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Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2007

Year in Review: Poker world prepares for Vegas

Poker, poker, poker ... WPA protects poker with Luske.

By Earl Burton

Throughout April and May, thousands of poker players began to prepare for their trek to the Rio in Las Vegas for the start of the 2007 World Series of Poker. That said, however, there were many other news stories that dominated the two months prior to the largest poker tournament on the planet.

At the beginning of April, the World Poker Association broke the 1,000-player mark and, as stated by its founder Jesse Jones, introduced a board of trustees for the organization. The elections ran for approximately a month and, after the votes were tallied, saw Annie Van Bebber, Chris Bigler, Wendeen Eolis, Jesse Jones, Mary Jones, Warren Karp, Lou Krieger, Marcel Luske and Harry Thomas elected as the first members of the board.

The World Poker Association, which has goals of standardizing many aspects of the tournament poker world, continues to be at the forefront of leadership in the poker world and was very visible at many of the larger poker tournaments throughout the year.

No Hold'em in Texas.

April and May also saw various legislative bodies debate the eternal question of the legalization of poker. The state of Texas may have given birth to the game of Texas Hold'em, but it has many laws that prohibit play.

Texas state representative Jose Menendez introduced legislation in April that would legalize cash game play in select locations around the state. After passing out of committee by a nearly unanimous vote, the bill died on the floor of the Texas legislature when it was not brought to a vote.

Menendez has vowed to continue the fight in the future and has the backing of thousands of players in the state of Texas as well as groups such as the Poker Players Alliance.

In the state of North Carolina, however, the story was much different. In May, the North Carolina Court of Appeals heard the case of Howard Fierman, who wanted to open a poker club in Raleigh and, after discussing the issue with many district attorneys, was prevented from doing so.

He challenged their decisions on the grounds that poker was a game of skill and not chance, thereby avoiding the North Carolina statutes regarding such games. The Court of Appeals dealt a bad hand to Fierman, though, as it ruled that poker was a game of chance, and refused to overturn the decisions of previous courts.

Fierman defiantly carries on the battle even now and looks to the day when the game of poker can be played in the open in the Tar Heel State.

Can Frank save online gambling?

The halls of Washington were also a battleground for poker. Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank introduced action in April to overturn the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and drew support throughout the year for its enactment into law. Many sports leagues, including the NFL, NBA and MLB, were against his initiatives.

Nevada Representative Shelley Berkley also introduced logical legislation that would analyze the online gaming world, its economic impact and ways to regulate the industry. Her bill drew support from around 60 of her fellow legislators, including Rep. Frank himself.

On a tragic note, professional player William "Bill" Gustafik was found brutally stabbed to death in his condominium in Las Vegas in April. A few days later, his wife, Jill Rockcastle, was found close to death in California after an apparent suicide attempt.

Prior to the alleged attempt on her own life, Rockcastle had sent a 10-page manifesto to friends and family that detailed her life with Gustafik and more or less revealed she had committed the murder. On May 31, Rockcastle was charged with the crime and slated for trial in October, but the case has yet to be heard as Rockcastle's attorneys are considering an insanity defense.

New channel for poker tour.

In the tournament poker world, the news was brighter for the World Poker Tour and worse for some professionals. After five seasons as the anchor of the Travel Channel, the network decided to part ways with the WPT.

In April, the WPT was able to secure a new home with GSN (formerly the Game Show Network) that would guarantee that the next two seasons (Seasons 6 and 7) would be shown alongside the highly popular High Stakes Poker.

As a result of the UIGEA, poker rooms began to release players from their sponsorship deals. Both Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet released poker pros Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi and Antonio Esfandiari from their sponsorships to be able to focus on international markets and to avoid having the players potentially fall victim to prosecution for aiding online gaming.

No more sponsorship.

While the loss of the sponsorships hurt, both Mizrachi and Esfandiari continue to be very visible in the poker community.

The WPT held its fifth WPT Championship in April and, after battling fellow professional Kirk Morrison, Juan Carlos Mortensen became only the fourth former world champion to win both the WSOP Championship Event and a WPT title.

In May, the sixth season of the ever-popular tour saw young guns Jonathan Little and Shawn Buchanan take championships at the Mirage and the Mandalay Bay. The European Poker Tour wrapped its third season by crowning a champion at the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo. American Gavin Griffin, who was joined at the final table by pros Andrew Black, Ram Vaswani, Soren Kongsgaard and Marc Karam, enjoyed the profits of the trip by taking down that title.

Finally, as it wound its way to Las Vegas for the granddaddy of poker tournaments, the World Series of Poker Circuit saw Cory Carroll (in April at Caesars in Las Vegas) and Louie Esposito (in May at Harrah's in New Orleans) take down the final Circuit championships for their third season.

As May wrapped up, the poker world held its collective breath as the greatest show on earth, the World Series of Poker, prepared to take center stage. We'll look back at the events of the summer of 2007 in our next installment of the Year in Review.