The immediate impact in the markets was a positive one, suggesting that investors believe the elections will increase the potential for legal, regulated online gaming in the US. Excerpt from an article in the Independent:

Elsewhere, gambling companies were strong after Merrill Lynch said an Obama victory may lead to more open markets in the US. “We think it could ultimately pave the way for online gaming regulation rather than prohibition,” the broker said, highlighting Democratic moves to repeal the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which was introduced in October 2006 to prohibit the transfer of funds from financial institutions to any internet gambling site.

Merrill added: “There have been separate acts to legalize internet gambling as well as those that particularly target poker and other games of skill. We think that with a Democrat president and Democrat-dominated Congress, such legislation would likely have a greater chance of being passed through.”

Poker News Daily also took a positive view of the election, focusing more on the specific Congressional races with direct links to online gaming legislation. Here’s their summary of the relevant races and outcomes, with individual grades for each taken from the PPA Congressional guide:

Bob Goodlatte (R-Va) – F-
Defeated Sam Rasoul 61% to 36%

Spencer Bachus (R-Ala) – F-
Ran Unopposed

Linda Sanchez (D-Cali) – A+
Defeated Diane Lenning 70% to 30%

John Conyers (D-Mich) – A+
Defeated two independent candidates 92% to 8%

Melvin Watt (D-NC) – A+
Defeated Ty Cobb 71% to 28%

Steve Cohen (D-Tenn) – A+
Defeated three independent candidates 88% to 12%

Bobby Scott (D-Va) – A+
Ran Unopposed

A lively discussion of the likely impact on 2+2 generated some humorous responses:

Obama will use tax money to bankroll himself to multitable RailHeaven and GusHeaven. FTP will add a new table called ObamaHeaven which is 2k/4k NL, as well as a table called McCainHeaven which is actually a $1+$0.43 Sit and Go tournament.

… and some more serious ones:

People don’t seem to understand that Democrats don’t need to do anything to make the online poker landscape much better. They just have to stop doing some of the things that the Bush Justice Department has been doing. Right now, there are people in high-ranking positions in the Justice Department who want to stop online gambling. Neteller gets indicted, payment processors get shut down, TV stations get fined for running certain advertisements, etc. I’m going to bet a lot of the high-ranking people that have been issuing these marching orders will be out of a job come January 20. Who ever replaces them will have very different priorities and a very different agenda.

We think that last point is right on the money. While Democratic control of Congress and the White House certainly makes it easier to pass pro-online gaming legislation, there’s no clear sign that the party as a whole is motivated to introduce and champion serious legislation. The more significant, immediate impact will likely be a rethinking of UIGEA enforcement and Wire Act interpretation at the DOJ level, depending on whom Obama appoints.

Source: PartTimePoker.com

Craker spoke with New Zealand’s 3 News after his win that spanned 4 days, saying, "I just felt something was just telling me - before I’d even started - that I was going to have a good go at it." He added, "On day two I played probably my best poker of the tournament which got me up there."

The Final Table included (showing chip counts):

Source: pokerpages.com

Born in New York City in 1959 and now calling Las Vegas home, Erik began his trek to the poker tables by languishing at the backgammon board and trading stocks on Wall Street.  For eight years he played backgammon professionally and, although he was making a name for himself, the smaller tournaments and prize pools made him yearn for a stronger challenge.  He would discover that on the baize of the poker tables.

Seidel found the legendary Mayfair Club in New York in 1985 and, with his talent for tournament backgammon play and some prior knowledge of poker, followed in the footsteps of other players such as Howard Lederer, Dan Harrington and Steve Zolotow to pursue the game professionally.  Little did he realize that he would have perhaps one of his most recognized moments, if not one of his personal highlights, a scant three years later.

At the 1988 World Series of Poker Championship Event, Seidel maneuvered his way to the final table alongside Jim Bechtel (the 1993 WSOP Champion), T. J. Cloutier and Humberto Brenes.  Battling these difficult players, an inexperienced Seidel found himself the only player remaining against defending champion Johnny Chan.  In a clip immortalized in the feature film Rounders, Erik was beaten by an expertly slow played straight by Chan and denied the world title.  Even Seidel himself admitted, “I was totally out of my element,” in Steve Rosenbloom’s The Best Hand I Ever Played. It would be the last time that Erik would find himself in that position.

Four years later, Erik picked up the first of what has now become an impressive eight WSOP bracelets and also returned to the WSOP $10,000 Championship Event final table in 1999.  The victories haven’t all been in No Limit Hold‘em; Erik also has tournament victories in Pot Limit Omaha and No Limit Deuce to Seven Lowball.  He has been one of only five men to win a bracelet in three consecutive years (along with Johnny Moss, Doyle Brunson, Gary “Bones” Berland and Allen Cunningham) and his eight bracelets put him in rarefied air behind only Phil Hellmuth, Brunson, Chan and tied with Moss on the list of all time bracelet winners.

The World Poker Tour has also been a fertile ground for Seidel.  He has cashed in sixteen events there, made two final tables and captured the Foxwoods Poker Classic in April 2008.  All totaled, Erik has a stunning 125 cashes in major events around the world and sits in ninth place in all time money earnings with over $9 million won.

Source: PokerNewsDaily

Demidov served as a precursor to this year’s Russian success at the World Series of Poker Europe where two players from his nation have made the final table.

Oh, but wait a moment, one of those two players is none other than Demidov himself. That’s right, while Demidov awaits play in next month’s World Series of Poker (Las Vegas) Final, he will be taking part in Thursday’s WSOPE final nine. For someone who only began playing poker in 2006 and has won a few thousand dollars on the live tournament circuit (just under $40,000 to date), Demidov could become one of the richest poker players by year’s end should he happen to win both World Series of Poker events. The WSOP pays first place $9.1 million while the World Series of Poker Europe will pay its first place winner just over $2.1 million.

Also sitting at the WSOPE final table is Russian Stanislav Alekhin. The relative unknown had the second largest number of chips at 1,278,000 heading into Friday’s showdown.

According to poker player Daniel Negreanu, The World Series of Poker has always attracted a competitive international field. Interestingly, this year’s World Series of Poker event in the US featured more players from Russia than ever before. Negreanu, who is competing with Demidov at the final table of the WSOPE, believes that Demidov has a good shot of winning the WSOP for his Russian homeland. It can be assumed Daniel feels differently about Demidov’s chances to win this year’s World Series of Poker Europe.

"Poker’s popularity is surging in Russia," Negreanu stated. "You can expect to see more Russian names winning on the European Poker Tour and other major international tournaments in coming years.

"Why are so many talented Russian players suddenly bursting on the poker scene? Maybe it’s because of the game of chess. Many years ago, Russian masters dominated their American counterparts in a different game of skill.

"That game, of course, was chess. The battles between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky were epic. And while poker isn’t quite at that point, we’re definitely headed in that direction."

Aside from Demidov and now Alekhin, Russians making a name for themselves on the international poker circuit include Kirill Gerasimov.

The 37-year old Gerasimov worked as an insurance salesman in Moscow, and started entering poker tournaments throughout Europe in 2001.

In May 2003, Gerasimov made his first World Series of Poker (WSOP) final table, finishing 6th in the $1,500 No Limit Hold-Em event and receiving a $24,000 prize.

He would return to the World Series of Poker in April 2004, making an appearance at two final tables: a 5th place finish ($30,060) in the $1,500 Pot Limit Hold-Em event featuring Huck Seed and Tony Bloom, and a 2nd place finish ($100,000) in the $1,500 No Limit Hold-Em shootout event featuring John Juanda, Asher Derei and Daniel Negreanu.

He also made the money 4 times in the 2005 World Series of Poker, including a 2nd place finish ($108,775) in the seven-card stud tournament, and he also made the money in the $10,000 Main Event for the first time, with his 444th place finish earning $16,055.

Gerasimov made two final tables during the second season of the European Poker Tour (EPT), finishing 5th in London and 3rd in Deauville.

As of 2008, Gerasimov has made over $2,000,000 in live tournament winnings. Prior to Alex Kravchenko’s 2007 performance at the WSOP, Gerasimov was number one on the Russian all time winning list.

Speaking of which, Kravchenko is another 37-year old professional poker player based in Moscow, Russia. He made a huge impact during the 2007 World Series of Poker, cashing six times, including finishing fourth at the Main Event and the $1,500 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo event where he won a WSOP bracelet. Kravchenko became the first Russian citizen in history to win a WSOP gold bracelet.

Kravchenko is a phenom on the European poker circuit. He’s also won the Austrian Masters Pot-Limit Championship and the Russian Pot-Limit Championship, both in 2001. He has cashed over 30 times with career winnings totaling $2,611,088.

Then there is the easy-to-pronounce Rafael "Ralph" Perry. Yes, he is from Russia and, yes, he changed his name from Rafael Perivoskin. Perry has won over $2,500,000 on the live poker circuit since 1992, most notably finishing third in the 2002 WSOP Main Event.

Like with the Americans, Russia also has its own celebrity players who were known for something else before they hit it big on the poker circuit. Yevgeny Kafelnikov has had a few impressive finishes at the 2005 World Series of Poker. He is a former World No. 1 tennis player from Russia. He won two Grand Slam singles titles (one French Open and one Australian Open), four Grand Slam doubles titles, and the men’s singles gold medal at the Sydney Olympic Games.

Source: gambling911.com

But poker has topped third on that list, behind only NASCAR and the NFL, a couple of properties that are legendary for television audiences. Poker comes in ahead of baseball, basketball, and hockey. How do you think Gary Bettman feels about THAT?

Obviously, poker has experienced a boom that dates back to 2003, and what is now known as ‘The Moneymaker Effect’. That was the year that a 32-year-old accountant from Tennessee managed to satellite his way into the World Series of Poker Main Event for $39, and walk away with the title and $2.5 million dollars. And from the moment that WSOP hit television, every guy in the world thought to himself, ‘that could be me’.

The resulting poker boom was breathtaking, and the WSOP has taken on the air of a month long Superbowl. With first place money in the $10 million dollar neighbourhood. That’s a pretty nice neighbourhood, and a lot of people want to take a crack at moving in.

Because of this giant explosion in the world of poker, several interesting things happened. Professional poker players, formerly a bunch of leather assed Texas rounders if you believe pop culture, took on the status of rock stars. Previously anonymous pros now found themselves household names.

Last year, Canadian poker star Daniel Negreanu and I were walking through a mall to grab a bite to eat at a tournament. We were approached by a young man in his early twenties who asked Daniel if he would autograph his forearm. So that he could get it tattooed on permanently! You’re talking Wayne Gretzky/Gene Simmons country right there. Rock stars.

But here’s the big difference that makes poker so appealing: accessibility. If you are a tennis fan, can you play tennis with Roger Federer? No chance. If you’re a golfer, can you play a round with Tiger Woods? Not unless you’re a millionaire. But if you’re into poker, you can sit down at a poker table and find yourself staring across at Doyle Brunson, or Johnny Chan, or Phil Hellmuth. You actually get the opportunity to test yourself against the legends of the game. And that’s why millions of players every year bust their butts trying to qualify to play in a WPT or WSOP event. Well, that and the prize money.

You can’t turn the TV on anymore without finding poker on one station or another. Everyone is playing, from garbage men to movie stars, and they all share the dreams of World Championship bracelets and millions in prize money. And that dream is very much attainable.

Two years ago, a part time auto worker from Oshawa named Soren Turkewitsch won his way into a World Poker Tour event in Niagara Falls. Five days later, he was holding a trophy and a cheque for $1.3 million bucks. Not a bad payday for a few days work. Might even be more than GM was paying him.

The poker boom is still going strong. I spent most of July in Las Vegas at the 2008 World Series of Poker, and I can guarantee you that poker is still on the upswing. Numbers for the WSOP were huge this year, and look to be getting even bigger. The final table from the main event will be played in November, and whether it’s some Cinderella-story nobody from next door, or one of the mega rich superstars we see on television who wins it, you can be sure it will be fun to watch.

What I’m hoping to do with this space is give you a peek at something even MORE interesting than just the surface scratching that is done with poker on TV. The world of high stakes poker is overflowing with colourful characters and wild stories. Most of the time, the behind-the-curtain world of professional poker players is infinitely more interesting than the actual card playing you see on the little screen.

High roller lifestyles, young millionaires, old road dogs, and crazy prop bets are all part of day-to-day life. For example, the aforementioned Daniel Negreanu had a little side bet with Phil Ivey for this year’s World Series of Poker: $200,000 per bracelet. Since Daniel won a bracelet, and Phil didn’t, Ivey owes Negreanu 200K.

Think that’s crazy? How about a prop bet to spend 12 straight hours in a hotel pool for $25K. Or how about losing 50 pounds of body weight in one year for a hundred grand? These kinds of crazy bets are just part of daily life in the poker world.

Like Cat Stevens once said, ‘Oooh baby, it’s a wild world’. But it’s a fascinating and fun world too. Come on by and have a look beyond the looking glass. It’s all-in or nothing, and the game is on…

Chris Tessaro is the host of The Hardcore Poker Show, North American wide on Wednesday nights at 8 PM on Sirius 98. www.hardcorepokershow.com.

Source: torontosun.com

Englishman Chris Moorman is arguably the best online tournament player in the world right now, with  an incredibly consistent record of victories including the FullTiltPoker.com $1k buy-in which is widely considered one of the toughest fields in poker — both online and live. Moorman branched out into the live arena in 2008, playing a succession of UK circuit events, yet finding little success. However, the young man from Brighton has been firmly tipped to replicate his online success soon, and the 2008 World Series Of Poker Europe main event, presented by Betfair, is a pretty good place to start.

When Card Player caught up with Moorman, he was on the money bubble with a sizeable stack. However, shortly after we spoke, Moorman was crippled in a huge pot holding pocket kings against Johnny Lodden’s aces. He eventually crashed out in 38th, just before the cash, yet his great display here has sent a statement of intent to the live poker community.

Shane Gittes: Talk us through how your main event has gone so far.

Chris Moorman: I had a really good start managing to stack Howard Lederer in the very first level and I built up to about 80,000 before the antes kicked in. And then this guy from my hometown who I’d never met before pulled the sickest bluff on me, which tore me into pieces after he showed it. The rest of that day I stayed pretty level at 60,000. Day 2 started with me bluffing off most of my stack to send me into pieces once again before I managed to bust a Scandinavian and build up gradually through the day. It was all a bit of a rollercoaster really.

SG: You have an online reputation as being super-aggressive. Have you been bringing that same style here to the WSOPE?

CM: Yeah, really aggressive. Sometimes I give myself a heart attack. I’m aggressive in all positions really!

SG: How has Day 3 gone for you so far?

CM: I had a few tough hands early. I made a big laydown with jacks. I called a raise against a guy  and we were both very deepstacked. The flop came down ten-high and it went check, check. The turn was a 3 and I just figured when I bet that he would call me down with A-K or something like that. So I bet and then he raised me which I wasn’t expecting. I called anyway. The river was a king which didn’t really change much but then I think he owned me with his bet sizing because it looked so much like a value bet and I laid it down because I was sure he was just taking me to value-town. It might have been a bad laydown thinking about it though.

Then I played an awful hand against Mike Matusow. A really bad player raised under the gun when both me and him were really deepstacked. I was pretty sure I’d be able to take him off most flops and so I called with 2-2. If he  had an overpair and I flopped a set, I was confident I’d be able to stack him. I called. Mike asked how much he had and he called so I put him on a speculative hand. Mike had been playing pretty tight and reminded me of that every five minutes by singing ‘Tight Mike, tight Mike’! To be honest, I was pretty happy to have another player in the pot. The flop came 9-3-3 with two clubs. The preflop raiser checked and I knew 100 percent that he didn’t have a hand. I bet two-thirds the pot expecting to take it down and then Mike raised me. I started to own myself by thinking, ‘How can he have a 3?’ Pocket nines is about the only hand he could raise me with, I thought. But I knew that if I raised on the flop it just looked like a bluff. So I just called and then bet into him big on the turn. Mike then put me all-in! So I folded …

SG: This is your deepest run in a major live tournament, despite all your online success. When you lose big hands and a big chip stack like you’ve just described, did you start to panic a little bit?

CM: Yeah, I was just thinking, ‘Here we go again’! If this was online with my stack then I still would have been pretty healthy but all I could think of was how many chips I’d lost and how hard it was going to be for me to get them back. The field is so tough.

SG: We are approaching the bubble now. Does cashing really matter that much to you or is your sole aim to shoot for the final table?

CM: I’d be lying if I said cashing didn’t matter. Obviously it would be nice but it’s not the main aim. I’m trying to chip up and give myself the best chance to win the thing.

SG: You had a huge hand against John Juanda where you got all in preflop with pocket sevens and doubled up. How did that come about?

CM: Juanda had been raising with any two cards all day. I had an awful image, yet I had a really weird sized stack of about 32 big blinds. I had 7-7 and didn’t love to raise but really didn’t want to just call out of position. I figured that a lot of the time I was going to pick up the pot by reraising. Yet when I raise I know I’m going to have to go with the hand whatever happens. When Juanda moved all-in, I obviously wasn’t thrilled but I knew a lot of the time that I would be in a race.

SG: How important is it for you make a mark in a major live tournament such as this one? Would a final table here for example stand out as your greatest achievement in poker?

CM: Definitely. At the moment, all online players pray for this. And I just hope I play well enough to keep it going.

Source: CardPlayer.com

Politico

That would be this New York Times story, describing McCain playing the craps table with Rick Davis and Scott Reed. Davis is a longtime McCain friend and associate, currently his campaign manager, who runs a lobbying firm that represented Indian tribes with casino interests. Reed also worked as a lobbyist for Indian tribes, but he was also Bob Dole’s campaign manager in 1996, where McCain is a top surrogate. To define these longtime buddies of McCain as lobbyists, you would also have to define David Axelrod as a lobbyist.

Beyond that, are we supposed to ignore the fact that the criticism is going to come from the guy who used to have a weekly poker game with lobbyists?

USA Today, July 6 of this year: "On Wednesday nights during Illinois General Assembly sessions, a group of lobbyists and lawmakers used to gather at the headquarters of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association for a weekly poker game. Barack Obama, who represented part of Chicago as state senator from 1997-2004, was a regular."

I guess gambling with lobbyists is scandalous, but if a Democrat does it, it’s okay.

Source: acc-tv.com

While that’s a traditional type of coin flip, a race can occur any time there’s an all-in pot where the odds are even close to 50-50. I’ll explain why it’s usually a better idea to gamble on a coin flip after the flop as opposed to before.

The most important reason why it’s dangerous to risk all your chips pre-flop is that you simply can’t be certain that you are even in a coin-flip situation at that time.

You could actually be a much bigger underdog than that. Say you’re playing pocket sixes against a higher pair, such as 9-9. The outlook is dismal in this situation, as you would have just a 19 percent chance to win the pot. That’s not a coin flip; you’re a 4-to-1 underdog!

You see, even a lowly starting hand like pocket sixes is a favorite against a seemingly strong hand like A-K. But the real problem with playing the sixes is that you’re banking on the best-case outcome to win the pot before the flop. Either you’re in a coin flip as a small favorite or you’re a massive underdog against a bigger pair.

Rookies often make this mistake. They’ll overplay these hands before the flop by calling big all-in bets. Or even worse, they’ll re-raise all-in.

Professionals, on the other hand, dread the idea of shoving all their chips into the pot in coin-flip situations. Once they push their chips in, they understand that skill is no longer a factor. Instead, they’re simply at the mercy of Lady Luck.

That’s why pros wait to take their chances with coin flips until after the flop.

It’s often said that to win a poker tournament, you have to win your fair share of coin flips. That’s true. But it’s not often mentioned that you can choose when to do your gambling. You’ll be much safer to delay moving all-in until after the flop, especially if you hit a two-way draw like a straight and flush draw, a pair and a draw, or a draw and overcards.

OK, say you hold 4h-6h and the flop comes Jh-6d-3h, giving you a pair and a flush draw. It’s impossible to be drawing dead against your opponent in this situation. If he has three of a kind, you still can hit your flush. And if he’s on a better flush draw, well, you’re still in the lead with a pair of sixes.

This is the kind of situation where you can gamble aggressively because you can’t be a massive underdog. Even if your opponent holds As-Ad, you’d still be the favorite with a 51.6 percent chance to win. If he has Ah-Kh for the better flush draw, you’d be favored to win a little over 52 percent of the time. And in the worst possible case, if he has three jacks, you’d still manage to win the pot 30 percent of the time.

Do what the pros do and wait until after the flop to try to win a race. That way you can be fairly certain that you’re in no worse shape than a coin-flip situation. Also, by playing aggressively after the flop, you might actually force your opponent to fold his stronger hand, thus winning the pot without even having to see the next two cards.

● Go to www.cardsharkmedia.com/book.html for information about Daniel Negreanu’s newest book, "More Hold’em Wisdom for All Players."

Source: azstarnet.com

In two separate cases, Michael Josem, from Chatswood, analysed detailed hand history data from Absolute Poker and UltimateBet and uncovered that certain player accounts won money at a rate too fast to be legitimate.

His findings led to an internal investigation by the parent company that owns both sites. It found rogue employees had defrauded players over three years via a security hole that allowed the cheats to see other player’s secret (or hole) cards.

Now the owners of the sites have filed a $US75 million claim against the makers of the software that powers them, claiming they were unaware of the security holes when they purchased the sites in 2006, MSNBC reported this month.

Official investigators - brought in following Josem’s revelations - have named one of the world’s most successful poker players, Russ Hamilton, as the main perpetrator of the fraud.

Suspicions of unfair play at Absolute Poker were first raised late last year. Josem plotted the win rate of several thousand players against the suspicious accounts and found the cheats won money at a rate that was 100 times faster than a good player could reasonably win.

The cheating accounts played every hand as if they knew every card that the other players had and folded hands at just the right time.

The findings led to an investigation by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, which licenses several hundred online casinos and poker rooms. It found Absolute Poker attempted to cover up the cheating by deleting gaming logs and records and fined it $US500,000.

Absolute Poker repaid those who had lost money but refused to release the cheater’s identity because a private settlement was reached.

A few months later, Josem and players from the Two Plus Two online poker forum used the same methods to uncover almost identical cheating occurring at Absolute Poker’s sister site, UltimateBet. One player account, NioNio, netted a profit of $300,000 in just 3000 hands and won 13 of the 14 sessions recorded on the MyPokerIntel.com website, which tracks high stakes online tournaments.

"The chances of a player winning at those rates is approximately equal to winning a one-in-a-million lottery on six consecutive occasions," said Josem.

"In poker, a contest of limited information, if you know what cards your opponent has, you’ll never lose - and this is precisely what happened."

The cheats passed their fraudulent winnings between multiple user accounts in an attempt to avoid detection.

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission today released the initial findings of an audit it is conducting into UltimateBet.

It named World Series of Poker winner Russ Hamilton, previously associated with Ultimate Bet’s affiliate program, as the main perpetrator. Commission spokesman Chuck Barnett said the names of others involved would come out when the final report was released in November.

The commission ordered UltimateBet to begin refunding all players adversely affected by the cheating scheme and remove any staff connected with the scheme by November 3.

The site has also been fined $US1.5 million and will have its licence revoked if it does not comply with any of the sanctions.

An Australian company, Gaming Associates, conducted the official investigations on both UltimateBet and Absolute Poker for the commission. Its principal consultant, Alan Pedley, refused to discuss the specifics of the findings as he was bound by a non-disclosure agreement.

As a result of his detective work Josem has been employed by the leading online poker site, PokerStars, to work on its security team.

He said other sites weren’t vulnerable to the same cheats because they used different software and had more credible operators.

"Just as not all insurance companies behave the same way as HIH, and not all politicians are the same as Brian Burke, not all poker companies are the same as UltimateBet and Absolute Poker," Josem said.

"The employees of the leading online poker operators simply don’t have the feature or ability to view hole cards of players during a hand and they don’t have this ability because of a security decision that was made when their software was first written many years ago."

Josem said people could still be confident about playing on online poker sites because, if something untoward happened, it could easily be caught by statistical analysis, precisely as happened in this situation.

"Every online poker hand is recorded electronically and can be analysed after the fact. Just as the third umpire video replay can be used to enforce the rules in cricket, third-party analysis can be used to enforce the rules of poker."

Source: The Age

Despite being a "terrible poker player," Norman was encouraged by big wins and started to look at poker "more as a career than a hobby," he said.

As poker’s popularity among college students continues to rise, so does the number of students who develop bad gambling habits that can lead to a pathological gambling addiction later in life, said Jeff Friedman, a therapist at Cottonwood de Tucson.

An article published in the New York Times magazine stated that in 2005 an estimated 1.6 million out of 17 million U.S. college students gambled online - mostly on poker.

Poker, particularly Texas Hold ‘Em, owes most of its increasing popularity to its presence on cable TV.

The escalating presence of poker in mainstream media has created an atmosphere of acceptability, said Rick Pyper, director of the Arizona Office of Problem Gambling.

"Poker is different from most forms of gambling because the player has the ability to make many more decisions and exert more control over the game. This is why poker attracts action gamblers while compulsive gamblers, who play to escape their problems, prefer to play games of pure chance like roulette or slots," Pyper said.

The element of skill is what initially attracted Norman to the game and, after walking away from poker for several months, he realized this is exactly what he had lacked.

Norman began picking up poker books and reading online forums.

Soon after turning 21, Norman went to Las Vegas and played in person for the first time and won $2,000 in three days.
Now Norman believes he’s a good player but acknowledges that at first he had "no idea how to play the game or manage his finances."

Mike Gelfund, a 22-year-old former UA student, agrees managing money is critical to being a successful poker player and actually has a separate bank account for his poker money.

"You can’t risk money for things you really need like rent or food," Gelfund said. "If you are afraid to lose your money, you won’t be able to put all the chips out there when you need to," he said.

Gelfund is very aware of gambling addictions and has seen many of his friends "go on tilt" and lose large amounts of money.
One of his friends lost $5,000 in 15 minutes while on the way to Las Vegas because they decided to play blackjack.
When he goes on tilt, Gelfund likes to take a break, breathe deeply and "try not to throw over the poker table," he laughed.

A successful poker player is someone who consistently wins, not someone who wins big once or twice, he said.
Gelfund and Norman agree poker is getting much more popular among students at the UA.

A study done by the Annenberg Public Policy Center concluded that the number of college males who reported gambling online once a week or more doubled in 2005.

Friedman has also seen an increase in the number of pathological gamblers that come into Cottonwood de Tucson, but attributes this mostly to the fact that there are more opportunities to gamble.

Most college students that report gambling problems come for treatment of a substance abuse problem and don’t meet the criteria for pathological gambling because they don’t have enough money, Friedman said.

If you have a problem with gambling or know someone who does, Friedman recommends you call Gambler’s Anonymous at (520) 570-7879 or go to their website, www.gamblersanonymous.org/mtgdirAZ.html to see their meeting times.

Source: media.wildcat.arizona.edu