In many ways, January was a tough month for poker and one in which it’s difficult to write about. I won’t go into the issues here, but most everyone on our site should be aware of the problems at The Borgata (link to 2+2 thread) and Foxwoods (link to 2+2 thread) (even though I consider the incident at Foxwoods to be minor). Of course, there’s also a certain poker site that seems to be having a lot of trouble in paying player withdrawals. So, what does this mean?

In my opinion, it means that poker has reached a stage where a lot of things are starting to go wrong, and it seems only logical that these problems will benefit those who are members of the forces which are opposing poker, especially the reestablishment of Internet poker in the United States.

What needs to be done? The answer to this is one word, integrity. There just needs to be more of it in poker.

Now I don’t mean to imply that most of the important people in our industry are lacking in this area. In fact, the opposite is true, and we at 2+2 are constantly working with people and Internet poker sites which we have the utmost respect for. But it needs to be better.

How do we make it better? Well, that’s where the poker community comes in. While it’s true that an individual player is often not very important in the overall scheme of things, as a group there’s no entity that’s more important. So, please speak out when you think it’s appropriate to do so, and we’ll be able to get through this troubling period.

On a different subject, work continues on our next book Harrington on Modern Tournament Poker; How to Play No-Limit Hold ‘em Multi-Table Tournaments by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie. May is probably a good estimate as to when it will be out. Also, starting with this issue, Two Plus Two Magazine will be running a few excerpts from the book.