For the third year in a row, an online poker bill has been filed in the state of Mississippi. Unfortunately, there’s little chance that it will even come to a vote. House Bill 306, the Mississippi Lawful Internet Gambling Act of 2015, would seek to make online poker and other forms of online gambling legal. Rep. Bobby Moak once again is the bill’s sponsor.

Two prior attempts to introduce this legislation have failed to emerge from committee and odds are the same will happen to this bill. Despite what is certainly a losing battle, Moak still submitted the bill in hopes to keep lines of dialogue open in the state.

Most of the Bill Remains the Same from Prior Filings

If you’ve been following past instances of this bill in Mississippi, there really isn’t anything new in terms of licensing, fees, etc. Providers would pay an initial licensing fee of $200,000 and then $200,000 a year that is split between the State General Fund and the MS Gaming Commission Fund. Taxes on gross gaming revenues are set at 5%. Like in past bills, Internet cafes are banned. Players must be 21 or older in order to play.

The Republican primary for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination is expected to produce a very crowded, diverse field of candidates. Everyone from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, to 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, to firebrand Ted Cruz and Libertarian Rand Paul have been mentioned as possible candidates, and that list of potential candidates may have just grown by one, and it’s a name very familiar to online poker players.

Who else might be throwing their hat in the ring? Former New York Governor and current Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling (CSIG) co-chair George Pataki.

This week Pataki was in New Hampshire (an early primary state) and told reporters he was “seriously considering” running for the nation’s highest office. Pataki said he was “encouraged” by the response he has received, and cited the fact that he “successfully ran one of the largest and most complicated governments in the country — and in a blue state,” to the Boston Globe following his New Hampshire appearance.

The Adelson effect

For the fourth month in a row, cash game player traffic at Lock Poker has taken a tumble.

The most recent estimates provided by PokerScout show a 23% drop in the average number of ring game players in a seven-day period. That average at Lock now totals only 20 players.

The decrease this month follows declines of 15% in October, 18% in November, and 7% in December. Should the drop in action continue at its current pace of the last few months, Lock would find its cash tables empty before the year is over.

Two years and counting

Online poker players in the State of Washington have reason to look on the bright side after a bill to regulate Internet poker was prefiled last Friday.

Those players, many of whom currently access offshore sites according to the proposal, are committing a crime when doing so. Washington State has a 2006 statute on the books that makes playing online poker a felony.

Apparently, that law has never been enforced, and it never will be if House Bill 1114 as introduced by Rep. Sherry Appleton finds enough ‘aye’ votes from state legislators. HB 1114 was filed in advance of the legislature’s 2015 regular session.

Player protections

The poker world is like a jungle. It looks beautiful – safe even – but there’s a whole lot of pain lurking in places you can’t even see. Things want to eat you up. Chew on your flesh; swallow your money, spit out your bones with the expensive leather wallet.

How do you get through a jungle and keep your balls in your belly – and not in the belly of something else? Perhaps a man called Jungleman may know?

In 2014, nobody won more money playing online cash games than Daniel ‘Jungleman12’ Cates. He ended the year with $2,805,751 in winnings on Full Tilt, and $631,288 on PokerStars, giving him a net profit of $3,437,039 on the two biggest sites in the world.

His total profit on the two sites over his lifetime exceeds $11m, and he was also the biggest winner in 2010 when he won over $5m. The man is a conundrum; of that there is no doubt. He has one of the sharpest minds in the history of the game; but he has other strengths, and one in particular stands out amidst the rest.

Retired soccer superstar Ronaldo is considered by many to be one of the greatest strikers in the history of the game. The former World Cup winner has now turned his sights toward a new game and is already beginning to show promise. On Monday, Ronaldo surprised the poker world by running deep and finishing 26th at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event in the Bahamas.

Ronaldo is a member of Team PokerStars SportsStars and entered the Main Event over the weekend. While not the first time he’s played in a high profile poker tournament, this event would prove to be the first time that he would cash in a live tournament, and for a while it seemed he was destined for the final table.

Ronaldo Not Afraid to Battle

According to reports, Ronaldo was as fearless at the poker tables during this event as he was on the pitch. Late Sunday night, he put his tournament life at risk with pocket eights against the A-K of another opponent and was able to double to around 500,000. That stack propelled him into Day 4 action on Monday but he had to get lucky against Christopher Lockhart in order to continue his deep run.

Since Black Friday the fight for iGaming expansion has been waged at state houses across the country. But that all changed in 2014 when Sheldon Adelson made it his personal mission to ban online gambling.

Considering how important this issue is, and how thoroughly it dominated the headlines toward the end of the year, you might be surprised to find this at #7, particularly considering how many columns I wrote on this in 2014, but there is a reason for that. With online gambling already legalized in three states, and several other states in the process of sorting out iGaming legislation, Adelson’s crusade was something of a fool’s errand.

A lot of people would have placed RAWA and Adelson’s efforts to ban online gambling a bit higher, but all along it seemed like a long shot. There were a few scares along the way, but in the end it was much as I expected early on, much ado about nothing.

Still, you have to give him credit; Adelson put up a hell of a fight in 2014.

After a successful first year in New Jersey, WSOP.com and 888Poker have decided to partially combine player pools in an effort to increase liquidity. The announcement was made late last week as State Senator Ray Lesniak hinted that PokerStars might go live sometime in March. CBS Philadelphia reports that both sites will begin partially sharing player pools on Monday.

The partial combining of player pools will help the sites improve player liquidity and help to remain competitive in a market where only 25% of revenue is based on online poker. According to All-American Poker Network CEO David Licht, “Shared liquidity will help create a better player experience that we hope will attract a diversity of players and begin to bring poker to a broader audience once again.”

Low Limit Cash Games and Select Tournaments to Share Players

Players at low limit cash games and selected tournaments will be those pooled at the beginning. Tournaments with guarantees of over $130,000 will now consist of players from both sites, making the events comparable to those currently held at PartyPoker.com and BorgataPoker.com.

Continuing in their series that reveals the inner workings behind the world’s largest online poker site through informative videos, PokerStars recently released “Inside PokerStars Episode 5.”

The latest release was prompted by a player’s question that went like this: “When I’m playing online at PokerStars, where do the games actually take place and is it secure?”

A very good question, considering that 700 poker hands are dealt every second, every day at PokerStars. If you’re looking for a tournament to enter at the site, your choices total 3,500 each day that collectively funnel over $25 million into player accounts each week.

With numbers of that magnitude, one would hope that the PokerStars data center on the Isle of Man is up to the challenge. And in the newest Inside PokerStars video, the site’s Director of IT Operations, Gary Hill, explains that the technical infrastructure of the software has been designed to meet the needs of PokerStars’ massive customer base.

Poker certainly has an abundance of colorful and controversial characters, some who have developed an image or reputation, either wittingly or not, that defines how they are known to the public at large.

Whether behaving like a brat, finishing every sentence with the word “baby,” being known for having an icy stare at the tables, or choosing to avoid the media after winning millions, the players that make up the world of poker develop a following of both fans and critics. But none have a greater following or seem to stir up opposite feelings of love and hate more than Dan Bilzerian.

The ‘King of Instagram,’ who can boast of social media followers totaling more than six million, has become an Internet sensation simply by sharing his life with the rest of the world. Posting photos, tweets and videos that favor guns, girls and expensive cars, Bilzerian is thought by many to have used social media perhaps better than any other in establishing an image and gaining considerable fame and notoriety.

Instagram Post Leads to Arrest

I have always thought there is a real lack of poker fiction and I think it would be fun to do a poker serial, a new story every week with a cast of characters. This story starts with our main character, Banks, at a poker table in Las Vegas. If you like the story please share the link and let your friends know about it. If it gets enough traffic PokerUpdate is likely to have me write a weekly installment for the foreseeable future.

Banks – Part 1

“What are you doing Banks?” Aaron’s voice came from behind him. “I’m not gonna sweat hands for you if you’re gonna fold after I bring em’ home.”

Banks just grinned. His real name is Thomas Banfield, but everyone in the poker world just called him Banks. He didn’t even remember when it started. Years ago somebody had heard his last name and started calling him Banksfield after he had a big hit in a cash game and eventually it shortened into Banks. And that was alright with Banks. It sounded good, it felt good, and it let people know that he was somebody. He hadn’t always been somebody, and it was nice to feel like somebody now.

The Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel filed a Motion to Dismiss versus the California Attorney General in the legal skirmish over the right to offer online bingo to California residents.

Such a motion is standard procedure in civil litigation after the plaintiff files a Complaint. The Iipay tribe promised to continue fighting after the state initiated the legal proceedings, so their recent filing seeking dismissal comes as no surprise.

A judge sided with the state last month in granting a temporary restraining order that put an end – at least for now – to the tribe’s Desert Rose Bingo endeavor. That online bingo site launched in advance of what the Iipay Nation are really after, and that is to roll out online poker via their PrivateTable.com website.

Private Table is open to Golden State residents for play-money, with a real-money launch repeatedly promised by Santa Ysabel throughout much of 2014. That launch has yet to take place, but the website has undergone a number of modifications in preparation of doing so, including naming a promotion for first-time real-money depositors.

UIGEA and Black Friday are the most often cited reasons for poker’s decline since it reached its apex in 2006. But these are just the most oft-cited among a myriad of potential culprits.

But what if the major reason poker’s popularity has waned has nothing to do with the availability of the game or its legality, and everything to do with the game itself?

Since the rise of Internet poker allowed players to put in a lifetime’s worth of practice in the space of a year or two, the game has become a very skillful pursuit, and like chess it’s possible that this skillfulness is what is keeping new and casual players from participating.

Correlation does not equal causation

The Global Poker Index (GPI) has announced the countries that qualified to participate in its first ever “Global Poker Masters” (GPM) event. The founder of GPI, Alexandre Dreyfus, envisions the GPM tournament growing into an international sporting event on par with the soccer World Cup or the Olympic Games.

The idea was conceived to align with his broader vision of “sportifying” poker and broadening the game’s appeal to a wider audience. By creating a more sophisticated ranking system for players, coupled with high-profile events and international competitions, GPI hopes to show off the global appeal of the game and increase the interest of large corporate sponsors.

Forty Players Total for Event

The tournament will unfold over two days and will be held during this year’s European Poker Tour (EPT) stop in Malta.

PokerStars has signed Aditya Agarwal and Kosei Ichinose to Team Pro contracts, it announced yesterday via the PokerStars Blog.

The pair are the first Indian and Japanese grinders, respectively, to receive sponsorship deals with the site.

Both players have been playing on the site for many years and found considerable success at the tables, both online and live. Their career highlights include Agarwal finishing 212th in the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event, and an outright victory for Ichinose in a 2013 Asia Pacific Poker Tour event.

Poker’s International Profile is Growing