Those who check out gambling industry news from time to time have no doubt heard of former Bodog owner Calvin Ayre.  The self-made billionaire and flamboyant playboy has been the subject of many magazine cover stories while his problems with the US government have received just as much attention as his business skills and partying lifestyle.

And throughout all of the turmoil that Ayre has faced, he has never really seemed fazed by the threat of litigation against him and he’s even taunted the US government in the past through the media.  However, there are plenty of poker players and gamblers on his site that are very scared at the prospect of not being able to access their money (or even lose it) amid more serious investigations into the company and Ayre.

Just recently, the US government seized $24 million from bank accounts that have been servicing Bodog over the years.  And this may only be the beginning as the feds are warning that there is going to be a huge investigation into the company.  And even though Ayre has distanced himself from the company, he too would face criminal actions since he owned Bodog for so long.

Some of the banks that have had Bodog money taken from them include major chains like Wachovia, Bank of America, and SunTrusts Banks.  This creates further worry in poker players and gamblers who use the BodogLife.com site as there is a very real possibility that their money could be put on hold or be frozen while further investigations would take place of Bodog and the bank accounts it has used.

An even worse scenario would be if the US government was able to take away much more money from Bodog or even shut it down entirely.  This would create the possibility that players could lose a lot, if not all of their money.  However, this would be the extreme scenario and I certainly hope that the people who play poker there wouldn’t lose their money as it would definitely hurt the industry quite a bit.

Going back to the WSOP for a moment, one of the darker sides of the whole event was how Tiffany Michelle and Tony G got into it about how the former PokerNews employee in Michelle was supposed to be representing the company throughout the Main Event.  Now this story has been beat to death by some people so I don’t want to go into it anymore. 

The only thing I want to say is that her wearing UltimateBet gear to the Main Event caused the rift because PokerNews paid her buy-in and she argued that other PokerNews employees were allowed to sponsor other companies and so should she. 

Well today, the weird saga came to fruition when Michelle was signed by the scandal-ridden UltimateBet today.  Apparently they, like many other people in the poker world were very impressed with her 17th place finish at the Main Event which drew major attention since she was the last female standing.  I’m sure they were also impressed by the fact that she’s one of the more attractive women in poker today (I’d give her about an 8 personally).

And all this got me wondering if this is one move that UltimateBet is banking on to help them restore their already broken image.  If Michelle turns out to be a big star in the form of their already popular UB team member in Annie Duke, it would certainly help out a lot.  However, what’s to stop Michelle from jumping ship as soon as soon as her playing ability is solidified enough to match her looks?

I don’t know who’s right or wrong in the PokerNews dispute but the reputation has already been created in some people’s minds that she would leave for greener pastures if given the chance.  All of this created for an interesting story to watch develop in the future.

I’ve heard a lot about players in the past who have poker backers.  Basically what happens here is that the backers will put up some money for another player’s buy-in and possibly hotel room (or players) as something of an investment.  There are different arrangements depending on who the backer is but in the end, the backers always expect more in return than they give (hence the investment idea).

These backers can come in the form of major players or as just companies that invest in different interests and they almost always take some kind of huge cut from a big cash the player makes.  In addition to taking a cut, sometimes the backers will even want past money they put up for the player back as well.  Over the weekend I actually had the chance to talk to one of these backed players and get a little more insight into the backer world.

He said that he was backed by a company out of New York and had made some cashes during the WSOP this year and had cashed in some previous major tournaments as well.  However, he also said that he found himself almost 120K in debt to these backers before the WSOP and has had to win a lot of that money back.  With his WSOP cashes and mostly through online play, he has cut that debt down to about 15K but all of this has me wondering about something.

Why doesn’t he play exclusively online?  It seems as if he makes a lot more money that way and he won’t have some outstanding debt owed to a backing company either.  Sure he won’t get to travel to all the cool places that he does under the backing company as he’d be pretty busy playing online most of the time but eventually he’ll earn enough money to do what he wants anyways.  

In the end though, it’s his decision and it would be hard to give up all that traveling to different cities and countries to focus exclusively online.

There’s been plenty of news on some poker room scandals as of late.  Thousands of players were furious after being ripped off by Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker which had certain players who could see other players’ hole cards.  And plenty of poker sites and blogs were quick to report on this injustice so I don’t want to harp on it anymore.

But now there is a new problem arising in the poker room world where players are having checks bounce as they try to cash them in.  The problem seems to stem from rooms that use a payment processor called Zip Payments.  There are quite a few sites that offer Zip Payments as an option so a lot of people have been affected by this. 

The rooms that sent these checks out are now trying to rectify the situation by sending new checks to the affected players and, in a lot of cases, covering the bank fees and penalties that arose from the situation.  But this is just a band aid being put over a growing problem and a lot of people are looking for someone to blame.

And most of the blame for poker rooms being forced to use questionable payment processors like Zip Payments can be pinned on the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act that was implemented in 2006.  Ever since the UIGEA act, poker rooms have been using these processors as a crutch and it doesn’t appear as if all of them are reliable. 

There’s already been enough problems with UB and AB rocking the poker world and this is the last thing that players need.  Hopefully poker rooms can find a 100% reliable method of getting money to players but this is probably something that will take a while to fix. 

The federal government seems to believe that poker is a form of gambling and there needs to be restrictions put on it.  They treat the game as if it is a vice that people can’t control and so they need to be supervised like kids by their parents.  But every person who’s played poker for any significant amount of time knows that poker involves a great deal of skill and that people can come out on top in the long run if they have enough skill.

In fact, there are plenty of people out there who are taking these thoughts to the next level and preparing for poker as if it is a career.  Just recently I saw where a West Virginia community college was offering a course on poker and they had 70 people graduate from it this year.  Poker in college?  It’s something that I never thought I would see.

However, there are also those who are choosing the game of poker over college entirely.  Some of these college eligible players are starting with the game directly and not even choosing to enroll while others are taking college classes before they eventually decide that their futures would better be served in the game of poker. 

This route has worked for many players in the past including pros like Erick Lindgren and Annie Duke who cut out on their college curriculum on hold in order to go for the green in the game of poker.  In the case o Kathy Liebert, she quit her stock market analysis job at the prestigious Dun & Bradstreet company in New York City to move out West where she found poker much more enjoyable.

But in the case of the average player, it’s tough to say whether it is a good decision to skip out on an education to fall back on if poker doesn’t work out.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any statistics to say whether or not it pans out in the end on the average but I’ll definitely be looking for studies on this in the future.