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How Slow is Poker News Today?

It’s one thing when some fluff piece, re-written press release makes its way around the poker press but when you keep seeing it pop up over and over again you have to wonder how damn slow is the poker news biz these days. Case in point is a press release / news article that PKR has signed an agreement making Xhilarate Poker its exclusive massage supplier at all live events in the future. Holy crap! They’ve signed an official massage supplier? Stop the presses.

Really? A massage supplier? A massage supplier that specializes in poker? Why is this news? Why is this appearing on what I normally consider reputable poker news outlets?

Actually, no. That is where his inexperience playing poker comes into play. On most poker sites a first time deposit bonus is either released incrementally as you hit certain milestones (like on Full Tilt Poker) or you have to complete the entire bonus to receive any part of it. Admittedly this is different than for online casinos which often comp you the money up front and then require that you give them so much turnover before any of it will be released to you. In fact, some poker sites even use a similar strategy to get low roller customers to come back to the site. They’ll deposit X dollars into your account and then you just have to play Y number of hands in order to release the money for withdrawal.

But the standard in the online poker industry, especially for first time deposit bonuses, is for the player to either earn off the matching portion incrementally or to completely earn it off before being released. The fact that the “Staff Editor” of a major gaming news site wouldn’t know that is somewhat scary. But even worse is that when he’s later informed that this is all in the terms and conditions when he signed up instead of investigating whether this is a fundamental difference between casino and poker offerings (which it is – and I’ll tell you why in a moment) he repeatedly calls Full Tilt “deceptive” and “deceiving.”

Now, Mr. Rutherford, should you read this, allow me to school you on why poker rooms and casinos offer different types of bonuses. When you play casino games you play against the house. That means if you lose your entire stake the casino still wins. Let’s look at the math:

Tags: Full Tilt Poker, industry, message supplier, News, Poker, poker industry, Poker Rules, slow, specialize, supplier

rule of OMAHA

    Omaha is similar to hold’em in using a three-card flop on the board, a fourth boardcard, and then a fifth boardcard. Each player is dealt four holecards (instead of two) at the start. In order to make a hand, a player must use precisely two holecards with three boardcards. The betting is the same as in hold’em. At the showdown , the entire four-card hand should be shown to receive the pot.

RULES OF OMAHA

    1. All the rules of hold’em apply to Omaha except the rule on playing the board, which is not possible in Omaha (because you must use two cards from your hand and three cards from the board)
Omaha is often played high-low split, 8-or-better. The player may use any combination of two holecards and three boardcards for the high hand and another (or the same) combination of two holecards and three boardcards for the low hand.

The rules governing kill pots are listed in “Section 13 – Kill Pots.”

Tags: governing, kill pot, OMAHA, Poker, Poker Rules, Rule

Communication Breakdown?

An unsettling tournament rules situation … just in from one of our undercover Pokeratizen investigators playing in the $1,500 NLH … and, of course, it involves texting.

This took place at a table in the Miranda Room, shortly after the first break … a player was re-raised all-in, and he supposedly went into the tank for a good two minutes. During that time, the player with his tournament life on the line reportedly stood up from the table and sent a text. A few seconds after getting a reply, he folded.

Though no one called the floor during the questionable texting, the table did bring it up after the hand, and the dealer apparently said that no, they are not supposed to issue any sort of reprimands for texting-related issues. The assumption around the table was that this dealer simply was a bit clueless … but then when a new dealer came in, the players brought up the same hand and issue, and the new dealer concurred, that yes, they are not supposed to stop any such activity.

I think we all know that this shoulda been a dead hand — sorry dude, your tourney’s over — but with the new dealer echoing the same thing, perhaps there was something misconveyed to the dealers about non-enforcement of original texting rules at the table, exception to the exception obviously being when a player’s in a hand?

We’ll see if we can’t find out more. Obviously you’d hate to boot a player on a rule violation or technicality in a $1,500 Donkament Super-Amazing Intraductory Pokerthon (we’re still workshopping a new name) … but at the same time, to avoid that, you’d think the dealers would need the authority to pipe up and say, “hey you, Mr. Amateur who doesn’t follow these sorts of things on Pokerati, stop that or your hand will be dead!”

Tags: Breakdown, Communication, donkament, floor-decisions, Poker Rules, Reply, Rule, texting at the tables, Twitter