Full Shill Poker

Amy Calistri over at PokerNews reports today that the broadcasts of the World Poker Tour Tournaments will be flying off of the Travel Channel after this season, landing on GSN, the Game Show Network. WPT broadcasting will join the stable with High Stakes Poker, and maybe now Vince Van Patten will watch a little Gabe Kaplan and learn a thing or two about poker broadcasting.

So apparently Neteller is working out a deal with the US Dept. of Justice to release the players’ funds that were seized earlier this year. This is certainly after a pile of accountants have gone over all Neteller’s records with a fine-toothed comb, and also won’t happen in a hurry.

Neteller says that at some point by the end of May a plan should be in place for folks to get their money back. Not that they’ll have their money by then, but that a plan will be in place by then. So continue in the not holding of your breath on the return of your mobney.

And then Neteller announces that regardless of the fact that Canada’s government has not come after them for anything, they’re stopping service to Canadians as well. I guess the fact that the word “America” is on the continent that Canada’s part of is enough for the newly minted chickens at Neteller.

Just checking in…yup, still fucked.

Hey - Pauly is over at PokerNews once again providing the world’s finest poker tournament coverage, so I thought I’d give you a little taste of what you’re missing if you’re not reading Tao of Poker or PokerNews.

After five grueling days of poker at the Commerce Casino, six players remain in the hunt for $2.4 million at the L.A. Poker Classic. JC Tran lost a tremendous margin in chips, yet managed to end Day 5 as the chipleader for the second day in a row with $3.47M. 2006 World Series of Poker runner-up Paul Wasicka ($3.39M) closed the gap along with local Jacobo Fernandez ($3.37M). They both only trail Tran by a few thousand. David Bach, Eric Hershler, and Chau Giang also advanced to the final TV table.

18 players began Day 5 with five short-stacked players and JC Tran as the chipleader. He had 2.5 times more chips than Jacobo Fernandez in second place and amassed 21% of the total chips in play. Everyone
Aussie Millions
in the ballroom wondered if Tran could make the final table at the L.A. Poker classic in consecutive years. He also bubbled off the final TV table in 2004.

Good shit, right? So go over to PokerNews and read the rest.

Change100 is reporting that Full Tilt and Pokerstars will be cranking up their WSOP satellites later this week or early next week, hoping to continue to flood the field with lousy players, despite their inability to accept advertising from sites that allow US players. But you can still wear your ugly .net hats!

After a brief but enjoyable run at Pokerworks, the blogfather, Iggy, is moving back into his old digs at Guinness and Poker. His uber-posts will be Guinness-fueled once again at his old stomping grounds.

Real journalists do research. Fuckers like me link to them.

From PokerNews.com, a real journalist (Amy Calistri) reports -

When we contacted Gary Thompson, Director of the World Series of Poker Tournament Operations and Communications, he had the following comments relative to the recent Harrah’s related forum fodder.

As far as the felts, I have seen blogs and forum threads speculating about who may or may not have sought advertising rights to the WSOP. Harrah’s has a long-standing policy of not commenting on rumors or speculation. If we do enter into any business agreement with another company, we’ll make a public announcement at the appropriate time.”

So you can still wear your stupid hat with the dot net logo on it at the WSOP 2007. Once you clean out enough quarters from behind the seat cushions to buy your way in.

Doyle’s Room is the latest in the string of online poker sites to shut off US players in the wake of the UIGEA legislation. As of March 1, Doyle’s Room will join the rest of the Tribeca Tables network in no longer allowing US players to to make real money wagers or deposits into the site. So one more time, you’ve been Frist-fucked.

Doyle’s Room is reportedly working a deal to transfer palyers’ funds to Full Tilt, since there really aren’t many ways to get your money off of poker sites lately. They’ll also transfer your Action Points into Full Tilt points, so you can get a different T-shirt!

So here’s the deal. I see that a lot of people find this site looking for information on Neteller, and how to get your money from Neteller, and if you’re fucked because Neteller has your money, and neteller withdrawal problems and all those other search terms. So lemme boil it down for you.

1) If you still have money in Neteller, it’s safe. Like the kinda buried in your backyard in a Mason jar like a toothless hillbilly safe. You may as well forget where you buried the jar, because you can’t get to in right now, but eventually you will. Neteller is not going to steal your money. Eventually they will figure out a way to get your money to you.

2) If you have a withdrawal in your Neteller account marked “pending,” you’re fucked. You’re fucked like a coed after winning the Florida Crisco Twister Championships for 2006. You’re fucked like the girl in the donkey show in Tijuana that you always thought was a myth. Plan on walking bowlegged for a while, because the US gubmint has done took yo’ money. You might be able to get it back someday, but I might slip on a tutu and dance fucking Swan Lake first.

3) If you’ve got cash on poker sites that you deposited via Neteller, you’re at the mercy of the sites. You might be able to cash out, you might not. You might find someone willing to Paypal you real money in exchange for the play money you have on the site, but don’t bet the farm on their trustworthiness. You might also just be fucked.

I hope this clears up some confusion.

This probably didn’t make anyone think Frist is a douchebag, but it certainly solidified that opinion in the minds of 220 people in Canada and 30 in the UK who are getting shitcanned by Neteller because of the UIGEA. And as we’ve seen in recent fun months, just because you don’t work for the company anymore doesn’t mean that an intrusive foreign government can’t throw your ass in jail when you come visit Aunt Ethel in the US! Hope none of those 250 poor bastards have to change planes at JFK anytime soon.

Every once in a while, someone in the blogger world will do something pretty cool, and whip out their real journalist skillz and go to town on one issue or another. And let’s face it, it’s up to the bloggers to do that in the world of poker, since the magazines and major news sources are so tied in to ad revenue from the poker sites that they can’t say shit about anything without getting their pee-pees slapped. And really, who wants a dickwhipping early in the morning?

But anyway - Amy Calistri, in addition to being voted Best Cleavage in Poker and having a cool hat, has gotten together with the Poker Shrink to write a badass series of article over at PokerNews looking into the mystery of the added $2 million in chips in the WSOP Main Event last summer. So go read their update.

Haley is another one of those real journalist types with ethics and stuff. We respect that crap in others, just don’t really have a whole lot of it ourselves. I’ve frequently found that high moral standards just don’t get you the hookers and blow like I’m into. So I have ethics vicariously through others. Haley has spent a while looking into the question of the WSOP.com website and why it has little or nothing to do with the World Series of Poker, and she’s come up with a tangled web of deceit, firings, backstabbing and moneygrubbing that totally belongs in Vegas. So go read all her stuff, too!

These are just the latest examples of the kickassery that goes on in the poker blogging world. You and I both know that you can’t get shit for real news outta Cardplayer, and Bluff’s opinions are edited (or else!), so you gotta count on the freelancers to lay it out there for ya, gonzo-style. Now these three folks ain’t exactly the heir apparent to Hunter S. Thompson, but they are some fine Woodstein-style journalists, so go show ‘em the love.