SCOOP!! - CPLPoker scoops Star Tribune

No, we didn't scoop a poker pot. We scooped our breaking news story (posted just before 2 am on Sunday, Nov. 30) on the financial plight at Running Aces. Since we're a little tighter with the various dealers and casino end of things we reported on dealer work hour reductions and loss of benefits.

It seems that maybe the Strib reads our blog as they posted (sometime around 11:30 pm on Monday, Dec. 1 - that's about 45 hours AFTER our breaking news) this story by reporter Paul Levy including a little more background info and fuller scope of the situation - and, he apparently took most of Monday (or even Sunday) to get the interviews.

Ahh!!! Scooping pots is nice, but this feels much better.

BREAKING NEWS - Running Aces Dealers' hours reduced, benefits cut

The CPL Poker Blog has it from reliable sources that the situation at Running Aces is extremely tough. Apparently, meetings held for dealers on Friday and Saturday (11/28 and 11/29) informed them that most (if not all) of them were having their work hours reduced to part-time. Additionally, benefits were being cut or eliminated for them.

Tough times apparently at Running Aces as new management attempts to right the bottom line. Tougher times still for the dealers - there's a "Merry Christmas" for ya.

It's CPL Poker Blog's hope that the ship is righted (we like the competition the extra card room has created) not only for our own amusement and money-making, but so that their employees can earn a decent living with decent benefits.

Running Aces December Tourney Schedule Available

You can view December's scheduled tournaments at Running Aces Card Room here.

For you OH8 fans, it looks like they've shifted back to the first Sunday of the month.

Also, for you Pai Gow fans - there is No Ante/No Commission play until November 30.

Bill 'Comeback Kid' Crowned CPL Champion Fall 2008!

It was a great Tournament of Champions for the CPL!  10 members went back and forth for over 6 hours before a winner was declared, including an awesome 35 minute heads up finale between Bill 'Comeback Kid' Lanoux and Malinda 'Nemesis' Cardenas for the CPL Championship!

This TOC was filled with interesting twists and turns very similar to the entire 2008 Fall Session.  

First off, we had a massive $3000 bet, courtesy of Mike 'Una-Bomber' Bowman, on the first hand when blinds were only 10/20!!  Then we had an early chip leader by Una-Bomber who just ran over the table for several hours. I lost track of how many pocket pair he showed in the first 2 hours...and the two Ace high flushes helped a bit!

The wealth would also get concentrated as a Big Stack with 'Karaoke' Phil Fuehrer, who was the chip leader starting the TOC.

Early trouble was brewing for Greg 'NewLife' Durand who lost significant chips early...for Mark 'Verbal' Cardenas who was the short stack starting the TOC, and for Voni 'Rookie' Khang who was also short stacked going into the TOC and could not pick up a significant pot early.   

After 3 hours of play and going into level 7, all ten CPL members were still in play.  Then eliminations began....

First victim was Verbal, who was on the big blind with Karaoke limping in the pot.  Verbal hit top pair matching his Q, while Karaoke flopped a made straight.  Well that spelled disaster as Verbal went all in, was insta-called by Karaoke, and the number 10 seeded Verbal's 2008 TOC was done as he went out in 10th.  

Over the next two hours 7 more players would be eliminated.

Next in line was The Rookie, as the blinds got the best of her...and rumors started spreading about how the seeds were all going to come true...

Then going out in 8th was Jeff 'Matusow' Matson who was seeded 3rd going into the TOC.  Matusow was slightly distracted during his TOC as scheduling problems left him trying the 'win big or go home' method.  And go home he did.

Balance of Power on the table then began to shift....

Karaoke Phil was eliminated in 7th place as his significant chip lead kept was not big enough to withstand the number of hands he was in

Mike 'Blind Me Down' Behr went out in 6th place in a fairly normal tournament for Blind Me Down.  He played conservatively, bantered playfully and sometimes aggressively with Vince "The Cursed One" Castellanos and was probably one hand away from making into the points...I mean the money.

Greg 'NewLife' Durand who truly obtained new life by taking The Rookie's chips when he himself was short stacked ended up going out in 5th place.  A great tournament for NewLife who was in serious trouble early and fought back to take 5th! (Plus 16.00 in the scratch off ticket winnings!)

The Una-Bomber went out on in 4th on the CPL Ticket Bubble losing a big hand against Nemesis.  A great first CPL season and a great TOC for the Una-Bomber! 

The Cursed One went out in 3rd place and scored the first of 3 CPL Vouchers to the Running Aces Tournament.  A great match by the 'weakest' player in the CPL who steadily and solidly increased his stack of chips throughout the tournament.  Apparently The Cursed One's pleadings to a higher power worked! Time to become that better person you promised! Congrats Cursed One!

This left Comeback Kid and Nemesis to battle it out heads up.  We initially thought this would be over and done with in short order as the blinds were at level 12 (2000-4000) and Nemesis had a huge chip stack advantage....but that would not be the case.  In the longest running heads up play in CPL history (about 35 minutes) and moving to the never before seen 13th blind level of 3000/6000 the chips moved from Nemesis to Comeback, back to Nemesis, back to Comeback again and finally a Tournament of Champions Champion was crowned.  

Congrats to the three CPL Tournament of Champions Running Aces Tournament Voucher Winners for the 2008 Fall Session!  Now go out and take it down at Running Aces!

1-Bill 'Comeback Kid' Lanoux

2-Malinda 'Nemesis' Cardenas

3-Vince 'Cursed One' Castellanos

One final note....although Verbal went out in a dismal tenth place...after everyone left and the table and chips were put away...Verbal scratched off his two $1 tickets to find a $50.00 winner!  Not bad for going out in tenth place!!

--
CPL Director Mark Cardenas
and
CPL Co-Director Phil Fuehrer

Find the Podcast on ITunes: CPLDirectors Podcast

BREAKING NEWS - Stay Granted in Kentucky Domain Seizure Case

A Kentucky Court of Appeals granted a delay in the upcoming forfeiture hearing which was scheduled to determine the ownership and fate of more than 140 domain names related to online gambling and poker.

The Court of Appeals will hear from iMega (the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association) on Dec. 12 and their petition to have the lower court's ruling overturned.

Read more at Cardplayer.com

More fun with numbers, or, CPL Poker Blog rising up the charts

Month 2's Google Analytics results are in and we're looking pretty good. Our attempts to broaden out the blog to include Home Poker League Resources, Poker News and things like the Hand of the Week look to be paying off.

As we did last month - here's the map of our site's visits:
Still heavily Midwest, but we're up 13.5% on hits from various cities (59 cities last month to 67 this month), and up 15.6 % on visits (377 to 436). We also saw hits coming from 14 different countries (up from 11).

This last point is of some interest. Cities with the most visits were largely the same: Minneapolis and St. Paul led the way again. Circle Pines and Hennepin County moved up a spot with Burnsville replacing Hopkins in the top 5. The item of interest is that Sydney, Australia came in 6th - we're branching out - and, a g'day to all you down under.

On the keyword end of things, our coverage of the area's two biggest card rooms (Canterbury Park and Running Aces) led the way with 19 visits from searches. Add in our various news visits (most often about one of the two card rooms) and you have another 7 visits. Our Home Poker League Resources saw 10 visitors checking us out (with the new "Missouri Chip" getting 6 of them).

This month's stats saw us hit our high water mark for unique visitors in day at 17 - on October 29. We're pretty consistently between 10 and 15 each day. On the browser end of things - over the two full month's of stats - IE leads with 65.56% of visitor browsers, Firefox is at 19.075, 12.30% use Apple's Safari system and Google's new Chrome browser is the choice of 2.71%.

Finally, it pays to give players monikers mimicking pros. We had 7 visits from people looking for either our own league players, people with similar names to our players and those actually looking for Mike Matusow and Phil "Unibomber" Lakk, but finding our versions of them.

Drop us a line if you'd like to see us add features or items - we love hearing from you.