Ho Ho Maria; Lobbyists Spend Millions; Playing Scared
Maria’s Ho’s holiday wish: World Series of Poker bracelet
by Mark Mayer
Mark can be found at the super gaming website www.gamingtoday.com
When first meeting world class poker player Maria Ho, it would be the wrong approach to ask her what else she’s done. Far better to say, “What haven’t you done?”
“Oh, I travel quite a bit, stay pretty busy,” Ho said when reached in Los Angeles as she prepares for the World Poker Tour’s Five Diamond Classic to be held Dec. 6-11 at the Bellagio. “I was in a lot of musicals and have done commentary. I’m just enjoying life.”
Maria’s interests and accomplishments are truly eclectic. Ho is the only player to have been the Last Woman Standing in both the World Series of Poker and WSOP-Europe main events – each accomplished this year. She’s also been on the Emmy Award winning show “The Amazing Race” (with fellow poker pro Tiffany Michelle) and a panelist on Anderson Cooper’s CNN news show.
“I learned the game by dropping in to poker games while in college at UC-San Diego,” said the 26-year-old Ho, who has made several Top 100 sexiest women’s lists. “My dad played the game and it got me interested.”
Ho started playing poker seriously at age 18, going to card rooms and slowly building up the bankroll. After four years of winning consistently, she began formulating her strategy for taking on the pros as a career.
“I would say it takes about $30,000 to think about playing poker as a profession,” she said. “Now I play from 20 to 30 major events a year and travel quite a bit. I always enjoy coming to Las Vegas because there is always something going on poker wise.”
Maria said her biggest goal is to win a bracelet at the WSOP, something she nearly accomplished this year after finishing second in the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Event No. 4 at the Rio. She came away with $540,020 – the largest cash prize a woman has ever had at the WSOP to date.
Ho followed that up a few months later in Cannes at WSOP-Europe with a 27th place finish, the highest for a woman competitor in the main event.
“Poker has traditionally been a man’s game until the last 20 years,” Ho said. “It’s still marketed more toward men, but I would like to see more women get into the game.”
Ho rates Phil Ivey, Eric Seidel and Daniel Negreanu as the top players she admires and explained how she incorporated some of their top traits into her game.
“Phil has a strong table presence, reads people very well and has good instincts,” she said. “Eric has had a tremendous year. He has a real sense of calm. There is no panic to him. Daniel is one of the best people to talk to. He is super observant.”
Online poker has also been part of Maria’s interests, but with all the controversy she is shying away from it for now.
“I believe the public perception is more negative than ever toward Internet poker,” she said. “I think the online game will be in limbo for awhile, but I would like to be hopeful things will change.”
Maria has received invitations to play in various types of games all over the world. In 2008, she traveled to Hong Kong to play in the World Mahjong Tour, going head-to-head with various Chinese and Taiwanese celebrities and pro Mahjong players. In 2010, she played as a member of Team China in the Inaugural World Team Poker Invitational and helped her team secure a first place victory.
Also, as a communications major with a minor in law when enrolled at UC-San Diego, she has many outside interests awaiting her if full-time poker no longer becomes her prime interest.
“I’ve always been drawn to the psychological and competitive spirit of poker,” she said. “I really want that bracelet. After that, we’ll see.”
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Online Poker and Gaming Lobbyists Spending Millions
By: Charles Read more articles like that at www.pokernewsreport.com
Almost $33 million has been spent by lobbyists in payments and political donations in 2011 by varied interest groups that are looking for a slice of the profits to be had from online gaming, but the lobbying groups are in disagreement over whether online poker should be regulated at the state or federal level.
Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, which has jurisdiction on the internet gambling issue and has already held two hearings on the matter, said that the big money lobbying campaigns are hard to miss as each group presses to have their interests or messages heard.
“Increased lobbying brings the issue to the forefront of what the members are paying attention to,” Bono Mack said, pointing out that online poker supporters have made their feelings known with a large number of posts on her Twitter account and Facebook page.
In the lobbying battle between federal and state regulation lobbyists, one of the biggest spenders in the game revealed which side of the fence they were on. “We prefer federal legislation,” said Poker Players Alliance (PPA) Executive Director John Pappas. Since the beginning of the year, the PPA has doled out over $1 million to send 20 lobbyists to Washington in an effort to garner support for federal regulations to legalize internet poker.
Although admitting that lobbyists can be a powerful force in getting a group’s message across, Pappas also feels that the efforts made by online poker players themselves who are PPA members also has considerable value that can sometimes be as effective as traditional lobbying efforts to persuade and influence lawmakers.
“We’ve had tens of thousands of letters sent to Capitol Hill, hundreds of personal visits by individual poker players who care about this issue,” Pappas said. “Lobbyists are just a bunch of suits. Our 1.2 million members are really the heart and soul of our organization.”
One factor that may presently be standing in the way of state-regulated gaming is the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006, which prohibits financial institutions or companies from conducting monetary transactions involving internet gaming. Whether the UIGEA permits individual states to provide and run their own online gambling systems is still being debated by lawmakers
Two proposed federal bills, one to regulate online poker and the other aimed at legalizing all forms of internet gambling, are now pending before Congress. Las Vegas casinos are also pushing for federal legislation to be enacted as opposed to state regulations.
“There are large gaming companies and large technology companies that are working for a federal bill,” said Sanford I. Millar, a Los Angeles-based attorney who represents clients in the internet gaming industry. “Working against those interests at the federal level are significant separate state interests, such as tribes, card clubs and racetracks,” Millar added. “Each of them has a separate and distinct business model they’re trying to protect.”
Tribal gaming interests have spent over $11 million in lobbying efforts this year. Most are opposed to federal legislation that could take away their regular casino customers. Many fear that Indian tribes would not be able to go up against land-based casinos in an online market and that their lucrative casino profits would suffer as a result. But some tribes are better-suited than others to provide and benefit from online poker.
“To be sure, 100 percent of the tribes would face new competition with the authorization of online gambling, while only a few would have the financial strength to compete with those who are granted new online gaming franchises,” Morongo Chairman Robert Martin said recently.
“The tribes have various viewpoints,” Bono Mack said. “and they’re all valid.” During the subcommittee hearing, Bono Mack alluded to the prominent role that Indian gaming plays in her constituency, a sign that may signal that she is leaning toward a state-regulated approach to online poker legislation in an effort to appease the tribes: “In my own Congressional District, tribal gaming has been a huge plus, with seven casinos supporting thousands of jobs during these difficult economic times. The tribes have been great neighbors too, contributing regularly to charities and civic events.”
The horse-racing industry is also closely involved in the federal and state regulation debate. Internet wagering on horse racing is permitted in many states and it is the only current legalized online gambling allowed in the U.S. The horse-racing industry is seeking benefits in a federal bill that would legalize internet poker.
“We have the exclusive in that space now,” said John Rubinstein, vice president for development at Del Mar Thoroughbred Club. “If there is an expansion in internet wagering, we want to make sure we’re involved and continue to prosper.”
As it stands now, 48 states and the District of Columbia permit some type of gambling, whether it be wagering in Atlantic City or Las Vegas, at tribal gaming casinos, or betting on horses or state lotteries. In 2010, commercial gambling tallied over $60 billion in revenue throughout the U.S. Of that total, about $26 billion went to Indian tribes, according to statistics provided by the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
Still remaining up for grabs is the billions of dollars that Americans are wagering annually on untaxed and unregulated offshore poker websites. And that’s the target the lobbyists are aiming for.
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It’s OK to Play Scared
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By Dan Katz – Read more from Dan at www.pokernewsdaily.com – it’s an excellent site for poker lovers
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When I spent the summers of 2005 and 2006 in Las Vegas covering the World Series of Poker, my favorite part of the festivities was when the Main Event was on the bubble. Standing next to a couple tables while the play is hand-for-hand and everyone is waiting to hear a dealer yell, “Seat open!” is fantastic. And it is incredibly easy to spot the amateurs – they are the ones steeped in tension, just hoping to make the money (not that I wouldn’t feel that way).
One of the most common lines I heard uttered by players, almost exclusively amateurs, was, “I’m folding everything until I make the money. Even pocket Aces.”
Most people who say this are not serious, but every year, without fail, I hear about someone who actually did fold Aces pre-flop and showed them to the table to prove it. The question that inevitably comes up after something like this is, “Is it ever reasonable to fold pocket Aces pre-flop?”
In short: yes. But first, let’s examine the World Series of Poker bubble example. I am not rich by any means. If I made the money in the Main Event, the $10,000+ (or $20,000, had I qualified via a cheap online satellite) profit I would see by making the money would be significant for me. That said, folding A-A just to try to sneak into the money would be an insult to all that is holy in poker. The goal of tournament poker is to win the entire tournament, not to simply survive. To fold the best hand pre-flop is criminal. You should be raising and re-raising that hand, hoping to get all your chips in before the flop. Sure, if you see a flop and start to sense danger, make your read and fold if it makes sense, just like you would with any other hand. But don’t fold pre-flop. You will be a huge favorite to win with pocket Aces.
Of course, if that money would truly be life changing to you, then it might not be the most horrible move of all time to fold, but if the money is life changing, that means you are broke and really shouldn’t be playing in a high stakes poker tournament.
In a cash game, it is even worse to fold A-A pre-flop. If you lose, you can just reach into your pocket and re-buy. At least there is a logical reason for someone to fold in a tournament (albeit a bad reason). But in a cash game? If you fold A-A pre-flop, you might as well just give up the game of poker right then and there.
Now, there is a scenario where it might make sense mathematically to fold, but it is a highly contrived scenario, one which will never come up. Without getting into too much detail, it would be a hand in which everybody at a 10-handed table goes all-in ahead of you and you know that the hands you are facing give your A-A equity that is worse than your pot odds. But this will never happen because a) you will never know everyone’s hand, and b) the hands will never be dealt exactly as needed to make the math work. So forget that whole scenario.
Now on to the one time that it is absolutely fine, and actually appropriate, to fold the strongest starting hand in Hold’em pre-flop: on the bubble in a satellite tournament. Satellites are unique in that the prize structure does not gradually escalate. All of the players who “make the money” all win the same thing, a seat into another tournament. Everyone else wins nothing. Thus, unless the only person who receives a seat is the winner, it is of no added benefit to win the tournament over placing elsewhere in the money.
For example, if you are playing in a World Series of Poker satellite and seven players win a seat to the Main Event, winning the tournament is worth just as much as placing seventh (in fact, once the field is down to seven, the tournament will be stopped, anyway). Thus, if you are in the final eight and have a medium to large stack, there is no reason to take any unnecessary chances.
Think about it. Let’s say you are the second largest stack and the one player with a stack larger than yours goes all-in pre-flop, probably in an attempt to bully the table. In most situations, you would insta-call with A-A, but on the bubble of a satellite, there is no point. Aces are not guaranteed to win and doubling-up an already healthy stack isn’t important, since you do not need to win the tournament. If you lose, you are gone, when all you had to do was outlast one more player. There will inevitably be a short stack or two just hoping to survive – let them risk their chips as the blinds and antes eat them up.
Even if the player who goes all-in ahead of you does not have you covered, it is still usually wise to fold, as you do not want to risk losing a significant portion of your chips and becoming a short stack. If the all-in player is a very short stack, sure, go ahead and call, but be careful if there are other players left to act. While an over-the-top all-in would likely force everyone else to fold, it might not, and is again an unnecessary risk to take. The bottom line is that you should not play unless you absolutely must. Let the short stacks sweat it out and allow others to do your dirty work for you.
This is not to say that you should not raise pre-flop if you have the opportunity to open the betting, but just be cautious. If someone who can do you significant harm decides to play back at you, do not let your ego override common sense. Live to see another hand. As with any other poker hand, it is important to understand the situation and play appropriately. In this case, that means folding your pocket rockets pre-flop unless losing the hand would make only the tiniest of dents in your chip stack.
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