The letter was addressed to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve System Board of Governors Chairman Ben Bernanke. In it, the two senators express their concerns that the regulations being set up constitute too onerous a burden on the banks that would have to implement the ban on online gambling transactions.
Their letter reads as follows:
Dear Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke,
The effectiveness of any law is reliant on sound implementation. Federal regulations are intended to provide clarity and guidance for those subjected to their reach. The value of such regulations is to prevent non-compliance while minimizing wasted effort, time, and cost by those being regulated. Clear rules also promote interstate commerce by facilitating uniform enforcement.
In this spirit, your agencies have an opportunity to provide additional guidance in the implementation of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA). While the October Notice of Proposed Rulemaking contains certain guidance for the regulated community, it leaves sufficient ambiguity as to what sort of transactions are to be blocked. In failing to provide more detail, the proposed rules would inordinately burden every bank, credit union, credit card company, money transmitting business and payment system in the country, leading to non-uniform compliance and confusion. This issue is particularly important, as most federal and state gambling laws predate the Internet, and are less than specific as to their application to particular practices or circumstances.
The extensive public comments received on this issue highlight the likelihood that risk-averse financial institutions will simply choose to block every transaction that may be interpreted [as] or could resemble gambling, whether legal or not. Knowing that this is not your intention, we write to urge that any final rules contain a list of restricted transactions and instances that are covered by the law and the corresponding rules.
As an alternative, we suggest you consider separating the rules into those forms of activities for which there is settled federal law (i.e., defined by the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA)) and those that are not. This would allow immediate implementation for known activities, while providing greater time to determine what other transactions are to be captured.
We thank you in advance for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Sen. John E. Sununu [R-NH]
Sen. Pete Domenici [R-NM]
The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act makes it illegal for people to transfer money from banks and other financial institutions to online gambling sites, essentially tightening restrictions on the online gambling industry in the United States.
The UIGEA was passed in 2006 and has since been in the implementation process as the Treasury and Federal Reserve work together to create regulations and guidelines for the law.
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Stars, Titan traffic growing
Tracking and analyzing close to 20 million hands a month, the MarketPulse section is the most comprehensive statistical overview of online poker on the Web, and subsequently can provide some pretty illuminating numbers.
Case in point: cash-game traffic, which, continuing a strong trend over the last few months, was dominated again by PokerStars in February.
Stars was far and away the cash game leader again this month, with upwards of 21,000 players at peak times and an 18% upswing in traffic volume overall. In total: averaging a massive 13,675 real-money cash players over a 24-hour period.
A distant second overall, but also experiencing a nice upswing of 9% in February, is Full Tilt Poker. which averaged 7,631 players over each 24 hour period - up from 6,976 in January.
Next biggest increase for February goes to the leading room in the iPoker network, Titan Poker, with a 4% increase in cash game traffic bringing it to 5,252 players on average.
Also of particular interest: a significant overall rise in average traffic at both PokerStars and Full Tilt, beginning back in December 2007; both have seen a very strong jump in action, with 2-3,000 more players apiece regularly dropping in for a round at the tables.
Check out the full online traffic report here.
Other numbers of note:
Average pot size (generally indicating looser or more passive games) was up at three rooms last month - Titan Poker, Mansion Poker and Party Poker.
Titan and Mansion in particular experienced fairly big upswings, with the average pot at Titan growing 7% to $26.20 and the average pot at Mansion gaining 6% to $23.10; details here.
On the juiciest games front, Bodog Poker and Pacific Poker still lead the way in low-to-mid stakes No-Limit and Limit Hold'em. Viewed-flop percentages are still hovering around 50-54% for both, although pot sizes on average are much larger at Pacific, topping out at $164 in the mid-stakes games ($1/$2-$3/$6).
#img: phil-ivey_17464.jpg: right: Phil Ivey: Knows how to drag big pots.#
At the highest stakes, Full Tilt, PokerStars and Titan hold down the top spots decidedly, dominating a large percentage of the juicy high-stakes action.
Biggest Hold'em pot won over the last 30 days remains a massive $384,951 pot the one and only Phil Ivey took from online rival seda1 - rumored to be Beverly Hills attorney Shawn Sedaghat - at Full Tilt Feb. 19.
The two had an epic series of high-stakes $500/$1,000 No-Limit Hold'em sessions over the last few weeks, with seda1 decidedly taking the worst of it - esepcially on the 19th, when he came out a mind-noggling $600k lighter in the wallet.
To see a full breakdown of the massive $385k pot, jump to our strategy snapshot here. Or you can check out some of the other huge pots they played in the MarketPulse biggest pots section, where you'll find the biggest Hold'em pots won online over the last day, week and month.
Related Articles:
- Glutton for punishment? seda1 back for more
- Ivey crushes seda1 for $600k
- Ivey takes three $100k pots in last week
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#347 - "Michael Craig is Giving It Away" - Cleavagegate, Loose Ends, and Hope for the Future
Naturally, I didn't get to do everything I wanted for the contest and for FTOPS. I have lots of material on Event #1 about how I played (I busted David Benyamine in the first half hour when I played top...
Bodog starts more satellites for Poker Open
Bodog Poker will be hosting a Bodog Poker Open Main Event Satellite every weekday night through March 7, at 8:35 p.m. (EST). There will be 20 seats to the main event guaranteed from each satellite, regardless of how many players are registered.
The main event satellite schedule is as follows:
| Date | Buy-in |
| Feb. 26 | $50+$5 |
| Feb. 27 | $69+$6 |
| Feb. 28 | $40+$4 |
| Feb. 29 | $50+$5 |
| March 3 | $40+$4 |
| March 4 | $50+$5 |
| March 5 | $69+$6 |
| March 6 | $40+$4 |
| March 7 | $50+$5 |
The Bodog Poker Open will begin on Monday with the first of five preliminary events leading up to the main event. The main event will take place March 9 with a $470+$30 buy-in, and Bodog Poker will also be adding an extra $25,000 to the prize pool.
The event schedule is as follows:
| Date | Event | Format | Buy-in | Added |
| March 3 | No. 1 | No-Limit | $250+$20 | $10,000 |
| March 4 | No. 2 | No-Limit 6-Handed | $300+$25 | $10,000 |
| March 5 | No. 3 | Re-buy | $100+$10 | $10,000 |
| March 6 | No. 4 | Pot-Limit | $200+$15 | $10,000 |
| March 7 | No. 5 | Limit | $150+$10 | $10,000 |
| March 9 | No. 6 | Main Event (No-Limit) | $470+$30 | $25,000 |
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Speculation continues regarding the identity of seda1
Seda1, the mysterious online poker player who has been battling it out with Phil Ivey in the largest cash games online lately at Full Tilt Poker, has finally been identified - at least that’s the speculation coming out of Poker King and 2+2 recently. PK ran ��...full article
Seda1, the mysterious online poker player who has been battling it out with Phil Ivey in the largest cash games online lately at Full Tilt Poker, has finally been identified - at least that’s the speculation coming out of Poker King and 2+2 recently.
PK ran a story yesterday based largely on a 2+2 thread that identified seda1 as Shawn Sedaghat. Excerpt:
It seems as though the true identity of “seda1″ is likely to be Shawn Sedaghat.
Sedaghat is a wealthy businessman who has been known to play in some high-stakes poker games. He reportedly took millions of dollars off of Ron Meyer, long-time head of Universal Studios, according to this article.
Sedaghat won $29,925 at the 2005 World Series of Poker Main Event, which is the only cash that I can find to his name.
Sedaghat was formerly the President and Chief Executive Officer of Seda Specialty Packaging until the company was purchased by CCL Industries, Inc. on June 16, 1997. SEC Document here
2+2 thread here.
PokerStars qualifier wins EPT’s Scandinavian Open
An American is the latest winner on the European Poker Tour, as PokerStars qualifier Tim Vance won the tour’s stop in Copenhagen, Denmark. Vance, a 46-year-old construction company manager from near St. Louis, Missouri, won the first prize of 21,086,400 Danish Kroner (around 830,000 Euros or ��...full article
An American is the latest winner on the European Poker Tour, as PokerStars qualifier Tim Vance won the tour’s stop in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Vance, a 46-year-old construction company manager from near St. Louis, Missouri, won the first prize of 21,086,400 Danish Kroner (around 830,000 Euros or more than $1.2 million). He outlasted 460 players to earn the title of the tournament, which had a prize pool of about 3 million Euros ($4.5 million)
Vance entered the final table with a huge chip lead, more than 1.4 million in chips to the second-place competitor’s 800,000.
Once the tournament got to heads up, there were apparently hundreds of hands played between Vance and Denmark’s Soren Jensen, with few confrontations. Vance finally won when Jensen shoved into his Vance’s nut flush on the turn. For a look back at the heads up battle, you can check out pokerlistings.com.
For more details on the event, visit the tournament’s Web site.
U.K. scraps supercasino plans
According to a Bloomberg story, Prime Minster Gordon Brown's government officially vetoed plans to build a Las Vegas-style casino in Manchester. Instead, 16 casinos (eight larger and eight small) will be built in the areas that competed to host the supercasino.
The move was confirmed by Culture Secretary Andy Burnham today, who told MPs that there had been concerns over the negative impact of the supercasino.
While the new Gambling Act made the supercasino legal, Parliament's two chambers had been deadlocked on approving the Manchester casino.
Manchester had beat bids from London and Blackpool to build the supercasino as a way to lure £265 million of investment and 2,700 jobs to the area.
Sir Howard Bernstein, chief executive of the Manchester City Council, told Bloomberg, "A regional casino has been a fundamental part of our regeneration strategy."
However, when Gordon Brown became prime minister last year, he expressed his opposition to the plans. He called for a review of the supercasino decision and wanted to find a better way to regenerate areas.
According to an article in InTheNews.co.uk, Burnham said that there is a big difference in scale in terms of gambling opportunities in a supercasino compared to in one of the smaller casinos.
Today he approved casinos with up to 150 slot machines holding jackpots of up to £4,000 in Leeds, Southampton, Great Yarmouth, Middlesbrough, Solihull, Hull, Milton Keynes and Newham in London.
Smaller casinos were approved for the Bath area, Stranraer, Scarborough, Wolverhampton, Swansea, Luton, Torbay and East Lindsey.
Burnham also claimed that the United Kingdom would have the toughest regulatory regime for gambling in the world. The plan is to force casinos to close their doors for six hours a day, to not allow credit card use and to not offer drink promotions involving free beverages.
Related Articles:
- New PM Rethinking U.K. Supercasino
- Prime Minister Wants Two Supercasinos
- Lords Kibosh Manchester Supercasino
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Antonio Esfandiari hired by the WPT to do something or other
The WPT has apparently decided that their model for success relies on fewer tournaments and more hype - at least that’s one conclusion you could draw from today’s announcement that the World Poker Tour has hired Antonio Esfandiari to be the ‘face of the WPT ��...full article
The WPT has apparently decided that their model for success relies on fewer tournaments and more hype - at least that’s one conclusion you could draw from today’s announcement that the World Poker Tour has hired Antonio Esfandiari to be the ‘face of the WPT Poker-Made Millionaire’.
CardPlayer ran a story on the announcement. Excerpt:
According to the WPTE, Esfandiari will leverage his experience to provide poker tips, tools and tricks for fans and players while delivering updates and information from tournament stops via WPT Live Updates, web videos and online blogs. He will also represent WPT in tournaments and events across the world, including the upcoming WPT tournament at Casino Barcelona in May, which is the first of many regional events WPT will implement in various markets worldwide.
“Antonio embodies the excitement that has become the WPT journey,” said Lipscomb. ”This is the only sport in the history of televised sports that allows you to watch it, dream it and be it. Now, WPT fans and poker enthusiasts can take the journey with Antonio as he leads the way for the next WPT Poker-Made Millionaire.”
Pokerati ran a bit on the story here.
Wicked Chops hasn’t run anything on it yet, but they probably will soon. You should go there regardless.
#340 - FTOPS is a Curse (separate from “The FTOPS Curse”)
So we’re 12+ events into FTOPS and, despite all my efforts to the contrary, I am miserable. Why am I miserable? I’ve played 8 events without cashing. I played extremely well in HORSE and finished about a half hour short...
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