Bird on the Rail
Jennicide to Appear in Playboy
It’s true — online poker sensation Jennifer “Jennicide” Leigh will be featured in a sixpage pictorial in Playboy’s May 2008 issue. Rumors of Leigh’s photo shoot for the mag circulated throughout the poker world for months (remember all those whispers about her plan to play the 2007 WSOP Main Event in lingerie?), but Jennicide herself confi rmed it in a recent interview for SheKnows.com. Leigh’s parents weren’t too thrilled about the prospect of their daughter baring all, but they eventually came around, her mom even accompanying her on the shoot. This isn’t Jennicide’s fi rst foray into posing for men’s magazines, having appeared in a lingerie spread for FHM last spring. The Playboy issue hits the stands in early April.
Cash Game Star Sightings
Two of the three members of the R&B group Boyz II Men were spotted playing $1/$2 No Limit at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas following a concert appearance. Judging by the way they expertly shuffl ed their chips, they’re not new to the game… New York Yankee Derek Jeter had a grand old time in the $4/$8 Limit Hold’em game at Mandalay Bay on a recent visit to Sin City… and James Woods was seen playing multiple sessions of $5/$10 No Limit at Foxwoods. Several nights a week he can still be found in his regular game, the $10/$20 No Limit at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles.
Betfair to SNG Players: “Give Us Our Money Back!”
Betfair is seeking the return of over £100,000 from approximately 20 players who profi ted off a glitch in the online poker site’s software. This group discovered that when multiple players were all in during a 6-handed single table sit-n-go, the busted players would all be awarded second-place money. Therefore, if all six players went all in on the fi rst hand, the winner of the hand would win fi rst-place money while the other fi ve would all receive secondplace awards. In other words, guaranteed profi t. As soon as these players discovered the glitch, they went on a tear, playing hundreds of SNGs at higher and higher limits, all within a few hours. Betfair caught the software glitch within hours, but it was too late. Hundreds of thousands in winnings had already been withdrawn, some players managing to cash out over £60,000 each. Sources estimate the total amount lost by Betfair due to the glitch anywhere between £1,000,000 and £4,000,000.
Betfair sent emails to the 20 players involved, stating that “You recently received payments from playing Sit & Go STTs [single table tournaments] on Betfair Poker in circumstances that resulted in greater payouts than intended.” The sit-n-go’s, they claimed, “were incorrectly set up to pay everyone involved in certain all-in situations and this was exploited by you and others to generate substantial returns in a short space of time. As I’m sure you can understand, the winnings received as a result of this exploitation must be returned.”
While many of the players involve have publicly expressed their regrets over exploiting the glitch in postings on online forums, others are already planning legal action against Betfair to protect their “winnings.” Thus far, Betfair has kept mum on the situation, sticking with “no comment.”
Mirage, Mandalay Bay WPT Events Axed
Have you noticed that this spring’s poker calendar looks a bit… lighter? It certainly is when two major $10,000 events are moved off the schedule. The Mirage Poker Showdown and the Mandalay Bay Poker Championship have both been scuttled from the WPT’s Season Seven lineup, according to several well-placed insiders. While the Mirage pulled itself out of contention, citing “property confl icts,” they have not ruled out a return to the WPT at a later date. The Mandalay Bay Poker Championship, though, ran smack into the fi rst few events of the World Series of Poker last year and, as a result, the tournament attracted only 228 runners, a low number compared to other stops on the tour. Many are speculating that if the tournaments pop up on the WPT again, they’ll be moved to a different slot on the poker calendar where they won’t confl ict with so many other events. Others say that the WPT was bound to downsize at some point, given their falling profi t margins. Stay tuned…
Online Player Robbed of Aussie Millions Winnings
Jason Potter, a popular online player and frequent poster on poker message boards was held up at knifepoint several blocks away from Melbourne’s Crown Casino, just after cashing out his $30,000 in winnings from the Aussie Millions Main Event. Following the attack, Potter told police that he suspected that the culprit had been watching him inside the casino and followed him out as he headed back to his hotel. The thieves got away with Potter’s winnings, but Melbourne police did arrest two local men, 32-year-old Dwayne Johnstone and 27-year-old Vhyharn Arumughasamu, who were each charged with armed robbery and remain in custody. Thankfully, Potter came out of the scuffl e unharmed.
CA Puts the Kibosh on Ladies-Only Tournaments
Remember back when we told you about how Jose Canseco and fi ve of his friends decided to crash a ladies-only tournament at the Commerce Casino and caused quite a stir? Well, now they’re free to do it again, whenever they want. The California Bureau of Gambling Control released a statement recently about ladies-only tournaments that concluded “that such tournaments may violate California’s anti-discrimination laws.” In a nutshell, under California’s Civil Rights act, “businesses may not discriminate in admittance prices, or services offered to customers based on the customers’ sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, marital status, or sexual orientation. ‘Ladies only’ tournaments or any other promotional events that fail to admit men and women to advertised activities on an equal basis regardless of sex are unlawful.” Ergo, California casinos can host “ladies” tournaments; they just have to drop the “only” and admit men if they’d like to play. So, if Jose Canseco wants to be crowned the “Queen of Queens,” he’s 100% free to do so. The new rule will affect how casinos advertise their ladies’ tournaments (expect something along the lines of “open to all” to appear somewhere in the copy), but will not infl uence how often they run them. If anything, the ladies’ poker calendar is exploding in California, with the expansion of the LIPS tour and new, higher buy-in ladies’ events landing on the tournament calendars at Commerce as well as the Bicycle Casino, which continues to host the WPT Ladies’ Night invitational each fall. Now that drag is no longer required to play, let’s see if any gentlemen decide to take the plunge.
