Poker News - Report issued on attacks against gambling Web sites

Report issued on attacks against gambling Web sites
More has been learned on the attacks that have plagued gambling and poker Web sites – among them Full Tilt Poker — this week. A Web site called shadowserver.org, which tracks hacker activity globally, said the Distributed Denial of Service attacks are being caused by a ��...full article

More has been learned on the attacks that have plagued gambling and poker Web sites – among them Full Tilt Poker — this week.

A Web site called shadowserver.org, which tracks hacker activity globally, said the Distributed Denial of Service attacks are being caused by a network of hacker compromised computers. The report from the group said many gambling sites were affected, and their own site was a victim as well.

According to a UPI story published at majorwager.com:

The report listed more than 30 gambling sites attacked in the past week, the majority with Russian Internet addresses, but also including U.S. companies and one British site.

“Some were attacked for a few hours and others for a few days. … The desired result of the attacker is to completely disrupt service to the Web site,” reads the report. It noted that several of the sites being attacked were “fully unavailable for the last few hours.”

News and discussion sites for online gamblers noted that several poker sites were hard or impossible to access at various times over the past few days.

Here’s the whole story.

No motive for the attacks has been discovered yet.

Glutton for punishment? seda1 back for more

After a much publicized six-hour session of $500/$1,000 No-Limit Hold'em with Phil Ivey on Tuesday that left seda1 seemingly battered and broken - and $600k in the hole - the two were back at it again last night, going head-to-head in another multi-hour session at Ivey's own personal heads-up Deathmatch table at Full Tilt Poker.

This time though, it looks like seda1 emerged a little less the worse for wear - even taking a $195,000 pot of his own, miraculously hitting a set on the turn despite getting all-in behind on the flop.

#img: lou-diamond-phillips_5228.jpg: left: How far has Lou Diamond Phillips fallen off the pop culture map? Didn't even make the "possible seda1" rumor list. Compare: Kimbo Slice and Razor Ramon both did.#

Nonetheless, although totals for the session were undetermined, Ivey still took the lion's share of the biggest pots - including the biggest, for $251,935. Ironically, it was also after hitting a set on the turn. Except he waited until he actually hit the set before getting it all-in.

Check out all the big pots from the latest session over in the PL.com MarketPulse section, plus the rest of the Top 10 biggest Hold'em pots won online over the last day, week and month.

Also on a side note: the mysterious identity of seda1 was apparently revealed over in the 2+2 forums last night (although still highly speculative and unconfirmed), with much less fanfare than expected.

Why? The unidentified rounder apparently isn't the sports or entertainment star, such as Jay-Z or Gilbert Arenas, the railbirds so desperately wanted it to be.

It's likely a less-than-famous amateur poker player from Beverly Hills named Shawn Sedaghat. Check the 2+2 forum thread for the details.

Here's the hand history for the latest $250k stomper:

Full Tilt Poker Game #5348468724: Table Ivey Deathmatch - $500/$1000 - No-Limit Hold'em - 21:53:32 ET - 2008/02/21
Seat 1: Phil Ivey ($125,967.75)
Seat 2: seda1 ($173,970.75)
seda1 posts the small blind of $500
Phil Ivey posts the big blind of $1,000
The button is in seat #2

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Seda1 raise to $3,000

Phil Ivey raises to $9,000
seda1 calls $6,000

*** FLOP ***

#Jc-#Ah-#9s

Phil Ivey bets $13,000
seda1 calls $13,000

*** TURN ***

#Jc-#Ah-#9s-#6h

Phil Ivey bets $33,000
seda1 has 15 seconds left to act
seda1 has requested TIME
seda1 raises to $143,000
Phil Ivey calls $70,967.75, and is all-in

seda1 shows #As-#Ks

Phil Ivey shows #6c-#6d

Uncalled bet of $39,032.25 returned to seda1

*** RIVER ***

#Jc-#Ah-#9s-#6h-#3s

seda1 shows a pair of aces
Phil Ivey shows three of a kind, sixes
Phil Ivey wins the pot ($251,935) with three of a kind, sixes

*** SUMMARY ***

Total pot $251,935.50 | Rake $0.50
Board: #Jc-#Ah-#9s-#6h-#3s
Seat 1: Phil Ivey (big blind) showed #6c-#6d and won ($251,935) with three of a kind, sixes
Seat 2: seda1 (small blind) showed #As-#Ks and lost with a pair of aces

Tracking and analyzing close to 20 million online poker hands every month, the PokerListings.com MarketPulse section is the most comprehensive, real-time statistical "snapshot" of the online poker industry.

Biggest Hold'em pots with full hand histories; traffic volume and trends across all poker rooms; where to find the juiciest games; statistical breakdowns for all Hold'em limits across heads-up, short-handed and full ring games... all stats you can find now, with more categories being added in the near future.

Data is also updated hourly, so check back frequently. And take advantage of the Real-Time TableFinder to search for and access your perfect game, tournament or freeroll directly.

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DDoS Attacks Hamper Online Poker Sites
A wave of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks targeting major online poker and gambling sites has at times impaired the functionality of several of those major sites in recent days. According to a report at the Shadowserver...

WSOPC heads to Hawkeye State

But the World Series of Poker Circuit has landed there for its latest stop at the Horseshoe Casino and Hotel, transforming the small city into a bit of a poker mecca, and its 11-event schedule has already seen poker players turning out in droves.

Although there hasn't yet been a slew of star-player sightings, a solid stable of Midwesterners have been putting on a great show during the past week.

Event 1

Monday saw the first event kick off, the $300 No Limit Hold'em tournament. A surprising 492 players ponied up the buy-in for a shot at the top prize of $42,942 and the WSOPC championship ring that goes to each event winner.

Joel Brown, a 22-year-old college student at the University of Nebraska, came to the final table Tuesday with almost half of the $1.5 million in chips in play, only to find himself under attack from the outset. Michael Armstrong wrested the chip lead away from Brown when his pocket jacks defeated Brown's A-K, and he continued to hold that lead as the action led to a heads-up brawl between him and Brown.

Leading by a 2-1 margin, Armstrong looked good to deliver the final blow and take the championship, but Brown wouldn't go away. After 100 hands of play, it looked as if Armstrong had found his moment when, on a 10-7-3 flop, Brown moved all-in with 10-4.

Armstrong called the bet with his dominating 10-6 but, when a four came on the turn, the tide had changed once again and Brown assumed an edge that he wouldn't release.

Three hands later, on a K-J-6-5 board, Brown bet out with an innocuous K-2 and Armstrong responded with an all-in push. Brown reluctantly called but found himself in decent shape when Armstrong could only muster a 7-5 to go against him.

When the river blanked out, Brown had a WSOPC win. The final-table results were:

Place	Name	Hometown	Prize
1st	Joel Brown	Lincoln, Neb.	$42,942
2nd	Michael Armstrong	Chicago, Ill.	$23,051
3rd	Eric Francois	Bellevue, Neb.	$11,454
4th	Don Marchi	Leawood, Kan.	$10,022
5th	Corey Ferger	Rock Falls, Ill.	$8,590
6th	Glenn Wallin	Dixon, Ill.	$7,159
7th	Duane Gerleman	Ridgeway, Iowa	$5,727
8th	Larry Cascio	Bellevue, Neb.	$4,295
9th	Tim Laws	Columbia, Mo.	$2,863

Event 2

Tuesday also saw the second event, the $500 No Limit Hold'em tournament, play down from its starting field of 223 to a champion.

Professional player Danny Walker carried a slim lead into the final table with $203,000 in chips and, from the start, he controlled the play at the final table. After suffering a little hiccup and tripling up the short-stacked Jason Vargas, Walker eliminated Blake Cahail on the next hand to extend his lead until Larry Christensen passed him during three-handed play.

This seemed to spark Walker's competitive fires, as he went on the attack against Christensen. Surprisingly, he took a hand when he moved all-in with a ten high and Christensen could only muster a nine high to compete with him, giving the chip lead back to Walker.

Shortly after hand, on a K-J-6 board, Christensen moved in with K-2 and was crushed by Walker's K-J for two pair, eliminating Christensen in third place.

Heads-up against John Kurtenbach, Walker held nearly a 3-1 lead, but Kurtenbach chipped up to cut that lead to 2-1. During a break in the action, the two players agreed on a chop for the majority of the money. They played on, however, for the title and the WSOPC championship ring, per Iowa law. In the end, Walker flopped a pair with 9-8 on a Q-J-9 board, turned two pair when another jack hit, and filled the gut-shot draw when a ten came on the river. Kurtenbach couldn't show a better hand and Walker pulled down the $500 event at the WSOPC.

The final-table results were:

Place	Name	Hometown	Prize
1st	Danny Walker	Omaha, Neb.	$34,608*
2nd	John Kurtenbach	Omaha, Neb.	$19,035*
3rd	Larry Christensen	Kennebec, S.D.	$9,734
4th	Scott Buller	Lincoln, Neb.	$7,571
5th	Ron Miller	Mosinee, Wis.	$6,489
6th	Steve Spratlen	Lincoln, Neb.	$5,408
7th	Daniel Sindelar	Omaha, Neb.	$3,245
8th	Jason Vargas	Omaha, Neb.	$3,245
9th	Blake Cahail	Columbia, Mo.	$2,163

* Does not reflect deal.

Event 3

Wednesday saw the second $300 No-Limit Hold'em event hit the felt with 374 runners battling for the title and the $33,742 first-place prize. Once they worked their way down to the final table, they came back on Thursday.

Two of the short stacks at the start of the final table were able to get into the game through key double-ups early on. David Andrew outran Josh Shmerl's pocket jacks with K-J when he rivered a king, and Rick Behrendt used an aggressive all-in style to build himself up from the bottom of the leaderboard to the top.

As play winnowed the field down to the final three, Behrendt still held a sizable lead over Shmerl and Andrew but was unable to drive to the victory.

Shmerl took around 450k in chips from Behrendt when Shmerl made two pair with K-5 against him, and it was Shmerl who dispatched Behrendt from the final table when both had pocket pairs. Shmerl's pocket pair was bigger, though, as his kings stood up to Behrendt's pocket tens to eliminate Behrendt in third.

Shmerl and Andrew swapped the lead on several occasions during heads-up action. After losing a pot with pocket eights to Shmerl's pocket nines to even up the chip counts, Andrew began to seize control. He ground Shmerl's stack down relentlessly.

Then Shmerl made the mistake of slow-playing pocket aces, and let Andrew see the flop with 6-5. When it came down 6-5-x, Shmerl went all-in only to see that he had allowed Andrew to hit two pair. When the turn and river didn't improve Shmerl's hand, David Andrew had captured the title.

The final-table results were:

Place	Name	Hometown	Prize
1st	David Andrew	Bondurant, Iowa	$33,742
2nd	Josh Shmerl	Wauconda, Ill.	$17,413
3rd	Rick Behrendt	Ravenna, Neb.	$8,707
4th	Jason Bartholomew	Sarasota, Fla.	$7,618
5th	Amy Miller	Cedar Rapids, Iowa	$6,530
6th	Chris Drew	Omaha, Neb.	$5,442
7th	David Sawyer	Lincoln, Neb.	$4,353
8th	Sean Johnson	Chamberlain, S.D.	$3,265
9th	Jeff Hubbard	Lincoln, Neb.	$2,177

Weekend action at the Horseshoe Casino will bring the $300 Omaha Hi-Lo final table on Friday, the $1500 No-Limit tournament on Saturday and the $500 H.O.R.S.E event on Sunday. It's all paving the way for the start of the $5,000 Circuit Championship Event Monday, where PokerListings.com will be in attendance to provide live coverage.

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PokerListings players make the grade at FTOPS VII

Among the money winners were a few PokerListings.com players. Several players cashed in the Main Event on Sunday, while one player even managed a second-place finish during the series.

The first PokerListings.com player to make an appearance in the money was jwerk, who made it to 52nd place in Event 9, the $300+$22 No-Limit Hold'em tournament hosted by Erick Lindgren.

The tournament had a $1 million guarantee and saw 5,637 players turn out to make it $1,691,100. Lindgren made FTOPS history by winning the event himself, but jwerk made a respectable $2,959 cash for his 52nd place out of the 738 players who were paid out in the event.

Event 10 also paid out for a PokerListings.com player. Of the 204 who cashed in the $1,000+$60 No-Limit Hold'em six-max event, vikihris landed in 194th place for $1,484 from the $1,649,000 prize pool.

#img: ftops-vii-event-15_17148.jpg: left#

It was in Event 15, however, that PokerListings players got their biggest bite of a prize pool. With Yahoobie coming in second for $46,645, and TeMEPyT hitting 21st spot for $1,815, they brought home a pretty big chunk of the $363,000 prize pool in the $200+$16 No-Limit Hold'em six-max event.

On Saturday, 849 players showed up for the $1.5 million guaranteed, two-day No-Limit Hold'em event hosted by Scott Fischman. One of those players was PokerListings player jotaele1, who cashed in 160th place in the event.

The FTOPS VII many players wanted to take on was the Main Event. Hosted by Allen Cunningham on Sunday, the $500+$35 No-Limit Hold'em main event offered a $2 million guaranteed prize pool. By the time the cards were shuffled and dealt, 5,291 players had registered to play, making it a $1,122,500 prize pool instead.

Four PokerListings players cashed in on that event, with herod79 faring the best in 62nd place. The four players who cashed were:

Place	Name	Prize
62nd	herod79	$4,629
160th	jakchel	$1,719
222nd	kingdevine	$1,375
256th	All In Reed	$1,375

For more information about this and other events, visit Full Tilt Poker.

Related Articles:

• Bad Day for Pros at FTOPS VII
• FTOPS VII: H.A., Razz Find Winners
• FTOPS VII: Clements' Event Goes to Ilikeaces86

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Lunch with Jack Effel: Changes to the 2008 WSOP, Part 1
The other day I was invited to lunch with WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel. I really like Jack and figured he would have a comp so I accepted. I brought my wife along as well, as I knew that he would have to be nice to me...

Update: Bodog domain dispute heats up
It looks like the conflict between gaming / entertainment conglomerate BodogLife and 1st Technology, LLC is coming to a head yet again. This week witnessed two dispatches from BodogLife, a press release and a blog entry from BodogLife owner Calvin Ayre, both of which ��...full article

It looks like the conflict between gaming / entertainment conglomerate BodogLife and 1st Technology, LLC is coming to a head yet again. This week witnessed two dispatches from BodogLife, a press release and a blog entry from BodogLife owner Calvin Ayre, both of which took a heated tone in addressing recent tactics by 1st Technology, LLC in the ongoing legal dispute between the two parties.

Both the press release and the blog entry spend extensive time driving home the argument that the company 1st Technology is suing, Data Entry and Domain Management, S.A., is not now, nor has it ever been, a part of Bodog. Rather, the company in question in characterized by Ayre as a separate organization that provided some services to Bodog.

Excerpt from Ayre’s blog:

4. And the latest reports that some of our advertising contacts being issued subpoenas? No amount of digging through subpoenas on the part of the patent trolls is going to make the wrong company the right company or put assets into a company that was asset-less since before the litigation started. My advice to anyone getting one of these is to just say you have never worked for Bodog.com (you cannot work for a domain), or the company they mention in the documents and then just throw the thing in the garbage and treat the Trolls with the respect they deserve, ignore them entirely.

5. Let’s also not forget that I don’t know this guy at all, and neither do any of the other many companies he is victimizing. He made the conscious decision to attack one of our suppliers for personal gain at their expense, and in this effort has cost me and a lot of my good friends personally when our domains got dragged into this and he unilaterally shut them off without contacting us in advance. This is not someone I would feel inclined to hold back on as I cover this the way I see it. In my opinion Scott Lewis represents all that is evil in business today and I call them as I see them on my blog.

Excerpt from the press release:

As is clearly stated by the Antigua Gaming Commission, Bodog (now Bodoglife.com on the Internet) has been based in Antigua since fall 2006 and had been previously operating there under a license that was obtained when purchased from BetWWTS. Shortly thereafter, Bodog obtained its own license from the Antigua Gaming Commission, months prior to 1st Tech receiving a default judgment against Bodog’s former independent domain management service provider.

The Bodoglife.com domain was established shortly after the original Bodog domain was lost and has never received redirects from Bodog.com. The Bodoglife.com domain is no way connected with 1st Tech’s case and it stretches credulity for 1st Tech to claim that relationships between Bodog and its suppliers in relation to this domain could be in any way relevant to 1st Tech’s effort to collect its questionable default judgment from an independent, defunct, and essentially insolvent ex-service provider. No subpoena that is targeted at anything to do with Bodog.com should affect Bodoglife.com or .net advertising relationships.

Ayre blog entry located here.

Poker Room Review: Route 66 Casino Hotel, Albuquerque, NM
New Mexico has a nice cluster of poker rooms situated within 30 minutes of the corridor between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. There are seven rooms in all – though some don't operate full time, and only one has a full host of games...

Online poker bill introduced in California

According to Capitol Weekly, the newspaper of California government and politics, Bill AB 2026 would order a study on the federal online gambling laws that ban Internet poker and see if the state could regulate the online game for California residents.

Levine said in the newspaper that the federal law appears to leave room for states to legalize online gambling as long as the player and server hosting the online game are both located in the state. His bill proposes a study to find out if that's true.

He is referring to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act that was passed as a part of the Safe Port Act in 2006. The Act hasn't been fully implemented yet, but when it is it will effectively ban online gambling prohibiting money transactions related to illegal online gambling.

However, the Act doesn't define what illegal online gambling is. Instead, it leaves that open for the states to determine.

That means a state could potentially allow online gambling for its residents. While there are many issues to work out in setting up an intra-state online poker site, Levine told Capital Weekly the beauty of a one-state system is that the legislature and the governor will ultimately be able to control decisions such as who will be allowed to set up online operations, whether and how tax will be assessed, and more.

"It would be regulated," Levine said in the Capitol Weekly. "We don't know what the state's piece will be, but it will be a regulated entity."

He also believes online gambling operated in a regulated environment in the state would ensure consumer protection for Internet gamblers. He points out that if a player is playing legally on a site that is legal in California, there is recourse if a site refuses to pay a customer.

For now, his bill is just a study to see if this system would even be feasible in the face of federal law. But he did say if it's viable, his bill could evolve into an actual push to re-legalize online poker in the state.

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