Basically there is no news yet on the Full Tilt hearing today. The Full Tilt hearing with the Alderney Gambling Control Commission was as expected held behind closed doors. There have been no statements issued so far. One interesting twist is that the AGCC executive director Andre Wilsenach said he was “disappointed with the tribunal’s decision”. Here is his quote:

“I am pleased that the FTP hearing will continue as scheduled, as was argued on my behalf. Notwithstanding my arguments to the contrary, the hearing will be held in private. I believe the public has a right to know the reasoning behind the decisions to suspend FTP’s licences and call a hearing, and to hear the evidence that will be put forward on my behalf.”

Here is the official press release:

Dublin, Ireland (August 22, 2011) – On August 16, Irish based Pocket Kings Ltd., brand executor for the Full Tilt Poker moniker, concluded the exclusivity period of negotiations with their current potential investor.

While Pocket Kings Ltd. plans to continue discussions with its current investor, the company has now begun negotiations with additional potential investors to conclude the sale/partnership of the Full Tilt Poker brand and its assets.

Full Tilt Poker apologizes for its lack of communication with its customers over the last month and a half, but it has been grappling with unexpected and complex legal and financial issues arising from Black Friday and its aftermath. In addition, the company has had to be circumspect about disclosing the progress of negotiations with potential investors because there is often a requirement of strict confidentiality.

To the extent that it can do so without jeopardizing future opportunities, Full Tilt Poker will strive to have better communication with its customers going forward. Full Tilt Poker’s number one priority remains the same: to secure an infusion of capital to repay all of its worldwide customers.

This past Friday the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) released a statement saying that Full Tilt Poker has paid its past due licensing fees of over $400k USD. I view this as bullish for US Players getting paid and so does the AGCC. Here is their statement: “The recent payment of overdue licence fees by FTP is also in players’ best interests since it allows commercial negotiations to take place that might result in a successful refinancing deal.”

It’s a scenario that every poker play knows all too well: the turn is dealt, and you have a monster hand (Trip kings, a straight, it doesn’t matter). Play goes back and forth, the pot getting larger and larger, and suddenly you are all in. You both show your hands, and all he has is a flush draw. But then the river comes and, lo and behold, it’s a spade and to complete his flush. You played the hand perfectly, so it’s tough to think of a way out of handing the opponent all your money after he wins the river lottery.

The answer to this problem may come in the form of something called “running it twice”. If both players agree to “run it twice,” the dealer splits the pot in two. Then he deals the river in the normal way, and whoever has the best hand wins half of the pot. Next, the dealer burns a card (without replacing the previously dealt card) and deals out a new river. Whoever wins this time gets the second half of the pot. If players agree to run it twice pre flop the entire board is dealt twice, or from the flop, 2 turns and rivers must be dealt.

So why would a player want to run it twice? After all, the odds of winning aren’t actually changed. The answer is that it reduces the likelihood of losing everything. In a normal hand, there are generally only two options: win the entire pot, or win nothing and lose everything you’ve put in. Split pots are rare. When you run it twice, though, there are three possibilities: win, lose, or split the pot.

For example, in the scenario at the beginning of this article the opponent was a huge underdog. To make the math simple let’s say that he had a one in four chance of winning. If you just play the hand out normally, that means there’s a one in four chance that you lose everything or 25%. So 75% of the time you win it all and 25% of the time you go broke. But if you run it twice, the odds change: the likelihood of your opponent hitting is flush two times in a row is only (1/4) x (1/4)=1/16, or about 6 %. So all of a sudden the risk of going broke has gone down by a factor of four.

Here’s an example, just to show how the math works. You hold pocket kings of clubs and diamonds. The flop comes King of spades, 6 of diamonds, 4 of hearts, giving you three kings. The turn comes 7 of spades, and your opponent goes all in. You call, and see that he has A8 of spades, for a flush draw and a gut shot straight. Now, you will win 77.27% of the time here, while he wins 22.73% of the time. If you decide to run it twice, you win the whole pot (.772 x .772)=59.6% of the time. He wins the whole pot (.2273 x.2273)=5.2% of the time. You split the pot (100 – 59.6 – 5.2)=35.2% of the time. If the pot had $500 in it, your expected value would be (.596) x (500)+(.352) x (500/2)=$386. If you only ran it once, your EV would be (.772) x (500)=386, which as you can see is the same exact value.

The benefits here depend on the hand, and possibly more on you personally. If you really don’t want to bust (and who does?), then reducing the possibility of losing it all keeps your roll safer. In other words, it lowers variance. The likelihood of your opponent getting lucky on the river two times in a row is exponentially lower than it happening once. If you’re a risk-averse player, or just looking for ways to reduce variance, then running it twice can be a good option.

There are also situations where I think it is silly not to run it twice. One example might be a hand where your opponent has just one out. Because the cards aren’t shuffled back into the deck, he can’t possibly win the whole pot. In this case you are insulating yourself against risk while still winning the whole pot in the vast majority of cases. Surprisingly, running it twice actually lowers variance for both the losing and the winning player, because the loser gets another chance to hit his draw.

Of course, some cases also exist where you should refuse to run it twice. If you’re up against a really aggressive player who keeps trying to steal the pot every hand and when called asks to run it twice, you may want to decline. He wants to reduce his variance to make sure he doesn’t go broke when he gets caught. You, on the other hand, would like nothing more than to punish this player. The more variance he has, the better.

If you aren’t too bothered by variance, then by all means only run it once. The expected value of your hand isn’t improved by running it twice. Poker is sometimes about getting it all in and seeing who ends up taking all the money. But if a bad run of cards is dragging on your bankroll, or you want to protect the night’s big winnings, then think about running it twice.

I used all of these programs and then some when playing and got a kick out of this spoof video. Enjoy…

With the coming prospect of legal and regulated online gambling appearing on the legislative horizon with HR2267, many poker enthusiasts are wondering if the poker world is nearing another proverbial golden age. I think some players prefer the status quo, where online gambling exists in a legal netherworld and the games come from overseas providers and the vast majority of potential and current online poker players should see this bill as a positive development. If HR2267 is passed by the House and Senate it would grant the Secretary of the Treasury the authority to regulate and issue licenses to online gambling firms. It would also grant legitimacy to the practice and open up the game to a large pool of individuals that want to take part but have been prevented from doing so by the fear of any possible legality issues. Having recently passed the House Financial Services Committee with a positive recommendation, the bill has a reasonable chance of being looked upon favorably by the House as a whole. Now the question remains as to whether or not this will cause a renaissance of sorts in the online poker world, but changes will undoubtedly occur.
Many experienced players I know hope for a return of the influx of less skilled players that the game saw during its initial boom in 2004-2005. I doubt it will be the same this time but one thing is fairly certain and that is there will be lots of new players and money coming into the game. That is always a good thing.

In addition, the legislation will officially ratify online poker’s status as a legitimate business practice as well as a recreational diversion. Assuming that the regulations enacted by the Treasury do not make hosting games prohibitively expensive and/or difficult, there is no reason that online poker can’t experience another golden era. All of the major sites in the industry will have an incentive to tap the newly legalized legion of American poker players. If history is anything to go by, the new level of competition introduced into the market will spur innovation and enforce quality on the industry in a way that government regulation cannot. Once the harsh prohibitions are lifted and the United States market is ready to be tapped, the poker industry could potentially erupt at a magnitude reaching perhaps billions of dollars. Given the expense of processing money in the current unregulated system, the added costs to players that would be incurred by taxes would easily be alleviated by the savings of being allowed to operate in the open marketplace. While it is impossible to tell the future, it seems fairly certain that another golden age of poker exists just over the horizon.

Pokerstars did modify the buy ins as I speculated about. The full text of the announcement is below but here is the short version first:

Most NL/PL games with have 3 buy in ranges:

20 to 50BB

40 to 100BB

100 to 250BB. The 100 to 250BB buy in games also add an ante of 20% of the BB which I find interesting.  More on this later.

One other change is the waiting time to return to a table and buy in for a lower amount. This went from 30 minutes to 60 minutes.

Here is the official announcement from PS Support:

I just got back from a 10 day spring break vacation with the family. We started off at Disneyland near LA for a day, then Legoland for 2 days and finally some R&R in Palm Springs CA which was great. During the day I spent my time with the family at the pool and at night when they went to bed I headed over to the Aqua Caliente Casino for some poker. The poker room is a cozy 11 tables and they spread mostly smaller limits. The biggest game is a 3 blind 5-10-20 ($700 to $3000 buy in) No Limit hold-em game but it seems to break constantly and the one time I played it broke within an hour. Mostly I played 2-5 No Limit hold-em and had a nice win for the trip. The play was mostly very tight with an older crowd plus a nice steady stream of younger players coming and going and thankfully giving away their chips. The highlight for me was getting a Royal Flush in Spades and winning a daily high hand promo which was good for $300. I also took down a very nice pot with that hand.