For much of early the 2000’s, the focus of online poker rooms was about how they could attract the most Americans possible to play at their room.  After all, it seemed that a good number of US residents were poker fanatics who were ready and willing to spend money on the game as frequently as possible.  But when the UIGEA act was signed into effect in 2006, many of these rooms were at a loss for what to do.

Fortunately for the poker industry, many Americans have come back to the game but the focus isn’t on them as much anymore.  That’s because online poker is rising rapidly in many European countries - especially among the younger people.  A survey run by JupiterResearch discovered that the number of poker players between the ages of 18-24 has gone up by a ridiculous amount. 

For example, Germany saw its total poker playing population in the 18-24 year-old demographic go from 17% to 41% in just one year!  Sweden saw a somewhat big increase too since its number of 18-24 year-old players went from 18% to 25%.  Poland and Hungary didn’t see its younger poker playing population increase that much but it’s tough to do when you’ve already got over 60% of your players being in the 18-24 year-old range.

Females are increasingly responsible for this poker surge in Europe too since places like Spain and Italy have seen huge hikes in female players.  In fact, Spain sees almost a 50/50 split since 44% of its poker player population consists of women and this is up from 16% in 2007.  Italy only had an 18% female online poker playing population but this number has bolted up to 34%.  Norway, Finland, and Sweden also have a big female poker player base too. 

With how much many of the demographics and numbers have changed in just one year, it’s tough to imagine where the limits for poker are in Europe.  Hopefully the game keeps growing throughout the continent as more and more people take up poker.

When I first heard the news of Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear’s plan to seize 141 different domain names from GoDaddy.com because they violated his state’s anti-gambling laws I thought it was some kind of joke post by the website I was checking out.  I just thought that something like this was too ridiculous to ever be true and dismissed it immediately.  However, I kept seeing the story pop up on more and more sites on the Internet and finally came to the realization that this sad story was true.

Basically, Beshear thinks that he can protect the state of Kentucky’s small potatoes gambling status, in comparison to the world, by making this bold (and totally retarded) move.  Unfortunately, the law has to take this matter seriously and actually has a judge on the case by the name of Thomas Wingate.  Interestingly enough, Doyle’s Room is one of the domain names that will be affected by this case.

There’s no telling what will happen with this story in the end as Wingate is a Kentucky circuit court judge and may have some biased towards the state.  On the other hand, it would be totally crazy if Wingate ruled in favor of Kentucky being allowed to seize the domain names since none of them are registered in the state and they operate on a worldwide basis.

An attorney named Bret Fausett (works for a famous LA law firm called Adorno, Yoss, Alvarado, & Smith) made the humorous comment when interviewed that, “This is a little bit like if the Home Shopping TV network was accused of fraud, and Kentucky decided to seize the show’s cameras and set even though HSN’s real location is nowhere near the state.”

I’d have to agree with Fausett on this funny comment as it seems like Beshear and the state of Kentucky have lost their mind over this matter.  But we’ll have to see in a few days if the law system has lost its mind too.

I’ve always liked the concept that Duplicate Poker brought to the table within the online poker community.  It’s style of play focussed on two players at different tables holding the same cards and seeing who could play them the best.  The winner was obviously the person who made the right moves with the cards and outplayed their opponent.  In this system there was no bad beats, no bad stretch of cards, and no people lucking into money. 

However, a unique concept wasn’t enough to survive in the end as Duplicate Poker fell victim to the poor economy that the world is starting to experience.  The fact that Duplicate Poker was one of the few places that was allowed to operate in the US (because it wasn’t considered gambling) couldn’t even save them in the end. 

And this was a tremendous surprise to me personally because I saw on a site called businesswire.com where Duplicate Poker was supposed to be kicking ass despite the major turmoil that other rooms were experiencing due to the world economy.  The article even mentioned something about how their player base had increased by 25% during one bad economic stretch.  

For this reason, the news was kind of puzzling to me.  Especially when the Duplicate CEO, Pinhas Romik, was making statements such as, “DuplicatePoker.com has quickly gained global appeal and poker players at all levels are playing this new game and developing new strategies for winning. Our revenues have increased six-fold since the public launch and we expect the game’s popularity to continue its upward trajectory.”

Going beyond the fact that this statement just seemed really cocky, it also makes me wonder if it was just a last ditch effort to try and shuttle as many people towards Duplicate as possible to save the company.  Here’s the statement that their site now says, “Duplicate is sadly bidding farewell to its players. Caught in the middle of the global financial situation, the company is not able to continue to provide service. We are a small victim of the global financial crisis.”

That’s quite a change from the former.  I just hope that everyone is able to get their money out of Duplicate Poker without losing any of it.

There’s normally a formula that rappers and other artists in the hip-hop community follow to release successful records.  They normally try to build some type of street cred, align with some of the people who’ve already made it in the hip-hop world, and then rap about the streets and other related subjects.  Poker usually doesn’t fall anywhere in the mix.

However, a rapper named The Illest thinks differently and released his rap about poker that features a full 3 minute and 25 second song.  It’s called “Live pros gonna die hoez” and, in my opinion, it isn’t absolutely horrible for a poker rap song.  Of course this is in comparison to Prahlad Friedman’s “Poker is Fun” rap that was done for the WSOP.  Hear this abomination here.

Now I’ll admit that the name of the song in “Live pros gonna die hoez” is absolutely retarded but some of the lyrics are pretty humorous such as when The Illest starts fires several disses at Phil Hellmuth including, “If he talks to me, I’m gonna put him on his fucking back.”  The basic jest of the song is that online players are better than live pros.  Plus there’s a shameless promotional line for cardrunners.com thrown into the track which I’m guessing may have some definite influence on the song.  Listen to the whole thing here.

The Illest better watch out though because Phil Hellmuth has some rapping skills of his own which can be seen here.  And he’s not nearly as bad as Prahlad Friedman so he might actually be able to defend himself against the verbal assault from The Illest.  Do I smell a future rap battle here?

I am definitely a person who supports the movement to increase people’s freedom to play poker wherever, whenever, and however they want to anywhere in the world.  In fact I think it’s ridiculous that places like the United States can tell people that they can’t use certain methods to legally play poker online or in their home. 

And along with this, I also support what the PPA (Poker Players Alliance) has been doing to try and secure more freedoms for poker players in places such as the US.  Many other people support what they’re doing too since the membership base has grown to a staggering 1.2 million.  However, I am starting to wonder just how much money should really go to the poker lobbying effort.

This is because some figures have shown that the PPA spent a whopping $283,000 just over the spring of 2008 alone!  Now I know that it costs money to get anything done on Capitol Hill but you’re talking about a nice chunk of change in $283K and it’s only in one fourth of a year.  Imagine the spending for the entire year as it would have to be at least a million.  And the sum could definitely be going up in the future as the PPA will no doubt be trying to put the pressure on Congress even more to lift online gambling regulations on poker.

Speculation seems to indicate that the PPA is hopeful that the ban will be lifted sometime in 2009 but that is only the best case scenario.  I definitely hope that they are successful in their attempt to get the regulations lifted but I also hope that they make some major headway since the costs have been so great in getting things accomplished.  We’ll see how things progress in another few months or so.