Category: News

A federal appeals court has breathed new life into the group behind the failed Foxwoods Casino Philadelphia project’s effort to get back a $50 million licensing fee it once paid the state.

In fact, earlier this month, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s ruling upholding a 2016 US Bankruptcy Court ruling denying the group’s claim. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ three-judge panel is now saying the bankruptcy court made an error.

The case will now be sent back to US District Court. However, it is likely to eventually be remanded back to US Bankruptcy Court.

The Philadelphia casino plan

In December 2006, Pennsylvania issued two licenses for casinos to be built in Philadelphia.

One went to HSP Gaming, LP, which proposed to build SugarHouse Casino along the Delaware River in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood. Plans were for SugarHouse to open with 3,000 slot machines in April 2008.

However, local residents lined up on both sides, and land issues forced delays. At one point, the city tried to revoke a SugarHouse construction permit. However, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled all its permits were legal. HSP Gaming, LP finally broke ground in October 2009. The casino opened in September 2010.

The other Philadelphia casino license went to Philadelphia Entertainment & Development Partners, LP. It planned a 3,000-slot facility in South Philadelphia along the Delaware River dubbed Foxwoods Casino Philadelphia.

One-third of the Philadelphia Entertainment & Development Partners, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe’s Foxwoods Development Co. was tapped to run the casino. Initial plans had it opening in November 2008.

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribe is owner and operator of Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut. It is the second-largest casino in the US.

The Foxwoods road to failure

The group paid a $50 million licensing fee to the state in 2007. However, neighborhood opposition forced them to move the proposed site for the project to The Gallery at Market East downtown shopping center. Eventually, more difficulties with the downtown location and increased opposition emerged.

Casino mogul Steve Wynn came in as managing partner in February 2010. Wynn came with a plan to move the project back to its original Waterfront location. However, three days after presenting the plan to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, Wynn announced his company was withdrawing.

In October of that same year, Harrah’s Entertainment announced plans to buy a one-third stake in the project. Harrah’s also planned to run the casino. Additionally, it wanted to open the facility under its Horseshoe casino brand with 1,500 slots and 70 table games. However, Harrah’s ultimately missed a deadline for signing an agreement to take over. In the end, Harrah’s walked away.

There was no other financing in place. Moreover, the group missed a series of deadlines for submitting plans and financial information. Ultimately, in December 2010, the gaming board revoked the Philadelphia Entertainment & Development Partners casino license.

The group unsuccessfully appealed the board’s decision to revoke the license, and it went up for auction.

The new Stadium Casino

Stadium Casino, LLC successfully bid for the license in November 2014. It is a partnership between Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment, owners of the state’s highest-grossing gambling complex, Parx Casino and Racing, and Cordish Companies, which runs the Live!-branded casinos, hotels, and entertainment venues across the country. It planned a $600 million gambling and entertainment complex project in South Philadelphia’s Stadium District.

However, SugarHouse and others opposed the project and it spent the next three years stuck in court. Opponents claimed Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment owner Bob Manoukian’s interest in Parx prohibited him from owning more than a one-third of another Pennsylvania casino.

However, the state repealed those casino ownership laws as a part of its new gambling expansion laws passed in October 2017. All opposition went away and after a re-branding, the Philadelphia Live! Hotel and Casino project became Stadium Casino. Developers are now moving forward with a plan to open up in 2020.

The new casino and hotel project will feature a 100,000 square-foot casino with 2,000 slot machines and 150 table games attached to a 240-room boutique hotel. Plus, it will include a 30-table-plus poker room.

Construction is going forward on a site in close proximity to the Philadelphia Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field, the Philadelphia Flyers’ Wells Fargo Center arena, and the Philadelphia Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park.

The post Foxwoods Philadelphia Failed, But It Might Succeed Getting Its Money Back appeared first on Play Pennsylvania.

Online Poker Report’s Eric Ramsey and partypoker sponsored pro Ike Haxton talked about a wide-range of topics in a recent interview. Among the topics Haxton discussed was his new role with partypoker and the current online poker landscape, including the current trajectories of his new company, partypoker, and his old company, PokerStars.

During the interview there were a couple of comments that really leapt off the page and warrant more discussion.

Is PokerStars saving or reallocating money?

In his lead-in, Ramsey wrote that while partypoker is adding sponsored pros, PokerStars has been cutting them.

“PokerStars’ non-poker owner, The Stars Group, doesn’t appear to have the same budget for long-term deals as the previous owner,” Ramsey wrote, noting that PokerStars’ U.S.-facing roster has been culled in recent years.

The Team PokerStars roster has definitely been downsized, but I’m not sure calling it a budget issue is quite correct.

In an interview with PokerNews, Eric Hollreiser, director of corporate communications for The Stars Group, explained that the shift to celebrity endorsers reduced the companies need for a certain type of sponsored player.

“So we continued to reduce the roster of Pros, while always adjusting the mix of players,” Hollreiser told PokerNews. “We also believed that our ambassadors should not solely be winners and credible/authentic poker players but should live and breathe the game, proactively creating excitement around it and generating multimedia content that reaches multiple audiences.”

PokerStars has simply lost its appetite to spend like a drunken sailor on sponsored players. At the end of the day, the money previously being spent on sponsored pros is by and large being shifted elsewhere, including signing big-name athletes and celebrities, the PokerStars Players Championship, and innovative products like Power Up.

Who’s more prepared for U.S. online poker?

Setting aside what’s happening to the money PokerStars was paying some of its former sponsored pros, Haxton’s view of the future U.S. market was the part of the interview that really caught my eye.

“I mean, I don’t know what Stars’ strategy is,” Haxton said. “But they don’t seem to be, at this point, as invested in being ready for a U.S. launch as they once were or as Party is now.”

This is a weird statement.

First, both companies are already involved in the legal U.S. online poker market in New Jersey, as well as prepping to launch in Pennsylvania.

Second, PokerStars has a very clear U.S. strategy and is well positioned to be a player in legal U.S. markets.

PokerStars has been actively lobbying for online poker legislation in Pennsylvania, New York, California, and Michigan, where it has:

• Spent millions of dollars for several years trying to push online poker legislation across the finish line in several locales;
• Formed partnerships with land-based operators in these jurisdictions; and
• Sent spokespeople and other experts to testify at hearings.

Bottom line: PokerStars is way ahead of every online poker company not named 888 in the legal U.S. market, and is the only company really pushing for future expansion.

To say partypoker is better positioned in the U.S. is to ignore all of the available evidence, including the rosters of sponsored players at each company.

partypoker is catching up, but still way behind

Haxton’s comment seems to stem from the fact that PokerStars has been cutting U.S. players while partypoker has been adding them.

That may be true in recent months, but PokerStars U.S. roster is still way stronger than partypoker’s.

Here’s a look at PokerStars U.S. roster:

• Daniel Negreanu (Canada/U.S.)
• Chris Moneymaker
• Jason Somerville
• Jeff Gross
• Barry Greenstein
• Jamie Staples
• Jennifer Shahade (Ambassador)
• Randy Lew
• Victor Ramdin

Here’s partypoker’s:

• Mike Sexton
• Jason Koon
• Isaac Haxton

And if you think PokerStars is going to sit on its hands and not expand its roster as new states pass legislation, then I have a bridge for sale.

Which PokerStars is better for U.S. players?

The final aspect of the interview I want to discuss is the notion that the ownership change has been entirely to the company’s detriment.

Ramsey wrote:

“PokerStars, once the overwhelming market leader, has earned some distrust from customers in recent years. An ownership change brought about a cutthroat focus on the bottom line and a series of changes to player perks that not everyone loved. It’s the reason Haxton left the site at the start of 2016.”

Ramsey is right. PokerStars shot itself in the foot when it decided to abruptly end the second year of Supernova Elite benefits, and with that as the starting point, subsequent changes have been largely unpopular among a small segment of players.

As clumsily as that was handled, the narrative players like Ike Haxton are putting forth, that Isai Scheinberg was running PokerStars like a non-profit until the greedy corporate raiders named Amaya showed up and ruined everything, is fantasyland.

First, almost every critical change made by current PokerStars’ ownership was set in motion by the previous owners. Ask former employees or any current employee whose tenure spans both owners, they’ll tell you things like adding a casino and sports book can be traced back to the Scheinbergs.

That isn’t the case when it comes to the roster of sponsored players. If the Scheinbergs were still at the helm a lot of players cut loose would have likely been renewed. But that doesn’t make loyalty a good business decision. The new publicly traded PokerStars simply doesn’t have the same sentimental blind spot when it comes to the value of sponsored players, nor can it justify the expense to its investors.

Second, PokerStars would be sitting on the sidelines of the U.S. market.

Everyone wants to look back fondly on the Scheinberg era, but let’s not overlook that an Isai Scheinberg led PokerStars couldn’t get a license in regulated U.S. markets.

Even after Scheinberg was out, New Jersey still gave PokerStars a two-year timeout before approving its license.

The company has also been blackballed in Nevada, with other states considering similar prohibitions stemming from the way the company did business in the U.S. under the Scheinbergs.

Whether you agree with the “bad actor” designation PokerStars has been tagged with or not, the idea that U.S. players would be better off today with the Scheinbergs at the helm is a debatable point.

For one thing, it’s highly unlikely the company could secure a U.S. license while Isai Scheinberg is under indictment by the DoJ. With no license, and no hope for a license, there wouldn’t be a PokerStars NJ and PokerStars would have probably cut way back on its U.S. lobbying spend. Without PokerStars lobbying dollars and education efforts, legislation might not have been passed in Pennsylvania last year.

Isai Scheinberg created a great company, and under his leadership it became a best-in-class business. But if you’re a U.S. player keen on playing at PokerStars, realize it most likely wouldn’t have happened under the Scheinbergs. Not to mention PokerStars would have been offering casino and sports betting just like it does now.

The post Ike Haxton Thinks partypoker Has A Leg Up On PokerStars In The U.S. appeared first on .

Andrew Neeme posted two wins at the 4th Annual American Poker Awards Feb. 23: Video Blogger of the Year and the People’s Choice Award.

The Las Vegas grinder received over 10,000 votes to snag the win, the most of any award. He watched the award show from South Africa and had this to say following the festivities:

MASSIVE thanks to everyone who voted in the American Poker Awards. When all the hours put into a project results in true value for the audience (entertainment, info, or whatever the case) it’s an awesome feeling.

— Andrew Neeme (@andrewneeme) February 23, 2018

According to the GPI Network, the event brought celebs, including Randall Emmett, Tom Sandoval, Ariana Madix, Amber Nichole Miller, and Tito Ortiz.

While GPI was trending, at the awards, Jacob Zalewski and the One Step Closer Foundation brought tears to the eyes of the attendees. The foundation received the Charity Initiative of the Year award. Zalewski lives with cerebral palsy; he was given a 3 percent chance to live. He not only beat the odds, but generated over $1 million for his foundation.

No one could forget when Ema Zajmovic became the first female player to win an open event on the World Poker Tour. Thus, she took the Moment of the Year.

This year, the partypoker MILLIONS North America Event from Playground Poker Club Montreal picked up Event of the Year. The Mid-Major Circuit award went to WPTDeepStacks (WPTDS).

American Poker Award roundup

Here are the awards of the night:

• Industry Person of the Year – Matt Savage
• Tournament Performance of the Year – Scott Blumstein (WSOP Main Event)
• Lifetime Achievement in Poker – Lon McEachern and Norman Chad
• Breakout Player – Artur Papazyan
• Journalist of the Year – Lance Bradley
• Broadcaster of the Year – Nick Schulman
• Poker Streamer – Jaime Staples
• PocketFives Legacy Award – Ari Engel
• Jury Prize – Eric Danis
• Poker’s Biggest Influencer – Cary Katz
• 2017 GPI American Player of the Year – Bryn Kenney
• 2017 GPI Female Player of the Year – Kristen Bicknell

Tracing back 2017 for the winners

Matt Savage received his second Industry Person of the Year award in his third straight year of collecting trophies from the American Poker Awards.

Scott Blumstein, early in 2017, was posited as a great ambassador for poker. This proved true in his WSOP Main Event win, taking down the third-largest WSOP Main Event ever for over $8.1 million.

His smile and personality at the table weren’t all that got him noticed. The New Jersey poster boy signals success for online poker. The Garden State brought online poker in, and since then, it’s been difficult to keep New Jersey players out of the Main Event final table.

Comparatively, Lon McEachern, the play-by-play analyst, and Norman Chad, the color commentator, returned to the WSOP Main Event on ESPN. These familiar faces, veterans in the poker world, did as they have for the past decade and a half. McEachern was caught off guard by his award.

Taking the Media Content award was “Dead Money: A Super High Roller Bowl Story,” a PokerCentral documentary on Matt Berkey’s run in the 2016 Super High Roller Bowl.

PokerCentral also scooped the Podcast category with the PokerCentral Podcast, featuring Brent Hanks, Will O’Connor, and Remko Rinkema.

Nick Schulman, Broadcaster of the Year, hosted the live stream of the ESPN Main Event on PokerGO with Ali Nejad. The poker community praises the pair, known for their chemistry, knowledge, and ability to fill dead air when the action slows down. They also provided commentary on the Poker After Dark relaunch.

Photo by revolutionpix for GPI (Global Poker Index)

The post Andrew Neeme Takes Two at American Poker Awards appeared first on Play USA.

Registration for the 2018 World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic $10,000 no-limit hold’em main event at the Commerce Casino officially closed on Sunday, Feb. 25. The event attracted a total …

Despite only kicking off in July, Nevada’s recreational marijuana industry sold nearly $200 million worth of the plant last year. That’s according to figures released Friday by the Nevada Department …

What’s going on at Hard Rock AC, Ocean Resort Casino and Showboat?

The post Wheels Set In Motion For Hard Rock AC, Ocean Resort And Showboat appeared first on Play NJ.