Fifteen years ago, Matt Damon and Edward Norton didn’t have any idea that they were about to change the game of poker forever. Now, in 2013, the two well-known actors are ready to take the poker world by storm yet again.
According to deadline.com, Damon and Norton will once again play characters Mike McDermott and Lester “Worm” Murphy in a sequel to the famous poker movie “Rounders.” Miramax announced that the sequel will finally be made two months after screenwriters David Levien and Brian Koppleman confirmed finishing the plot for the continuation of the story that began in a New York underground poker room.
This time, the story will leave its American roots and go international. Rounders 2 will be filmed in Paris, but will also feature the famous Sin City – Las Vegas. Unfortunately for John Malkovich fans, there won’t be any Teddy KGB involved in the sequel. A new villain will replace Malkovich’s character and the producers are targeting 70-year-old Robert de Niro.
The budget for the new film has yet to be discussed but almost certainly will be bigger than the original film. The 1998 Rounders had a budget of $12 million and grossed $8.5 million during its opening weekend. Eventually, it made $22,912,409 domestically.
The sequel has what it takes to become much more popular than the original version. In a period when poker was not played at such a large scale professionally, Rounders ranked 80 in the top 1998 movies in domestic gross revenue. Now, after 15 years and a massive online poker boom, Rounders 2 is set to become a box-office success.
http://www.pokerupdate.com/
Poker News
Ladbrokes has officially announced that its transition from Microgaming's MPN network to Playtech's iPoker Network will take place on December 21, promising that the move will bring with it a number of advantages for its loyal players.
Along with improved software that provides "a more user-friendly interface" that enhances multi-tabling for grinders, comes increased liquidity from joining the world's top-ranked online poker network. Players can expect a wider choice of cash and tournament tables, promotions that are bigger and better, larger prizepools for leaderboard enthusiasts, improved release of bonuses, and a newly-structured VIP loyalty program that provides better rewards at all levels of play.
Existing Ladbrokes players will be informed via email prior to Dec. 21 of the steps required in downloading the new poker software. The new software must be downloaded, as Ladbrokes will no longer be part of Microgaming's poker network. However, the UK-based bookmaker's online casino games will continue with Microgaming until the early part of 2014.
Account balances and poker loyalty points will remain intact following the move to the improved online poker environment found at iPoker. As a gesture of appreciation to loyal Ladbrokes players, the highest VIP level achieved during the last 12 months will be granted to all players for the first month following the transition.
Any active bonuses will also be moved to Ladbrokes accounts at iPoker. Unused tokens or tournament tickets will not make the move and will instead be converted into cash and credited to the new accounts.
The current rakeback scheme will not be in effect under the new software. But a new Ladbrokes VIP Shop allows for flexibility in converting points to cash or tournament tickets at the discretion of each player. More precise information regarding the new VIP player loyalty program shall be forthcoming before the Dec. 21 transition date.
layers will be required to choose a new screen name. The same nickname can be used only if it is not already in use by another iPoker player. However, current Ladbrokes usernames and passwords required to log in will remain in effect.
The iPoker Network currently holds down second place in cash game player traffic worldwide in rankings provided by PokerScout. The addition of Ladbrokes will mean increased action at the tables and solidify iPoker as the world's leading online poker network.
MPN, meanwhile, has cracked the top ten in the global market and has been seen as bucking the trend in online poker as of late. That trend finds player numbers declining in the industry overall at a rate of 15% less than this time last year. The loss of Ladbrokes may cause the network to relinquish its top ten status.
To further put a strain on MPN's recent progress, the exit of Ladbrokes will be followed by a departure from Unibet that will occur in Q1 of 2014. Unibet has teamed with Relax Gaming and will strike out on its own with a poker site that plans to direct its marketing strategy toward casual players.
http://www.pokerupdate.com/
A Macau-based high-stakes poker player stole the show at the mixed-games tables last week; he outperformed big names such as Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, Alexander “PostflopAction” Kostritsyn, Patrik “FinddaGrind” Antonius, and Rui Cao, earning almost $668k in 1,678 hands.
Online pro "samrostan," also known as The Artist, came up big in two major 8-Game sessions that secured him the top spot in last week’s online winners’ leaderboard. He was involved in the biggest pot of the month so far, according to HighStakesDB.
While playing with Isildur1 and PostflopAction, samrostan won a $265k pot in a Pot-Limit Omaha hand on Tuesday. Both Blom and Kostritsyn moved all-in on an 8-3-10 rainbow flop after aggressive pre-flop plays, but it was the Asian player who had the edge. Holding bullets in the hole, samrostan eventually made a straight on the river that helped him take down the huge pot. He was back at the 8-Game tables on Friday, continuing where he left off three days ago and winning over $308k.
The Macau-based player also played 2-7 Triple Draw last week, but didn’t enjoy the same success as in the mixed games. He lost $123k at the 2-7 TD tables. Nevertheless, he still tops the winning leaderboard with a major $594,437 profit.
The second big winner in the last seven days is FinddaGrind. Antonius had a great start to the week, winning over $275k at the $2,000/4,000 2-7 TD tables mostly thanks to Russian Kostritsyn, who leaked around $226k in just 1 hour and 40 minutes and 212 hands.
Niklas “ragen70” Heinecker seems to be unstoppable at the Draw tables, managing every time to finish a session with a profit. Last week, he played just 741 hands, but still won over $238k.
The biggest winner on PokerStars is Russian No-Limit Hold’em specialist "forhayley." He played 116 sessions and 10,213 hands in the second week of December, winning $156,124.
The losers’ leaderboard is dominated by Blom. The Swede was the biggest loser for the second straight week with -$423,887. Overall, in December, he played 16,411 poker hands from NLHE and PLO to Limit Omaha 8-or-Better and 2-7 TD, losing $847k. Swiss Ronny “ronnyr37617” Kaiser is next with -$215k in the last seven days playing mostly PLO and 2-7 TD.
Career-wise, however, Kaiser is still a winner on Full Tilt. Since 2010, he has won $839,922 in 133,291 hands at $25/$50NL and higher. After a terrific restart last year, reaching the $2 million mark, ronnyr37617 is on a major downswing in the last ten months. He has taken hit after hit, losing almost $1.3 million. How will his bankroll look at the end of 2013 if the downswing continues?
http://www.pokerupdate.com/
Las Vegas Sands has scrapped its plan to build a hotel and casino mega-complex on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain, the company announced Friday.
“After months of on-going discussions with various levels of the Spanish government and continued internal due diligence, Las Vegas Sands Corp. said today that a formal proposal to invest more than $30 billion to develop a series of integrated resorts in Madrid, Spain will not be forthcoming,” the company announced.
According to local reports, the Spanish government would not concede to some of the demands made by the US casino group, including a smoking exemption.
Sheldon Adelson’s audacious plan to recreate Las Vegas in Spain included building a total of twelve separate mega-resorts with enough rooms to house 36,000 guests, and six casinos with 1600 tables and over 18,000 slots.
The plans list an expected initial development spend of $7.9bn, and would have generated 250,000 jobs.
The project hinged on winning large concessions from the government. Madrid had already agreed to cut casino tax by 75% and Las Vegas Sands was pushing for an exemption to the smoking ban in public places—something the government was reportedly considering. Sands was even reportedly pressuring Spain to limit online gaming.
According to a report in El Mundo, the government informed Las Vegas Sands that it rejected certain demands that it considered “non-negotiable,” and the company subsequently retracted its proposal.
The company plans to aggressively pursue opportunities in Asia, including Japan and Korea, to “dramatically enhance their tourism offering through the development of integrated resorts.”
http://pokerfuse.com/
Last Tuesday's subcommittee hearing at which U.S. lawmakers looked at Rep. Joe Barton's Internet Poker Freedom Act of 2013 has allowed the federal proposal to gain a certain degree of newfound respect.
It's a respect that had perhaps been missing when the Texas Republican first introduced H.R. 2666 in July. Rep. Lee Terry (R-Nebraska) indicated as much when he stated near the end of the hearing that he and some of his colleagues were not enamored of the bill upon their first reading over the summer.
Terry jokingly said that lawmakers were of the mind that Barton's poker-only bill may have been "way out there" regarding certain language contained within the proposal. But the Nebraska legislator admitted that his colleague from Texas has always been viewed as being somewhat on the "cutting edge" of lawmaking.
Terry further stated that although the hearing included a few lighthearted and whimsical moments on whether or not God or Satan are the main backers of H.R. 2666, the legalization of online gambling in the U.S. is a serious matter and should be analyzed and debated accordingly.
That scrutiny is now underway and it finds lawmakers likely looking at the Internet Poker Freedom Act under a new light. Perhaps part of the reason for the proposal's improved standing was the strong showing at the hearing by Geoff Freeman of the American Gaming Association and John Pappas of the Poker Players Alliance. Both were quite convincing in their pro-Internet poker arguments.
H.R. 2666 may still be a longshot at finding approval among a majority of lawmakers. However, the odds of that happening have improved following "The State of Online Gaming" hearing before the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade last week.
Barton readily admitted that his bill is not perfect. But at least H.R. 2666 has gained favorable recognition and now has the opportunity to possibly gain some momentum toward the goal of regulating Internet poker at the federal level.
http://www.pokerupdate.com/
Police and agents from the Arizona Department of Gaming (ADG) raided five poker establishments including private poker clubs and a poker supply shop in Phoenix last Thursday. The clubs mainly offered low stakes tournament games.
A statement released by the ADG explained that this was “a combined effort to pursue concerns over alleged illegal gambling operations throughout Phoenix.”
Poker equipment, chips, eleven tables and a total of $5k in cash was confiscated. Two people were arrested on charges not related to poker. The police collected personal details from players and staff with a view to possible prosecutions.
Club owners argue that poker is not illegal in Arizona, but the ADG disagrees. Theoretically, it is legal to play poker with friends, as long as there is no profit being made by anyone arranging the game, including from the sale of food and drink.
The accusation is that the clubs that were raided have in some way flouted these rules to make a profit.
The establishments raided include AZ Poker Supply, Cracked Aces, Joker Social Club, Pocket Rockets and Poker Play.
The clubs have become attractive venues for players dissatisfied with the alternatives which involve playing at licensed casinos on tribal lands. Poker activist, Howard Lee—who was himself convicted of felonies related to running poker games in 2012—argues that the tribal poker games are over priced, with pots automatically skimmed to fund a jackpot, and carry a high rake.
Fellow activist John Schnaubelt maintains a website of poker clubs, PhoenixPokerClubs.com, but is accused by some of their owners of waging a campaign to close them down. Schnaubelt defends himself with the argument that once poker players have nowhere to go and are forced to play only the tribal games, they will put political pressure on the state and municipal government to create legal venues.
http://pokerfuse.com/
Poker Snowie, the poker education software that boasts “near perfect” game theory instruction, has released a major update that now allows subscribers to play directly against the engine itself.
The new “Challenge” feature lets you play heads up or in ring games against up to nine Snowie opponents. You can even play two tables at once. All played hands are uploaded automatically to their servers, allowing you to immediately review your play in the analysis section of the tool.
Power Snowie uses a proprietary neural network system trained over billions of hands, that Snowie claims makes it the best NL strategy engine in the world.
The tool centers around hand analysis and review. You can import import hands from real-money sessions played online or construct your own scenarios. The engine then analyzes the hands and points out mistakes and blunders. It gives recommendations for each action on each street of the hand, including the EV (expected value) of each decision. It even indicates when mixed strategies (say, raising and calling a percentage of the time) are optimal.
The new facility to play directly against Snowie will allow players to test the burning question—just how good is the engine? It won the endorsement of Dan 'Jungleman’ Cates who had the chance to play one-on-one with the bot in October; now anyone interested can test their mettle.
http://pokerfuse.com/
Tony G has launched an online poker room dedicated to Open Face Chinese Poker (OFCP). The poker room is available on his gambling site TonyBet.
Prior to the launch, he had been titillating his followers with veiled hints of exciting new developments: “I have the biggest thing since the invention of online poker in my hands and I want to share it with all of you!”
Four varieties of the game are presented; Classic, Pineapple, 13-Card and Turbo. An explanation of each game and its rules has been published in the poker room website. Tony states that the site will only offer OFCP.
The announcement was publicized on PokerNews, the affiliate site founded by the Lithuanian/Australian poker pro. with a quote from the man himself:
When all my poker mates became crazy about OFCP I couldn’t just sit there and watch them play each other all day long until they were at each other’s throats. I had to find more opponents for them. That’s when I decided to bring the game out to the masses and give poker pros some fresh meat.
http://pokerfuse.com/
Poker players are protesting ewallet Paypal over reported connections with Iovation, an online fraud detection service that has ties to UltimateBet.
The relationship was first publicized by poker journalist John Mehaffey, who discovered that Iovation was on a PayPal list of “non-exclusive examples of the actual third parties to whom we currently disclose your account information.”
The article has spawned a thread on 2+2, where angered players are encouraging others to complain to Paypal.
The suggested text of one prewritten email states Iovation “was established by the former operators of online poker sites Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. These sites were knowingly operated to commit theft of tens of millions of dollars from their customers.”
Previous player anger led to Nevada online poker entrant Ultimate Poker severing its relationship with the verification company in May this year.
Michael Josem, one of the two players who carried out a forensic investigation that exposed the cheating scandal posted: “People who steal money should be in prison, and leading financial organisations like Paypal should not be trusting them with our personally identifiable information.” He tweeted:
Hey @AskPayPal -Stop sharing my personal information with Iovation, the former operators of AbsolutePoker & UltimateBet
— Michael Josem (@michaeljosem) December 12, 2013
The protests in May led to Iovation being investigated by the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Iovation CEO and founder, Greg Pierson, was directly implicated in the UltimateBet cheating scandal and subsequent coverup by taped recordings of conversations made by cheater Russ Hamilton.
http://pokerfuse.com/
PokerStars parent company Rational Group’s application for online gaming in New Jersey has been suspended for two years. The group has this time to address concerns over its executives, in particular an outstanding inditement over PokerStars founder Isai Scheinberg.
According to statements from both the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) and PokerStars, as reported by Forbes’ Nathan Vardi, its license application has been suspended, although a review of its application may come if “circumstances change” during this period.
The reason for the denial is due to the “continued association with its founder, Isai Scheinberg,” according to the report.
Scheinberg formally stepped down from his executive position in July 2012 as part of its civil settlement with the United States Department of Justice. Scheinberg himself remains under federal indictment.
He has recently hired former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey as his lawyer, according to Vardi’s report.
“The Division, within that period [of two years], may consider a request for relief to reactivate the application if significantly changed circumstances are demonstrated,” reads the DGE’s expansive statement.
“We are disappointed that the N.J. Division of Gaming Enforcement has suspended the review of our application at this time,” Eric Hollreiser, a Rational Group’s Head of Corporate Communications, said in a statement to Forbes. “We note that the DGE will resume the review of our application if our circumstances change. We will remain in open dialogue with the DGE and will update them on changes in our situation as they occur.”
PokerStars formed a partnership with Resorts Casino Atlantic City in order to pursue US online gaming, following the collapse of a previous deal with the Atlantic Club.
The big winners today are the incumbent operators who successfully launched online gaming in the state last month.
The market is currently headed by PartyPoker NJ, which operates a network that includes its own brand and a Borgata poker room. WSOP, All American Poker Network/888, Ultimate Poker and Betfair are also live for real-money online poker and casino games.
http://pokerfuse.com/
