PokerTips Blog

The Huffington Post recently featured an article on botox for poker players called “Pokertox” introduced by Dr. Jack Berdy.

Berdy believes that poker players are the next big market for botox. His process involves consulting with poker players to determine what they believe are their major “facial” tells. Berdy is hoping to create a niche market of poker pros who come to him for botox refills every three to four months.

Berdy should have consulted with some poker players before launching these services so someone could have told him the idea is stupid as hell. “So far, no one has signed up for the service,” says the Huffington Post article. What a shock! Dr. Berdy should expect that market trend to continue indefinitely.

There have been plenty of bad poker ideas over the years, but Pokertox might be the worst one we’ve heard yet.

Click here for the full story from Huffington Post.

Looking for the best poker tumblr on the web? Look no further than Life With Face Cards.

Life With Face Cards is a series of animated GIF images that each capture an emotion one feels playing poker. They’re hilarious.

Here are a couple of our favorites:

when I suckout to stay alive in a tournament:

when I get dealt Aces and try to look calm:

when I stay patient and bust a clown in one hand:

Have a look at the rest of these great poker GIFs. Be warned, however. They’re addicting and will likely vacuum away 15 minutes of your day. Kudos to whoever put this great Tumblr site together!

In a very not surprising turn of events, Barack Obama won the presidency last night. Additionally, Democrats performed well in the Senate but were not even close to retaking the House.

It was very clear that Mitt Romney would be no friend of poker. The GOP made outlawing all online poker, even legal state online poker part of its platform, and Romney publicly came out against any federal legalization effort.

Under a Romney presidency, Harry Reid or Joe Barton would have next to no chance of successfully pushing a federal legalization effort (which would be the most ideal, even if it’s likely to be flawed). Of course, in the first four years of Obama, it’s not like anything came close at the federal level either. The most action was the DOJ interpreting past laws. It used the UIGEA and other laws to create Black Friday, but then also publicly stated that legalized state poker would not violate any federal laws.

How much did Obama have to do with either of these DOJ actions? Next to nothing. In fact, Obama has so far been a big nothing in regards to online poker. At least you can say he isn’t a major Frist-style negative nancy like Romney though.

With Obama, the poker world has some outs. The most likely occurrence that also has the least overall benefit is the continued expansion of intra-state legal online poker. Nevada will be launching soon, and it’s only a matter of time until states like New Jersey, California, and others have online poker within its borders. I think it’ll by the time 2014 or 2015 rolls around, we’ll see significant instra-state online poker, though most people in the US will still be left in prohibition.

The poker world has some federal-level outs. With the Democrats still firmly in control of the Senate and a friend with Harry Reid, he may be able to tack on some online poker legalization rider to a bill, just like Frist did the UIGEA in 2006. Again, I think this would likely happen sometime in 2014, perhaps just before the midterm elections (just like what Frist did).

There is also the possibility that Barton/Reid get some bill pushed through both houses of Congress, like most traditional legislation are pushed. It’ll be a long slog and is unlikely to happen, but at least it could happen.

There is also the possibility that Obama has a come to Jesus moment where he suddenly embraces and pushes for online poker, similar to how he did for gay marriage this past year. Perhaps Obama just gets the itch and wants to play or perhaps he just wants to show his range in terms of flip flopping, but there is a remote possibility of this happening.

All in all, I don’t expect miracles in regards to US legalization efforts soon. Our best hope for something significantly positive occuring  is likely in the 2014-2015 range. With Obama instead of Romney in office though, at least we don’t have some muppet that will veto any break we get.

One Black Friday defendant is done holding his tongue in protection of others associated with Full Tilt Poker. Chad Elie, who was one of eleven men indicted during the U.S. government’s attack on online poker operations on April 15th, 2011, has created a Twitter account to air some of the dirty laundry associated with Full Tilt Poker and its lawyers.

As a part of Elie’s agenda to take a dump all over anyone associated with Full Tilt is to uncover a lie told by Howard Lederer in his interview with PokerNews during which he claimed to have not met with payment processors. Elie was indicted on Black Friday for his role in helping online poker sites like Full Tilt Poker process payments with its U.S. customers. The first tweet from Elie’s account, which was created last Friday, read, “”I never met with a payment processor”-Howard Lederer. Interesting Howard,do you not remember the MEETINGS we had?What about NYE?5hr meeting.”

Elie’s tweets include pictures that provide an idea of just how connected top Full Tilt officials were. Here are pictures of Lederer, Ray Bitar and poker primadonna of the century, Phil Ivey, taken meeting with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

Elie also uploaded to Twitter several screen captures of documents from Full Tilt lawyers through which they claim that payment processing related to online poker is completely legal. Whoops! It turns out the DOJ disagreed with that assessment.

Today, Elie announced that he is doing an exclusive interview with “Diamond Flush”, an anonymous poker journalist who came to prominence through aiding the grassroots journalism done by now-closed poker news site Subject: Poker.

Our friends at QuadJacks have a nice recap of more highlights of the Chad Elie Twitter dump.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then nothing needs said beyond this picture of Greg Merson taken by Joe Giron on behalf of PokerNews about what it must feel like to win the WSOP Main Event and $8.5 million:

Merson prevailed at the 2012 WSOP Main Event Final Table following an epic 10-hour three-handed battle with Jesse Sylvia and Jake Balsiger during which the chip-lead changed ownership on multiple occasions.

On the final hand of action, Merson min-raised on the button to 4 million. Sylvia three-bet to 9.5 million and Merson moved all-in putting Sylvia to the test for his remaining 69.3 million chips. Surprisingly, Sylvia made the call with Queen-Jack of spades. Merson was pleased to find himself ahead with King-Five of diamonds. Although Sylvia picked up a flush draw on the turn, the board bricked out to make Merson’s King-high enough to become the 2012 WSOP Champion.

The 24-year-old Merson has had a roller coaster year and a half. Following Black Friday when his career was taken away from him, he suffered a drug relapse. Merson refocused on his poker career in 2012 and won WSOP Event #57, the $10,000 six-handed no-limit hold’em tournament. Days later, Merson sealed his place among the “Octo-Nine” and was considered a favorite by many to win the tournament despite being out-chipped by Sylvia coming into the final table. Merson is now comfortably a poker millionaire eleven months following his decision to gain sobriety.

Commented Merson on Twitter following his win, “Thanks to everyone that supported me it was an overwhelming experience.” Judging from the above picture, it sure looks like it!

Congrats to Greg Merson, 2012 WSOP Champion!

Here is a rundown of the final table finishers and prize payouts from the 2012 WSOP Main Event:

1st: Greg Merson – $8,531,853
2nd: Jesse Sylvia - $5,295,149
3rd: Jake Balsiger – $3,799,073
4th: Russell Thomas – $2,851,537
5th: Jeremy Ausmus – $2,155,313
6th: Andras Koroknai – $1,640,902
7th: Michael Esposito – $1,258,040
8th: Rob Salaburu – $971,360
9th: Steve Gee – $754,798