Make pocket pairs pay bigFriday, December 30th, 20...

Make pocket pairs pay big

Friday, December 30th, 2005

You are dealt pocket 4s. You raise because you are hoping to eliminate the many hands with overcards that can beat you.

At least that's what many poker books and many big-name professionals tell you to do.

But that's not what Phil Gordon recommends.

With pocket pairs, especially small ones, you just want to call because you have the chance to make a lot of money if the field is bigger, said the author of "Phil Gordon's Little Green Book: Lessons and Teachings in No Limit Texas Hold 'Em" (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, $21).

"Before, I might've raised to limit the field," Gordon said, "but what I realized through some mathematical study is that you want as many people as possible when you have the middle pocket pair, and you want to get in cheap. You want to flop a set (three of a kind), and you want as many people in as possible so someone else flops something, too."

The retooled Gordon found himself with pocket deuces in the small blind in a $1,000-buy-in World Series of Poker no-limit hold 'em event.

more at Free Press >>>

Wall St. Bets on Gambling on the WebWednesday, Dec...

Wall St. Bets on Gambling on the Web

Wednesday, December 28th, 2005

By MATT RICHTEL
NYTimes.com

Internet casinos are outlaw operations in the eyes of the federal government, but they look like solid investments to many of Wall Street's largest firms.

Blue-chip investment houses like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Fidelity now hold hundreds of millions of dollars in shares of online casinos and betting parlors, which are publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange and headquartered in places like Costa Rica or Gibraltar.

The growing participation by American investors underscores a striking gap between the federal law-enforcement position on online gambling and the realities behind what has emerged as a booming business.

It also highlights the difficulty of policing cross-border activity in the Internet age at the same time that electronic commerce and a global economy are creating fast economic partners across national boundaries.

Legal experts are divided over whether American investors and the investment houses that operate mutual funds could themselves be seen as criminally liable for their actions by providing financial backing for offshore casinos. To be sure, it is not uncommon for Americans to invest in overseas companies whose operations may be considered illegal or unacceptable here, from sweatshop manufacturers to European energy producers that do business in Iran.

The difference with Internet gambling is that the activity takes place on domestic shores - with Americans placing bets online using their home computers - and the Justice Department has stated clearly that the operators are violating American law.

Jaclyn Lesch, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said that the agency considered online gambling illegal but declined to "comment on the liability or hypothetical liability of a company or an individual."

But Internet gambling analysts and company executives said that the investments highlight how widely the federal policy is, in essence, being ignored.

Millions of Americans use the Internet to play games like poker, blackjack and roulette, or to place wagers on sporting events. Online casinos advertise in magazines and on cable television while filling big billboards in Times Square and other places where crowds congregate. Celebrities like Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota, hawk their wares.

Full story in New York Times >>>

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Make pocket pairs pay bigFriday, December 30th, 20...

Wall St. Bets on Gambling on the WebWednesday, Dec...