With help from TV, card tourney is bigger than ever

By Karen Florin
Day Staff Writer, Casinos/Gambling
Published on 11/18/2004

Mashantucket

A redhead from Portland, Ore., was sitting on her feet, fingering a healthy stack of poker chips, and the “railbirds” watching from the sidelines were chirping.

“That's Annie Duke,” one spectator whispered to another. “She's won some tournaments, but I think she's overrated.”

Overrated or not, the mother of four who became a household figure when poker hit it big on TV was still in the game on Day 3 of the World Poker Finals at Foxwoods Resort Casino.

You couldn't say the same for most of the other big-time players who made the annual pilgrimage to the Mashantucket Pequots' castle-like casino in the woods of Connecticut this week and bought into the World Poker Finals for $10,000.

There would be no $1.5 million check or custom-made wampum belt for Doyle Brunson, a 71-year-old considered by some to be the greatest poker player alive. The Texas native was eliminated early and retired to the poker room upstairs, where for the next three days he played for an estimated $2 or $3 million against other “losers,” like Chip Reese, Lyle Berman and Chau Lang.

Greg “Fossilman” Raymer, the patent attorney from Stonington who won $5 million in the World Series of Poker in May and promptly quit his day job at Pfizer Inc. to travel the world and play cards, was long gone from the tournament. A run of bad luck, his fans said.

Phil Hellmuth, the self-titled “Poker Brat” from Madison, Wis., who has enough championship bracelets to weigh down an arm, had been knocked out the day before. Hoyt Corkins, the Alabama cowboy who won $1 million in the final game at Foxwoods last year, was history.

The pros and the wannabes had been falling like flies all day, but with 88 out of 674 players left, the action had slowed down significantly Monday in the makeshift tournament room off the lobby of the Great Cedar Hotel. Nobody was betting on toss-up hands now. Players who finish in the top 60 would be paid, and everyone in the room wanted to be “in the money.”

•••

Poker has become a national pastime thanks to television and its use of the lipstick camera, a tiny device that allows viewers to see a player's “hole cards.” In televised No Limit Texas Hold 'em, players flash their two under cards to the camera so the viewer, but not the other players, knows what they are holding as they decide to fold, call or raise.

“It puts the viewer right into the seat,” said Kathy Raymond, director of poker operations at Foxwoods. The technology led at-home players to think “I can do that,” Raymond said, drawing droves of new players into casino poker rooms.

Foxwoods has 81 tables, and on weekends it is not enough.

The World Poker Tour, owned by Lakes Entertainment, aired its first season in 2003 and is now taping its third. Like a golf tournament, players travel from site to site and battle for the big prizes.

The show's instant success on the Travel Channel spawned numerous copycats, and aficionados can now watch poker most nights of the week.

Home to one of the oldest and largest poker rooms on the East Coast, Foxwoods was the first casino to sign up for the World Poker Tour, according to Raymond, who loves to enumerate all the other firsts Foxwoods has racked up since then. Last year the casino set the record for the highest prize pool, and this year it has the largest number of entrants.

Foxwoods this week debuted the inaugural game of the Professional Poker Tour, a new, invitational-only venture of the World Poker Tour featuring the best of the best. The field has been whittled to six, and the final game will be taped before a live audience Friday.

This year's World Poker Tour, with the final game played Wednesday before a live television audience, was more like a carnival than ever, Raymond said. During the TV taping, six of the top poker authors were signing books in an adjacent room. Spectators picked up tips on the game at a demonstration table. Amber Bach, one of the television sponsors, set up a beer-tasting table. The World Poker tour sold branded shirts, hats and poker paraphernalia.

Poker is so hot that Foxwoods executives have created an advertising campaign based on the game. In one spot, a jolly looking man dressed as a king comes out of a men's room with a paper folded under his arm. He sighs contentedly and says, “Nothing beats a royal flush.”

Raymond and others in the field say the poker craze is far from over.

“As we move forward, there's no telling how big poker will get,” Raymond said. “This whole event has not been a mild preview of things to come. The growth is not even close to stabilizing.”

•••

Television is not the only technology that has revolutionized a card game forever associated with old men and smoky basements. The shy and inexperienced can sign on to Web sites like partypoker.com and pokerstars.com and play thousands of hands on-line before venturing into a casino and plunking down some chips. Internet poker games are faster than so-called “ring games,” and some players are emboldened by the anonymity.

The Web has created champions like Chris Moneymaker, who won a seat at last year's World Series of Poker in an on-line satellite game and then bluffed and bullied his way past the old pros to take the title. At the same time, the Web has shaken up the poker world. Internet-schooled newcomers tend to be more aggressive and unpredictable than card-room veterans, and the two playing styles can clash.

“It's always good to have new money in the game. That's the good news,” said Jimmy Christina, a Foxwoods tournament supervisor who has been a part of the action here since the casino opened in 1992. “The bad news is, the new people don't always play the way the pros expect. In the old days, the pros would be able to make a bet and look a guy in the eye and know what they have. That's not happening anymore.”

Playing a “correct” game of poker has become a subjective term.

Walt Williams, a tournament regular from August, Ga., said the young players “really have a lot to learn.”

“They'll call hands with an ace, 10 or a small pair,” he said. “They don't know about the ‘over cards,' as we call them.”

He quoted Sammy Farha, a poker great who once said, “I can beat anyone who knows how to play.”

But Scott Fischmann, a member of “the crew,” a group of young players who banded together last year and have since won some money and notoriety, says the older guys might need to adapt to the new style of play. He calls it the “Internet gap.”

“The new style is aggressive,” he said.

Some of the old-timers are embracing the young people and their beloved Internet. Bill Seyour and Jim Bucci, two 60-something tournament players who don't want to travel as much these days, are coaching players on-line for a healthy fee. The coach and player sign onto the same game and the coach advises the student on how to play each hand.

“We have to be smart enough to adjust to the game,” Seyour said.

•••

Earlier this week, the railbirds at Foxwoods were chattering about Eric Seidel, who hunched over a large stack of chips. Some people recognize Seidel, a balding former bond trader turned poker pro, as the man who was beaten by Johnny Chan in the now-classic poker movie “Rounders.” Watch him, the railbirds said. He's really good.

But then here came another contender. Scotty Nguyen sauntered into the room in his leather jacket following a break in the action and playfully grabbed the microphone. He returned to his seat, where he had a large stack of chips and a fresh Heineken.

A native of Vietnam whose name is pronounced “win,” Nguyen could be a poster boy for his new home in the Nevada desert. He wears a shag haircut, dark sunglasses and a fat gold medallion on his chest and tends to end his sentences with the word “baby.”

A day later, Seidel and Nguyen were out, and Duke, the sole remaining female, was close to the end. Vying with nine men for a seat on the final table, she went “all in” with a pair of eights, pushing her diminished stack of chips into the middle of the table.

“Annie's all in,” the railbirds tittered.

Tuan Le called with an ace, 10, and picked up another 10 when the “flop” cards were turned over.

Adios, Annie.

Duke left the table quickly with a not-unhappy look on her face.

“Don't feel bad for Annie,” commented Jim Bourque, one of Foxwoods' tuxedoed tournament supervisors. “She just won $166,000.”

The 'Professor of Poker' Gives You the Tools of the Trade and the Secrets of the Game Just in Time for Christmas

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Professional poker player Howard Lederer's new Texas Hold'em Poker Tournament set goes on sale just in time for Christmas. Known as the "Professor of Poker," and a member of Team Full Tilt, Howard Lederer gives you the tools of the trade in this deluxe, professional poker set.

The winner of ten major poker titles including the World Series of Poker and The World Poker Tour championships, Howard Lederer is one of the best known and most successful poker players today.

Retailing elsewhere for $149.00, Howard's Texas Hold'em Poker Tournament Set can be purchased for $94.99 online at www.costco.com from November 13, 2004 to November 30, 2004.

Howard's Texas Hold'em Poker Tournament Set includes:

The World Poker Enterprise's professional poker tour, or PPT as it is known, will kick off on the 9th of November at the Foxwoods Resort Casino. WPT have now published its list of eligible players, with the final count coming to around the 200 mark. The list comprised of champions from tournaments including the World Poker Tour, the World Series of Poker and European Poker competition. The PPT differs from the WPT in that only those who qualify are able to play. Participation is by invite to the most successful poker players on the circuit. The criteria for eligibility includes: having won or reaching a final table at APT event or championship; by ranking in the top ten point leader table in the WPT Player-of-the-Year rankings; by becoming a member of the Poker hall of Fame; securing a spot on either CardPlayer Magazine's Card Player of the Year Top 10 list, or Poker Europa's Top 10; or by winning or placing highly in the US$10,000 buy in event at the World Series of Poker.

President of WPT Enterprises, Steve Lipscomb, explained the strict rules regarding entry to the PPT: 'This qualifying process ensures that the television audience will have a chance to consistently see the most exciting, skilled poker played by the sport's All-Stars. The PPT will be a league of poker Titans.' The names of those qualifying include: Doyle Brunson, Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Johnny Chan, Annie Duke, Phil Hellmuth, Gus Hansen, Phil Gordon, Men 'The Master' Nguyen, Chris Moneymaker, Antonio Esfandiari, Bobby Baldwin, Daniel Negreanu, Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson, Jennifer Harman, David 'Devilfish' Ulliott, Samy Farah, Mel Judah, Scotty Nguyen, Erick Lindgren, Phil 'The Unabomber' Laak, Huck Seed, Tom McEvoy, Layne Flack, Carlos Mortensen, Chip Reese, Erick Seidel, Lyle Berman, Kathy Liebert, T. J. Cloutier, Ted Forrest and Linda Johnson.

The event in November will mark the first year of the Professional Poker Tour, which will feature five US$500,000 free-roll tournaments. After Foxwoods, the tour moves to Bellagio in Las Vegas, the Goldstrike Casino in Tunica, Commerce Casino in California and back to Las Vegas at The Mirage.

The action will be broadcast on the Travel Channel in the US on Wednesdays at 9pm, with more television partners still to be announced.

Recruiters from some of the world's largest financial organisations have revealed that when it comes to searching for new trading staff these days, there is a whole new set of criteria employers are looking for. It seems that a new approach is seeing applicants being put to the test on video gaming and online poker skills, with recruiters believing that the skill set required to be successful in these activities correlate well with the skills required to be a successful financial trader. As well as now being used as a test for prospective employees, the video gaming and online poker skills are also being incorporated into training programmes for traders for the same reasons. It is now becoming an increasingly popular belief that training in these games will help to develop the attributes of the most successful traders in new employees.
One institution already utilising this new recruitment and training programme is Geneva Trading. President of the company, Mary McDonnell explained the new direction and policy. She commented that : 'It is unlikely that we would hire someone who didn't show good proficiency at a GameBoy or online poker or similar video-type game where hand-to-eye coordination is important. It's the discipline of not getting too emotional about your transactions, and also the mathematical ability to keep track of numbers, as in card counting. Online poker practice helps traders to read the markets correctly. It helps to determine if people are bluffing, trying to make the market move one way or another.
This kind of thinking has also emerged from a University in the UK where academics have created a link between success at either online or land based poker games and success in the work place. Gambling expert at Nottingham Trent University, Mark Griffiths explained: 'Poker-playing managers will be used to asking, 'did I play that right?', and equally are likely to be more objective in reviewing the decisions they make. They may be more pragmatic than others, as playing with the cards you have is a winning strategy in poker. And top poker players are insatiable in their desire to win. Being this focused is an important leadership skill in the workplace. Then there's the art of deception, not normally seen as a desirable skill, but in poker it's all part of the game. After all, in many workplace situations the ability to get away with white lies, to save face or be diplomatic, or to smooth over or disguise mistakes and errors, is a big advantage.'
This article was broght to you by the Poker. Net staff.

A small pile of $10 bills sits at the end of the long dining table as 17-year-old Rory Gallagher makes tall stacks of his poker chips. It's early in the game, and he already has lost several hands. "I'm going to stack my chips really high to make myself feel better," the Healdsburg High senior says to a group of school friends he's hosting for a Saturday night game of Texas Hold'em.

Meanwhile, his mother, Rebecca Gallagher, a teacher at Ridgway High School, is in the kitchen cooking pasta for the group of seven teenage boys.
This Saturday night scene is being played out in living rooms across the North Coast as teenagers embrace what has become a national craze driven by televised poker tournaments with stakes in the millions.
Some parents of today's young poker sharks say it's good fun, a chance for kids to socialize with their friends instead of sitting in front of a TV for hours or spending just as long killing aliens and ghouls in video games.
Yet, some researchers and gambling critics are concerned that the rise in popularity of poker among young people corresponds to the nation's growing preoccupation with gambling. It is a cultural change that has taken a game that was once largely limited to card rooms and Nevada gaming halls to Indian casinos, the Internet and national cable TV.
Today's youngsters are the first generation under 25 in American history to grow up in a gambling permissive society, said Bruce Roberts, president and acting executive director of the Palm Springs-based California Council on Problem Gambling.
"Prior to this generation, gambling was looked on as something only the black sheep of the family did," he said.
The media blitz of poker shows has contributed to the recent surge in poker popularity, he said. "No question about it, I'd call it a craze."

Card game's popularity attracting a brand-new generation of players
By Peter Applebome, New York Times
LARCHMONT , N.Y. -- The table was antique mahogany. The chips were casino-quality clay in a gleaming, Bond-like steel carrying case.
The game was, of course, No Limit Texas Hold Em, except for the players who had already lost their buy-in and joined the poker and dice games in another room.
Records of earnings and losses for the 15 regulars and seven occasional players were kept on an Excel spreadsheet on an organizer's computer.
After 11 p.m. or so, the winners pocketed their cash.
The players snacked on popcorn and chips and whatever else they could forage from the kitchen, argued amiably about who was the biggest poker addict, and then ran into the ample back yard, where the floodlights allowed for a high-energy game of midnight football, the perfect way for a group of ninth-graders to end an evening out.
Do you know where your high school kids are at night?
If the answer is yes, chances are it's because they're poring over poker hands, practicing their dead man's stares, and aping the big-timers on ESPN sitting there with dark glasses and million-dollar piles of chips at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas .
Some youngsters have always played poker for money.
But, thanks largely to the mania for televised poker, an evening out for adolescent boys (and it is almost all boys) in almost any suburban town these days almost invariably takes the form of a marathon poker game with stakes as low as the $5 buy-in at this game or considerably higher at some impromptu tournaments.
The favored game is Texas Hold Em, where each player is dealt two cards face down and then plays a poker hand with four rounds of betting based on those and five communal cards dealt open-faced on the table.
Were this "The Music Man," Robert Preston could easily proclaim: "We've got trouble, right here in River City . With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Poker."
But, as is often the case, when we look at what our kids are doing, we see ourselves reflected back, so even those inclined to wag fingers are mostly keeping it in check.
Certainly, most high school students don't see playing poker for $5 or $10 a night as a huge moral conundrum.
"It's not much different than going to someone's house and throwing around a football or baseball," said Ben Wrobel, a junior at Mamaroneck High School , who was sitting with two friends outside school on Thursday. "You get together with your friends to play poker, just as you would get together to watch a game."
His friend Andrew Klein makes money giving drum lessons.
He has won some money at poker, too, and he figures if he loses $10 or $20 at the game, it's his money.
As for kids getting in too deep, he hasn't heard about it, but, with the world-weariness of youth, he figures you can never tell.
"Nothing surprises me anymore," he said. "Bomb threats. Middle school kids getting wasted at school dances. You never know." (There was a notorious drinking incident at a middle school dance last year.)
Pick a town, any town, and you'll find kids more often than not who know the difference between the flop (first three communal cards in Hold Em), the turn (the fourth) and the river, (the fifth). The World Series of Poker on ESPN has made poker stars like Doyle Brunson and Chris Moneymaker as familiar to adolescent boys as Kobe and Shaq. (And if the pot bellies and sallow visages of the supremely unglamorous poker elite aren't typical celebrity profiles, their air of eccentric inscrutability does have a certain middle school appeal to it.)
The Travel Channel's World Poker Tour and Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown have also been enormous cable hits, spawning other imitators.
At East Hampton High School on Long Island , the principal, Scott Farina, said he hadn't heard about kids gambling on poker. But of a handful of boys interviewed, all said they played.
Kevin Gomez said he played only once a month or so, Robert Dayton and Noah Kouffman said they usually played two or three times a week, and James Westfall, a tall, red-haired junior, said he liked to play in "block periods": he doesn't play for a few days and then maybe plays for several days in a row, sometimes from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.
"Everyone has chips and decks," he said, adding that most games are for modest pots, although he once won a pot of $230. "I usually win, but when I lose I walk away."
His mother, Daryl Westfall, said she could tell there were days he was happy because he had won, but poker was mostly a mystery to her.
"It's like a secret club being a teenager," she said. "As long as we don't have to create a new 12-step program for teenage poker players, let's be happy they're doing something. I'm not going to worry until they're booking Las Vegas junkets through East Hampton High."
Poker begins well before high school these days. John Nakashian, who owns Creative Entertainment Associates, which arranges parties and other events, said he now regularly took poker tables and dealers from casinos to bar mitzvahs, where kids don't play for money but often can win prizes, usually modest, sometimes as pricey as an iPod.
"I started with three Hold 'Em tables; I just had to order six more," he said. "The 13-year-olds know more about it than I do."
For almost all parents, the calculus of teenage poker begins with the alternatives. What's worse, they say, kids playing for a few dollars with friends at someone's house, with parents around? Or out in cars, drinking beer on a golf course, or tempted by drugs? For most, it's a pretty easy decision.
"My initial reaction was concern that it's gambling, but with parental restrictions, I'm comfortable with it," said Lori Brandon, whose son, Matt, 13, was one of the group of youngsters whose poker evening culminated in the football game. Most are good students and athletes at Mamaroneck High School .
"They play for $5, so when it's gone, they're done," Brandon said. "The risk of losing more than $5 is zero. They're together with friends I know. There's a parent around. I know where he is. He'd spend more money going to the movies."
Some fathers not only are comfortable with the games, but like sitting in sometimes. And for some parents, there's the ancillary benefit that the game takes concentration and math skills, so it's not true slackerdom.
"Someone said that the kids usually left at the end are the ones with the highest SAT scores," one Larchmont mother said.
Helene Fremder, the social worker at Mamaroneck High, and experts elsewhere say for some youngsters gambling at a young age will lead to addictive gambling. Experts say parents should be aware if youngsters play too often, obsess too much, or start letting poker crowd out other activities. (It's probably not a great sign, for example, that some Mamaroneck High students play at restaurants, on the school steps or at someone's home during lunch.)
"Most of it's harmless," said Nancy Petry, a professor of psychiatry and an expert on gambling and addictions at the University of Connecticut . "But parents should know that it can become a problem, and I think a lot of them don't know that."
Still, she and experts at Harvard and the University of Minnesota were all quite sanguine about poker's hold on America 's youth. They note that the country is in the midst of a revolution in its view of gambling -- now a $70 billion annual business -- from casinos to lotteries to sports betting to poker on television -- and that the young are part of that shift
People can make different moral calculations about how good or bad this is. But Ken Winters, of the department of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota , said that despite real risks of addictive gambling, so far the spread of legalized gambling has not sent the country hurtling toward perdition and it probably won't send its youth there either.
"I worry about sexually transmitted diseases and drug abuse a lot more than I worry about gambling," he said. "I really don't think the sky is falling with Texas Hold Em. My parents' generation said the Beatles would be the beginning of the end. I don't think it really led to all that much trouble."

By Rob Kaiser
Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO - Nate Silver quit his $55,000-a-year financial consulting job in April to play poker.

So far it's been a wise career move: The 26-year-old Silver expects to make more than $100,000 this year playing the game, mainly on the Internet.

Silver belongs to a new generation of poker players who feast on the growing number of novices taking up poker after watching televised contests.

While few players go to the extreme of quitting their jobs, many spend their evenings stalking sites such as Party Poker.com and PokerStars.com, pocketing an extra $20,000 or $30,000 annually on top of their regular salaries.

And as more novices keep appearing, opportunity grows for experienced players.

"You'll see people make terrible plays routinely," said Silver, who lives in Wrigleyville , Ill. "For the most part these people call too much and play too aggressively."

Online poker has exploded along with the recent surge of interest in the game.

In January 2003, $11.1 million was wagered on the major poker sites. That number rocketed to $136.1 million in September, according to Poker Pulse.com, which tracks activity on 21 of the largest poker sites.

Total gambling at poker sites easily will clear $1 billion this year, based on PokerPulse's figures, which likely undercount total betting because they do not include popular online poker tournaments that charge entry fees.

People trying to bank quick online profits are reminiscent of another recent Internet phenomenon: day traders.

Rather than making rapid-fire stock trades online, these gamblers seek profits by leveraging small advantages with their poker experience, discipline and statistical savvy. While their gains and losses vary widely day to day, experienced players say the odds are heavily in their favor in the long run.

Still, the easy money could quickly disappear if the poker fad fades.

Mike Kim, who lives in Lincoln Park , Mich. , said he plays online poker every day, sometimes for a couple of hours and sometimes for 12 hours straight. He said his average winnings are $15,000 a month.

"I had no idea it would become my full-time job," said Kim, who started playing online nearly a year ago while studying mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois . "I didn't find a job when I graduated so I just kept playing for money."

The 23-year-old Kim is no longer looking for a job, although his family is concerned he will lose money.

"At first they didn't like it because they thought I was gambling," Kim said. "When I told them how much money I made, they kind of understood I couldn't go back to a regular job."

Neal Salmen, a 28-year-old Chicago real estate investor who said he has made about $25,000 this year playing online poker, noted the anonymity of Internet games often makes new players more aggressive. In casinos, Salmen said, "You don't want to look too stupid so people play more conservatively."

Internet poker offers experienced players some advantages, particularly the ability to play at multiple tables at the same time. Online games generally go faster than casino games, and by playing three or four tables simultaneously, players can easily participate in more than 200 hands an hour.

The main disadvantage of Internet play for poker pros is the inability to "read" competitors - noticing small ticks and other mannerisms that can reveal if somebody is holding a strong hand or bluffing.

Even at in-person games, pros often have more trouble reading the novices.

"It's hard to read someone if they don't know if they have a good hand," said Jim Karamanis, a Chicago attorney who plays online and in-person poker recreationally.

Nobody tracks how many people play poker for a living, but the number appears to be growing.

"Certainly at this point there are thousands," said Greg Raymer, who left his job as a patent attorney at Pfizer Inc. after winning $5 million this year at poker's biggest event, the World Series of Poker.

The lure of Internet poker has intensified since Raymer and the 2003 World Series winner gained entry into the casino events, which were broadcast on ESPN, by winning online tournaments.

To prosper at Internet poker, players must be technically strong and quickly assess the thousands of scenarios that arise - betting aggressively on strong hands and folding when they're in a weak position.

Signing on to EmpirePoker.com one Tuesday afternoon, Silver put $1,000 into his account and folded most hands before the first round of betting, losing his $15 ante. On the first hand he played, Silver lost $170.

"If I lose $170 on a hand, it's nothing," Silver said. "You can't let it get to you."

Silver usually plays on weekday evenings and sometimes stays up until sunrise so he can play against aggressive Scandinavian players.

"My sleep schedule has been terrible recently," said Silver, who also does work for Baseball Prospectus, which does statistical analysis of baseball games.

Silver said he's done much better financially with online poker than he expected, though he and other players acknowledge their profitable poker days may not be long-lived.

"I'm just trying to ride it out," Kim said. "If poker starts dying down, I'm going to have to get a real job."

By Pete Harrison
LONDON (Reuters) - Sportingbet has agreed to buy Internet poker site Paradise Poker for an initial payment of $297.5 million (162.5 million pounds), securing its position as the world's biggest online betting firm.
"This more than doubles us in size," Chief Executive Nigel Payne told Reuters on Thursday. "If we believed we were No. 1 before, then we certainly are today."
Its shares soared 9.9 percent by 9:15 a.m. to 127-1/2 pence, valuing the group at around 265 million pounds.
Sportingbet, which averages 8 bets a second, said sports bets were up 36 percent in the year to July 31, and its customers were up 30 percent to 1.2 million.
"Over the last 16 months, we have seen the number of customers, the number of bets taken, and the profits and cash generated reach record levels," said Payne.
Sportingbet ( SBT.L) also announced pretax profit of 5.4 million pounds for the 16 months to July 31, compared to 1.4 million in the 12 months to March 31, 2003 .
British firms are set for a boost from the relaxation of the UK 's gambling laws, and are stealing a march on competitors in the United States , where online betting is strictly regulated.
Payne estimated there were over 50 million poker players in the United States -- where Paradise does 79 percent of its business -- but only 2 percent of U.S. players had converted to using the Internet.
"There's a great deal of growth yet to go," he said.
Paradise , which was launched in 1999 and is now the world's No. 3 poker site, has 97,000 active players.
"We are big fans of the online poker space," Altium Securities said in a research note. "This meaningful acquisition de-risks the group's earnings and should result in lower volatility. The price paid seems very reasonable."
It said it would pay the unnamed vendors $193.3 million in cash and 56.7 million shares.
The $193.3 million will be funded by taking out 90 million pounds of bank debt and by placing 44 million shares at 110 pence each.
A further $50 million could be paid in cash and shares for Paradise if it meets profitability targets over the next three years.