PTP News Hit and Run: December 5th

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Durrrr is back, and analyzing Obama’s poker game. Take a spin through all things poker with today’s PTPN Hit and Run.

The demise of “durrrr” isn’t here yet. After an awful month of November, in which he gave back more than $6 million, Tom “durrrrr” Dwan has a nice start to December. He’s played 10K hands and is up over a million dollars early in the month. And if you want to see some major variance, check out the graph here, detailing the rise and fall of Isildur1.

Even ESPN is getting in on the high-stakes action: column here. The article talks about how players like Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, Di “urindanger” Dang, and Hac “trex313” Dang, have reined in their action since the arrival of Isildur1. Interesting read on the dynamics of the high-stakes world.

While a lot of legal news affecting poker has been centering on the Congress in the United States, there’s been some presidential talk about poker. First, a story about Barack Obama from the National Journal, which you can read about here. We can’t link the actual story, because you need to be a subscriber to the National Journal, which is a fairly wonky Washington insider publication. But the pokernewsdaily.com story gives us some insight into the piece, which compares Obama’s poker game to how he runs the country. A passage from the article: “Fellow politicians and card sharks have referred to his playing style as cautious, patient and, oddly enough, conservative. In other words, our President is a bit of a nit.” And the story speaks of poker in glowing terms, as a skill game that sharpens critical thinking. Anything showing poker in a positive light in the U.S. has to be viewed as a positive.

And Obama answers a question at a town hall meeting, where gambling is lumped in with drugs and prostitution. It’s not really an indicator of how he’ll respond to the legislation in Congress regarding the regulation of online poker, but interesting nonetheless:

And here is a story here in the Washington Times, usually considered a conservative newspaper, basically saying the United States’ Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act is silly. Summing up the UIGEA, the author writes: “In other words, figuring out which forms of online betting are illegal is so complex and uncertain a task that federal regulators did not even attempt it. Yet that is what they expect financial institutions to do.”

Some more mainstream poker coverage here — former World Series of Poker main event winner Joe Hachem penned a column for the Sydney Morning Herald, saying poker is still growing in Australia. Read it here.

This just in from President Obama: He issued a statement saying everyone should sign up at Full Tilt Poker. Not really. But you can get rakeback if you sign up today.

Get your daily dose of poker news with the PTP Hit and Run.

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