The question of Is Poker Legal? is often asked thousands of times each day and the answer is confusing. Online poker is legal in some places and illegal in other places. This just adds to the public’s confusion that was caused when congress passed a law that made it so banks could not legally do business with online poker rooms. Legalize Me aims to keep you up to date with all the details of who, what, where, why, when and how about legal online poker rooms so you can play poker legally. Many Online Casinos offer the opportunity to play legal online games so that just adds to the confusion regarding playing poker.
I hope the powers that be legalize poker because poker is one of the most social, most challenging, most competitive, most suspenseful and just about most (insert adjective here) games ever created. In a nutshell, poker is quick to learn but hard to master. Which is why it is a skill game and skill games shouldn’t be lumped in with house games like craps and roulette when making laws that affect millions of people and their right to choose how they want to spend their free time and their disposable income.
Legalizing online poker for everyone is the right thing to do and done right with regulation the government wins by making money, players win by being protected by regulators, and the poker rooms win by knowing they are not breaking any laws. I am pretty sure someone once said it is always a good idea to go ahead with win-win situations so lets legalize poker.
Chino Rheem has won the first-ever Epic Poker League Main Event after outlasting Erik Seidel in the heads-up play. Rheem earned a cool million dollars for his win.
In the last hand of the tournament Seidel’s A-Q was no match for Rheem’s A-K.
Seidel took home $604,330 for finishing in second place and has now won already well over six million dollars this year from live tournaments.
Many high profile poker pros, like Ben Lamb, Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Joseph Cheong have claimed recently, that the newly crowned champion Chino Rheem has money owed to them.
It will be now interesting to see will the ex November Niner decide to pay at least some of his debts back after winning a million dollars.
Epic Poker League Main Event results (Buy-in $20,000, rake-free, 137 players):
1 Chino Rheem $1,000,000
2 Erik Seidel $604,330
3 Jason Mercier $360,970
4 Hasan Habib $237,560
5 Gavin Smith $154,260
6 Huck Seed $107,980
Phil Ivey and Luke “__FullFlush1__” Schwartz got a confrontation earlier yesterday at the WPT London.
“We joined the action on the river, where Schwartz’ stack was all in the middle, called by Seidel – but his pocket tens were looking pretty impregnable on the T-9-3-8-8 board and Seidel just mucked his hand.
With Seidel forced to hand over the bulk of his stack to the rampaging young Englishmen, Schwartz couldn’t help but ask, “What did you have” as he swept up the miserable-looking Seidel’s stack.
Ivey laughed and shook his hand, leading Schwartz to go on the attack.
“What are you laughing at??” he said.
“You’ve just won a huge pot off the guy and you’re asking him what he has,” Ivey responded.
“What does he care, he’s a multi-millionaire!” exclaimed Schwartz.
“That’s not the point, you don’t do that” said Ivey.
“I just wanted to find out how big a cooler it was. It’s nothing to do with you anyway,” fired back Schwartz.
“Well you asked me what I was laughing at…so I told you,” Ivey said, unfazed by the brazen Schwartz’ approach.”
Last night Tom “durrr” Dwan and Daniel “jungleman12″ Cates continued their durrrr challenge heads up match playing about 1,000 hands. Cates won $172k and took his lead in the overall challenge to almost $700k.
Dwan and Cates have been battling it out @ the 200/400 no limit tables.
Mr.OMG isn’t liking new CAP games. Check out what he had to say about it in his blog.
“Hey Guys,
After a nice break from poker since the WSOP ME, I played my first 2 sessions yesterday.
The first was across tables of 400/800 and 500/1000 7game. Games were just okay, but I was happy to be playing and working on my mixed game. I finished down around 20k after losing a 3way allin in the NLHE round with 44 v AA v A5cc on J43cc9 with 60k in the middle. Everyone played it fine.
I took a break for a while and came back later to 6 table 200/400 cap PLO. I ran pretty hot and won around 80.
I really dislike cap PLO. I think it’s a boring game with few complexities, and those complexities are more about math and running hand scenarios through calculators off the table than they are about psychology, leveling, and adjusting to opponents and game flow. If cap PLO are the only games running, I’ll play, but I hope people start playing something else.
You can now own one of Phil Ivey’s Las Vegas homes. The poker star just recently put his house on the open market for a cool 2 million.The crib, built in early 2001, has 6 bathrooms and various other luxuries. A private swimming pool is a given, and it’s located right near a golf course. Neighbors include Andre Agassi, David Copperfield, and Howard Lederer.
Jens “Jeans89” Kyllönen was the week's big winner with $459,504 in profit, while Viktor Blom played his biggest ever pot on PokerStars, one worth $355K! […]
