The San Antonio Police Department disclosed some details about its investigation of WSOP finalist Richard Lee, who they allege is part of a illegal bookmaking operation.

Since February, a vice officer has rifled through trash, tailed luxury cars, gambled online and sorted through a string of local bank accounts and phone records in an effort to gather evidence against Lee and others, according to an affidavit for a search warrant released Friday.

What police found could alter the public poker face of this city's once-celebrated gambling star, who placed sixth last month while hyping San Antonio in the World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas.

Lee, otherwise known as "The Chinaman," is the "biggest bookie" in San Antonio, according to a "credible source" quoted in the document. The affidavit also names Lee as the brains behind an illegal Internet gambling operation run in part from his Shavano Park home.

Wow. "The Chinaman." Welcome to 1956, everybody.

The SAPD allege that Richard Lee is connected to a website called www.betbsbnow.com which claims to be located off shore, but is, in fact, in San Antonio.

More details, including how the SAPD became aware of the operation and how they conducted their investigation, can be found at PokerGazette, via the link below.

My (pretty useless) analysis? Though he seemed like a really good guy when I saw him at the WSOP, and his recent comments to the press appear to confirm that, things look very, very bad for Richard Lee right now.

We should also be very concerned that opportunistic lawmakers, with an eye toward the election, will attempt to conflate this illegal bookmaking operation (if they prove their case in court) with online poker, and online poker players, especially since -- oh shit -- it appears that Mr. Lee was playing online poker when his house was raided which the District Attorney says "that act in and of itself is illegal." Oh boy. Here we go.

Alright, I really have seen it all now. In further proof that just about anyone can get their own online poker room, I give you Pamela Poker - Pamela Anderson's new (ok, new-ish, I'm a little late on this one) poker site. Why am I surprised? If Cindy Margolis can do it, why not Pam? Hell, I should just open my own poker room, it can't be that hard.

All jokes aside, I am happy for my fellow Canuck, I can't blame her for getting on the poker bandwagon while it is still hot. What does bother me however, is her actual poker website. There is a link that says 'Pamela Anderson Blog'. I was thinking it had to be one of two things - either a blog written by Pam herself, or at the very least a poker blog with relevant content. Boy was I wrong. When you click on it, you are brought to a Blogger page, yes, but is not written by Pam, and it has nothing to do with poker. It is just one more outlet for them to increase her web presence. The entries have titles such as:

Pamela Anderson's iconic status is on the rise
Kid Rock obsessed with Pamela Anderson
Pamela Anderson pays surprise visit to winery

Puuuuleeeeeze. After reading this I went back to her site and saw another link - Poker Diary. Once again I got my hopes up that there may actually be some poker-related written content on her site, but no such luck. When you click on that link you are just redirected to yet another 'About Pam' page.

Message to the Marketing Team and Management of Pamela Poker: We get it. She is hot. She is famous. She works with PETA. We know, really. Is it truly stretching the imagination so much that you can't see the value in having some actual poker content on your site, or at the very least, have one of your blog/diary links be even remotely about the game?

For those of you who are in the Vegas area this long weekend and are looking for something a little different, the 2006 Oasis Open is currently running in Mesquite, Nevada. Tournament buy-ins range between $80 - $125 (including juice) so you aren't exactly going to make a fortune off of them, but that is a pretty ideal amount for recreational players looking for a game in between rounds of golf.

Schedule for the Open is as follows:

Sept. 1 NLHE, Single Rebuy $60 + $20
Sept. 1 NLHE, No Rebuys $100 + $25
Sept. 2 NLHE, Single Rebuy $60 + $20
Sept. 2 NLHE, No Rebuys $100 + $25
Sept. 3 Tag Team 1/2 Hold'em 1/2 Omaha 8OB Single Rebuy, $100 + $25
Sept. 3 NLHE, No Rebuys $100 + $25
Sept. 4 NLHE, Single Rebuy $60 + $20

About 42 seconds before the WWdN tournament started last night, I managed to log on to PokerStars and register. As it turns out I would have been better off had my computer crashed and I was unable to sign up, but I wasn't that lucky. Yes, I get the Gigli prize this week.

The Thursday night games are quite small, so the field was only 14 of us, with nary an Anithri in sight. It was great seeing Hoyazo, Iakaris, et al again though, since I have been MIA in the Wheaton tourneys as of late.

I realized about 5 minutes in that I wasn't going to be able to play for long as I had a commitment out of the house that I forgot about, so when I looked down to find AKs I was pretty much prepared to play them all the way. I ended up all in against DakotaKen whose pocket tens easily beat my A-high hand. I had him covered by 100 chips, but donked those off to Iakaris within the next orbit.

Oh well, I came, I saw, I donated. Congratulations to those that did do well, especially to NewinNov for taking it down. I'll see you guys at the next one!

The latest installment in the Howard Lederer-branded World Championship Poker franchise, World Championship Poker: All In, has shipped to stores, according to IGN.com.

Marcel Luske, Thomas Bihl, Erin Ness, Robert Williamson III, Annie Duke, Greg Raymer, Amir Vahidi, and Paul Darden join The Professor in this version, which includes a variety of games beyond Texas Hold'Em, including Five Card Draw, Seven Card Stud, and Omaha. The career mode also adds multi-table tournaments and recurring home games, as well as mixed games.

I haven't had an opportunity to play this release, but I played an earlier version of WCP, and like every other computerized poker game, it had its high and low points. The AI was competent, and it was pretty cool to zip around the globe to play in widely different home games and tournaments, but several minigames -- especially a maddening test of dexterity whenever you attempted to bluff -- took almost all of the fun out of the game for me and it is now gathering dust along Gun and Buns of Steel in my game and DVD drawer.

WCP:AI is currently available for PSP and PS2, and will ship for the 360 in October, but there are some rumblings at the IGN forums about the game locking up and preventing the player from winning a MTT that potential buyers may want to investigate before plunking down five WWdN tourney buy-ins for it. Even if you don't plan to buy the game, I'd suggest reading it, because it's nice to hear poker players complaining about something that is not a bad beat for a change.

Just a quick reminder to you all that the Thursday night edition of the WWdN Invitationals will begin in just over 3 hours, so get over to PokerStars and register if you want to play. The tournaments are open to anyone who wants to play, so even if you have never joined before feel free to sign up. I'm going to try to make it to tonight's game, so hope to see you all there.

Details are:

Where: PokerStars
What: WWdN: Not The Anithri Invitational
When: 22:30 ET, August 31, 2006
How much? $10 plus $1
Password: monkey

The Legends of Poker comes to a close tonight with the final event, an invitation-only ladies event that always draws huge television audiences, and has served as the launching point for more than one career.

At Pokerblog, Change100 (who has provided the best Legends coverage on the Internets) has an insightful post about why Ladies Night matters:

WPT Ladies Night has emerged as the significant mass-media launching pad for female poker players. In it's first edition, a young unknown Texan who had just missed the final table of the WPT Costa Rica Classic upset a table full of female greats of the game including Kathy Liebert, Jennifer Harman, and Annie Duke to capture the first WPT Ladies Night title. That woman, of course was Clonie Gowen, who has since gone on to sign a lucrative endorsement contract with Full Tilt Poker, play in numerous made-for-TV pro invitational tournaments, and appear in Maxim magazine in addition to playing the $10K tournament circuit full-time. The runner-up that evening was Evelyn Ng, who went on to enjoy a similar success story, including sponsorship from Poker Stars and later, Bodog. The same goes for Ladies Night II winner, Isabelle Mercier, who prior to that fateful evening, was a middle-limit player and host at the Aviation Club, best known for calling "shuffle up and deal" on the broadcast of the WPT Paris. Now she's a member of Team Poker Stars and played over a dozen WSOP events this summer, finishing 5th in the $5K NLHE. Amongst the pro contingent and the "pokerati" a victory in this event may not mean too much in terms of legitimacy as a player, but it's worth its weight in gold in terms of opportunity.

Change picks Vanessa Rousso to win, and I'll take that bet for sure. Vanessa is a hell of a player, and has been playing her heart out since the WSOP, cashing numerous times in many events, and cashing in the Legends Main Event this week. She'll need to catch some cards early, though, or run into a few weak opponents; Vanessa is incredibly aggressive, and needs a lot of chips to play her game.

I highly recommend reading Change's entire post, via the link below, and checking pokerwire and pokerblog for updates once play gets underway tonight at 5:30 PDT.

It was a year ago this week when Hurricane Katrina first made landfall, decimating large portions of the Gulf Coast area in her wake. Only a few short weeks later Hurricane Rita followed suit, further destroying homes, lives, and businesses. It is hard enough to recapture the feeling of terror I felt (way up here in Canada, even) sitting on my couch watching the news unfold on CNN, I can't even begin to imagine how much worse it would have been for anyone who was directly involved or affected by the storms.

Though we all were wrapped up in the news and reports about the entire situation, being a gaming site our focus was naturally on discussing the aftermath and effect Hurricanes Katrina and Rita had on the casino industry in Louisiana and Mississippi. Was that really a full year ago? Tempus Fugit, as they say. Thinking of all this again, I began to wonder what happened to all the casinos - we have had various reports here and there, but never a full listing. So, following is a recap of the tragedy, as well as some information on the casinos today.

When the Hurricanes first made landfall, displacing many gambling barges hundreds of yards from sea to shore, it was impossible at first to determine the amount of damage caused and what it would take to repair them. When the numbers started trickling in, it was beyond comprehension. As Derek wrote last August 31:

"Harrah's Entertainment has the highest exposure down south. They have nine casinos that are in the path of the hurricane. Analysts expect Harrah's to lose almost $2.5 million in revenue for each day its casinos remain closed. MGM Mirage has two casinos in Mississippi and they're expected to lose about $1.1 million in revenue each day. To make matters worse, the state of Mississippi is losing half a million dollars in tax revenue each day due to the casinos being shut down. Not only are the residents of these towns suffering but so is the economy."

Rather than sitting around waiting for the final damage to be assessed though, people and businesses sprung into action. Many of the online poker rooms held Hurricane relief tournaments including PokerStars, Full Tilt, and Party Poker. Phil Hellmuth hosted a tournament at Ultimate Bet, and our own Wil Wheaton organized relief tournaments at Stars. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised and donated to the Red Cross and other relief organizations, proving once again what an amazing community poker players can be.

So now, a year later, what has become of the many casinos affected by the storms?

When the final table for the Legends of Poker Main Event started yesterday, eventual champion Joe Pelton only had more chips than WSOP champion Scotty Nguyen, who was my pick to win the whole thing, despite his short stack, because I understand and respect the power of the mullet.

However, poker is a fickle mistress -- as Andy Bloch once said, "A godless game, full of pain." Poker smiled on Hoyt Corkins (whose jam-with-just-about-anything final table strategy is about as exciting to watch as something that's really boring -- sorry, I'm short on metaphors today) and gave him a three-outer suckout to send Scotty home in sixth place. (Scotty: if there's one thing I've learned from playing with bloggers, it's that you should never get your money in ahead, except when you should. HTH, KTXHBYE.)

Looking at the live updates from PokerWire, it actually looks like this will be a pretty exciting episode of World Poker Tour, though, as Joe Pelton mounted an incredible comeback against eventual second place finisher Frankie O'Dell, who had 5.6 million to Joe's 3.5 million when heads up play began with blinds at 40K/80K/10K, when he doubled up quickly and never looked back.

Cardplayer.com has video of Joe, taken after his victory. Wicked Chops Poker notes that in the five times this tourney has been played, a true Legend has only won it once (Doyle Brunson, about as Legendary as you can get) but Joe is in the company of future Legends Mel Judah, and Chris Karagulleyan.

Congratulations, Joe Pelton!

Michael Craig, who authored the spectacular book The Professor, the Banker and the Suicide King has an equally spectacular blog. He says, Richard Lee has not only not been convicted of anything, he hasn't been accused of anything. Yet a bunch of people came into his house without his consent and took his cars, his money, and his TV.

I thought the police were supposed to prevent that kind of abuse, not perpetrate it, and then have the nerve to brag about it.

I don't know how tall [SAPD Spokesman] Joe Rios is, or whether his nose looks like a nipple, but he came off sounding like a gigantic boob. "Now that we have the evidence, we can move forward."

Don't you need evidence before you move forward? Especially when you are going to steamroll into someone's house at night and steal their property. It sounds like the search was a fishing expedition to build a case.

In another life, Michael was a lawyer, so I'm inclined to give his legal opinions a bit more weight than, say, my commentary about the wisdom of jamming with pocket jacks against the one guy who can bust you at the final table. He goes into much greater depth in his own blog, which I encourage everyone to immediately go read, before doing anything else today. I'm serious. Get out of here.

Though no arrests have been made, Richard Lee issued a statement from his home today, regarding the raid and allegations against him I wrote about earlier.

"Just a few hours ago I was one of San Antonio's favorite sons," Lee said, sitting outside his posh home Wednesday morning beside a gurgling stone fountain. "It seems like maybe I've gone from hero to zero in the course of a few hours."

Lee added that he didn't feel he'd done anything wrong, and "if they prove differently on something I thought was OK, well, I guess I'm going to have to cross that bridge when I get to it."

Uh, Richard, there's this little thing called the Wire Act that pretty clearly states that what you were doing -- if proved -- was about as far from okay as you can get, so good luck crossing that bridge, sir. Some free advice: fold the jacks this time.

(Via Pokerblog, where Jennifer observes, "I find it interesting that Jamie Gold, in response to his lawsuit, needed a publicist to speak for him while Lee told reporters face to face outside his home." Indeed, Jennifer.)

Thanks to our friends at Pokerwire, here are the chip counts and seat assignments for today's final TV Table at the Legends of Poker at the Bike:

F	1	Scotty Nguyen	375,000
F	2	Hoyt Corkins	1,030,000
F	3	Kevin O'Donnell	2,345,000
F	4	Joe Pelton	615,000
F	5	Frankie O'Dell	3,880,000
F	6	Randy Holland	1,100,000

Play resumes at 5:00PM Pacific today, and PokerWire will have live updates until the winner is crowned later tonight.

I was in the media room when Richard Lee virtually guaranteed that Jamie Gold would eventually win the World Series. Jamie Gold hadn't made any friends at the Rio, as spectators, dealers, fellow players and members of the media enjoyed his inflated opinion of himself, his entourage, his body guards (allegedly hired so nobody would talk to him in the bathroom) and his outrageously rude, insulting, "I'm from Hollywood so I'm better than you" behavior. When we saw Richard Lee get all his money in with pocket jacks against the only guy at the table who could bust him, we wove a tapestry of profanity that still hangs over Las Vegas to this day[1]

The general consensus among the poker professionals and writers I know is that Jamie Gold and Bodog are bad for poker, (Bodog girls quite obviously excluded) so Richard Lee got himself a spot on a lot of lists when he gave Gold a nearly insurmountable chip lead with a questionable play.

It would appear that Richard Lee has gotten himself onto another, more serious list with another questionable play, possibly running an ilegal bookmaking operation out of a home in San Antonio. Police say that tax records indicate that the home is owned by Lee, and that it was the "brains or the nerve center" of an operation with payouts in excess of $500,000. At the house, police found a money-counting machine, five Lexus cars, multiple plasma-screen TVs, and a large amount of cash with receipts for dozens of bets.

If the allegations prove to be true, and if reports of it being that Richard Lee are accurate, it will be yet another black eye on the 2006 WSOP, which really can't afford many more.

Further details and analysis can be found at PokerNews, through the link below.


[1] With gratitude and apologies to Jean Shepherd.

This week's field may have been a bit smaller than normal, but I sure saw a lot of faces that I haven't seen in a while. 52 players joined tonight for the regular WWdN Tuesday night game at PokerStars, and just like last week I performed quite miserably. That's ok though, since I had an exceptional poker day otherwise. Is it just me, or have the players really improved a lot over the past few months? Either way, it was once again great to see all of you and have you take all my chips.

Congrats to TransFish who won this week's event, as well as to the other 8 players listed to the right, who all finished in the money. The second place finisher, Astin, was the one who knocked out Wil, so next Tuesday will be the WWdN: Astin Invitational tournament. Hope to see everyone there again!

Quick reminder to everyone that the WWdN: The Hunting Fish Invitational will be held tonight at 20:30 ET. That's in 46 minutes, so if you want to play go register now!

Details are as follows:
What: WWdN: The Hunting Fish Invitational
Where: PokerStars
When: 20:30 ET
How much: $10 plus 1
The tournament can be found under the private tourney tab
Password: monkey

Hope to see you all there!