individuals can seek out job training and secondary education opportunities in order to improve their skills in the workplace. All of the money comes from taxation of the internet gambling industry in the United States, assuming Congress decides to regulate it. Read more »
As young poker pro Tiffany Michelle made it deep into the WSOP Main Event and became the last woman standing at spot 17, some noticed a change in her sponsorship patches: while she started out wearing Poker News gear, she ended her Main Event run in Ultimate Bet logos. Poker News issued a strongly worded statement regarding what they see as a breach of trust, while Michelle states she never had an exclusivity deal. Here are both sides of the story. Read more »
Be it online or live, how you act at the table can and will have a direct impact on your overall win rate. Read more »
With the looks of a runway model and the physique of a professional athlete, Patrik Antonius sticks out like a sore thumb at most poker tables. Yet behind the stunning façade hides one of the sharpest poker brains of the new generation – Antonius has been compared to Phil Ivey by Barry Greenstein, who also called him "one of the biggest winners in the history of online poker." Read more »
The numbers speak for themselves: CD Poker is an outstanding poker room for both beginners and seasoned players. Part of the large iPoker network, CD Poker has plenty of loose games (thanks to fish swimming in from their casino), stable software and an eye-popping variety of Sit & Gos. CD Poker does not accept US players, but it more than makes up for it with its software and they provide support in 16 languages. Read more »
To say that the last six months have been busy for the customer service department at Ultimate Bet would be quite an understatement. Rocked by a cheating scandal involving the former owners of the company, Ultimate Bet has struggled to maintain its customer's trust as it moves forward. Recent threads on several of the major online poker discussion forums, including TwoPlusTwo and PocketFives.com, have implicated one of UB's former owners, Russ Hamilton, in the cheating scandal. Although the information is currently nothing more than pure speculation, the online poker world is gradually beginning to learn more about just what caused the larceny to occur. Read more »
The WSOP has now come to a standstill, as the final table of the Main Event is finally determined. Now we all must wait for November 9 to find out who will win poker's most coveted prize and over $9 million. Read more »
Investmant bank JP Morgan released a report this week looking at the fundamentals of Ladbrokes plc, which is due to release its first-half results on August 7. Read more »
While the eyes of the entire poker world were fixed squarely on Las Vegas, online poker tournaments across the major sites continued as normal. The highlight of the week came on PokerStars, where every guarantee was doubled. Who needs the World Series of Poker when you have double guarantees on PokerStars? This meant the Sunday Million, a weekly tournament with a one million dollar guarantee, was actually the Sunday Two Million. The buy-in remained $215, attracting a ridiculously large field as you might expect. Three total tournaments on PokerStars this week offered $2.4 million in guarantees, much larger than twice the total tournament prize pool of the Full Tilt Poker $750K Guaranteed, UB $200K Guaranteed, and Bodog $100K Guaranteed combined. Let's find the poker star in us this week in the online tournament roundup. Read more »
Stu Ungar, the brightest star in poker, blazed his way through circuits and tournaments with a superhuman poker skill till he ended his days as a burnt-out supernova in a haze of drugs and debt. Born in September 8, 1953 in New York, he came from solid gaming stock: his father Ido Ungar was a loan shark who ran a gambling saloon, familiarizing Stu with gambling from an early age. In spite of his parents' attempts to keep him away from gambling, he won a gin rummy tournament at the age of 10 and by 23 he had earned an excellent reputation as a card player. After his father's death he took up full-time gin rummy to support his mother and sister, and he turned to alleged mafia boss Victor Romano who became a father figure to him, protecting him in the New York back-alley casinos. Read more »
Ted Forrest's fans claim he is not only one of the best poker players in the world, but one of the nicest as well, and he is highly respected by his peers because of his manners and poise. One of his biographers, Michael Craig, writes about buying a car with Ted: when asked what he was looking for, Ted replied, "Good AC." This from a man who has won 5 WSOP gold bracelets. Read more »
Beirut-born Ihsan (Sammy) is famous for his unpredictable poker style, expensive fashion sense and entertaining personality, but mostly for losing to Chris Moneymaker, the poker rookie who made poker an "everyman" game. Read more »
The story of Jeff Madsen's rise to poker power is short – really short. In fact, with the possible exceptions of Stu Ungar and Phil Hellmuth, it is the shortest rise to the top in the history of poker. Read more »
Several major names in the world of poker have advanced to Day 6 of the Main Event. One of them, however, won't be able to sit at his table when play commences at noon PT on Sunday. Read more »
A significantly larger field packed the Amazon Room and several surrounding rooms for Day 2b of the Main Event than Day 2a. The reason being the number difference between Days 1a/1b and 1c/1d. Read more »
Ever since the scandal erupted at Ultimate Bet, the site has been quick to take action. On May 29th, the company issued a statement regarding the findings of its investigation, which had been ongoing since UB was made aware of the abnormalities in January of several of its user accounts. In response, UB issued a statement last week outlining other screen names that were involved in the scandal, which rocked UB and caused many to question its security measures. The list of newly-named user accounts follows: Crackcorn55, WhakMe, GrabBag123, gravitation, Bgroup, H_Curtis, Twenty 1, WacoManiac, Broke_In_L_A, ShaqTack, BlueBerry101, HolyMucker, 55WasHere, Xnomas, dannyboy55, Indy05, and SlimPikins2. It's the latest news in the scandal, which is currently still being investigated by UB's parent company, Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG. Read more »
888 has agreed to power the PokerDomePoker.com website, which is owned and operated by the Australia-based PokerDome Group. Read more »
Playtech has signed a licensing agreement with Paramount Pictures to produce games based on two of the studio's classic films, Ridley Scott's 2000 Best Picture Oscar winner "Gladiator" and Brian De Palma's 1987 Al Capone drama "The Untouchables", starring Robert DeNiro and Kevin Costner. Read more »
