Borgata Event Prize Pool Still Frozen, Class Action Filed

A class action has been filed against the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in connection with the suspended event 1 in the Borgata Winter Open. Thousands may claim reimbursement for buy-ins and travel costs.

The opening event of  #BorgataWinterOpen2014  in Atlantic City had a $560 buy-in and a $2 million guarantee and had attracted more than 4,800 entries. The tournament was suspended on January 16, Day 3, by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement after counterfeit chips were found to be in circulation.

The only person charged to date is @Christian Lusardi, who introduced counterfeit chips into the tournament multiple times to increase his stack. He was eliminated on Day 2 and reportedly cashed for $6,814. A few days later he made funny criminal history as he was caught after he flushed the remaining fake chips ($ 2.7 million in tournament value) down the toilet of his hotel room. This caused plumbing problems, the chips were discovered, and the police promptly intervened.

Initially, Joe Lupo, Senior Vice President of Operations for Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, expected tournament officials and the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement to reach a resolution after a 24-hour investigation. Yet it has been more than a month and the prize money (of which more than $ 1.4 m remained on Day 3) is still frozen.

On Friday, February 21, New Jersey resident @Jacob Musterel filed a class action against the Borgata on behalf of the players who entered the opening event of the Borgata Winter Open. At the time of the suspension order only 27 players remained but it is very difficult to say how many may have been affected by the fake chips in circulation since Day 1. So far Musterel is the only one listed by name but his lawyer, Bruce LiCausi, has been publicising the claim and clearly hopes thousands will join to demand reimbursement for buy-ins and travel costs.

Little did they know that they were only in for the learning experience...

“In my 31 years in practice, I have to say this is one of the cleanest claims we’ve had,” Attorney Bruce LiCausi told The Press of Atlantic City. “Borgata holds itself as a respected provider of poker tournaments. They might say this is a learning experience for them, and while that’s laudable, it’s at the expense of the thousands who traveled to Atlantic City and entered this tournament under the expectation that it would be run properly.”

The New Poker Role Models - Danielle Andersen

I am fairly certain I’m the only high stakes poker player in the world who has simultaneously: multi-tabled high stakes, cooked dinner, and read a book to my three-year-old! Seriously.

A young mother from Minnesota is the latest @Ultimate Poker pro team addition.  Danielle Andersen is certainly not just another lovely face with a sponsorship deal in the world of poker. She is famous in the poker community as one of the three players featured in the 2013 documentary Bet, Raise, Fold about online poker before & after #BlackFriday. And before she did the film she was well-known under the online screen name Dmoongirl and as one of the top female earners of online poker.

Bet, Raise, Fold trailer

“It’s not just a game, it’s my livelihood,” Danielle Andersen says on the Bet, Fold, Raise documentary, and it’s been that way ever since the day she left her job at a local shoe store and dropped out of college to pursue poker full-time. “Eventually, to set a good example for my son, and have a backup plan should the sky fall on poker (spoiler: it did), I went back to school and graduated with a nursing degree in 2010.” The fact that she did is further evidence of her realistic, responsible, hard-working, and very likeable self.

Source: http://www.dmoongirl.com

#BlackFriday 2011 was a hard blow to Danielle and as she would neither move abroad or leave poker, she ended up at the live tables and has since preferred to play cash games. In 2013 @FullTilt Poker  sponsored her for the @WSOP Main Event and most recently she won a longer-term sponsorship deal with @Ultimate Poker.

“Proud to be where I’ve ended up,” says Danielle and we can only share her sincere delight. Danielle’s life experience and inner strength, her friendly personality and All-American, down-to-earth charm are certain to strike the right chord with the public and she will make a great ambassador for the game of poker at a time when it needs every little help it can get to regain its credibility and popularity in U.S.

Source: http://www.dmoongirl.com

Can Work Ethics Save Us From Poker Addiction?

A recent beautiful piece by Lee Davy got many of us thinking again about the hush-hush subject of addiction. And if you’re reading this article on RankingHero, chances are you wouldn’t pass most of the basic self-assessment addiction tests available on the web.

Simply because it takes so much time to get better at poker and there are only three slots where you can get this time – work, family/social life, and your sleep. Take away 3 hours a day from any of them and they will obviously suffer, as will the general health and quality of your life. (No wonder all those young kids are taking online poker by storm - they have about 20 hours to spare for poker since they have no jobs, no family, their social life is on the Internet anyway and they need less sleep :)

Overall, there seems to be a high level of awareness among poker players (committed amateurs and aspiring pros) about the lurking dangers of addiction; rather than ask ourselves IF we are susceptible or already addicted, we KNOW we are at risk and are concerned with how to cope with it and keep it from getting out of hand.

And as in so many other respects, we look to the pros for models to follow. To quote Michael Craig, author of “The Professor, the Banker and the Suicide King”:

“These guys may play poker 10 hours a day, but that leaves 14 hours in which they need to do something interesting. If they are home watching TV, they bet sports. If they are driving through the rain, they bet on how long it will take a raindrop to reach the bottom of the car’s window. They want to have gambling in every aspect of their lives.”

Yet they do manage to keep it out of poker and if some occasionally slip down a self-destructive path - as in the case of @Erick Lindgren  - the addiction is likely to lie elsewhere - sports or horse betting, even extreme prop betting.

In the 1970s Robert L. Custer was the first to introduce the concept of ‘pathological gambling’. He identified 6 types of gamblers, with the following definition of ‘professional gamblers’:

Professional gamblers make their living by gambling and thus consider it a profession. They are skilled in the games they choose to play and are able to control both the amount of money and time spent gambling. Thus, professional gamblers are not addicted to gambling. They patiently wait for the best bet and then try to win as much as they can.

So what about us, ordinary amateurs who find ourselves on the edge of the pitfall?.. Based on my own humble experience with problem gambling and online poker, I’d say we must cling to skill and ignore chance. And we must use the skill argument not as a form of self-delusion, but of self-defence. If we can’t treat it as a profession, we can at the very least regard poker as a second job or work assignment; we can:

• resist the rush of adrenaline and anticipation with a probability firewall;
• fight tilt with objective hand history analysis;
• forget about luck and losses and think in terms of variance and bankroll management;
• before playing, force ourselves to first read a chapter of one of the dozens of poker books we’ve got waiting on the kindle;
• never give in to simple happiness over winning a tough hand – call it satisfaction with a job well done;
• and from time to time, buy a lottery ticket or a few spins on a slot machine – just to fool our brain and give it some of the gambling excitement it craves.

We will still be annoyed by the ring of the telephone and we will still be depriving friends and family of our time and attention but at least we are more likely to remain on the safe side of the addiction abyss without giving up our absolutely maddening, nerve-racking, infuriating and exhilarating game - poker.

#RankingHero en francais et avec des #hashtags c'est çà qu'on veut! 

My Poker Scene of the Week

Back in the days of five-card draw poker and Friends Season 1, guess which popular TV character famously threw away a pair of jacks 'because they didn't look happy'?...

Poker Under Siege in Kiev, Ukraine

Poker got caught up in the violent events in Kiev during Day 2 of RPT 5th Anniversary Tournament. The last tweet from Russian Poker Tour was sent at 5:05 PM, Feb 18th and ran: "Dear Players! We strongly urge you to refrain from coming to the Khreshchatyk Club until further notice."

The Fifth Anniversary Russian Poker Tour Tournament kicked off on February 17th in what some have argued to be an unwisely chosen location - the Khreshchatyk Club in the very heart of the Ukraine capital, Kiev (RPT has to be conducted in neighboring countries due to Russian legislative restrictions).

In fact, in what was a very difficult decision for the organizers, just one week before the scheduled Day 1, the tournament start date was moved from Feb. 1st to Feb. 17th, on account of the escalating tension and clashes in Kiev between pro-European Union protesters and the police.

Though it seemed for a while that the situation was improving, hopes for a safe and untroubled poker event were dashed yesterday with the latest outburst of violence. Tuesday is now called ‘the nation’s bloodiest day’, with the death toll rising to at least 25 and 250 injured.

Photo: Efrem Lukatsky, AP

With the explosion of violence, the 150 players who had come to the Kreschatyk Club for RPT Day 2 were locked inside the premises and noone was allowed to leave or enter.

PokerNews reported yesterday:

"We are in a very bad situation right now. Not only for the Russian Poker Tour, but for the whole Ukraine", tournament director Oleg Udovenko told PokerNews, confirming that around 150 players are now locked in the Khreschatyk Club, right in the heart of Kiev.

"There is not much we can do now," added Udovenko. "We can just wait and try our best to keep people as calm as possible. Even if the mood in here is not very good. People are trying to keep playing poker. We have shut all doors, and we are not allowing anyone to come in or to leave the club. Luckily, we have still enough water for everyone."

 "We will not go anywhere from here," Vitali Klitschko, opposition leader and former heavyweight boxing champion, told the crowd, speaking from a stage in the square as tents and tires burned around him, releasing huge plumes of smoke. "This is an island of freedom and we will defend it," he said.

The tournament will most likely be postponed or moved to a safer location far from the violent clashes in the city center. Regretfully, the Ukrainian protesters do not have recourse to either postponement or safe havens…

New Jersey Gambling Data Points to Complementarity Rather than Cannibalization

The two biggest land-based casino operators in New Jersey - Ceasars and the Borgata - are also the most successful in the online gaming market and are in the best position to dispell the cannibalization fears spurred on by Sheldon Adelson's campaign against Internet gambling.

In its public messages, Sheldon Adelson’s Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling has been playing on some of the worst fears and concerns of Americans. The communications are executed in the best prohibition-era or totalitarian-propaganda style and the regulation of online gambling is compared to allowing heroin use or giving free rein to terrorism. Regulated online gambling would allegedly facilitate money-laundering and serve the interests of organized crime, all at at the expense of the young, the poor, and the elderly.

The messages of the Coalition to Stop Internet are reminiscent of the prohibition campaign

Albeit in a low-key manner, one argument that is always present - and which some suspect is central to Adelson’s own motivation - is that Internet gambling “destroys jobs” and would have a devastating effect on the 300,000 Americans working in the casino industry. Never mind that this is refuted by statistics and research in the European countries where online gambling has been regulated for many years.

"The online gaming sector is growing but its growth is not taking place at the detriment of the land based sector." http://www.egba.eu/pdf/EGBA_FS_MarketReality.pdf

Fortunately America now has its own data-generating test markets for regulated online gambling and poker in particular. New Jersey is very valuable in this respect with the - lucrative! - involvement of the major brick-and-mortar casinos - Ceasars and the Borgata. Because of the short time period, the body of evidence may as yet be too thin to convince the opponents of regulation but the data confirm the very different product and player profiles for online and land-based gambling.

Keith Smith, president and CEO of #BoydGaming (the company that operates the #Borgata and shares ownership with #MGM) recently commented on Borgata’s market-leading figures in New Jersey:

“These results also once again demonstrate online gaming’s potential to expand our business. Online gaming is growing our database, creating a long-term opportunity to market Borgata to an entirely new group of customers.”

Borgata COO Tom Ballance confirms Internet gambling is not a threat to land-based casinos. "When we match up databases, the great majority of players who were playing online have not been to Borgata in well over a year. And the vast majority have made fewer than two trips in the past year. So it's a different customer."