Poker News Roundup: December 2, 2011

by Dougie Goguen | Dec 2 2011

The press ranks players and that big Macau shindig may turn out to be a bust.

The Internet
ESPN's "The Nuts" is their monthly blog post that ranks the best poker players in the world at the moment. Featuring input from poker reporters that cover the scene along with ESPN stalwarts like Andrew Feldman and Gary Wise, it provides an interesting counterpoint to things like the Global Poker Index as it allows online poker players to be part of the action.

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Online pro Jason Mercier came in at #1 for the sixth month in a row, followed by Erik Seidel (who managed to go for the entire month of November without cashing in a tournament) Eugene Katchalov and Ben Lamb were ranked third and fourth respectively. Lamb's ranking is a bit of a head-scratcher: he came in third in the WSOP Main Event and seems to have been a candidate for upward mobility in the rankings, but that was not the case.

Sam Trickett had the biggest jump in the rankings. He moved upward by five slots after his Partouche Poker Tour win for $1.3m. Trickett now has more than $4.2 million in winnings just for 2011. He recently passed David "Devilfish" Ulliott as Britain's all-time money earner in live poker tournaments.

After that, the list is fairly typical: Shawn Buchanan, Bertrand Grospellier, Chris Moorman, Jake Cody and Phil Hellmuth were ranked in sixth throughout tenth place, respectively. Hellmuth will likely be bumped from the list not the next go-around, but 2011 saw him earn the most money he'd ever gotten from tournament cashes: $1.6 million.

Macau
We know, we know. We were excited too. But it turns out that that $100,000,000 high-roller poker tournament that was all over the poker news site earlier this week may just be a publicity grab by Macau-based businessman William Murray and the companies behind the announcement, which sent eyebrows skyward around the world as people tried to figure out which 200 players would pony up the $500,000 buy-in when even $250,000 tournaments have trouble getting more than 20-30 people to sit down.

Local gambling insider Tom Hall came to the web's most popular online poker forum, Two Plus Two, to call out Murray and his associates.

"Nobody sensible I know in Macau knows anything about it," Hall wrote in the thread about the tournament. "None of the casinos, poker room managers, big game players, junket room operators or media guys has heard anything credible."

He added: "You also have to get any poker event approved … gambling on TV is highly restricted in China and promotion of gaming generally frowned upon … why would Chinese institutions support it?"

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Hall makes very valid points. While China is making a lot of money off gambling and gaming, they're also very controlling of the media and poker is associated with both the west as a game and capitalism, a concept they're still not completely sold on there.

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