Online Poker Wins Another Legal Battle

Internet gambling won another battle in the long fight to legalize poker and other forms of gambling online in the US. This senator has tried unsuccessfully to ban all forms of financial transactions to gaming companies from credit cards based in the US. Apparently the senate has no desire to get involved or even debate the issue of online gaming. This is a win for us as far as i'm concerned. There is a lot of interests in the US for gambling even though most casinos are hosted on offshore servers. In other words......keep playing the game we all have come to love, at least for now





From eGaming Review Magazine

Legislation outlawing online gambling has little chance of success following the failure of the latest attempt in the US Senate, according to two leading industry commentators.

The US Senate rejected a proposed amendment to an Appropriations Bill last week that would have forced banks and credit card companies to block egaming transactions.

It was the seventh time legislation proposed by Senator John Kyl has failed in the US, and analysts instantly reduced their appraisal of regulatory risk to egaming businesses with strong US custom.

A research note by investment bank Cannacord Capital said the senate had shown “little appetite for anti-gaming legislation”.

And David Carruthers, chief executive of BetonSports, said he felt the latest failure from Senator Kyl was reflective of a lack of interest in prohibitive legislation.

“The failure of the Kyl bill is symptomatic of where we are in the debate,” Carruthers said.

“I don’t think there is any traction to internet gaming legislation in the US,” he added.

Bill White, chief executive of software firm Global Cyber GPS, told delegates at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) in Las Vegas, a US egaming industry was on the way.

“A legitimate, fully lawful Internet gambling industry is coming to the US, and soon,” White said.

But Carruthers said he felt talk of regulated egaming in the US was still some way off.

“I don’t think regulation is around the corner, we are at least five years away, but it is time to start having a serious debate.”

Cannacord also added a note of caution to the positive assessments pointing out there is still the looming spectre of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruling.

The US has to confirm by April 2006 if it plans to permit Antiguan egaming firms to offer services to US citizens or ban all forms of remote gambling in the US.

“This Bill is likely to “confirm” or “clarify” as opposed to “authorizse” the US view of online gambling,” Cannacord said.

Poker and DMOZ

On a important note before I start rambling....The World Poker Tour created another millionaire this past week. The payout was just a tad over 1.2 million dollars and the entry AGAIN came from a small online satellite tournament. This guy paid 40$ to enter an online tourney and ended up winning over 1,000,000 bucks. Call it luck or whatever but, this is getting way too common these days. It shouldn't be that easy to get into the millionaire club but maybe it is ??
Anyway, I paid 25$ to get into one of those poker tournaments earlier in the week and was doing quite well until my power went out because of Hurricane Ophelia. I live about 4 miles from the beach and thought since it was a weak cat 1 the power would stay on but as my luck would have it....a tree in my back yard decided to crash my poker party.
It was just a small pine tree but it was enough to wipe out the powerline to my home. Needless to say,by the time the power came back on the following day, the tourney was over and so was my shot to get in this week. (you can play in these every day if you want,but I limit my play to one tournament a week to keep my wife off my ass!) Stay tuned to follow my quest to get into either the World Series of Poker or the World Poker Tour. Its really a fairly simple and cheap process to get started

On to the real story:

Some people have recently suggested that dmoz is an outdated useless directory because of the "lack of editors" to quote another blog I read this morning. Apparently, the backlog of sites waiting to be reviewed is over 1 million which means there is an awful lot of work to be done, but yet there are thousands of honest people who really would benefit dmoz and they turn them away daily.
I do understand that lots of people try to become an editor simply to self promote their own sites but, at the same time I also know there are a lot of people who would be great editors (including myself) that have been turned down for no obvious reason. I have applied twice in the last year...both times to categories not even remotely related to my own sites and yet still no offer to join, instead I received a generic sorry but...email. I have coached little league baseball in my town for 9 years and have been involved in baseball for a total of 30 years and Still wasn't qualified to edit a youth baseball category with a grand total of 8 sites. Go figure!

The blog i read this morning suggests that dmoz is a dead fish in the huge pool of water known as the internet. With all the info on the net, its hard to believe that DMOZ just continues to flounder. Yeah, i know its the largest human edited directory in the world but at the same time its also apparently the largest "unedited" directory in the world. I have very mixed feelings about this statement because I have always had such respect for the big D. I used to do all my search there but the web is so much bigger now that the information you find in dmoz is outdated before the site even gets reviewed,much less added to the directory. I really hope that they come out of this slump because all the internet dinosaurs are pretty much gone these days, it would be a shame to lose the last greatest one known

http://www.games-videopoker.com

British Man Wins 865,000$ Tournament With 27$ Entry Fee

I watched the World Poker Tour on tv last night in astonishment as a man from England wiped out everyone at the final table to win 865,000 $. This guy had never played in any poker tournament before except for online. He won his trip to the Bahamas plus his entry fee to the wpt event by paying 27 bucks at party poker (link is to the right if you want to check it out) to enter one of their qualifying satellite tournaments and went on to win the title. This is just another reason why so many people are jumping on the poker bandwagon.

Your odds of winning large amounts of money are 50 times better than playing the local powerball lottery every week. I was playing casual poker several times a week just to get some spending cash but the more i see these amateurs winning sooooo much cash, the more i want to get in on the action. So....effective immediately I'm gonna start playing these cheap tournaments and see how much real money I can make. I will keep yall posted as to the progress!

Right now, I'm playing about 4-5 hours a week and usually average about 300-400 a week profit by playing tight but it's time to loosen up a little and go for the cash. For those of you wanting to get started, unlike most other poker sites, i think the best way to learn the game is by using real money games. Low limit (.50/1.00 games) is the best way to get real experience. Playing for free is OK but the game action isn't realistic and you will have to adjust your whole style of play when you move to real money games.

The reason for this is everybody plays very loose when it's play money......who cares if you lose 500$ dollars of play money,all you have to do is get more play dollars. The game is very different when real money is on the line. Anyway, I learned this the hard way by playing play money games thinking i was really good,when in actuality i was learning how NOT to play the game. If you don't know how to play at all...then sure go ahead and play the free games but only until you have a good feel for the rules and how things go. In the low limit money games you will very seldom win or lose more than 50$ so the risk is minimal but the rewards from the experience you gain will continue to pay off for a long time!

Still Playing Texas Holdem at 85

Texas holdem is the game of choice these days as millions are flocking to a sport trying to win their share of millions...Where else can you get paid a million dollars by playing as an amateur? There is no age limit and it doesn't matter if you are 18 years old or 85 years young. You don't have to worry about retiring by the time you are 35 because you can't compete as is the case with football,baseball and most other high paying sports. In poker, all you need is a competitive drive from within yourself and the balls to call all-in with a king-ten offsuit. This leads me to my point in todays story

My friends grandfather (Gramps...as we call him) just turned 85 years old last week and invited some of us young guns over to play some poker to celebrate this day. This is the same man who took all of us fishing several times a summer when we were teenagers (brave soul to say the least) on his 28' fishing boat. Even back then he would kick our ass by cranking in more kings (king mackeral...the mack daddy of deep running saltwater fish) than we could even think about.
Anyway, we went over to play poker expecting a lazy game of 5 card draw but he surprised us all when he called $5/10 limit holdem right out of the gate. I thought, what in the hell is wrong with this codger, I don't want to take all of his social security money. Man, was I wrong...and I mean dead wrong. I didn't have to worry about feeling bad by beating him at the game I love because he totally kicked our asses. 4 hours later he had won almost 800 bucks from the 5 of us, one of which was his grandson. I left the old farmhouse wondering what in the hell had just happened but on the drive home I realized that we just learned a lesson in Texas Holdem Poker, and the lesson was it doesn't make any difference how good you think you are, you never quit learning the game. Thanks for the lesson Gramps...and the memories

We Love you Grampa Aug 23, 1920 - Sep 2, 2005


PokerListings.com is the leading online poker guide, featuring the world's largest poker directory, reviews on all poker rooms, top lists of best poker games and poker rules. Find where to play poker online in our daily free roll schedules!
Poker Listings - Play Texas Holdem Poker Online!