2009 Year in Review Part I

On the felt, 2009 was a stunning year for poker. Five players won multiple World Series of Poker bracelets, Jeffrey Lisandro took down three WSOP events himself, Phil Ivey reached the final table of the main event after winning two World Series events, Cornel Cimpan proved that he is a force to be reckoned with, as he took down two World Poker Tour events, 21-year-old Joe Cada became the youngest-ever WSOP main-event champion, and countless new stars emerged as multimillion-dollar tournaments were hosted around the globe.

But off the felt, it was a transformative year for the industry. The Poker Players Alliance (PPA) assisted poker players around the country as they fought in the courts to identify poker as a game of skill, and thus not “illegal gambling,” according to the definition of most state constitutions. There was also finally some headway in Congress in the battle for online poker rights, as Rep. Barney Frank introduced favorable legislation to regulate the industry. And in what was the 40th year of the WSOP, a number of new poker tours and series were launched to cater to the ever-expanding needs of poker players.

It was a historic year for the game, and Card Player will break down all of the major news and stories in its annual “Poker Year in Review” feature. Part II of this feature will appear in the next issue.

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Keeps Growing and Growing …
In the midst of one of the worst global recessions in the past hundred years, several poker tournaments around the country suffered declines in attendance. There simply weren’t as many people willing to shell out big bucks for a poker tournament. But PokerStars’ first European Poker Tour stop in 2009, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, was the glaring exception to that.

Thanks to the site’s continued international expansion and online qualifying efforts, along with a festival-like atmosphere in the Bahamas, the 2009 PCA was a rousing success. It welcomed 1,347 players for its $10,000 main event, distinguishing itself as the largest major poker tournament outside the U.S. The $3 million first-place prize was awarded to Canadian poker player Poorya Nazari, who captured his first major-tournament win.

The _PCA _main event debuted in 2004 with a $7,500 buy-in and 221 players. Attendance has grown every year since then — to 461, 725, 937, 1,136, and 1,347 in 2009, which was the first year that the tournament featured a $10,000 buy-in.

While Nazari emerged from the shadows for his first tourney win, two familiar faces made headlines at the 2009 PCA. Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier followed up his 2008 PCA main-event win with a victory in the 2009 PCA $25,000 high-roller event, for a payday of $433,500, and 2008 WSOP main-event champ Peter Eastgate claimed the second major-tournament win of his young career with a victory in a $5,000 event at the PCA, for $343,000.

The 2010 PCA will feature more tournaments than ever before, with more than 50 events on the schedule, including a ladies event and a charity tournament.

Tom Dwan Challenges the World
Tom Dwan, better known as “durrrr” online, has been at the pinnacle of the online poker world since late 2006. He has taken on all challengers, and has dragged in some of the largest online cash-game pots in the history of the game. So, it’s not too surprising that he had a little trouble finding heads-up action against his peers. What is surprising is what he decided to do about it.

Dwan issued a challenge in the Jan. 14, 2009, issue of Card Player that thrilled poker fans and drummed up major interest in high-stakes cash games. Dwan told Card Player that he was willing to make a bet against anyone, other than his good friend Phil Galfond, for 3-1 odds and up to $1.5 million on the side, playing heads up in 50,000 hands at four simultaneous online tables of either pot-limit Omaha or no-limit hold’em at $200-$400 blinds. Whoever was up at the end of 50,000 hands would walk away with the profits, in addition to the side bet.

“I don’t get enough people to play me heads up. Even though there is more money to be made in other games, rather than playing heads up at one or two tables, it’s so interesting, and I think you learn a lot,” said Dwan. “I might think I have an edge here, but it’s more fun to gamble a little. That’s why I’m making this challenge.”

Patrik Antonius and Phil Ivey both accepted the challenge, with the agreement that Antonius would go first. While the challenge seemingly promised tons of frequent high-stakes action, it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, as Antonius and Dwan played only sporadically as the year progressed. However, as of press time, Dwan held about a $780,000 lead with just over 27,000 of the 50,000 hands played.

One thing that Dwan was able to get in 2009 was plenty of action and some crazy swings — and it had nothing to do with the durrrr challenge. That action will be detailed in Part II of the Poker Year in Review in the next issue.

Poker Moves From the Basement to the Courthouse
It seems like anywhere you looked in the United States in 2009, there was a court battle with poker at the center of the debate. In South Carolina, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Kentucky, poker players battled with authorities for the right to play poker, both live in their homes and online.

While there were some setbacks along the way (and while some decisions can still be appealed), almost every local battle in which the poker industry found itself turned out to be a successful venture. Judges in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Colorado ruled that poker is a game of skill, and therefore had trouble fitting poker into their state constitutions’ definitions of illegal gambling, which ban “games of chance.”

The first positive ruling for the poker community came on Jan. 16, when Pennsylvania Judge Thomas A. James Jr. said that it is “apparent” that skill predominates over chance in the game. That decision was reinforced in Colorado just a week later.

Five poker players in Colorado were originally charged with professional gambling for hosting a $20 tournament at a local pub in August 2008, and eventually were prosecuted for illegal gambling. However, the state constitution excludes any “bona fide contests of skill,” which the players, in court, were able to successfully argue in regard to poker. A judge issued a not-guilty verdict for one of the players on Jan. 22, and dismissed the other players’ cases without prejudice.

In August, however, an appellate judge clarified the county judge’s decision, saying that poker was indeed considered gambling in the state, even if it was a game of skill. While the poker players involved were still off the hook, this clarification ensured the government that it wouldn’t have an unwanted spread of poker games in bars around the state.

Perhaps the most high-profile poker-related court case in the country in 2009 occurred in South Carolina, where a handful of poker players fought an 1802 law that, if enforced literally, banned “any game with cards or dice.” The PPA and the defendants decided to make the skill-versus-chance debate the centerpiece of their defense, and it turned out to be a wise decision.

A South Carolina judge’s ruling on Feb. 19 that five poker players were guilty of illegal gambling was actually seen as a bit of a victory, since the judge admitted that he viewed poker as a game of skill but had to refer the case to a higher court because of issues of precedence. An appellate judge agreed that poker is a game of skill, and he reversed the guilty verdict of the players in September.

Online poker was at the heart of several court battles, as well. In Minnesota and Kentucky, state governments went to great efforts to block their residents from accessing domain names of poker websites. However, thanks to a court ruling in Kentucky on Jan. 20 and the threat of legal action in Minnesota, the websites remain open to the public.

Minnesota’s state government admitted in June that it was dropping the idea completely, but Kentucky’s state government filed an appeal to its state Supreme Court. The Kentucky Supreme Court heard the case on Oct. 22, but as of press time, it had yet to release its decision.

Cornel Cimpan Wins L.A. Poker Classic and Emerges as Major Tourney Talent
Not too many people knew of Cornel Cimpan before 2009, even though he had been playing major events on the tournament trail for much of the decade. He had never had a six-figure cash or taken down a major event, and thus went through poker tournaments fairly anonymously. But that would all change after he entered and won the L.A. Poker Classic in February, for nearly $1.7 million.

Cimpan, thrilled at his huge success, knew that he couldn’t take this big win for granted, and admitted that he was ecstatic about seizing the opportunity, because he might not ever get that chance again.

Little did he know that just a few months later, at November’s World Poker Finals, he would win his second World Poker Tour main event in less than a year, for $910,058.

NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship: Huck Showcases Skills, Rousso Flourishes on Grand Stage
Huck Seed has pretty much flown under the radar since his win in the 1996 World Series of Poker main event, becoming known in the poker community more for his eccentric prop bets than for his tourney wins. He had quietly collected another two WSOP bracelets since that 1996 win, in razz events (giving him four overall), and had always been very respected amongst his peers for his abilities.

But in March in NBC’s National Heads-up Poker Championship, Seed reminded everyone just how impressive he could be. In the event’s four-year history, Seed had made the money every single time. But in 2009, no one could beat the former world champ. Seed stormed through the field — beating Jonathan Little, Gus Hansen, Glen Chorny, David Oppenheim, Sam Farha, and Vanessa Rousso to win $500,000.

“I was really happy with the consistency of my play, and I had a lot of fun playing,” said Seed, who now has the best overall record of anyone who has ever played in the event, 18-4.

Rousso, whom he defeated in the finals, had a sort of coming-out party during the event, as she really launched herself into the mainstream to become one of the most recognizable female stars in the game today.

In the week prior to her runner-up finish, Rousso filmed a couple of national commercials for GoDaddy, the popular domain registrar and web-hosting company. Proving that she wasn’t just a pretty face, she beat a star-studded lineup to get heads up with Seed; she defeated Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, Paul Wasicka, Daniel Negreanu, and Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier in the earlier rounds, and ended up winning $250,000.

Rousso continued to stay in the spotlight for the remainder of 2009, appearing on the cover of a December issue of Card Player and an E! television show called Bank of Hollywood, and even doing an interview for Hustler magazine.

Don’t expect 2009 to be the last year that Rousso and Seed make the headlines.

PokerStars’ Inaugural Spring Championship of Online Poker a Huge Success
With hotel room, flight, and restaurant bills, a live tournament can certainly be pricier than the initial buy-in suggests. Perhaps that’s why the number of big buy-in events online have been growing. These days, many top pros are playing from the comfort of their homes in lieu of flying halfway around the world.

The Full Tilt Online Poker Series and the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker have been around for years, but in 2009, PokerStars launched a new series, the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP).

The 22-event series offered a little something for everyone. It featured fields of 502 players for its $10,300 main event — which was won by j.thaddeus, for $963,388 — and 27,134 players for its opening tournament, a $5 rebuy event. Each of the 22 events featured three different price points, so players with bankrolls of all different sizes could afford to play.

More than $40 million in prize money was distributed during the series.

PartyGaming Forks Over $105 Million to U.S. Attorney’s Office
While several online poker sites remained open to U.S. residents after the UIGEA [Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act] was passed in 2006, PartyGaming and other publicly traded companies quickly closed their doors to American players. While there is no law that criminalizes online poker in the United States, the threat of lawsuits from the U.S. Attorney’s Office was more than enough to keep plenty of poker sites away.
PartyGaming, which ran the most popular online poker site in the world in PartyPoker prior to the UIGEA, showed just how powerful the U.S. Attorney’s threats were when it agreed on April 7 to pay $105 million to the Southern District of New York for a non-prosecution agreement after nearly two years of negotiations.

As part of the agreement, PartyGaming issued a statement acknowledging that it broke American law by offering real-money online poker games to U.S. residents and processing transactions through a third party. In late 2008, PartyGaming’s co-founder Anurag Dikshit made a similar agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Both deals were criticized by poker sites that currently offer poker games to American citizens, with Doyle Brunson saying that Dikshit and the company “folded up like an accordion and pled guilty to breaking some kind of mystery law.”

While the deal may have angered some people in the industry, it was evident that PartyGaming was positioning itself for a possible return to the United States if and when legislation passes to make it a more friendly country for online gaming.

Timoshenko Wins WPT Championship
On April 25, a star was born.

Yevgeniy Timoshenko, a 21-year-old pro from Washington who had earned a reputation as a great player online with his handle “Jovial Gent,” defeated a stacked final table at the WPT Championship, for $2.15 million.

It was the third live-tournament win in his brief career, but this victory introduced him to the remainder of the poker community who didn’t already know how good he is. His previous tourney wins came at the Irish Poker Open and the APT Macau main event.

The talent at that WPT Championship final table was overwhelming; the group included Scotty Nguyen, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Shannon Shorr, Christian Harder, and Ran Azor.

Normally, a $2.15 million win would be enough to qualify as a very successful year. But, Timoshenko followed up that win with another impressive victory in September, this time online in the 2009 World Championship of Online Poker main event on PokerStars. Jovial Gent won more than $1.7 million in topping a 2,144-player field.

De Korver Goes From Short Stack to EPT Monte Carlo Champion
Down to just three big blinds at the final table, Pieter De Korver faced long odds if he wanted to become the next Grand Final champion. But thanks to an incredible run of cards, he completed the epic comeback to win the huge EPT tournament and collect £2.3 million.

The Grand Final in Monte Carlo has established itself as one of the most prestigious events in the world, and in 2009, a record 935 players participated in the main event, an 11 percent increase over 2008.

Barney Frank Renews Hope for Regulated Online Poker
For much of the early part of 2009, the poker community anxiously waited for Rep. Barney Frank, the Democratic congressman from Massachussets, to keep his promise of introducing pro-poker legislation that would explicitly legalize and regulate the online poker industry.

But after President Barack Obama was inaugurated in January, he and the new Congress focused on the more pressing issues facing the nation, such as the financial crunch, the housing crisis, and health-care reform.

But finally, on May 6, Rep. Frank introduced two bills to Congress — one that delayed implementation of the UIGEA, which was scheduled to go into effect on Dec. 1, 2009, and a second that would openly establish a regulated online gaming market in the U.S.

“The government should not interfere with people’s liberty unless there is a very good reason,” Frank said at a news conference while introducing the bills.

The congressman proposed similar legislation in 2007, but was never able to get it to the House floor for a vote. With a Democratic Congress, poker advocates were much more hopeful this time around. Read about Rep. Frank’s progress with the legislation in Part II of this feature in the next issue.

PokerStars Continues to Get Into the Poker Tour Business
On May 28, PokerStars announced the creation of the brand-new Italian Poker Tour.

That creation was just one part of the site’s ongoing effort to establish itself as a major brand on the live-tournament scene. Earlier in the year, PokerStars launched the Russian Poker Tour — which was a short-lived venture because the Russian government made the decision to shut down all casinos on July 1 (a decision you can read about in the next issue) — as well as a live poker room in Macau.

While the company was flourishing on the international scene, it didn’t forget about establishing a presence stateside, either. In March, PokerStars signed a one-year deal, with an option for a second year, to become the title sponsor of the Heartland Poker Tour, a growing televised circuit in the United States with stops in Iowa, Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan, South Dakota, and Oklahoma.

Online Poker Funds Seized
Poker players generally don’t worry about legal situations unless they have to. Sure, they wish the government would stop trying to force a moral agenda upon its citizens and infringing on their personal liberties, but most people aren’t really going to take notice until their own money is at stake.

That’s exactly what happened in early June, when the Southern District of New York, the same office that forced PartyGaming to shell out for a non-prosecution agreement, seized approximately $30 million of online poker funds. Players were surprised to see their checks from PokerStars, Full Tilt, and other reputable poker sites bounce due to the government’s action.

The sites quickly contacted the affected players, let them know there was a problem with their funds, and reissued the checks through different payment processors. While that money has yet to be recovered, the poker sites absorbed the loss and paid back all of the players’ money.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office indicted the alleged owner of the payment-processing sites, Douglas Rennick, two months later for fraud conspiracy, money-laundering conspiracy, and gambling conspiracy. Rennick currently resides in Canada.

Multiple-Bracelet Winners Highlight Historic Year at the World Series of Poker
With all of the major news breaking about Rep. Barney Frank’s bills and the seizure of online poker funds, poker headlines were spiked with a tinge of drama heading into the 40th World Series of Poker. But, as a series of major summer story lines unfolded, all attention shifted to the game’s most important tournament.

Usually, when a player wins two WSOP bracelets in a single year, he probably expects to stand alone as the pre-eminent performer of the summer. But in 2009, five men overcame the astronomical odds of winning multiple bracelets in a single year.

Brock Parker won two six-handed hold’em events, Greg Mueller won two limit hold’em events, J.P. Kelly won a $1,500 pot-limit Omaha event in Las Vegas and then the opening hold’em event at the World Series of Poker Europe in London, Phil Ivey took down a deuce-to-seven lowball event and a mixed-games tourney (before making the final table of the main event), and Jeffrey Lisandro became just the fifth person ever to win three bracelets in a single World Series, thanks to three victories in stud-type events.

These remarkable performances highlighted an amazing year in which several pros made their mark on the Series. Ville Wahlbeck recorded six top-13 finishes, made four final tables, and won a bracelet, while Vitaly Lunkin followed up his win in the $40,000 no-limit hold’em event with a second-place finish in the pot-limit Omaha world championship and a fourth-place finish in the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. world championship.

40th World Series of Poker Honors the Past, Makes Changes for the Future
In its 40th year, the World Series of Poker featured two new events to honor its past. Harrah’s hosted an invitation-only freeroll tournament for all WSOP main-event champs, as well as a $40,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em event for ESPN. Tom McEvoy, the 1983 WSOP champ, won the freeroll, and Lunkin, who won the Russian Poker Tour Moscow event earlier in the year, stunned the poker elite by winning the $40,000 event and nearly $1.9 million against a stacked field, for the second bracelet of his career.
While Harrah’s made a couple of changes to honor the WSOP’s past, it also made a couple of changes that will likely last well into the future.

For the first year ever, every tournament featured a triple-the-buy-in starting stack. In recent years, starting stacks were upped to double-the-buy-in amounts. The WSOP also added more levels in most tournaments, thus providing the opportunity for more play.

The result of those changes? More bracelets were won by pros. With the opportunity for more play, the experienced players often rose to the top.

For the first time in several years, the WSOP also featured an open-field $1,000 buy-in event. The massive turnout (more than 6,000 players) all but ensures that $1,000 events will be a fixture at future WSOPs for years to come.

Phil Ivey, Jeff Shulman, and Joe Cada Highlight the 2009 “November Nine”
The 2009 main event will probably be remembered for three things: the year that Joe Cada won it all, the year that Phil Ivey and Jeff Shulman came so close to putting the big-name players back on top, and the year that hundreds were turned away from the main event.

The biggest tournament of the year started out with a black eye, because on day 1D, at least 500 players (a Harrah’s estimate) were turned away because seating had reached capacity. It was a painful lesson for hundreds of poker players, as they learned that the main event would not go to 10-handed play or accept alternates, which Harrah’s made clear before the event began.

When the dust cleared, a still impressive 6,494 players had registered for the big dance, and the November Nine was eventually formed with a lineup featuring seven-time bracelet winner Phil Ivey and Card Player President Jeff Shulman.

Seven other dreamers also made the final table, including 21-year-old Michigan pro Joe Cada, Maryland logger Darvin Moon, French pro Antoine Saout, New York cash-game player Eric Buchman, former Bear Stearns executive Steven Begleiter, Florida father Kevin Schaffel, and talented British pro James Akenhead.

For a review of that stunning final table, as well as all of the other major news from the second half of 2009, check out the next issue of Card Player.

Poker — 2.0
By Mitch Garber

Mitch Garber is no stranger to the poker world. After serving as the CEO of PartyGaming from 2006 to 2008, he is now the CEO of Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment, a new subsidiary of Harrah’s designed to oversee the World Series of Poker and explore online opportunities for the brand.

Garber shares with Card Player his views on how far the industry has come and his vision for its future.

Poker has experienced massive popularity and mainstream growth during the second half of this decade. What professionals, connoisseurs, and regular and not-so-regular people from every walk of life knew for decades took the Internet only a few short years to infiltrate the mindsets and lifestyles of tens of millions of people worldwide.

The emergence of Internet poker and its convergence with television, initially with small and often little-known cable networks, and ultimately with major networks, including ESPN, NBC, and FOX, has changed the game forever, and created an industry out of a pastime — an industry for players, organizers, fans, and casino owners like Harrah’s.

The World Series of Poker is no different. At the start of this decade, the WSOP attracted 512 entrants to its main event, won by Chris Ferguson in 2000. In 2009, the WSOP main event attracted 6,494 entrants, more than 12 times the number in 2000. It is clear that we are all players in the early stages of a global paradigm shift in poker.
 
I recently was brought in by Harrah’s to help pave the way during this next phase. I have been involved in the gaming industry for my entire 20-year professional career, and while it’s unclear if they’ll make classic movies about this era in gaming, it’s a safe bet that they will make several about the current era in poker.
 
The challenge as I see it is to preserve the integrity, history, and tradition of the game, to encourage and cultivate professional player business and revenue opportunities, and never to lose sight of the importance and prestige of the bracelet, and of every man’s and woman’s opportunity to play for one.

That may sound like an oversimplification, but we need to remember that it’s against the backdrop of a multibillion-dollar Internet poker and casino industry, and the lobby effort to legalize and tax it in the United States.

It’s also against the backdrop of Facebook and social network games, and millions of land-based real-money and charity tournaments in hundreds of countries. The pastime has become a global industry.

It could not be a more exciting time for the WSOP or its players, and despite the massive global momentum and expansion of the game and the way it is seen, heard, and played, we intend to stay true to the annual WSOP in Las Vegas. We intend to run the tournament in the same manner and consistency in which it has been run the last several years, and we intend to remain true to our responsibility as keepers of the sanctity and meaningfulness of the bracelet, and of the vision of Jack Binion.

What is good for the WSOP is good for poker, and vice versa. We hold the game in great regard and understand our unique role in it.

Recently, Jeffrey Pollack left the WSOP after shepherding the Internet-driven poker era and overseeing several positive developments at the WSOP. The_ WSOP’s_ biggest day-to-day contributors — people like Ty Stewart and Jack Effel, and the teams of professionals at the Rio and across the Circuit event locations — remain with us, fully committed and energized for WSOP 2010 and beyond. All of these people continue to work hard to ensure that the world’s most prestigious annual poker event runs as seamlessly as possible, and improves year over year. 

While one shouldn’t expect any major changes to the WSOP tournament at the Rio, we will work hard to expand our brand globally at the same time. One thing that attracted me to Harrah’s was the terrific portfolio of brands and assets that the company has — and the opportunity to take some of them to the Internet as well as to land-based venues around the globe. Execution of this strategy will be good for poker in general, and for its players and fans. It will result in more exposure, more television, and more opportunity to be rewarded.

We are proud of what the WSOP has become since Harrah’s took ownership of it in 2004. Witnessing both the 2008 and 2009 main-event final tables live was an incredible and eye-opening experience for me. The fact that poker fills up a huge theater with large cheering sections, with all of the glitz and glamour broadcast on ESPN in HD, is truly amazing.
 
Lastly, my arrival at Harrah’s, and our exploration of the Internet space as a source of revenue and growth, has created some discussion amongst professional players about the direction of the WSOP. As we enter 2010, let me assure you that we understand, and take seriously, the issues that are important to professional players and their livelihood, and that we look forward to a continued open relationship with players and a continued dialogue on tournament structures, prize pools, sponsorships, and other areas of importance.

We wish everyone a bracelet-filled 2010.