The Week That Was 5/26-30

Friday, May 30 marked the beginning of this year’s World Series of Poker (either the 38th, 39th or 40th edition, depending on your definition of when the Holiday Hotel tournament actually became the World Series of Poker.) Lawsuits, mergers, charities and cheats – a lot is happening in the world of poker.

 

• Following up on its humanitarian efforts with New Orleans and the Hurricane Katrina disaster, PokerStars has created a means for its members to contribute to the relief effort in earthquake ravaged China. PokerStars tournaments entitled “Quake Relief” will not be played out as actual poker tournaments; instead, all buy-ins will go directly to charities. Buy-ins range from $1 to $100.
  
  
• David Singer won the inaugural Full Tilt $25,000 Heads Up World Championship and the $560,000 first prize money. Other notable players finishing in the top eight of the 64 player field were Emil “whitelime” Patel (second place for $320,000) and Andy Bloch (third place for $168,000.) It is the second major heads up tournament in a row in which Bloch has placed in the top 3, the other being his runner up finish to Chris “Jesus” Ferguson in the 2008 National Heads Up Poker Tournament.
  
  
• Full Tilt has finally opened up its long awaited fantasy poker league. Fantasy players will receive points for the real world success of their selected poker professionals. The winner of the fantasy league will receive a Full Tilt Poker deluxe home game package and a custom Full Tilt Poker jersey.
  
  
• Poker superstar Daniel Negreanu has launched his own poker instructional website, http://www.pokervt.com/. The member site greets all visitors with a video of Kid Poker himself explaining the impetus behind the new site as well as its unique features.
  
  
• PartyPoker has returned to its roots by re-opening its famous PartyPoker Million Tournament. While the 7 figure guaranteed tournament is only scheduled to run once on Saturday, May 31, with American anti-gaming legislation coming under more and more scrutiny, a return to a weekly PartyPoker Million is far from out of the question.
  
  
• After announcing unexpected gains in 2008 first quarter profits of 14%, leading Irish sportsbook Paddy Power plc has acquired its competitor McGranaghan Racing, a leading independent bookmaker in the Greater Belfast area for £19 million. With the additional betting offices from McGranaghan Racing, Paddy Power now has over 250 betting offices and sportsbooks through Ireland and the UK. Following the announcement of the acquisition, Paddy Power plc shares (LSE:PAP) rose to a record close of €23.05 on Wednesday May, 28.
  
  
• In undoubtedly the biggest news of the past week, UltimateBet has announced that six separate accounts fraudulently possessed the ability to see every player’s hole cards at UB tables. Each of the so-called “super-users” are former executives at UltimateBet who implanted a software bug into UltimateBet itself prior to its October 2006 purchase by Tokwiro Enterprise ENRG (and their own subsequent departures from UltimateBet.) This bug enabled them to see all dealt cards in a game as if they had been dealt face up. This news comes as an unfortunate follow up to a recent vehement denial of other cheating by UltimateBet, not to mention sister company, Absolute Poker’s own recent super-user controversy in the form of part-owner Scott “potripper” Tom. For its part, UltimateBet is reporting that the security bug has been wholly corrected and that all defrauded players will be refunded for any and all moneys taken from them by the six illegitimate accounts.
  

And that’s what’s happening in poker.