Poker News

John Caldwell

PROPOSED 25 PERCENT WITHHOLDING ON POKER TOURNAMENT WINNINGS SQUELCHED

Poker tournament grinders everywhere are rejoicing, as a proposed Internal Revenue Service rule to withhold 25 percent of tournament winnings of over $5,000 has been nixed, and will not be enforced.

According to Wally Chalmers, Vice President of the American Gaming Association, a powerful lobby group that works on behalfof land-based casino interests, the 25 percent- withholding idea was abandoned after an assessment of the rule’s viability and negotiations with the IRS’s rules-making group. The AGA’s Tax and Finance Task Force played an important role in lobbying against the proposal, which would have both significantly increased casinos’ reporting burden and reduced the liquidity of tourney pros as they move from one event to the next.

POKERSTARS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP OF ONLINE POKER CROWNS CHAMPION-INVESTIGATION FOLLOWS

The “SuperBowl” of online poker, PokerStars WCOOP recently ended its 23-event run with its $2,600 Main Event. Just under 3,000 players entered, creating a prize pool of $7.5 million dollars. When the dust settled, it was “TheV0id” that outlasted all the other players, and took down the staggering $1.3 million dollar first prize. Almost immediately after the final card was dealt, rumors of multi-accounting by the winner surfaced on poker forums all over the web. Although no official statement has been issued, at last report PokerStars was conducting an investigation into the allegations which has not yet been concluded.

SIX CHARGED IN SWEDEN FOR RUNNING POKER TOURNAMENT

Six menhave been formally charged for hosting an unlicensed poker tournament in Sweden. The men could receive up to four year in jail for their alleged participation. The well publicized event attracted 700 players for the 250 Euro buy-in event. The organizers received 30 Euro of the buyin as fees, with the rest going into the prize pool. With 700 players in the field, the prize pool was about =C175,000, or just under a quarter of a million US Dollars. The top prize of 50,000 Euro was never awarded however, as the tournament was raided almost as soon as it began. Under Swedish law, providing the premises for illegal gambling holds the same penalty as running an illegal gambling operation. Two of the others arrested were associated with the sponsoring online gaming company. The last two men charged were locally based organizers.

2008 WORLD SERIES OF POKER DATES ANNOUNCED

Harrah’s announced that the 39th annual World Series of Poker will run May 30 through July 17, 2008, and the event will again be held at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. While the specific event schedule has not yet been made public, the general time frame allows the poker world to begin planning its collective schedule. “The team is still hard at work on the schedule of events for next year,” said Jeffrey Pollack, WSOP Commissioner, “but we’ve received so many requests for the dates that we decided to announce them now.” The WSOP tournament room at the Rio will open on May 26th for two special events. According to the vice president and assistant general manager of the Rio, Geno Iafrate, “This soft opening will give players a chance to register early and avoid the lines we had last year during opening weekend-our busiest time.”

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