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Poker News Digest 8/20/2008 – 8/22/2008
By Dan
Published: Friday, August 22, 2008
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- ChanPoker.com, fronted by ten-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner and two-time Main Event champion, Johnny Chan, closed its doors Thursday. The online poker room opened in 2006 and joined the Ongame poker network in the spring of 2007. Ongame, owned by bwin Interactive Entertainment, ranks as the fifth most popular network for cash game players, according to PokerScout.com, and is home to such rooms as PokerRoom.com, Hollywood Poker, and RedKings.com. ChanPoker.com management has assured its customers that all withdrawal requests will be processed quickly and that anyone who initiates a withdrawal will have their accounts immediately closed. For those who wish to keep playing, management is looking for an online poker partner that will accept its customers and honor their loyalty points.
- According to sources within online gambling operator, Bodog, the company is struggling, having whittled its workforce down to a “skeleton crew.” This week, Bodog laid off almost 250 employees in its Canadian offices, including its advertising manager. Each of its two offices, one in Vancouver and one in Montreal, now have approximately 100 employees a piece. This news follows less than one month after Forbes magazine reported that the U.S. government had seized $24 million from bank accounts belonging to Bodog.
- The Asian Poker Tour’s Jeff Mann has extended an open invitation to Olympic swimming hero, Michael Phelps, to play in the APT’s Macau event. Phelps, who won a record eight gold medals at this year’s Summer Olympics in Beijing, commented in the Baltimore Sun that he is interested in playing in the World Series of Poker. Seeing as Macau is in the same country as Beijing and the APT event begins next week, Mann has offered Phelps an all-expenses paid trip to Macau, plus the tournament buy-in. He has also suggested that it would be fun to bring in Mark Spitz, whose previous record of seven gold medals Phelps broke, for a heads-up competition. APT Macau will run August 28-31 and will feature a $5,300 buy-in. The prize pool is guaranteed to be at least $1.5 million, the largest in Asia.
- As World Poker Tour Entreprises, Inc., continues to languish, it faces yet another problem: the potential delisting of its stock. Currently listed under the WPTE ticker on NASDAQ, the company’s stock price has been stock under one dollar for more than 30 consecutive days. This means that the WPTE is not in compliance with the exchange’s minimum price requirements. The company was issued a letter by NASDAQ on August 14, informing it that it has 180 days to get the stock price above a dollar, where it must remain for at least ten consecutive days. If this does not happen, the stock may be delisted. The last time shares of WPTE closed above a dollar was July 1, when they closed at $1.04. The company’s second quarter financials were poor, showing a net loss of $3.9 million. WPTE cites 50% lower television licensing revenues, the loss of Budweiser as a sponsor, and higher administrative expenses from the upstart WPT China and ClubWPT.com businesses as reasons for the problem.
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