Feds reveal mafia-linked gambling probe that led to arrests of Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups and NBA star Terry Rozier

Winning is typically a good thing for the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers.

But six years ago, the scammers allegedly using Chauncey Billups as part of a sprawling criminal scheme to lure unsuspecting poker players to rigged tables believed he was winning far too much.

Billups was a “Face Card,” prosecutors said, a high-profile person who could help attract big-fish gamblers to ritzy card games in Manhattan, Las Vegas, Miami and the Hamptons. Billups, aided by equipment like a manipulated shuffling machine and an X-ray table, played on the “Cheating Team.”

In the middle of a game in Vegas in April 2019, the orchestrators of the plot realized they had a problem: Billups was winning too many improbable hands. The streak would surely draw suspicion, they said in text messages included in court documents unsealed Thursday. Billups needed to do something very few professional athletes enjoy: lose on purpose. That’s the only way the criminal enterprise could keep raking in cash.

It ultimately netted more than $7 million over six years.

Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and dozens of others were charged Thursday as part of two sweeping investigations: one into illegal sports gambling and the other into poker rigging schemes allegedly backed by the Mafia.

The extraordinary federal takedown led to the arrests of more than 30 people across 11 states on charges including wire fraud, money laundering, extortion, robbery and illegal gambling, FBI Director Kash Patel said at a news conference.

“The fraud is mind-boggling,” Patel told reporters, referring to the alleged wrongdoing as a “criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra.” He said the schemes involved “tens of millions of dollars” in ill-gotten gains.

The web of alleged criminal activity was laid out in two federal indictments that read like plot summaries for Martin Scorsese crime epics. Officials say key roles were played in one case by members of the notorious Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese crime “families” — as well as defendants with nicknames like “The Wrestler,” “Juice,” “Big Bruce” and “Pookie.”

The indictments threaten to create a reputational headache for both the NBA, one of the marquee professional sports leagues in the country, and the booming but increasingly scrutinized sports gambling industry. In a statement, the NBA said Billups and Rozier would be placed on “immediate leave.”

In the first case, dubbed “Operation Nothing But Bet” by federal agents, prosecutors accuse six defendants of participating in an insider sports betting scheme that “exploited confidential information” about basketball players and teams, U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. of the Eastern District of New York told reporters at the news conference.

Nocella called that alleged conspiracy “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States.”

Rozier was charged in that indictment. The former Charlotte Hornets player was arrested Thursday morning in Orlando, Florida, and he appeared in the city’s federal courthouse later Thursday. The indictment says he was also known by the nicknames “Scary Terry” and “Chum.”

In the second case, dubbed “Operation Royal Flush,” prosecutors accuse 31 defendants of a plot to rig underground poker games. The suspects allegedly used high-tech cheating gadgets to steal millions of dollars from games backed by four of the “Five Families” that have long ruled organized crime in the New York area.

The high-tech equipment described by Nocella included poker chip trays that secretly read cards with a hidden camera, special contact lenses that can read pre-marked cards and an X-ray table that can read cards facing down.

Billups was charged in that indictment, along with former NBA player Damon Jones.

It was not immediately clear where Billups was arrested, but he appeared Thursday in court in Portland, Oregon, where he lives. He was released on conditions that include travel restrictions, no gambling activity, a no contact order and standard conditions regarding firearms, according to NBC affiliate KGW. Billups coached the Blazers on Wednesday night in Portland.

Jones was arrested in Las Vegas. It was not immediately clear whether Jones had an attorney; calls and text messages to a phone number believed to belong to him were not returned.

“Your winning streak has ended,” Nocella said at the news conference, addressing the defendants in the “Royal Flush” case and appearing to enjoy the wordplay. “Your luck has run out. Violating the law is a losing proposition, and you can bet on that.”

Three of the defendants were allegedly involved in both cases, according to Christopher Raia, assistant director in charge of the FBI’’s New York field office.

The betting ring

The Charlotte Hornets were preparing to face off against the New Orleans Pelicans on March 23, 2023, and Terry Rozier had a plan. Rozier, at the time a starter for the Hornets, told Deniro Laster, a childhood friend, that he was going to “prematurely remove himself from the game in the first quarter due to a supposed injury and not return to play further,” prosecutors say.

Laster turned around and sold the tip about Rozier’s intentions to other defendants and co-conspirators, giving them a chance to “place fraudulent wagers based on the non-public information,” prosecutors say. Rozier was true to his word, they said, playing roughly nine minutes and 34 seconds before taking himself out of the game. The bets raked in thousands of dollars.

In their indictment, prosecutors accuse Rozier, Laster and four other defendants of participating in a “scheme to defraud” betting companies by “providing, obtaining and using non-public information relating to NBA games to place and cause others to place fraudulent sports wagers for profit, and to launder the proceeds thereof.”

The defendants and some of their co-conspirators had “access to private information known by NBA players or NBA coaches” that was likely to affect the outcomes of upcoming league games or certain players’ performances on the court, prosecutors said. Rozier’s choreographed exit from the Hornets’ March 2023 game against the Pelicans was just one example of that information-sharing system at work, they said.

Jones allegedly sold information on a prominent NBA player’s injury to bettors while he was an unofficial assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers in February 2023. He is said to have texted a co-conspirator that a certain player would be out when the Lakers faced the Milwaukee Bucks on Feb. 9, 2023. “Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out,” Jones said, according to the indictment.

When the game started that night, fans and viewers learned Lebron James was out with a sore left ankle and foot, according to a game recap from the time.

The poker games

The dozens of men (and one woman) accused of rigging poker games across the country over the last half-decade can’t be accused of using low-tech methods.

The defendants are said to have used “Rigged Shuffling Machines” that were secretly altered to read the cards in a deck, predict which player at the table had the best hand and relay that valuable information via interstate wires to an off-site operator. The operator then communicated that information by cellphone to one of the cheaters, referred to as the “Quarterback” or the “Driver,” who used “secret signaling” with other scammers at the table.

But that wasn’t the extent of the cheating system, according to prosecutors. The orchestrators also used electronic poker chip trays that could secretly read cards placed on the table, card analyzers with decoy cellphones that could surreptitiously detect which cards were on the table and playing cards with markers visible only to players wearing specifically designed contact lenses or sunglasses.

All that was in the service of what prosecutors characterized as a “complex fraud scheme to rig, or cheat at, illegal poker games in the Eastern District of New York and throughout the United States,” beginning in at least 2019. The suspects allegedly rigged card games at otherwise “straight tables” at locations across New York City, as well as Las Vegas, Miami and the Hamptons.

The defendants did that with the help of organized crime families, who “provided support and protection for the games and collected owed debts from the games in exchange for a portion of the illegal gambling proceeds,” according to the indictment. The victims, who were defrauded out of millions of dollars, had no idea they were playing against cheaters, it says.

Meanwhile, “members and associates of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese Crime Families used threats and intimidation to assure payment of debts from the Rigged Games and the ‘square’ illegal poker games organized” by the defendants, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors estimate that the defendants caused losses to victims totaling at least $7 million.

The players

Rozier’s attorney said in a statement that he had “reached out to these prosecutors to tell them we should have an open line of communication.”

“They characterized Terry as a subject, not a target, but at 6 a.m. this morning they called to tell me FBI agents were trying to arrest him in a hotel,” said the lawyer, Jim Trusty. “It is unfortunate that instead of allowing him to self-surrender, they opted for a photo-op.”

“They wanted the misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk. That tells you a lot about the motivations in this case,” Trust added. “They appear to be taking the word of spectacularly in-credible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing. Terry was cleared by the NBA, and these prosecutors revived that non-case. Terry is not a gambler, but he is not afraid of a fight, and he looks forward to winning this fight.”

Billups' attorney, Chris Heywood, said Billups will fight the charges and is not guilty of any wrongdoing. "Anyone who knows Chauncey Billups knows he is a man of integrity; men of integrity do not cheat and defraud others," Heywood said.

"To believe that Chauncey Billups did what the federal government is accusing him of is to believe that he would risk his hall-of-fame legacy, his reputation, and his freedom. He would not jeopardize those things for anything, let alone a card game," Heywood said.

"Furthermore, Chauncey Billups has never and would never gamble on basketball games, provide insider information, or sacrifice the trust of his team and the League, as it would tarnish the game he has devoted his entire life to," Heywood added.

The Miami Heat did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a statement, the NBA said it was in the “process of reviewing the federal indictments announced today. Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups are being placed on immediate leave from their teams, and we will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities. We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority.”

The Blazers said that the team was cooperating with the investigation and that Tiago Splitter will be the interim head coach.

Rozier, an Ohio native and 10-year NBA veteran, was picked 16th overall by the Boston Celtics in the 2015 NBA draft after having played college basketball for the Louisville Cardinals.

Billups has coached since 2021, following a widely lauded 17-season playing career that culminated in the sport’s highest honor: enshrinement in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame last year.

He entered the NBA in 1997 as the third overall draft pick. By 2004, his clutch baskets and on-court leadership were vital to Detroit’s NBA championship over the Lakers. The title run earned him the nickname “Mr. Big Shot” and the honor of being named the NBA Finals MVP, and it transformed his career. From 2006 to 2010, Billups was voted an All-Star five times.

After he retired in 2014, Billups worked as an NBA analyst for ESPN. After one season as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Clippers, he was hired by the Portland Trail Blazers in 2021.

Thursday’s high-profile arrests come four months after another NBA star, Gilbert Arenas, was arrested and indicted after the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California alleged he was involved in helping operate illegal, high-stakes poker games out of a Los Angeles-area home he owned. Arenas has pleaded not guilty.

Investigations into gambling have extended to active NBA players in recent seasons, as well. Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors pleaded guilty in federal court and was banned by the NBA for life last year for violating the league’s sports gambling rules, with the league alleging that he had bet on NBA games and disclosed confidential information about his own participation to bettors. He is set to be sentenced in December.

RFID implicated in live-streamed poker cheating scandal

Seems a pro-poker player, Mike Postle, has achieved impossible-seeming results. Other players have put hours upon hours upon hours into analyzing his baffling play. It is like watching someone play with perfect information, they claim!

While nothing definitive has been found, Stones Gambling Hall, a live poker site where the questionable Postle has spent a lot of time live streaming, has stopped using RFID chipped playing cards and hired an investigator.

It’s not just that Postle is winning, it’s how he’s winning, that is drawing suspicion. Ingram, Berkey and others have spent hours reviewing hands Postle played and found several times where Postle made a fold or a call that wouldn’t seem “right” but happened to work out in his favor.

Berkey said Postle made plays no pro would ever make, and he did them often, and they worked. Poker is a game of incomplete information. Berkey said Postle played “as if he had perfect information.”

Stones Gambling Hall said it has hired an independent investigator to look into the accusations.

In a statement Stones Gambling Hall said: “We temporarily halted all broadcasts from Stones. We have also, as a result, halted the use of RFID playing cards.”

Writer Halts Book on Poker After Winning $86,000 Playing Poker

Most of us entertain fantasies of ditching our lowly, soul-crushing jobs and making it as the next Timothée Chalamet or Russell Westbrook or Cardi B or whatever, though we know deep down that most of us never will. In lieu of those talents, we work away as bartenders or salesmen or, you know, bloggers, and we deal with it. But one woman proved that it doesn't take otherworldly, innate skill to leap from the humdrum world of the everyday into a higher, more thrilling plane—that with a little hard work and a little luck, you can hit the big time doing something you don't know a damn thing about.

This heroine—this ray of hope in the darkness—is Maria Konnikova, a New Yorker contributor who decided to write a book about high-stakes poker. She teamed up with Erik Seidel—a Poker Hall of Famer who's made more than $34 million playing—who let her shadow him, showed her the ropes, and got her going on a career of her own.

She came into the world of poker "as someone who’d never had any experience with the game,” and started out playing small, $20 and $40 tournaments and never winning much, Poker News reports. Then, with Seidel's guidance, she got better—shared higher-stakes tables with good players at serious Las Vegas casinos like the ARIA, and walked away from a few games with upwards of $2,000. Pretty soon, she was playing major tournaments.

As if that's not sick enough on its own, less than a year after she'd picked up the game, she struck gold. In January, at a national championship in the Bahamas, she beat out 230 other players and came out on top—winning $86,400 from a game she'd started playing from scratch, as an experiment, to research a book.

Now, according to Poker News, she's making so much goddamn money playing poker that she's putting the whole writing thing on the back burner—pushing her book schedule back, and living it up in the lucrative world of professional gambling. And apparently, the move is paying off—she just won $57,519 at a tournament in Macau, where she came in second. She also recently touched down in Monaco, where she ponied up $25,000 at a tournament for a chance to win, oh, who knows, somewhere in the range of millions of fucking dollars.

Maria Konnikova did it. She peaced the hell out of her job, tried her hand at some wild-ass hobby she didn't have a lick of experience with, crushed it, and now, she's unbelievably rich! Let her be an inspiration to us all. I don't know about you, but it's time for me to go learn Texas hold 'em.

Phil Ivey loses court battle over £7.7m winnings from London casino

The poker player Phil Ivey has lost his court bid to recover £7.7m ( $10.2m) of winnings from a London casino.

The 40-year-old American has been fighting to recover the sum since successfully playing a version of baccarat known as Punto Banco at Crockfords Club in Mayfair in 2012.

The hearing at the supreme court considered whether dishonesty was a necessary element of the offence of cheating.

Ivey had challenged a 2016 majority decision in the court of appeal dismissing his case against Genting Casinos UK, which owns Crockfords. Genting said a technique he used, called edge-sorting, was not a legitimate strategy, while Ivey maintained that he won fairly.

Five justices unanimously upheld the majority decision of the court of appeal, which dismissed his case on the basis that being knowingly dishonest was not a necessary element of “cheating”.

After the game in question, Ivey was told the money would be wired to him in Las Vegas, but it never arrived, although his stake of £1m was returned.

Genting said the technique of edge-sorting used by Ivey, which involves identifying small differences in the pattern on the reverse of playing cards and exploiting that information to increase the chances of winning, was not a legitimate strategy.

Ivey did not personally touch any cards, but persuaded the croupier to rotate the most valuable cards by intimating that he was superstitious.

In the court of appeal, Lady Justice Arden said the Gambling Act 2005 provided that someone may cheat “without dishonesty or intention to deceive: depending on the circumstances it may be enough that he simply interferes with the process of the game”.

There was no doubt, she added, that the actions of Ivey and another gambler, Cheung Yin Sun, interfered with the process by which Crockfords played the game of Punto Banco with Ivey.

Stephen Parkinson, head of criminal litigation at Kingsley Napley, the law firm that represented Crockfords, said: “This is one of the most significant decisions in criminal law in a generation. The concept of dishonesty is central to a whole range of offences, including fraud.

“For 35 years, juries have been told that defendants will only be guilty if the conduct complained of was dishonest by the standards of ordinary, reasonable and honest people, and also that they must have realised that ordinary, honest people would regard their behaviour as dishonest.

“The supreme court has now said that this second limb of the test does not represent the law and that directions based upon it ought no longer to be given by the courts.”

New York Senate Finance Committee passes online gaming bill

On Tuesday, the state Senate Finance Committee approved legislation that would make New York the fourth and most populous US state to welcome legal and regulated online poker. Approved by a vote of 27-9, the bill S3898 now goes to the entire Senate, where a majority vote would send it to the desk of Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his signature.

If it reaches the governor’s desk, there will be a 10-day period where it may be signed into law or vetoed.

Sponsored by Senator John Bonacic, the bill seeks to legalise online poker as a game of skill, or specifically hold’em and omaha, which are deemed by the senator, apparently, to be the most skillful variants. That will be the key point for debate the take place in the Senate.

The Empire State’s long-running efforts to legalise internet poker had first moved forward last february after the legislation passed the Senate Gaming Committee by a unanimous 11-0 vote.

The bill originally introduced in late January would authorise the New York State Gaming Commission to hand out online poker licenses at the cost of $10m per license. Under the bill, poker would be classified as a game of skill, which differs from the provision within the state constitution that prevents internet gaming. The state will also be able to enter interstate compacts in order to increase player pools and liquidity.

The bill would amend the Racing, Pari-Mutuel Wagering and Breeding Law to permit certain interactive poker games, specifically Texas Hold’em and Omaha Hold’em. It would change the definition of poker to constitute a game where the outcome is determined by skill rather than luck, and would regulated without this being considered gaming expansion.

Poker Player to eat $1k worth of McDonalds food in 36 hours

A professional poker player has taken up a rather unusual challenge of attempting to eat $1,000 worth of McDonald’s food in 36-hours with wagers topping $200k.

I once took on the Fatty Arbuckle Challenge and failed. My ex-wife came back from the toilet and found pieces of steak in the vase holding the fake flowers, both condiments, and squeezed in between pages of the menu.

Poker Player to eat $1k worth of McDonalds food in 36 hours. My father-in-law at the time also took the challenge. You had to eat a CAFO full of chicken wings, a 28 oz steak with all the trimmings, and a two-pint ice cream sundae.

The trick, it seems, was in the Sundae. My father-in-law used his lighter to melt it and then drank the lot.

But not even my former father-in-law would be able to eat $1,000 worth of McDonald’s in 36-hours, but professional poker player Mike Noori is ready to give it a shot.

The Word Poker Tour (WPT) Executive Tour Director, Matt Savage, is the man behind the idea and here are the stipulations:

– Only $200 can be spent on salads.
– $300 has to be spent on hot food items ($50 of which must be burgers)
– Drinks don’t count
– Cannot remove any items from his orders
– Can add additional foodstuffs to requested items (extra bacon, etc.)
– Must eat everything that comes with the order (except the Happy Meal toy)
– He must eat the food in its original state, no blender
– Puking is ok as long as he doesn’t force the puke or puke repeatedly
– No inflated prices (I.e. Eating in McDonald’s in an airport)

According to the word on social media, there is over $200k in bets already booked, with Noori admitting on Twitter that he only has a small piece of his action.

Noori has already indicated that he will begin the bet by eating $500 worth of apple slices, but even if he goes down that particular orchard, this still ranks as one of the more difficult prop bets to be accepted on the open market (take not Bill Perkins).

One man who knows what he is talking about when it comes to food is Jimmy Fricke, and he believes the bet is impossible.

What Happens if You Consume Over 66k Calories in 36 Hours?

You won’t be surprised to hear that our great God Google didn’t have an answer to that question. And when I asked Alexa she said Sorry I don’t know that one. But I do know what would happen if you ate 6,000 calories per day for seven days straight so you can get some picture.

According to Men’s Health magazine, six healthy guys did eat 6,000 calories for seven days straight while staying in a hospital bed under the name of medical research. The men gained on average 8 pounds per person. They developed insulin resistance, liver complications and extreme oxidative stress.

And who can forget Morgan Spurlock’s SuperSize Me documentary? Spurlock only ate McDonald’s food for 30 days straight in a bid to prove that although the fast food chain won a libel case against a couple of obese girls who laid the blame for the extra poundage on old Ronald, the fast food franchise was still responsible for causing physical harm.

Spurlock ate 5,000 calories per day, gained 11 kilogrammes in weight (a 13% body mass increase), saw his cholesterol shoot up to 230 mg/dL, and lost his libido. It took Spurlock 14-months to shed the extra weight after being placed on a strict vegan lifestyle.

The average healthy males consume on average 2,500 calories per day.

If Noori loses the bet and is still alive, he will have to foot the $1,000 food bill. If he wins, then he has to contribute $500 towards his feast.

My father-in-law?

He won a t-shirt.

In poker terms, Amaya is offering William Hill a marginal hand

When William Hill threw out a cheeky three-way merger proposal from the Rank Group and 888 Holdings a couple of months ago, its chairman, Gareth Davis, explained robustly that the bookmaker would not be doing a deal based on “risk, debt and hope”.

Quite right, too. Life has become tougher for William Hill over the past year, and it has lost its chief executive on the way, but there was no reason to panic.

But now comes a deal the board wants to look at – a potential “merger of equals” with Amaya, the Canadian company whose PokerStars website dominates the world of online poker. But, using Davis’s own yardsticks, the appeal looks wobbly at best.

On risk, Amaya brings at least two big ones. The more obvious is a $870m (£704m) penalty in the US state of Kentucky. Amaya is probably correct in thinking it will not end up paying anything like that sum, but one can never be sure given US authorities’ past (baffling) attempts to combat online poker.

The other risk is that William Hill ends up with too much exposure to unregulated markets, meaning those where gambling is either banned or the rules are so unclear that your local operation can legislated out of existence. At the moment, William Hill’s exposure to unregulated territories is an admirably low 5%. After a merger with Amaya, the ratio would rise to about a quarter of the business. Big difference.

On debt, Amaya would bring a bundle. The combined group’s borrowings would be about 3.5 times the top-line profits. Historically, William Hill has aimed for under two times. If high levels of debt are not your bag, Amaya is a strange choice of partner.

The hope element is that cross-selling will do wonders for both companies – that Amaya’s poker players will want to bet on sport with William Hill, and vice versa. That seems plausible, but the degree is untested.

Add it up and we can agree that Amaya looks a better gamble than the complex Rank/888 proposal, where the debt ratios would have been even higher. The Canadian company is a fearsome generator of cash and it is digital and international – qualities prized by William Hill. All the same, there’s a whiff of desperation in the idea that an overdose of online poker, a game that’s barely growing these days, is the thing to fire up William Hill.

Note the limp reaction in the share price, up just 3%. In poker terms, Amaya is offering a marginal hand. William Hill’s investors may fairly feel the self-help cards are stronger.

How Pokerstars Obscures the Facts

Pokerstars has made a fair number of announcements in the last year or so that they no doubt knew would be seen as bad news by their customers. However, it is their prerogative to run their business as they see fit and increasing rake, decreasing rewards and the like is entirely their choice, even if it effectively kills certain game types.

Clearly, Pokerstars have a PR team working on finding the best way to present these sorts of announcements to the player base in order to try to retain the greatest amount of business and keep profits high. The goodwill that Pokerstars had built up over years of consistently being the frontrunner in poker in all aspects of customer care has quickly been used up and given the content of the changes in question and the stark lack of any real good news to help balance things out, working in Pokerstars PR nowadays is an extremely tough job by anyone’s standards.

The issue is that now that times are tough, the communications department are trying too hard to spin each announcement as a positive change and I believe they have gone too far in their methods, veering into dishonesty and deceit and frankly insulting the intelligence of their customers in attempting to trick them.

Pokerstars latest announcement, posted on 21st March, detailed significant rake increases in a lot of their games. The decision was taken by their PR team to feature a section in the announcement titled “Comparison With Competitors”, showing an eye-catching chart that appears to show that Pokerstars rake is significantly lower than the competition, even after the changes. However, there are major flaws in what we are presented with and I believe Pokerstars are knowingly displaying poorly collated data in the hope it will be misinterpreted by many.

Here is the chart in question:

What we are looking at is information that has been cherry picked to fit the company rhetoric. It seems clear that Pokerstars first decided to present some information to support their increases and then, only after that decision, began to try to gather some relevant data with a goal of what the results should look like firmly in mind.

Perhaps the most glaring edit is the omission of Pokerstars current rake structure from the comparison altogether. Is it not the case that for players who play on Pokerstars, the rake structure that they are currently used to is the best frame of reference? Of course, when you consider that the inclusion of the current rake on the chart would make the changes look significantly worse, it’s easy to become a cynic.

The failure to include rakeback numbers in the chart has also skewed the way things look. Given the huge cuts to Pokerstars VIP program recently, it is no surprise that they would want to avoid any mention of such figures. It is clear that it is preferable to players to frequent a site where the rake is a little higher and rakeback is significant, rather than one where the rake is a little lower but rakeback is a negligible factor. This sort of system does exist in Pokerstars’ competitors models (40-60% rakeback is widely available on iPoker for instance). Rakeback is an integral part of analysing the overall rake a site charges to play in their games and to exclude it is disingenuous.

Notice that, at the bottom of the chart, we can see that the stakes are restricted to $0.02/$0.05 to $5/$10. If the chart were meant to give a fair overview of the full picture then surely all stakes would be included. Conveniently, the direct take is among least harsh at $5/$10 on Pokerstars, so it is ideal for them for that stake level to be included. However at those stakes there is a lack of any form of rakeback whatsoever, so players would likely be better off with a competitor.

A more unclear part of the chart is what exactly “Average Price” means. There are many ways that an “average” could be used in this case; averaging pot sizes, averaging rake %s, averaging rake cap numbers, averaging total take over stakes, weighting by number of hands per stake, and so on. If I were tasked with coming up with favourable results in this situation, I would calculate several of these in order to find the best looking one which would be chosen for use. The fact that Pokerstars will appear to be the among cheapest (because of the exclusion of rakeback) at the highest stakes included in the sample should mean that many of the cases the figures will be majorly skewed by hands from $5/$10 games.

Perhaps the most galling inefficiency can be seen when you turn your attention to the scale on the Y-axis. The chart does not start from zero, as would be expected, and there is no scale break to highlight this fact. “Zooming in” like this serves to make a small difference look much larger. For example, the green “888 Poker” column in the chart looks approximately 50% taller than the red “Pokerstars New” column, however the numbers that Pokerstars came up with show that it should only be 16% bigger. A fudged scale on a chart such as this would not pass a high school science exam and for a professional data analyst to allow such a clear flaw to be published is appalling.

This one chart is not the only example of Pokerstars attempts to obscure the facts with flawed arguments and insincere presentation. The way details are presented in their announcements is consistently deceptive and the Twitter feeds of their PR team are enraging to read as an informed customer. The prevalence of misinformation and flawed analogies is alarming and it is worrying that a number of less astute players may actually be satisfied with their answers. I hope that my writing here can go some way towards correcting that.

partypoker Set to Make Changes to Level the Playing Field

The debate on whether third-party software should be allowed is almost as old as online poker itself. Players tend to be in one of two camps: (1) Third-party software should be allowed or (2) third-party software should be banned. There tends to be no middle ground on this subject.

Over the coming weeks, partypoker is taking steps to prevent players from using third-party software with a trio of changes to the partypoker client in a move that it believes will level the playing field for all partypoker players regardless of their skill levels.

In short, the changes taking place are:

• Players will be able to view the last 12 months of their own hand histories within the Missions icon in the partypoker software, but hand histories will no longer be able to be downloaded and saved to their local devices
• Players wishing to wait for a cash game will join the room-wide waiting list and be randomly seated when a seat that matches their preference becomes available
• Players joining a cash game will see the names of their opponents only once their first hand is dealt

These changes will stop players from using poker tracking software and their associated Heads Up Displays (HUD), prevent players from sharing hand history databases and halt the use of seating scripts that some players use to target lesser-skilled players by automatically seating them in what is commonly referred to as the “God seat.”

Tony Dunst, a World Poker Tour champion and partypoker Ambassador, believes the upcoming changes will benefit both recreational players and professionals alike by preserving the quality of the games.

These changes at partypoker are designed to create a more hospitable environment for recreational players. Unfortunately, many of the tools and tactics that professionals use to maximize their edge have made the games too difficult for new players to survive. Without them, grinders will merely pass money back and forth while being raked, and games will inevitably dry up. I think these changes will help level the playing field for casual players, and preserve the quality of games for professionals.

”It is our duty as an online poker operator to provide a level playing field”

We put it to partypoker’s Head of Poker BI and Network Operations, Jay Kanabar that the upcoming changes to the partypker software may be seen radical to some section of the poker community, but Kanabar disagrees.

“To be honest, I don’t think there are radical changes, we are just doing our duty as an online poker operator to provide a level playing field and ensure that we strive to provide the fairest and most ethical environment for all poker players to enjoy the game that we all love.”

According to Kanabar, discussions about the changes have taken place over a 12-month period, during which time consultations with different sectors of the poker community have been had and analysis done on a plethora of statistics before reaching the decision to make the technical changes necessary to implement the aforementioned changes to the partypoker client.

Both Unibet Poker and Sky Poker prohibit the use of HUDs, with Unibet Poker taking things one step further by allowing players to change their screen name. Some sites, such as those on the MPN (formerly Microgaming), have tables where players remain anonymous throughout their session, but this last feature is not something that partypoker considered.

“I think it would be a real shame if online poker had to become completely anonymous, it wouldn’t be much fun to enter a WPT with everyone playing blindfolded. Our Poker for the People mission is about developing the partypoker community where players can play online and meet each other face to face at our live events. I think this is really important so I don’t feel that repetitive changing of screen names is good for partypoker or our players. I actually think this would be a defeatist solution and somewhat the easy way out.”

Comparisons will be drawn to the recent changes at Full Tilt where players can no longer select which tables they sit at, instead they choose which stakes they want to play for and are seated at a randomly selected seat.

Cash game traffic dropped significantly shortly after Full Tilt implemented its recent changes, something that Kanabar and his team are aware of, but believe that the changes set to come into force will benefit the site and its players in the long term.

“I think the changes we are making are more fundamental that other operators have so far implemented. We are not jumping on the recreational player bandwagon, we are making these changes to benefit all poker players and of course, we hope that partypoker will also benefit in the long term by making sensible, fair and balanced changes although it’s possible we could experience a drop but we want to be brave and not sit on the fence. If I walked into the Bellagio Poker Room in Las Vegas, I could not ask the Card Room Manager, “Who are your worst players? Can you lock me a seat up to the left of one of them? Where do I get the printout of all the hands everyone here has played over the last 6 months? When my juicy seat comes free can you give me a shout, I’m just nipping into Bobby’s Room to take some notes on the hands being played in there!”
Kanabar admits he has no issue with players who like to use third party software, but has received “overwhelming feedback from players that they would prefer not to use this software but are forced to because they would be at a disadvantage against the players that are deploying it against them.”

Players who are worried about their opponents trying to bypass these changes can rest assured that Kanabar and his team have thought of everything possible and steps are in place to prevent those players attempting to gain an advantage over others.

“We have made sure that we all our homework has been done before pushing the go button and delivering these improvements.”

New poker malware sees your cards

According to findings from ESET security research a new malware program is infecting online poker players game time on PokerStars & Full Tilt Poker and taking images of their hands and then sending them back to the user so they have a huge advantage when playing against them.

The virus called Win32/Spy.Odlanor, or just Odlanor focuses solely on poker players online and allows the author of the virus to take screenshots of the unsuspecting opposing players hands.

Many players download the virus without knowing as it can hide itself in programs such as Tournament Shark, Poker Calculator Pro, Smart Buddy, and Poker Office, which many online poker players download.

Once downloaded it will search for the PC users poker software and send a screenshot of the players ID online so allowing the author to search for them online and sit against them on the same poker tables.

ESET say that at present they only know of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker that is being infected by this new virus that was first spotted in March 2015.

Currently the virus is most active in Eastern European countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Kazahstan, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. There are no known cases in the UK and western countries but ESET says this does not mean it is not there.

IGT Wins Multi-Hand Poker U.S. Patent

nternational Game Technology (IGT) has announced today that its operating company was recently issued U.S. Patent No. 9,105,158. This patent grants IGT’s operating company exclusive rights in the field of multi-hand poker functionality in video poker games through November 2016. This pivotal patent is central to many of IGT’s industry-leading multi-hand video poker games including All-Star Poker TM, Ultimate X Poker TM, Hyper Bonus Poker TM, Triple Play™ Five Play ™ Ten Play™ Draw Poker and many other five, ten, 25, 50 and 100 play IGT video poker products.

“Multi-hand poker remains a pillar of IGT’s industry-leading video poker product portfolio,” said Jacob Lanning, IGT Vice President of Product Management. “This important patent enables IGT to maintain its global leadership in video poker content creation and deployment and allows the Company to continue to create proven game themes that are often some of the highest-earning titles on our customers’ floors.”

Austrian government to ban poker outside casinos

The Austrian government will ban all forms of poker games from outside of licensed casinos from 2020 it said in a statement, however Casinos Austria wanted the ban to be enforced as early as 2017 but has welcomed the new measures

In the statement the government plan to limit poker to licensed casino operators or electronic lotteries like win2day and WINWIN machine operators.

The law will allow for poker games to be played in pubs across the country but with limits such as a maximum of 100 players who pay €10 or less and those tournaments in pubs can only be held once in each quarter of the year. The new ruling will mean clubs such as the Concord Card Casinos will be outlawed which is welcomed by Casinos Austria and the casino giant also called for stricter prosecution laws for those who continue to ignore the new rules when they become law.

Bwin.party announce plans to close their WPTPoker skin

Bwin.party has announced plans to close their WPTPoker skin on June 3 citing plans to focus their online poker efforts on the partypoker and bwin brands.

Players spending their time on WPTPoker.com will have to find a new home. Their cyber doors will shut on June 3, and they will not reopen. The online poker room opened on the partypoker network in 2009, after party acquired the World Poker Tour (WPT) from WPTE. Whilst it never set the world alight, it would have been home to a lot of people.

A letter sent to players explaining the reason for closure cited bwin.party’s desire to concentrate all of their efforts on their two leading brands: partypoker and bwin poker. The content of the letter can be read below in full:

Dear Players,

Bwin.party has made the decision to focus our online poker efforts entirely on our lead brands: partypoker and bwin poker. This has resulted in the decision to close our WPTPoker.com site.

Please be aware that we are unable to move any balance directly from a WPTPoker.com account to a partypoker.com account.

The poker room will cease to run from June 3rd however players will have a further 3 months to withdraw their cash balance. During this period we will remove withdrawal limits. The fee will not be waived.

We understand the frustration and apologize for the inconvenience.

We also appreciate the time that players gave to WPTPoker.com. Thank you.

Players will not be allowed to transfer their funds to their partypoker account, players will have three months grace to withdraw their funds, and even if you have been hibernating for longer you can still withdraw your monies albeit through manual request to WPTPoker. Tournament dollars and tickets will be refunded, and any live event packages will still be honored.

It’s believed that the sale is connected with the impending sale of bwin.party. Last week saw 888 Holdings and a joint bid by Amaya Gaming Inc./GVC Holdings both make a move to acquire the largest online gambling outfit in the world.

888 Holdings have a relationship with the World Series of Poker (WSOP), and Amaya Gaming likewise with the European Poker Tour (EPT), both rival brands of the WPT.

Gaming agents infiltrated Bitcoin poker site to bring criminal case

A special agent with the Nevada Gaming Control Board infiltrated a Bitcoin-fueled poker website to help launch what authorities on Tuesday said was the first state-level criminal prosecution of illegal online poker.

“The industry must be licensed and controlled,” Attorney General Adam Laxalt said at a news conference, while flanked by A.G. Burnett, chairman of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, and Tony Alamo, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission.

An arrest warrant was issued against Bryan Micon, 36, in Las Vegas Justice Court on Monday on one count of operating an unlicensed interactive gaming system.

Laxalt added that the charge, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine, marks the first prosecution of a poker site that used the digital currency.

“Defending Nevada’s worldwide reputation as the gold standard of gaming integrity is a paramount concern to tens of thousands of Nevadans employed by the industry and the 41 million tourists who visit the state each year,” Laxalt said.

Court papers filed Monday state that Micon operated Seals with Clubs, which accepted Bitcoin digital currency, between March 1, 2014 and Feb. 9, 2015 “without first procuring and thereafter maintaining in effect the required licenses.”

The Gaming Control Board first learned of Seals with Clubs in August 2013, when a Belgian resident complained about the site, according to an affidavit for arrest.

In Skype conversations observed by gaming agents, Micon estimated that Seals with Clubs earned $10,000 to $12,000 profit each month. Authorities at the news conference declined to say how much of the digital currency was regularly wagered on the site.

Agent Ricardo Lopez created an account on the site in early February 2014 and used digital currency to start playing poker on the site the next month.

“I placed bets using my chips, and won some hands while losing others,” Lopez wrote, noting that the site had taken a rake, or a percentage of the pot from certain hands. “I had successfully purchased Bitcoin using U.S. currency and then gambled the Bitcoin on the website sealswithclubs.eu on two separate dates for a total of 30 hands of poker.”

Lopez compared the Bitcoin transaction to purchasing chips at a casino cage and gambling with the chips at a poker table.

The agent conducted surveillance on Micon’s home, then collected information from his social media accounts, learning that he identified himself as the “chairman” of Seals with Clubs.

In YouTube videos the agent observed, Micon offered instructions on how to load the “crypto currency” onto the poker site.

Micon was “prominently displayed in the ‘Teampro’ section of the site,” the agent wrote. “The narrative states that Bryan Micon’s team, ‘Seal Team 6,’ had worked hard to develop an Android application for Seals with Clubs. Much of the website page appears to be comedic narrative mixed in with funny photos, but it is clear Bryan Micon is not just a patron of the site but actually operates” Seals with Clubs.

When gaming agents raided Micon’s home on Feb. 11, they found that he was logged into the poker site and was editing one of the pages.

Seals with Clubs was promptly shut down in February after the raid, but Micon flew to Antigua the next day and later launched a new Bitcoin site, SwCPoker.eu.

Authorities said Micon’s last known whereabouts were in the Caribbean island nation.

On Tuesday afternoon, Micon Tweeted that he had launched a gofundme.com campaign to raise $100,000 for his legal defense.

“The price for representation will quickly deplete my funds, and I am asking for donations from anyone who feels like helping me,” Micon wrote on the site, which showed that he raised $1,000 in less than 20 minutes. “As a husband, father of a 2 year old girl, & outspoken Bitcoin advocate, I desire nothing more than to continue to be with my wife, raise my daughter, and continue to build layers on top of the Bitcoin protocol.

“The state of Nevada desires to take that away from me. Please help me fight.”

His lawyer, David Chesnoff, declined to speak about where Micon was living. No court date had been set as of Tuesday afternoon.

“Mr. Micon maintains his innocence, and we’re looking forward to litigating on what appears to be a case of first impression,” Chesnoff said. “We are going to advise our client that he’s been charged in Las Vegas and what his legal obligations are.”

Online poker is rigged

We all hear the arguments in cardrooms, on forums, and especially after a suckout occurs. The standard rebuttal is that these sites are making plenty of money, why would they risk losing everything if they juice their flops? There are a few things wrong with this rebuttal.

First, these online poker sites were making plenty of money. But how much is plenty? With increasing competition and a move towards publicly traded companies (Party Poker IPO, Empire Poker IPO, Paradise Poker takeover by SportingBet, and the pending Pacific Poker IPO), the pie is being divided up into smaller pieces while to pressure to continue growth rises. When all you have to do is spend your cash, it is easy to stay fair. Why rock the boat? But when the industry is shattering into a million tiny poker sites and your board of directors is holding you accountable for a few billion of investors’ money, you might try to squeak out a few pennies.

Second, are they really risking everything if they are certain they will not get caught? If Party Poker and Poker Stars can find subtle ways to juice their flops, it would be damn near undetectable. Over a few billion hands the difference of a fraction of a cent of rake per hand would make such deception worthwhile. So the two big questions are why and how.

Why Would Online Poker Be Rigged?

Why is simple. Money! As mentioned earlier, external and internal pressures are increasingly weighing on poker sites. Boards of directors and shareholders need to see returns, and customers need to be retained. Think of things from the perspective on an internet poker site who is considering their cash flow. They have a few problems facing them.

First, their players are going broke. Bad players will supposedly lose over the long run. Once they are gone, the poker sites are left with fewer players and therefore less rake. This must be a huge problem for poker sites. If they can tip the scales in favor of the fish occasionally, they can avoid detection. Most “lucky runs” are well within the realm of statistical probability, so they can give a loser a break every now and then to rejuvenate his rake producing bankroll.

Second, if overall growth stalls, then the only way to grow revenue is to squeeze more money per hand out of the poor saps at the tables. This is already happening. Party Poker has been peaking at 70,000 players for over a year. Their astronomical growth took them from 40,000 at peak hours to 70,000 in about a year. It has not moved from that point. Party Poker’s response was to rewrite their rake requirements to rake up to $3 from tables starting with 6 players rather than 7. This has had a huge impact on the rake generated at the 6-max tables, which have proliferated in recent months. They obviously need to squeeze their players, why not cheat them to squeeze out an extra dime per hand?

Finally, there is an intangible benefit to creating action. Not only does it produce more rake, but it gives the gambling type a feeling of exhiliration. Players feel like they were involved in a significant pot and boast of their wins and whine about their losses after the hand. No one brags up a 2 big bet win. Everyone tells the story of the 30 big bet pot they scooped.

It is obvious, then, that there is plenty of motivation to cheat. However, rigging online poker is a dangerous game. If they are accused and it is proven that there is a discepancy in the randomness of the cards, that internet poker site is done. They will be ass-raped and crucified by the playing public. Therefore, they need to insure they are not caught.

How Would Online Poker be Rigged?

There are two basic types of rigging. One is designed to retain players who would otherwise bust and leave, thus maximizing long-term rake, and one is designed to maximize the rake on an individual hand, or pump up short term rake. Each goal would require different methods.

Fluctuations are a normal part of poker. Everyone knows that. But poker sites are in a unique position where they can control those fluctuations. If a player is about to go broke and another player has done well, software could easily detect that they are at the same table. One or two bad beats will ensue and big pots will be taken by the poor player. Setting this up would not be difficult for a clever designer. As long as it does not happen to any individual player too often, it would be undetectable.

Another trick that would keep players playing is the so-called cashout curse. This is when a player withdraws and then goes on a slide, losing a chunk of change. It does not even need to be real, as long as the fear is there then people will be less inclined to withdraw their money and will continue to play. Rigging online poker to punish people who cash out would be the same as any other form of rigging.

Pump Up the Rake!

What if Party Poker intentionally dealt AA and KK to players once more than would normally occur every 1000 hands? If these monster hands generate an extra $0.50 of rake, then Party Poker would have made an extra $1,350,000 over the 2.7 billion hands they have dealt so far. While this is not a lot of money given their huge worth, imagine if they could flop an extra flush draw here, an extra out-kicked trip aces there. It would add up and put additional millions on the bottom line.

All of these internet poker sites claim to be audited by third party companies who check the veracity of their randomness claims. There are a few problems with this. The third parties verify the data given to them by the online poker site. The poker site can control what data they get to see and thus control their assessments. If a poker site were intentionally cheating, would they turn over proof to a consultant? Never! In fact, it is possible to cheat under the consultants’ noses. If a consultant were to examine 1 million flops they may not see aces flop more often than expected. However, if the consultants cannot see all of the players’ hole cards, they cannot make a judegement on randomness. Sure the flops might be random, but if three aces are out preflop, would it be too difficult to flop the last ace more often than expected and flop fewer aces when fewer aces are dealt preflop? By using the hidden nature of the players’ hole cards, the online poker sites can effectively skew the deal while appearing random.

Finally, the huge amounts of data collected by poker sites could be mined to find profitable patterns. If a player chases flush draws every time he flops them, then the software could flop him a lot of flush draws while keeping the flops random. This player will miss and fold the river often enough that other players will never know what he may have had or how likely it was. By knowing which players will bet and raise certain hands, a good data miner can create specific subtle flopping rules to entice that playr to bet and raise, increasing the rake. They could also calculate a deposit threshold for players. If they know he redeposits at $400 they may let him get there just to get the money into their system. The possibilities of effective and undetectable rigging through data mining are endless and a little scary.

So Is Online Poker Rigged? How the hell should I know? I have never sat at a table with 9 friends whose cards I could factor into calculations for the 500,000+ hands that it would likely take to uncover any statistical anomolies with an acceptable margin of error. Is it rigged? Maybe. Is that scary? Sure. The point is that these poker sites have too much motivation to juice their flops and bouy up their shitty players. Rigging their site may seem to be an easy way to go.

Poker Cheat Darren Woods Sentenced to 15-Months Behind Bars

A former World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner has been sentenced to 15-months behind bars, and ordered to pay back £1 million to the organizations, and players, that he duped during his crimes, after being found guilty of fraud by representation, in connection to online poker scams, at Sheffield Crown Court last week.

Darren Woods, 29, pleaded guilty to nine counts of fraud by false representation, after originally being charged, and maintaining his innocence, on 13 separate charges, and although 15-months is nowhere near the maximum sentence of 10-years, it’s still a victory for online poker.

The investigation into Woods behavior started in late 2011, when the Humberside Police’s Economic Crime Unit slapped a restraint order on him, and froze all of his assets. Woods, a one time 888Poker sponsored player, and Limit Hold’em coach on PokerStrategy, was in hot water after allegedly multi-accounting and creating bogus accounts to profit from affiliate payments.

Judge Paul Watson QC also ordered Woods to pay back £1m to those he had wronged, or else expect his jail sentence to be extended by a further six-years. Reports in the Grimsby Telegraph state £911,217 had been restrained, and Woods was ordered to pay £287,673 in compensation to an unnamed Gibraltar based gaming company, which would be used to pay back players that Woods had defrauded on their site. Police believe Woods made far more than the one million he is being asked to return.

Prosecutor Andrew West told the court: “At the moment, he has assets well in excess of £1.4 million.”

There is nothing, in either court reports of the Grimsby Telegraph reports that show any remorse coming from Woods, and the latter even ran with the headline: “Jailed Healing Poker Millionaire Darren Woods Insists: I’m Not the Criminal, I’m the Victim.”

Judge Watson told Woods: “You are an intelligent, able and even gifted young man but you turned your talents towards defrauding online gambling companies and cheating other players of online poker.”

He proceeded to chastise him and suggested that cheats like Woods affected the online gambling industry with people being ‘deterred if the system is unfairly balanced in favor of other players.”

The online poker players who were robbed by Woods may well be thinking: “When are we going to get our money back?”

Gordon Stables, who was representing Woods, had some good news for them: “All of those who feel they have lost out will be compensated, every last one,” said Stables before continuing to describe how his client’s name had been ‘effectively destroyed within the poker world’, and how, ‘he will not, in future, receive the sponsorship he once benefited from,’ and lastly, how his means of earning a living had been denied to him.

Woods father, Morteza Gharoon, was also sentenced. The 56-year old admitted possessing cannabis that was found at his home during the initial search, and admitted money-laundering charges. He was given a six-month suspended prison sentence, with no conditions, and had £18,910 confiscated from his accounts.

Poker program Cepheus is unbeatable, claim scientists

It may not win every hand it is dealt, but over time, no one can beat Cepheus, a computer program that scientists claim plays a near-perfect game of poker.

Unveiled in Canada on Thursday, the researchers believe that Cepheus is so good that a seasoned poker star could spend their whole life playing against it and still not come out on top.

To learn the game, Cepheus spent two months playing the equivalent of more than a billion billion hands of Texas hold’em, which is more poker games than have been played in the entirety of human history.

The feat required the number-crunching power of four thousand computer processors, each handling six billion hands every second. With each game Cepheus played, the program built up a database of cards dealt, betting decisions and outcomes. At the end of the marathon training session, the database contained 11 terabytes of information on calls, raises and folds for every hand a player could have.

Cepheus learns from an algorithm that essentially minimises its regrets: the program reviews every decision made and then learns which moves paid off and which cost it the hand. “For every single possible situation you could get into, it has a description for how you should play,” said Neil Burch, a computer scientist who helped develop Cepheus at the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group.

The program plays a variant of poker called heads-up limit hold’em, made famous by Michael Craig’s 2005 book, The Professor, the Banker and the Suicide King. The game involves two players who bet fixed amounts with a limit on the number of raises allowed.

“Cepheus starts off with a strategy that’s quite terrible,” said Burch. “But every time it plays a hand it comes up with a better strategy.”

It is impossible to make a program that wins every hand, because an opponent can always be dealt a pair of aces or another lucky hand. Instead, Cepheus plays the hand it is dealt in the best way possible. Before every decision, it checks its cards against the database and uses probability to play the best possible game, whether that means calling, raising or folding its hand.

“Cepheus loses to no one over a long enough time. You just have to play enough hands so that luck goes away,” said Burch.

The scientists describe how they created Cepheus in the latest issue of the journal Science. The program can be played online at the University of Alberta’s website.

“I’m sure we’ll get plenty of emails from people who will play 20 or 30 hands against it, win a little bit, and then happily declare victory and say Cepheus must have a bug. But while a human or another program could get lucky and beat Cepheus in a short match, nobody could do it consistently over a long match,” said Michael Johanson, a researcher at the lab.

The program marks a milestone in artificial intelligence and game theory because it makes optimal decisions in a game where only limited information is available: a player’s own cards and those face up on the table (the flop, turn and river, in poker terminology).

Until now, all of the major games that have been “solved” by computers are “perfect-information games” such as chess and checkers where the full history of the game is known to each player.

Poker and other card games are known as imperfect-information games and are much harder for computers to master because each player has only a limited amount of information on which to base their decisions.

The parallels between poker and real-life decision-making mean that card-playing programs are far more than toys. John von Neumann, the father of modern computing, was inspired by bluffing in poker to develop game theory. Versions of game-playing programs can be used to find the most effective ways to patrol coastlines for drugs traffickers, or the best way to schedule sky marshals on commercial flights.

The Canadian researchers said they have been careful not to release information about Cepheus that could be used to win fortunes on online casinos. But other computer experts could potentially recreate the program and unleash it on the web. Even if that happened, Burch is not convinced it would make a fortune from hapless online human players. “It’s like being a really good poker player. If you start beating people all the time, nobody will want to play with you,” he said.

Kara Scott and Partypoker Sever Ties After Five Years

Kara Scott is the latest professional poker player to part ways with a sponsor after her five-year affiliation with partypoker ends with 2014 drawing to a close.

Kara Scott is back on the market.

Nope, Kara Scott remains happily married; but she has signed on the dotted line of a set of divorce papers that ends a five-year relationship with partypoker. There was a time when this news would have made waves; today it barely ripples – and it goes to show the recent trend of burning professional sponsorship contracts can tinge the fingers of anyone.

In a recent interview with the PR mastermind, Warren Lush, I asked him which sponsored players had been worth their weight in gold during his time in the biz?

“I think Kara Scott is a fantastic ambassador for poker. She is an excellent TV presenter, and great with customers. We use her as a face on the mobile app, and we have enjoyed an excellent relationship for years now.” Lush told me.

She ticks every single box; proving the decision to allow people to leave – or not trying harder to get them to stay – says more of what online poker rooms are beginning to understand about the value a sponsored pro has to the company doing the hiring, than the actual ability of the person hired.

The announcement was made on Kara Scott’s Cardrunners blog.

“PartyPoker has gone through many changes and unfortunately as their focus shifted, there were fewer and fewer TV projects. As those shows disappeared, so did one of my favorite parts of the job and now my association with Party is ending. However, I’m not going anywhere. I still love playing poker and have made a lot of great friends in the industry.”

To be fair to bwin.party they did say that moving forward their rest of the world focus would be on casino products, and a concentrated effort on poker would only be made in the U.S. Scott is a globally recognized face, and spends more time on airplanes than Ted Striker, but her European base, and work within the European tour stops, doesn’t push her nicely into a New Jersey niche.

Scott follows ‘Mad’ Marvin Rettenmaier out of the door marked ‘exit’, and it will be interesting to see what happens to both Jamie Kerstetter and Scott Baumstein once their contracts come up for renewal. Ken Daneyko did buck the trend by joining the team at partypoker, but he is a former sports star, thus fitting the model of sponsored pro that seems to more appropriate in modern times.

With ties to partypoker now snipped, Scott can spend more time concentrating on her family, and she will continue to work with the ESPN and World Series of Poker (WSOP) when the summer comes rolling into her life. During her time with partypoker Scott played a pivotal role in turning TV productions of The Premier League and the Big Game into some of the greatest poker shows ever televised.

Rafa Nadal triumphs in grudge match against Ronaldo as SportStars duel

Tennis: Former World No.1 and 14-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal has beaten the Football legend Ronaldo (Brazilian) in the challenge game of Poker.

Nadal and Ronaldo had met in the Poker tournament last year, when the Spaniard had won. But this year Ronaldo wanted to take a revenge, so he challenged Nadal back in September.

Ronaldo had said he had learnt more tricks and techniques, but those could not help him, as he lost. Nadal posted the photo with Ronaldo and wrote on his Facebook account, ''I won #theduel!! A great game of poker with Ronaldo! The benefits will be donated to charity''.

The 28-year-old Mallorca resident had recently undergone a surgery and he is expected to start training for Tennis in December. Nadal has set his sight on playing in Doha and Abu Dhabi at the start of the next year.

French Internet Poker Market Falls To €57m In Q3 2014

French online gambling regulator Autorité de Régulation des Jeux En Ligne (ARJEL), has released its third quarter results for the country’s gambling industry and while sports betting gross gaming revenues were up by a massive 94% to €60 million, online poker continued its dramatic decline with revenues shrinking by 2% to just €57 million.

Poker Declines For Third Consecutive Quarter

In the third quarter, ARJEL reported a 2% fall in the country’s online poker market to €57 million, and while cash games noted a turnover drop of €59 million to €1.040 billion, tournament entries actually improved slightly by €2 million to €354 million.

Earlier this year, ARJEL President Charles Coppolani declared that poker was a losing proposition, and issued a public statement saying; “The fad is over. Basically, the online poker market may be mature.” Unfortunately, France’s quarterly results seem to be leaning in that direction, and the country has now experienced three quarters of declining revenues.

Nevertheless, while Coppolani has dismissed poker as a “fad” and “too complicated for a young audience”, the ARJEL President seems to be overlooking what is likely to be the real root cause of the problem, namely a ring-fenced market with a lack of liquidity, and a French government which has placed too high a tax burden on online poker operators.

Unappealing French iPoker Market

French online poker operators are currently subjected to an extortionate 37% tax rate, and also find themselves further disadvantaged by an estimated 45% of French players preferring to play on unlicensed sites, representing a considerable drain on France’s online poker industry. While ARJEL’s current President Coppolani seems to have overlooked just how significantly these factors have affected online poker in France, ARJEL former President Jean-François Vilotte,at least seemed to have had a better grasp on the situation and previously warned:

“Poker is going through a difficult time, but this is not something that is happening only in France, as Spain and Italy are experiencing a similar trend as well. Seen from a broader perspective, this is a problem of legalized markets competing against non-legalized ones. If legalized markets won’t learn how to become more flexible and adjust themselves quicker to what people want, they will keep doing the work for illegal websites and help them to win against their legal competitors.”

In addition, this uncompetitive situation has recently affected the country’s players and on September 26th, Europoker.fr officially shut its doors leaving between €300,000 and €500,000 of customers’ bankrolls and bonuses stuck in their online accounts.

Signs That ARJEL May Finally Be Addressing Shortcomings

However, there are at last signs that France’s regulator is beginning to see the need to improve the condition of its online poker market, and Coppolani recently met with a select group of French players and journalists in an effort to improve communication between ARJEL and the players in the future. Amongst a number of issues he has promised to consider is the need to introduce more poker games to the French online poker community, to reduce tax for online poker operators, and to share liquidity with other European countries, such as the UK, Spain and Italy.

Sports Betting The Outstanding Performer

While online poker continues to struggle from a number of factors, France’s gambling regulator ARJEL had nothing but praise for the country’s sports betting industry, which reported gross gaming revenue (GGR) of €60 million, up by 94% compared to the €31 million generated in Q3 last year.

Helping France’s sports betting balance sheet was the country’s promising performance at the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, which saw the national team reach the Quarter-finals before losing 1-0 to eventual winners Germany. While French bookies took €47 million from punters during the World Cup, French sports betting in general was up by 34% to €245 million in Q3, with football betting the most popular attraction with 63% of the action. Tennis proved the next most popular sport with 24% of total sports wagering, while horse racing continued to wane, falling by 7% in GGR to €238 million.