On Tuesday, a video montage of alleged cheating at the 2009 Partouche Poker Tour Grand Final was posted on You Tube by Nordine Bouya. Bouya claims that the winner Paul Pierre Pasqualini and Cedric Rossi, who finished second, used a simple code to signal to each other what cards they had.
According to a recent article in The Telegraph, photographers from the Assembly's press balcony caught several, including ministers, playing poker, ordering clothes, reading adult cartoons etc on their tablets and mobiles in the chamber sessions instead of lawmaking. Below are parts from The Telegraph's article.
Danièle Hoffmann, Socialist MP for Paris admitted to reading the papers via her tablet. "It's very practical. We're totally up to date and will soon receive amendments directly online, which will be progress," she told Le Parisien (a French newspaper).
Annie Duke has been lying extremly low in the live poker scene since the Epic Poker League filed for bankruptcy in the end of February this year. EPL gernerated only $37,052 during its short exitence, however the bankruptcy showed that Duke paid herself $299,784 for her time as commissioner while Epic Poker amounted debts of over $8 million. Among the defrauded in the EPL scandal was the Disabled American Veterans Charity.
Canadian poker pro Matthew Marafioti's name has been dragged through the mud in the past weeks. It all started last month when he and his ex-girlfriend Lauren Kling broke up and he called her names via his Twitter and Facebook.
Last week, things got really bad when an anonymous person posted Skype and Facebook conversations between Marafioti and Swedish hacker and poker player Samer Rahman in which the two talked about hacking the computer of Canadian poker player Will "molswi47" Molson so that Marafioti could see his cards.
Reuters, an international news agancy, reports that a group of 6 Buddhist monks have resigned after a video filmed secretly showed them playing high-stakes poker, drinking and smoking at a memorial event for dead Zen master. Seongho, a senior monk, said that about $875,000 was on the table during the cash game that lasted for about 13 hours.
A few weeks ago, Doyle Brunson promised his followers on twitter that he would write his own thoughts on Black Friday and the Full Tilt scandal. Two days ago, just as promised, The Godfather of Poker posted a blog on the matter that has affected hundreds of thousands of players all over the globe.
The hottest poker news of 2009 were mostly about one player, Isildur1 from Sweden. Isildur1 came from nowhere and won almost $6 millions in a couple of weeks and then lost it all + another $1.5 million in just a few days. After that, Isildur1 had another upswing and was plus for a day or two before he started losing again. Even though Isildur1 lost so much money, many of the world's best poker players praised the young Swede by saying that he is an outstanding poker player who just needs to avoid playing such long sessions and that he should stop playing PL Omaha and stick to NL Holdem instead.
The big scandal Isildur1 made many poker players even richer when his game wasn't at its best. For example, he lost about $4 million dollars in one single session to Brian Hastings, and also a few more millions to Brian Townsend, Cole South, Illari Sahamies, Phil Ivey etc. Shortly after this, Isildur1 disappeared from the high stakes scene and it seemed like it could take long before we heard about the unknown swede again. However, it didn't take long before Isildur1 once again was in the headlines as a big scandal was about to be revealed. It all started after that Brian Townsend got his red pro status removed by Full Tilt for a month because he had used a non-allowed poker program to collect data from the games against Isiludr1. And according to different rumors, Townsend had shared this information with Cole South and Hastings. However, neither of them got punished in any kind of way by Full Tilt. After that Isildur1 got to know about this, he said that he will ask Full Tilt to give back some of the money he had lost, and that he probably wouldn't play at Full Tilt anymore.
Brian Townsend has been in the center of the storm since last week when he got his red pro status removed (for a month) by Full Tilt after that they found out he had been using a non-allowed program to save hand history against Isildur1, and also discussed and shared this information with Brian Hastings and Cole South.
After this, Brian Townsend wrote in his blog that he was the sole one to break Full Tilt's terms & conditions and that Hastings and South had nothing to do with it. Brian Townsend probably thought that he would get some peace and quite after writing this. Unfortunately, for him, this "scandal" has now been taken to another level as many other pros now have started giving their opinions and thoughts on the Brian Townsend scandal. One of these pros are Tony G.
"The world of poker is a very complex structure built around players, the online poker sites and casinos that provide the games, the limits and games played, rake, backers, and a lot more, and in the end, trying to provide the best game possible that helps everyone. The entire situation with Townsend, Hastings, and Cole involving their combined knowledge and play against Ilsuldur1 leaves a bad smell in the air for everyone, especially for Full Tilt since Townsend is one of their Red Pros. As a player, I would like to see Townsend be more committed to giving his attention to doing what being a Red Pro demands at Full Tilt."
