September 15 2011, Elaine Chaivarlis

We’re at it again, just like we are every day of the week (well Monday through Friday, not counting holidays). We look for the news so you don’t have to. In this edition of the Nightly Turbo, we’re bringing you an update from the Partouche Poker Tour. Not only that, but we’ll tell you which German state has legalized online poker, and more.

In Case You Missed It

Thinking about relocating so that you can continue to play online poker? Having a problem figuring out where you want to go? In our latest edition of Packing Up to Play, we give you the scoop pubs, fish and chips, the Queen – or London, England.

If you want to better your pot-limit Omaha game, we suggest getting tips from the pros. Oh look! In the newest Strategy with Kristy podcast, Lex Veldhuis discusses pot-limit Omaha. It must be your lucky day.

The 2011 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker is trucking right along and has officially reached the halfway point. On Day 11, three bracelets were handed out, but to find out to who, you’re going to have to read our daily WCOOP recap.

The Global Poker Index released its rankings for the week ending Sept. 12. It’s not the same old song and dance this week! There’s a new GPI No. 1.

In the Money

Every day we sift through the Partouche Poker Tour blog, it’s like a French lesson for us – except it’s not really. We just look for words that look like English words and cross our fingers.

On Day 3 of the Partouche Poker Tour, 100 players took their seats in the hopes of making the money (only 63 would), and positioning themselves for a run at the final table. By the end of the day, 47 players remained.

Freddy Deeb and Arnaud Mattern were eliminated in 62nd and 60th place respectively, and each earned “12,000.

Remaining in the field and heading on to Day 4 are Joe Cassidy, Juha Helppi, and Tristan Clemencon. Sam Trickett also made it to Day 4, bagging 535,500 in chips. That puts him in the 10th spot on the chip leaderboard. Ludovic Lacay bagged up the second biggest stack in the room, with 771,700, and sits just behind Juan Maceiras who is leading the Day 4 charge with 800,000.

PartouchePokerTour.com has more updates from the event.

German State Legalizes Online Poker

Germany has 16 states, or Länder. One of them, Schleswig-Holstein, recently passed legislation that will legalize and regulate online poker.

The new legislation allows for betting exchange, sports books, poker and all casino games except roulette, blackjack, and baccarat, according to eGaming Review. The law will go into effect Jan. 1, 2012, and licenses will be valid beginning March 1. The state will also impose a 20 percent tax on gross profits.

After the news, Befair released a statement saying, “Schleswig-Holstein’s new online gambling treaty is a welcome piece of legislation geared towards creating a genuinely open, transparent and responsible online gambling market in Germany. We are pleased that it has today passed through the state parliament and we look forward to applying for a license to operate there.”

“We are now hopeful that the other 15 German states will make the required amendments to their proposed State Treaty, in order to bring it into line with EU law and with the law passed in S-H today,” it continued. “Betfair is committed to participating in the online gambling market in Germany, ready and willing to pay taxes there and offer German consumers competitive, innovative and safe products.”

Read more at EGRMagazine.com.

Gut Für Bwin.Party

Speaking of Schleswig-Holstein’s new online poker legislation, it wasn’t just good for poker players in the Länder, it was good for bwin.party’s stock. According to the Wall Street Journal, after the announcement that Schleswig-Holstein approved online gambling legislation, bwin.party’s stock rose 12 percent.

Ivor Jones, an analyst at Numis, believes the “Schleswig Holstein move greatly reduces the regulatory risk to bwin.party, which generates 22 percent of its revenues in Germany.”

In a note to clients, Numis said, “At best this represents the opening up of Germany to online gaming, in due course, on reasonable commercial terms. At worst it will greatly delay the introduction of a more restrictive regime.”

If you want to read more, you can do so at Online.WSJ.com.

Former FBI Director Joins FairPlayUSA

FairPlayUSA announced Thursday that former FBI director Louis Freeh had joined its advisory board.

“Current federal laws fail to provide U.S. law enforcement vital tools to address illegal internet gambling, enabling a ‘wild-west’ atmosphere,” Freeh said. “I am joining FairPlayUSA to improve this environment by clarifying these laws, better empowering law enforcement agencies to crack down on violators and using licensing and regulation to ensure safe and legal online poker.”

Freeh joins professional poker players Mike Sexton and Greg Raymer, Internet safety expert Parry Aftab, and former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on the advisory board.

FairPlayUSA is a grassroots coalition that has set out to educate the public and policymakers about online poker.

“States and tribes have rights that must be protected by authorizing them to decide for themselves whether to accept or prohibit online poker and make use of sophisticated technologies already in use in other industries to enforce those decisions,” said Tom Ridge.

Read the press release for more.

Follow us on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news.

Follow Elaine Chaivarlis on Twitter – @LaneyLV

September 15 2011, Chad Holloway

The events of Black Friday have inspired hundreds of poker players to leave the United States and relocate to more “online-friendly” countries. Although moving from one country to another is no doubt a headache, we at PokerNews thought we’d explore some of the more popular destinations to entice any players still on the fence. In our inaugural Packing Up to Play piece, we took a look at Tijuana, Mexico. This week, we’ve decided to jump across the pond to merry ole London, England!

To get the lowdown on playing online poker in London, we caught up with Paul Gibbons, founder of Healthy Poker, who recently returned to England to play the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker. Gibbons immigrated to the United States from London in 1981 but returned in 2008. He now splits his time between the two countries and offers some insight for those in the U.S. looking to London as a viable online option.

Known as “PAULGIBBO” online, Gibbons’ biggest online score was for $15,000 and, ironically, came on Black Friday. He also finished second in the 2011 Chicago Poker Classic $3,125 Main Event for $140,109.

Quick Overview

• Population as of 2010: 7,825,000
• Time Zone: GMT (UTC±0)
• Area: 1,572.1 km2 (607 sq mi)
• Founded: Settled by Romans in 43 AD
• Weather: 2.3°C (36.1°F) to 23.5°C (74.3°F) on average
• Language: English
• Currency: 1 British pound sterling = 1.5771 US dollars
• Website: http://www.london.gov.uk/

Finding a Place to Stay

One of the biggest obstacles to moving, whether it is to a different country or just down the street, is finding a place to stay. In our Tijuana piece, poker pro Jason Wheeler advocated walking around town and discovering a place that way. That may have been an option for him since Tijuana was just across the border, but not here because London is an entire ocean away. Of course you could always do an Internet search and go with a rental firm, but Gibbons believe he’s found a better solution.

“The best thing, by a huge margin, is to post on PocketFives or TwoPlusTwo and say you want to room with a European pro who lives there (there are many non-English pros living there),” Gibbons explains. “There are few apartments in good neighborhoods for under $2,000 per month, and in a very nice neighborhood, think twice that as an ‘ante.’ You can live outside the city, say on the coast, for much less and the train takes 30 minutes to downtown from those places.”

Visa Issues

Another issue you’ll have to contend with is acquiring a visa; however, if you’re simply looking for a temporary relocation just to play for a bit, say the WCOOP, then London is perfect because it allows a few options. As Gibbons puts it: “I can come and go as I please, and so can you – up to a point. You can stay up to six months without a visa, then they start to get fussy when you come and go. But if you come and go enough (as you might because of Euro-tournaments), you may be able to evade trouble for a year or more.”

He goes on to explain: “You can enter freely without a visa and stay for a long time without working. However, it is worth checking the limits on number of days per year you can reside without an immigration. It won’t be a problem while you are there, nobody cares much, but entering and re-entering become a hassle if you take too much ‘holiday’ here.”

Gibbons also noted that if you have Irish roots, meaning one grandparent, you could always apply for a Irish nationality, which would allow you to reside legally in any country in the European Union.

Satisfying Stars

If you’re from the U.S. and looking to relocate, you’re no doubt hoping to play on PokerStars. Unfortunately you’ll have to do more than just pack up and leave the country. In order to regain access to PokerStars, you need to provide certain documentation that shows you took your relocation seriously. Luckily, PokerStars has made this an incredibly easy process.

“You have to open a bank account and provide PokerStars (for example) with mail addressed to you there,” Gibbons explains. “The easiest form of ID to secure is an International Driver’s license, or UK one. This takes a while, but you can take a month setting up infrastructure while traveling and playing live.”

How’s the Internet?

There are very few places that have better Internet than the United States, but London is one of them. Let’s face it, anyone who has played online poker has experience Internet issues, whether it cuts out at a crucial point in a tournament or during a game-changing hand, nothing can be as frustrating as unreliable service. Gibbons’ time in the U.S. gave him first-hand experience as to the importance of having a reliable connection: “I have had to finish many MTTs at Denny’s because of bad broadband service here which is a little annoying when you are at a final table and have to drive 15 miles to Denny’s at 3 a.m.!”

In regards to the Internet in London, Gibbons doesn’t hesitate, “The reliability and speed of broadband connections are much better than in the U.S. (lots of fiber optic cabling).” Indeed, a quick online search turned up dozens of Internet providers. For a detailed list of internet providers, you might want to check out First-4-London.

Things to Do

Instead of suggesting things to do in a city we only occasionally visit, we thought it’d be better to ask someone who lives there and knows the place inside and out. With that said, we turned to Gibbons for his recommendations:

“Apart from hedonistic pleasures, the National Gallery has one of the finest art collections in the world, and the Science Museum has a section on the evolution of the steam engine through rocketry. It is worth a trip through ‘the City’ (financial district) where you can have a drink in a 500-year-old pub, visit the Tower and the Crown jewels. At any time, there will be world-class theater and live music of all descriptions.

“The most amazing thing about being in London, though, is that you can take a high-speed rail from downtown London to downtown Paris (500 miles away) in about two hours! New York and Chicago are similar distance apart, and with getting to airports, check-in, security, the flight and cab to downtown, it can take three times that! From Paris, the Riviera, Rome, Geneva, Barcelona and Munich are all short train hops.”

Sites to See and Places to Go

There is no shortage of places to visit in London. According to VisitLondon.com, the top ten attractions to visit are:

• British Museum
• National Gallery
• Tate Modern
• Natural History Museum
• London Eye
• Science Museum
• Tower of London
• National Maritime Museum
• Victoria and Albert Museum
• Madame Tussauds

Gibbons wasn’t afraid to add an eleventh to the list: “My favorite part of London is the King’s Road in Chelsea. It is a street full of super-model strutting, trendy boutiques, great restaurants and clubs, and where I lived for 10 years. It is also a ten-minute tube ride from the heart of London, restaurants, clubs, bars and of course, casinos.”

Speaking of casinos, London is home to 23 properties including Gala Casino, Napoleons, The Casino at the Empire, Golden Nugget Casino, Victoria Casino, and G Casino Piccadilly, just to names a few. The poker scene in London is the icing on the cake for any online player who may seek some occasional live action. According to Gibbons: “London also has over ten very good venues to play live poker, and no-limit hold’em games run from about $1/$3 to about $100/$200. These venues are a lot of fun, great places to hang with other pros and grind, and of course, the European Poker Tour is an excellent tour and you are ten hours closer to the Asian Poker Pacific Tour!”

Nightlife

After grinding in a room all day long, many poker players will no doubt be looking to relax by taking full advantage of the evening. For those interested, London has quite the vibrant nightlife. Soho House, Funky Buddha, Heaven, Paper, London Groove, and the Valmont Club are just a few of the world-famous clubs housed in the city.

“I like clubs and the Ministry of Sound is world famous for its massive size, three different dance floors, great DJs, and it is open until dawn,” said Gibbons. “There are now ten copy-cat clubs equally spectacular if that is your poison. Getting into Tramp is not easy, but if you are well-heeled enough, have your ‘secretary’ call up for a dinner reservation and see if you can represent being a huge baller.”

If you’re not a fan of the club scene, you could always opt for one of London’s historic pubs. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, The Punch Tavern, Old Bank of England Pub, The Old Bell Tavern, and Ye Old Watling are all located in Westminster and allow you the opportunity to drink like Dickens.

Beware!

London is an excellent option for anyone looking to relocate for online poker, but there is one major downfall. The cost of living in London is steep. As Gibbons concludes: “In many ways, if the world had a capital, London would be it. It’s a crossroad between the East and the West, and the financial and cultural capital. It’s the birthplace of modern democracy and the English language. At the same time, it is very expensive. Russian Oligarchs, Wall Street bankers, and Middle-Eastern Princes have been driving up property prices for decades. The cost of living and the number of excellent distractions will reduce ROI!”

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Photo courtesy of tourismeight.com

Follow Chad Holloway on Twitter – @ChadAHolloway

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