Andre Akari from Brazil won his country the second WSOP bracelet in the $1,500 no-limit hold’em, event no. 43. Not only this bracelet is his first, Alexandre Gomes won one, too, and it meant a lot for the poker branch in Brazil. If poker was abundant before Gomes’ victory, it assumed unprecedented dimensions after that. With this effect of the last WSOP victory in mind, Akari feels that this means a lot for his country. His ample Brazilian audience was cheering behind the rails through the whole game, waving Brazilian flags and celebrating the victory in the true and genuine Brazilian way. Just to give a little piece of the whole picture, Akari received 1,500 messages a minute on Twitter.

Rep. John Barton introduced legislation on Friday that would enable online poker in any U.S. stat that chooses to allow it. Online poker operators would need to get a licence from at least one federal stat and from the Department of Commerce. Once they have it, they can operate their website legally and offer poker to users from states where online poker is allowed. The formerly applied legislation (the infamous UIGEA) did not specifically ban online poker, but prohibited financial institutions to process transaction associated with online gambling or poker. I.e., online poker was legal, however getting proceeds from it was not. The new measure should bring modre revenue to the coffers and give more freedom to U.S. citizens.

A hedge fund manager Brad Ruderman allegedly lost $25 million in poker to a Hollywod stars poker ring including Tobey Maguire, Leonardo Di Caprio, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. However, he did not take his lost lightly. Basing his argumentation on the fact that the games were not properly licensed, he is taking some of his opponents to court to reclaim his money back. The poker games were played in Beverly Hills and Ruderman paid £296,875 to the organiser who is now also being sued. In the meantime, Ruderman himself is said to have lured investors into a Ponzi scheme and earlier this year he was sentenced to ten years behind the bars for wire fraud, investment adviser fraud and failure to pay taxes.

Daniel Tzwetzkoff managed to make himself infamous enough to get his name ring some bells in virtually every poker reader’s ears. His brilliant mind stood behind the formation and operation of Intabill, a payment processing company that would deal with online gambling money. Allegedly, Tzwetzkoff had been smart enough to cheat his business partners of hundreds of millions of dollars. In April 2010, however, he got arrested in Las Vegas by the FBI and was charged with money laundering and bank fraud and was denied a bail. Sometime after that, the authorities miraculously let him go. Why? Well, the logical surmise is that he had to give them some information in exchange. No sooner got he out of the hands of the fed than the Australian authorities suggested they might turn their wrath against him, too, this time over Australian company BT Projects, the Australian branch of Intabill.

Following online poker operators, also sports betting sites are being hit by the actions of FBI who seized three biggest online poker .com domains last month. Then more sites have been shut down since, sportsbooks amongst them. According to the latest news, the shocking actions are a result of a two-year sting operation involving the Department of Homeland Security setting up a phoney company (Linwood Payment Solutions) that would process millions in transactions on behalf of some of the leading poker and sport betting websites, having gathered ample evidence of the illegal nature of their operations. There are also speculations about Michael Garone, who was charged with money laundering in relation to Bodog back in 2008, cooperating with the feds in exchange for freedom – he received just a year’s probation on his charges. Whilst people are demonstrating at the Capitol Hill to enforce legalisation of online gambling and experts argue on behalf of the same, the prospects are not exactly great.

Poker face is largely, and quite logically, associated with the game of poker. As it shows, however, you might take advantage of the art of poker face at other card games found in a casino, too. Or just change the designation and call it a blackjack face if you like. And why so, when every studied player knows that there are perfectly legal card counting systems plus the possibility of a highly skilled team play (not welcome by casino operators, however, not exactly illegal in most places across the world)? It’s because casinos do watch their profits and if they find out their numbers are out of the ordinary, they start sniffing around for the culprit. And they usually identify you and let you decently know you are now welcome in their lobbies. And if you do not understand, the procedure becomes less decent – you are simply banned. So, as one experienced blackjack player recently put it, even if you were the smartest ass in town, you better conceal it and play a stupid guy before the pit bosses – thus you stand a bigger chance you won’t get spotted.

Upon conclusion of the Grand Final in Madrid, the European Poker Tool dealt several special awards to players who delivered outstanding results in Season 7. The prizes awarded were: Player of the Year, Omaha Player of the Year, Mixed Game Player of the Year, Heads-up Player of the Year, Country of the EPT (which went to Ireland), Online qualifier of the year, EPT Achievement of the Year, and Players’ Choice. And who delivered so greatly as to earn one of them? Portuguese Fernando Brito, a 52-year old who cashed in an amazing 16 times during EPT Season 7 earned the Player of the Year title. Martin Jacobson, who cashed in five Main Events and finished second to Brito in the POY section, claimed the Online Qualifier of the year title. Dario Alioto was rewarded for his results in Omaha poker whilst John O’Shea is taking back to Ireland the Country of the EPT award. Max Heinzelman took two awards, being appointed the winner of both the EPT Achievement and the Players’ Choice title.

Daniel Negreanu, Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey, those are the names we were used to read about quite frequently in online poker news before the Black Friday when FBI seized the three biggest poker websites in the U.S. Players who were achieving their big victories in colours of PokerStars, FullTils and Absolute Poker now seem to have sort of disappeared and whether they will emerge reborn abroad cannot be said for sure. Instead, a new set of previously unknown players is replacing them, filling the headlines with names no one really heard of before. The majority of them are high-stakes poker pros who were previously outshined by sponsored professionals of the most powerful online poker sites who were, thanks to the scale of their business, able to offer the best paying games of all. Speculations also emerged according to which many American online poker pros might soon be heading to Canada in search of a new home.

Some American online poker players who previously had their money saved at Absolute Poker or UB.com might have reasons to worry about their balances. Whilst, after the Black Friday, PokerStars and FullTilt arrived to an agreement with the U.S. government who consented they would be able to pay their American players, smaller Absolute Poker and UB.com are not sure about what will happen with the money players have deposited with them. Before the FBI seized the biggest poker websites offering online poker to U.S. citizens, about 10 million Americans were enjoying this card game online. It’s not known how many of them endured in their passion. The executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, John Pappas, estimates that Americans might have up to $500 million in their online poker accounts.

More bond-cutting and staff firing is happening as a consequence of the Black Friday in poker. Blanca Games, the company behind the Cereus network which was home to Absolute Poker and UB.com, has laid off their sponsored poker pros and Blanca Games fired their entire staff of which only 20% might be hired back later. Those companies were basically relying on the U.S. market and after the big online poker raid they lost a significant portion of their player base. Amongst the pros that lost their poker home in the process are, to name a few, Eric Baldwin or Tiffany Michelle. Whilst PokerStars and FullTilt can continue their business overseas, companies who only operated within the U.S. are quite knocked out.