Days 2&3: Jetskis?

If one more person asks us on the beach if we want to a coconut, jetski ride, or booze cruise, their lives over. Day 2 went well, besides Justin getting knocked out right before the end of the day. Lost most of his stack around 5 o'clock on a kind of move .

In mid position, cutoff+1, a player raised, and he called in the cutoff with K7s. The flop was 653, and the player led for about half the pot. Justin called. the turn was a 6, and the player bet, Justin raised, player thought forever and called. River was a brick like a jack, the player checked Justin bet 10,000 and the player called. A6s. Nh.

Finally went on the mayan slide you see on advertisements today. It goes underneath the aquarium, pretty cool. There's a tube slide that goes underneath but you stay under and get to watch the sharks underneath and around them its real cool. The nerf sharks are still our friends, and DC has been swimming with them daily.

Jaime was still in it starting today, he had 17,000 in chips. We'll see what he does.

Day 1: Shake Your Moneymaker

Aside from buying large amounts of alcohol in a Bahimian slum, Nick jumping in the shark pool, shaking moneymaker's baby at the welcome cocktail party, and Danny asking Negreanu down the hall what he was doing up so late at 4:30 when it was actually midnight, it was a pretty normal day 1.

Atlantis is the absolutely ridiculous. This tomb spans everywhere and there is a huge aquarium that spans around and in most of the towers. We got in about 2:00 but after messing around in the cab for 3 hours we finally got to the hotel and checked in. The rooms are very cool, with walk out patios to this lazy river type water thing. Beach is a 2 minute walk from the room.

A drunk walk to the poker room managed to happen at what seemed like 3 am but was 9:00. Jammed with sit-n-gos and satellites, but no cash games. Strolling back to the room because the lists were so long, we caught up with Negraneu walking down our hallway with his luggage. Danny told him that he loves his blog of fulltilt poker and reads it all the time.

The Coral Tower is nice. The pool area near the room is basically a mini water park with a lot of beach chairs an expensive bar and gold diggers. Other than literally everything is pricy (internet, alcohol, food, water) its amazing. The sulfur smell from the well water from the toilet last night was the only drawback.

Oh yea, Nick decided to get blackout drunk and shake moneymaker's baby at the cocktail party forcibly hard. High five.

Flight day 1 is today, so after the beach I'll head over and see how Young Gun Gary's doing and see who else is around.

p.s. Monster where are you?

Internet Gambling, Morality, and The US Government

Forbes.com listed this article on the recent weekend passage of a bill outlawing credit card transactions and money transfer companies to internet gambling sites.

What does that mean?

It means that despite the World Trade Organization finding the United States guilty on many infractions and may force sanctions on them soon (antiguawto.com for more) the U.S. is now putting itself in a position to make itself actual less compliant with regulations. It means that the foremost reason poker sites are flourishing (US public consumers) will soon be lost. It means Christian right'ists and Harrahs' entertainment lobbyists we'll sleep well, knowing that they lobbied together successfully for something that very well will only become a hotter, more engorging debate in the coming years.

On the one hand, we have billion dollar gambling corporations, Indian and regular, in the US lobbying in essence to give them a chance to exploit gambling degenerated consumers for themselves, as well as giving their companies a chance to enter in the online marketplace for gambling. On the opposite side, we have the Christian right saying that on a moral level less gambling is as important as preventing overseas companies from profiting from the US without paying taxes on the margins.

Lastly, we have the U.S. Government. Separated from from church, letting its bureaucracy churn on by burning even more of tax payers money on enforcing a law which could turn into a multi-billion dollar money maker allowed and taxed, instead. Morality, unfortunately, I don't believe is driving any of the votes in congress or the senate against internet gambling -- bureaucracy, money, and stubbornness are.

Big business vs morality. I don't get it. Does anyone have any comments besides me?

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Side note: I'm real proud of wsex (world sports exchange)'s stance on this. Here's an e-mail sent to a player:

Hi xxxx,

We have absolutely no plans whatsoever of dropping any players. In short, it will be business as usual. WSEX.com and all its sister companies are legal and licensed businesses regulated by the Gaming Commission of Antigua and Barbuda. We are wholly located in Antigua and do no business or run any part of our operation on US soil.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has recognized the right of Antiguan companies to be in this business and has instructed the United States to stop trying to block US residents from playing at Antiguan operations.

Nothing in the bill criminalizes placing a bet or sending money to or receiving money from an offshore gambling business.

We strongly suggest that our players/bettors get set up with alternative payment systems (such as Neteller and First Pay).

Thanks for your enquiry xxxx. WSEX is here to stay.

Best regards,

Byron WPX "

So they said: suck it. Their balls drag on the ground. NH

+2,000,000

At the conclusion of this year's main event, 2 million extra chips were in play. Now, I don't think its the massively huge deal people make this out to be, a 'industry-altering' event. However, it is a large mess up on managements part. How to deal with it in the future, I'm not really sure.

Irregardless, a great three-part article on how it is believed to have happened is located here. It is rather intriguing to think they rationalized the situation down to a 22 minute span where the miscount (or illicit cheating) must have happened.

WPT Court Case

I'm not sure what side I agree with yet, but here is a copy of the complaint that Raymer filed. It'll be interesting to see what happens with it. Twoplustwo thread with a lot of Raymer's comments about it.

Also, congradulations to Jamie Gold for WSOP.

World Series Coverage

If you have been or plan on trying to follow the WSOP main event so far this week and into the next, your best bets are here, here, here, and here for coverage and photos.

Jason Strasser (strassa2 on pokerstars) is out. He had a horrendous day, AA to AK and 1010 to 99, real tough luck, and just about kills the last player I was cheering for. 8,773 entrants -- ridiculous.

As for noted players still in, the list keeps dwindling but I think Annie Duke and Allen Cunnigham are still in. It'll be interesting this year to see if 1 'noted' player makes the final table.

Edit: check cardplayer.com, they seem to have accurate chip counts coming in right now fairly quickly. Also, Annie is not only doing well but has almost a million chips. She's in the hunt -- you know what that means -- time to get snapped off.

Champ Chimp Clown Caper

http://www.brynkenney.com/bryn/content/view/174/1/