Jon at Poker Clan

Chip Reese

2008-01-10T08:22:00Z

One of the greats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Reese, We will miss him.

Poker Clan forums

2007-11-20T05:03:00Z

I am working on this site daily. Things are of course going slower then I would like. All the posts are up. I have yet to contact the membership but will when I get this thing to a state that I like.

The Legal state of the Poker Union

2007-10-25T16:12:00Z

It has been over a year since the port bill passed throwing the world of on line poker into a chaotic state of being for players in the US and to some degree players all over the world. The poker boom was busted for sure with a deadening of growth and a substantial recession of the number of people playing on line.However players from all over the world are now fueling the growth of on line poker. There is cause for optimism. The US legislation did not cause a domino effect of banning on line poker in other countries, indeed the effect was just the opposite. There are movements a foot in the US to bring back the game on line. And perhaps most telling of all, there has been nil enforcement of the gaming related clauses of the port bill.

However, unlike the previous attempts to baffle the on line poker boom, the port bill did and continues to have a negative impact on poker players in the US. We just can't go back to the carefree days of lore to playing on line poker at whim.

Here are some resources to help keep you informed about the plight of on line poker in the US:

H.R. 2046: Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act of 2007
To amend title 31, United States Code, to provide for the licensing of Internet gambling facilities by the Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and for other purposes.

http://pokerpatriots.com/
A lot of good stuff on the politics of poker and general poker blogs.

Poker Players Alliance
A lobbying organization for the legalization of on line poker for US players.

LA Times Poker players lobby for on line gaming
Tech News: Poker Players Call Misdeal on Net Gambling Ban
The State.com : Poker players seek new deal on Internet gambling
Interesting reads about Annie Dukes and others from the PPA recent (October 07) visit to capitol hill.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 Analyzed, by I Nelson Rose
Highly interesting article by I Nelson Rose, Top Gaming attorney IMHO in the US.

Know your Enemy:
The National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling

IRS to poker winners: Pay up!

2007-10-20T19:38:00Z

They're not bluffing: Tax collectors will start requiring poker tournaments to report the winners' take.

WASHINGTON — Starting next year, casinos and other sponsors of poker tournaments will be required to report most winnings to winners and the Internal Revenue Service, according to the IRS.

The new requirement, which goes into effect on March 4, 2008, was contained in guidance released Sept. 4 by the Treasury Department and the IRS. The guidance is designed to clear up confusion about the tax reporting rules that apply to poker tournaments. In recent years, some casinos and players have been confused over whether poker tournament sponsors who hold the money for participants in a poker tournament are required to report the winnings to the IRS and withhold tax on the winnings.

For tournaments completed during 2007 and before March 4, 2008, casinos and other sponsors of poker tournaments will not be required to report the winnings to the IRS or withhold tax on the winnings. But beginning March 4, 2008, the IRS will require all tournament sponsors to report tournament winnings of more than $5,000, usually on an IRS Form W-2G.

Tournament sponsors who comply with this reporting requirement will not need to withhold federal income tax at the end of a tournament. If any tournament sponsor does not report the tournament winnings, the IRS will enforce the reporting requirement and also require the sponsor to pay any tax that should have been withheld from the winner if the withholding requirement had been asserted. The withholding amount is normally 25 percent of any amounts that should have been reported.

So that tournament sponsors can comply with this requirement, tournament winners must provide their taxpayer identification number, usually a social security number, to the tournament sponsor. If a winner fails to provide this identification number, the tournament sponsor must withhold federal income tax at the rate of 28 percent.

The IRS reminds tournament winners that, by law, they must report all their winnings on their federal income tax returns. This rule applies regardless of the amount and regardless of whether the winner receives a Form W-2G or any other reporting form. This is true for 2007 and earlier years, and will continue to be the case after the new reporting requirement goes into effect.

More...

Absolute poker cheating scandel

2007-10-19T22:48:00Z

Seems things are not as they should be with online poker while I was away. Hole cards that can be seen oh my! Security that sucks at online poker rooms, employees with their fingers in the cookie jar. I read about things like this a couple of years ago, in a published book (Dirty Poker By Richard Marcus), I wrote this a while back. I had a friend offer to get me a peeker program awhile back, he said it had been written by a 16 year old kid in Las Vegas, (I declined). And these people who run online poker sites are just catching wind of it? Oh please spare me the "How safe our poker room is" Bullshit.

Here is some stuff on the Absolute Poker Scandal:
Steven Levitt Blogs at the New York Times
How Not to Cheat
The Absolute Poker Cheating Scandal Blown Wide Open
allegations of cheating

Two Plus Two Thread (This is must read)
Absolute Poker Scandal: An Inside Job

Using Tags

2007-10-18T06:34:00Z

What is a tag? It is essentially a weighted list of hyper links displayed in a tag cloud. Follow the link to wikipedia for a more detailed ex plantation.

Tags are a great way for people to find stuff on a blogs and forum site. I strongly urge you all to use them in your posts. It is simple to do. When you write a new post you will see a small text box that you can add words to that will tag your post with those words. You will also see an option to select tags. The tags we have will grow over time as more people tag their posts.

A lot more to do.

2007-10-16T22:24:00Z

Over the past few weeks I have been dedicating almost every spare moment to writing a migration program that would move all the data from the old forum to the new one. I was anxious just to get things online and I pretty much let a bunch of other stuff, like the site styling, sit on the back burner.

Todays task is getting an email out to the membership, letting them know that the site is back online.And then just sort of arranging things, than a little book reading on the visual features of the new software. What we have here now is pretty basic stuff.

Poker Clan is back

2007-10-16T13:33:00Z

To my poker playing friends, Welcome back to Poker Clan!

With the legislation in late 2006, I concluded that it might be prudent to go offline for a while to let the cloud of confusion settle. Now were back after almost 9 months have passed since the plug was pulled.

There are some big changes with Poker Clan. I have migrated everything over to a new software package called Community Server. It is simply one of the most powerful “Community” software packages available. Besides the poker forums, we now have the ability to include bloggers, file sharing and picture galleries. The software is very flexible and more things will be in the works.

If you were a registered member here before, your password has been reset and you should have been sent an email indicating this. If you did not receive an email please contact me and we will try to get you back into your account. If you recognize some of your posts posted as anonymous it means that your account did not transfer for some reason (usually a bad email address) and you will need to set up a new account.

We lost a few things during the transfer of data. I did not transfer any of the old polls, PM was not transferred and a few profile items were not transferred. You should check your profile once you have successfully logged back on. There are a lot of broken images in the old posts. I will be working on getting most of that fixed over the coming weeks.

The new software is chock full of new features. There are many more custom settings available, the post editor includes spell checking and the anti-spam measures are superb. RSS feeds are available for all the content on the site, including posts and blog. I am looking forward to having some of you make this your new blog home, please PM if you are interested

It has been a long time and I have missed the Clan tremendously, I have missed you all, even Andrew. So lets get back to the tables, and to the forums, to the blogs and get this ball rolling again.

Jon