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Poker News Digest 5/30/2009 – 6/2/2009
By Dan
Published: Tuesday, June 02, 2009
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- The $1,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold'em "Stimulus Special" event at the 2009 World Series of Poker maxed out its registrant capacity, seating 6,000 players for an after-rake prize pool of over $5.4 million. The new, lower than usual buy-in has proven so popular that, according to CardPlayer.com, WSOP officials are considering making more events that affordable next year. Currently, the tournament is the only $1,000 non-rebuy event on the WSOP schedule and is, in fact, the only one of its kind ever at the WSOP. There are eighteen $1,500 events, however, and Harrah's, the owner of the WSOP, might give consideration to converting those to $1,000 events. The upside to this is that more casual players will get involved in the WSOP, but the downside is that there would be so many huge tournament fields that logistics would be difficult and they could get in the way of other events.
- Harrah's has decided to place the headquarters of its new subsidiary, Harrah's Interactive Entertainment (HIE), in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Well, it wasn't so much Harrah's decision as it was HIE's leader, Mitch Garber. The ex-PartyGaming CEO wanted to keep his family in his hometown, although this fact was likely known by Harrah's when they hired him, so the location for the subsidiary was probably in the cards (pun intended) from the start. Garber is going to work on two primary goals with HIE. One is to establish an online gaming presence in Europe, starting with the United Kingdom – Harrah's already has an interactive gaming license, which was issued in Alderney. The second goal is to further expand the World Series of Poker worldwide, as it did in the last couple years with WSOP Europe.
- While South Carolina residents who want to play a friendly, rake free game of poker in the privacy of their own homes need not worry about being arrested for it, they should know that such an activity will remain illegal in the state until at least next year. Senate Bills 535 and 629, which would both legalize "social" poker games (games in which the organizer does not take a rake or a fee), allow for charitable gambling, and institute the "predominance test" to determine whether or not something is gambling, will be put on the back burner until 2010. The bills had been passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, but according to the Augusta Chronicle, they had been "contested during the final days of the legislative session" and will not be readdressed until January. The last legislative session ended on Thursday.
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