For those who don’t know, there is some sad news to report with the passing of poker great Bobby Hoff. While I only knew Bobby slightly, there is no question that he was a great no-limit hold ‘em player and was well liked by everyone.

In our book, Harrington on Cash Games, Volume II: How to Play No‑Limit Hold ‘em Cash Games by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie, there is an interview with Bobby Hoff. It’s a terrific read, and as a way of remembering this great player, we have posted the interview here.

As for other news, the number one question that’s being asked is when will the next Internet poker sites start up. Our answer to this is we don’t know, but we’re hopeful that it will be sooner rather than later.

It appears to us, and we have no inside information confirming this, that the state of Nevada is being very careful to make sure that not only does everything work right on the sites, but that there is no way any scandal, such as what we saw with Ultimate Bet, can occur. We at Two Plus Two think this is the right decision and support the go-slow approach by the state of Nevada even though we can’t wait for the sites to launch and for different states to link up,.

Next, we’re also being asked what has happened to our book Harrington on Modern Tournament Poker by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie. Well, I just spoke to Dan and much progress has been made. We’re now hoping to have it published by the end of the year.

Finally, I want to mention that it has been discovered that the kindles of two of our books Applications of No-Limit Hold ‘em; A Guide to Understanding Theoretical Sound Poker by Matthew Janda and Further Limit Hold ‘em; Exploring the Model Poker Game by Philip Newall are not as good as they should be. So we have asked Amazon.com to take the kindles down and we’re hoping to have much better kindle versions available on Amazon.com in a few weeks. However, our other e-book version (for both of these books), which is available through our 2+2 store is fine.

As many of you now know, last month we endorsed Nevada Senator Dean Heller for election to the Senate this November. Unlike most other Senate races, the Nevada contest features two candidates that are both in favor of online poker. Despite this, we consider this race, from a standpoint of obtaining a good federal poker bill, to be the most important one in the country.

The reason for this is that to get a successful bill, the voting in the Senate will need to be bi-partisan. That is, it will need support from both Republicans and Democrats, and right now, more Republicans are needed.

Well, it turns out that Senator Heller has become the lead spokesperson on the Republican side for supporting this issue, and we hope that his winning the election will be the equivalent to bringing a number of additional Senate votes to our side. We don’t see anything like this happening with his opponent. So, our decision to support Senator Heller was an easy one as well as an important one. There’s lots of discussion in our Poker Legislation forum concerning this endorsement since it has surprised a lot of people. We encourage those of you who are interested in this race, whether you live in our home state of Nevada or some place else, to join in.

We also want to announce that we’re hard at work on our next book. It’s titled Further Limit Hold ‘em; Exploring the Model Poker Game and the author is Philip Newall. It discusses some advanced strategies that can be used in limit hold ‘em games, and it’s of the same top notch quality as Philip’s first book, The Intelligent Poker Player. We hope to have it available before the end of the year.

I also want to comment on the status of intrastate poker here in Nevada. It’s coming, and we expect the first sites to be up and running within six months. If you’ve been following the discussion on the forums, this information is nothing new. As more information becomes known and the sites actually start real play, there should be plenty of discussion in the appropriate forums, and of course if we in 2+2 management hear anything unique, we’ll quickly get the word out.