There is huge turmoil in the world of online poker after three of the world’s major online poker sites were shut down by the FBI last Friday, 15 April, now labelled Black Friday in the online poker community.

US federal prosecutors filed an indictment charging the founders of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, as well as nine other individuals, of operating illegal gambling businesses. Federal prosecutors also filed a civil lawsuit of $3 billion in money laundering penalties, accusing the online poker companies of disguising the money they received from US poker players as payments to non-related online merchants such as jewelers and golf ball suppliers.

The PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker.com internet domain names were seized to stop the companies from operating in the US, and a federal judge enforced a restraining order against 76 bank accounts in 14 countries that are connected with these online poker companies.

The accused poker operators have maintained that they were not violating US laws, and that poker is a game of skill and not gambling, but have not commented since last Friday. Some legal land-based casinos have been in the process of setting up lucrative deals with these online sites. These deals will no longer go ahead.

The indictment still maintains that PokerStars, Full Tilt and Absolute Poker “…used fraudulent methods to avoid restrictions and to receive billions of dollars from United States residents who gambled” and “…deceived or directed others to deceive United States banks and financial institutions into processing billions of dollars in payments”.

The above-mentioned online poker companies are not run in the US but are estimated to have made over $1.4 billion in revenue from US players.

The belle of poker, Annie Duke, is to become the commissioner of a new poker league planned to become the equivalent of the PGA in the poker world. The league goals include becoming a showcase for the best games of the best players as well as to host invitational tournaments for the best of the best. Best, best, best – we get it.

The, as yet unnamed, league will televise four regular-season events and a $1 million championship freeroll in Las Vegas within the year.
Duke told The Associated Press:

“This is incredibly pro-centric…This is the one piece that’s kind of missing from the poker landscape right now, which is something for the best players in the world to compete against the best players in the world.”

The biggest poker event presently is the World Series of Poker which is open to anyone to play if they can afford the hefty entry fees. The main event, the no-limit Texas Hold’em event, costs a whopping $10,000 to enter but still manages to draw in thousands of players every year. Last year’s main event winner, Jonathan Duhamel, wasn’t known before winning and taking home $8.94 million and with the growing number of tournaments and players, ever-entertaining showdowns between the ‘big’ players cannot be guaranteed.

Duke has certainly claimed her place in the world of poker fame. She’s racked up a series of wins and also featured as a contestant on the “Celebrity Apprentice” series. She thinks this league will showcase what it really takes to become and remain a poker pro.

The league will use a mathematical formula to measure who will get to be part of it. The formula will take into account finishes in major events, money earned and recent wins. Cash games and online poker will not factor into these calculations.

Players in the league will have two-, three- or five-year terms and less than 10 lifetime cards will be dished out to living players who have experienced remarkable success at the tables.

“This is something that I really wanted to see happen for a very long time,” Duke said.

As the second biggest event after the WSOP, the PCA is one of the biggest tournaments in poker and now that the 2011 PCA Main Event is to be broadcast the question arises; will it attract more people/viewers to the game?

Televsied poker has become more and more popular recently and there's no doubt that the PCA broadcast plans to capitalize on this. It will also continue in the poker-broadcast trend to use niche stats and terminology that the average crowd would not understand. This means that the crowd they are trying to attract already have accounts and already watch poker. Why would they change what they’re already doing for a similar product?

The average, casual viewer is going to find this kind of broadcast slow, difficult to understand and therefore boring. More so when you consider that the broadcast of the final happens at the same time as the NFL playoffs. All that these broadcasts entail is poker, stats, analysis, poker and more poker.

The set is also a problem. It seems to reinforce the blandness. The set should be something that attracts a viewer as they flip from channel to channel and, at the moment just doesn’t grab anyone’s attention.

The actual poker stars are of a different kind these days too. They used to be strong minded and willed personalities who relied on feel and intuition. These days there seems to be a parade of young savant-like players with no charisma or entertainment value. This is beyond the control of the broadcaster but a factor nevertheless.

If the broadcasters and production houses want an audience, they need to start thinking a bit more out of the box. More excitement, more entertainment and a faster pace is necessary to bring in a broader audience. Audiences need a ‘hook’ to get them watching, interesting excerpts to keep them captivated during the slow times and they need to feel some sort of an emotional connection with the players.

While the present broadcast was done well for advanced players and audiences, it just doesn’t have the necessary ‘draw cards’ to reel in a bigger audience.

This year the World Series of Poker saw 63,706 entrants competing for millions and unprecedented amounts of spectators there to make sure they didn’t miss out on any of the action. Becoming a professional poker player is now potentially just as lucrative as becoming any other professional sports player, if not more.

Major League Baseball players have the highest average pay and no enforced salary cap while MMA fighters are paid significantly less despite competition from WWE and pro-boxing.

Poker generates some of the highest sports salaries in the world and while it does require considerable skill it does not require a huge amount of physical prowess. AND, as with Major League Baseball, poker salaries have no cap!

Take a look at how online poker incomes compare to other pro sports salaries:

Poker got a great boost in popularity in 1998 thanks to the release of the film Rounders, starring Matt Damon and Edward Norton. Although the film was regarded as a box-office flop at the time, it’s received a cult following that has continued to grow over the years. Since 1998, the game of poker has also seen an unprecedented rise in popularity with live poker being broadcast to audiences throughout the world regularly and online casinos being sprawled all over  the internet. 

Perhaps in recognition of this poker trend, Miramax has decided to release a sequel to the 1998 original. It was recently announced that in a partnership between The Weinstein Company, a series of sequels to popular Miramax films from the 90’s will be made and released, including Rounders.  Other films in line to have sequels made are Bad Santa and the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love.

While we aren’t sure when production will start on Rounders 2, it has been suggested that film will be released sometime in 2012.

There are two poker tables set up in William Snyder’s math classroom at George Mason High School and both are buzzing. At one, 17 year old Daniel Fletcher is trying to decide what to do with his four of hearts and two of clubs.

Fletcher is part of a growing trend to take poker from casinos to classrooms in a drive to get kids to use card-table concepts for math and logical-reasoning lessons.

After his pile of chips grew substantially throughout last week, he inadvertently summed up the exercise: "I don't know whether math class is helping me with poker, or whether poker is helping me in math class,"

The poker club Fletcher is part of is sponsored by his school and since it started in September has become one of the most popular extracurricular activities offered by the high school.

The club has also resulted in a popular debate resurfacing. Anti-gambling groups are questioning whether the club is bringing up unhealthy gambling habits in the kids participating. Gambling has already been recognised as a problem amongst teenagers in the US.

Principal Tyrone Byrd has defended their decision by saying: "We know the kids could play outside of school, but when they're here, we have the opportunity to show them how to play responsibly and to show them how the game relates to their education," said Mason Principal Tyrone Byrd.

Byrd set up ground rules to protect the teenagers: no real money is allowed to be used and the emphasis must be on the game’s educational relevance.

Universities have been on this wavelength for some time with many offering classes that deconstructed the game’s “marvellous architecture” as Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson puts it.

Nesson’s classes are about more than basic statistics, but about understanding the anatomy of reasoning and human behaviour - "about teaching them to contend in a contentious environment."

With his students Nesson formed the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society in 2007 and the club has since expanded to a number of other top universities. Its members aim to deliver their mission statement that poker, "can be used as a powerful teaching tool at all levels of academia and in secondary education."
 
Anti-gambling activists are insisting that these lessons are not suited to high school students who might get heavily influenced by high-stakes poker and celebrity players and start playing on the very easily accessible online poker rooms.

The Annenberg Public Policy Foundation at the University of Pennsylvania released a study last month that found that 15 percent of boys between 14 and 17 years old gamble using cards at least once a month.

 So while there is no doubt that the game is popular amongst teenagers and also holds a large amount of potential for being used as an educational tool perhaps the emphasis should not be on whether or not to offer the game at schools but how the game can be taught so that teenagers can play it, enjoy it and learn from it in a healthy and constructive environment.