Poker playing tourists may want to consider St. Croix next year. The Divi Carina Bay Casino there is making a major poker play, becoming the first Caribbean casino to host WSOP and WPT satellites.

Divi will play host to satellite qualifying tournaments for Binion's World Series of Poker and Bellagio's World Poker Tour, two of the most recognizable gaming tournaments in the world, casino officials said Tuesday.

Link

The WPT today announced that it is rolling out a 2-tier satellite system, in partnership with casinos around the US. Casinos will run satellites locally, and the winners of those will receive entry into a $2,600 buyin single-table satellite at the Bellagio, plus airfare and accomodations. The single-table satellite winners will then win a $25,000 seat in the WPT championship event in April.

To maximize the value of the WPT Satellite program for both parties, the WPT will provide promotional assistance to each participating casino. This package includes artwork for advertising, promotional materials, templates for signage, promotional video, DVDs and publicity materials to build the buzz for the event. The winner of the WPT Championship will be profiled in the final televised show--spotlighting his journey to the finals and the casino. Casinos are also offered the opportunity to share in the proceeds from the sale of WPT merchandise.

Initial casinos that have enthusiastically signed up include Turning Stone Casino Resort (Verona, NY); Players Casino (Federal Way, WA); Spirit Mountain Casino (Willamina, OR), Village Club (Chula Vista, CA), Divi Carina Bay Casino (Christiansted, Virgin Islands), Wildhorse Casino Resort (Pendleton, OR), Six Card Charlies (Long Beach, WA), Planetpoker.com (online), and AbsolutePoker.com (online).

Link (via wptfan.com)

It's a great move for the WPT, regional casinos, and players. Players get an easier way into the WPT main event, the regional casinos get additional revenues from the satellites, and the WPT gets to "monetize" their tremendous regional influence on poker by charging the regional casinos licensing fees to officially join the World Poker Tour and getting their merchandise in more channels. I expect many more casinos to join the program soon.

Kevin made an interesting post to the comments section of a recent post:

The rise in popularity is great for casinos and for poker in general, but it's not great for the dealers! Our poker room has more than doubled in players/games/hours played in the last year but our toke rate has nearly been cut in half. To new players: you don't see it on tv or during tournaments (although it's definitely appreciated afterwards!) but you can occasionally toke the dealer.

This was news to me -- I suppose it makes some sense, but I hadn't thought that the rise in poker's popularity would see the toke rate drop to the level of half what it was before.

So please, poker players -- try to educate the newbies at your table on the etiquette of tipping poker dealers. Kevin makes it a good point that it's never shown or mentioned on the TV tournament broadcasts.

Arik writes:

Is pachinko considered a form of pinball? If so, why is it illegal? I can't comprehend why a game of this nature is any different than a ticket jackpot machine commonly found in kids arcades and chucky cheese's throught the U.S.

As far as I know, Arik, there are no U.S. state or federal laws specifically targeted at pachinko and it is not illegal in the U.S. Its regulation in the U.S. (when not played for money) falls under normal fair games and amusements, which most if not all states do have laws and regulations for. It's certainly pretty easy to acquire a pachinko machine for home use; they are carried by many amusement machine companies, as well as home casino suppliers. Most machines I've seen run in the US$100-300 range.

For those of you who do not know, pachinko is a Japanese game. It consists of a standing machine with a spring-loaded hand control. The player loads a large amount (usually in the hundreds) of small metal balls (about 1/4 inch wide) into a hopper in the machine. When the hand control is rotated, the balls fire out at a speed determined by how far the hand control is turned. If the player keeps the hand control rotated, the balls continue to fire at regular intervals.

They fire into a lattice of metal pegs, obstacles and goals. The aim of the game is to fire the balls into goals, which are usually small wheels or slots in the board. Based on the number and frequency of balls which hit these goals, the machine pays out more balls, based on rules which are totally unknown to the player. Usually the machine includes some sort of progressive modes, which encourage the player to play more balls and get the machine "hot" to pay off even more balls. The goal is to leave the machine with more balls than you started with.

In Japan, these balls are then exchangeable for prizes. The prizes usually seem totally out of whack with the amount the game costs -- you may pump $20 worth of balls into a machine and get a little weird teddy bear, for instance. However, near every pachinko parlor is a store that "purchases" these specific prizes for cash. It's that exchange which makes pachinko a gambling game in Japan, and while gambling is illegal there it is generally tolerated in this technically illegal form.

As to why it is not popular in the U.S. is open for debate. My theory is that the game isn't all that exciting compared to the legal forms of U.S. gambling such as video poker or blackjack, and it isn't as much of a game of skill as, say, skee-ball, if it were to be played for amusement or fair-type prizes. On the other hand, pachinko is more skill-based than basic three-reel slot machines, and those are wildly popular in the U.S. It's conceivable that pachinko machines could get regulated and legalized in a place like Vegas as a gambling device, but I don't see why any casino would go through the trouble -- they would require much more maintenance and support than the existing video gambling machines and don't offer anything unique to the casinos other than perhaps an attraction for Japanese tourists and pachinko enthusiasts.

For further reading, there are some good article on pachinko in Japan out there. Try here and here for starters. You can also search eBay for pachinko auctions.

A couple of interesting sidenotes:

Juzo Itami, a Japanese movie director who was responsible for my favorite foreign film, Tampopo, also directed a movie called A Taxing Woman (Marusa no onna). It revolves around an aggressive tax inspector who is going after a pachinko parlor for under-reporting their revenues.

I've heard that some Japanese pachinko parlors post "No Gaijin" signs, or don't allow Americans. I'm not sure how many of them do this; a couple of my friends have been to Japan and played pachinko with no problems so it may be rare.

December 10 2003 6:00 PM | permalink (6 players) | 0 pointers

Apparently Sugar's men's club here in Austin has been holding a weekly charity poker tournament for several weeks now. It will be continuing, every Tuesday, until December 23rd, with the finals held December 30th. The grand prize is a trip for two to Vegas; proceeds are going to charity. Play starts at 9pm. Link (thanks, Robert!)

There's another interesting article on the popularity of poker and the influence TV has had on expanding the game. This one is noteworthy because it's peppered with some great quotes and sketches of Atlantic City pros.

"Being a poker player is not easy," says Nguyen, one of 20 or so female players in the room, jammed with 500-plus gamblers. "It's a hard way to make an easy living. If you lose control, you can lose bad and lose a lot of money."

Link

I watched "Celebrity Poker Showdown" last night on Bravo.

The poker play was pretty much what I expected: fairly terrible, punctuated by moments of hilarity as the celebs considered -- and made -- ridiculously bad plays. From a poker standpoint, there's nothing here to really learn. But the show was still pretty entertaining.

Ben Affleck was clearly the experience at the table, but even he made some questionable plays. Don Cheadle and Kevin Pollak offered some decent comic relief. Along with Pollak, the show is commentated by tiltboy Phil Gordon, who is one of my poker idols.

The other strike against the show is that the celebs are not playing with their own money, but for a charity of their choice, which makes the wins and losses a lot less compelling in my eyes.

But as I said, it's fun and funny to watch celebrities playing poker. I'd probably pay $50 on pay-per-view if they had a cast reunion of The Golden Girls in a celebrity poker showdown. And while I don't expect the ratings of Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown to come close to the World Poker Tour or World Series of Poker broadcasts, it still is an interesting and encouraging addition to the TV poker lineup. When it comes down it, your average american TV watcher probably cares (and understands) a lot less about quality of play, and celebrities playing poker will get a whole class of viewer who would never watch nobodies playing. So I think it's a great thing for poker.

There was this hilarious take on United Poker Forum:

I can't believe Hollywood caught on to our beloved game and is attempting to kill it with celebs. What's next?
Everyone Bluffs Raymond
Kings and Queens in Queens
Survivor - Binions
Big Blind for the Straight Guy
7th Street Heaven

I read another article somewhere this week that claimed CPS is going to kill TV poker, which is absolutely untrue. Despite the poor play, I'm going to keep watching the show, and millions of Americans who otherwise would have little interest in poker, but may have a lot of interest in, say, Ben Affleck or Martin Sheen, will be tuning in too.

In the spirit of the "Home Poker Tour", some folks up in NY have put up their own home poker tournament site for the "Sayville Poker Tour". Very well done, it includes player rankings based on results over numerous tournaments, player rankings, photos, etc. Link

It would be a great idea for someone to put up a general site like this where individual groups could create their own "Poker Tour" sites for their own group, which managed all this content. Pretty special-purpose and I'm sure there is not a lot of money to be made doing it, but it would be a cool idea.

Don't forget, the premiere of Bravo's new poker show is tonight! It will show at 8pm central, with a repeat at 10pm. The first episode features Ben Affleck, Don Cheadle, David Schwimmer, Emily Proctor and Willie Garson. Link

I trust everyone had a happy thanksgiving! A few little odds tidbits for your pleasure:

Before this weekend's NFL action, the New England Patriots had gone 11 games in a row without winning a coin toss. Odds: 2047:1.

I recently played two games of Scrabble in a row. In Scrabble, each player draws a letter tile to start the game, the player with the letter closest to 'A' goes first. In the first game, I drew a 'B' and my opponent drew an 'A'. Odds of drawing a 'B': 49:1. Odds of then being outdrawn by an 'A': 11:1. Combined odds: 549:1. That's a fairly bad beat.

In the second game, I drew a 'Y' and my opponent drew a 'Z'. Odds of drawing a 'Y': 49:1. Odds of opponent then drawing a 'Z': 98:1. Combined odds: 4949:1. That probably makes up for the earlier bad beat.

Odds of these two events happening in back-to-back games of Scrabble: 2,722,499:1.

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