These days everyone has a Facebook account so it should appear as no surprise that poker players are very active on the world’s largest social networking site. Unfortunately though, scam artists are taking advantage of this activity by conning people out of their money.
The scam involves people opening up accounts as well known poker pros and fooling others into thinking they are the actual pros. Once the con artist has a person fooled into thinking they are the real poker pro, they ask the person for money transfers at a poker site. They may even go as far as to ask for a loan through bank transfer.
To fool these people, scam artists often offer a piece of their action in poker tournaments. If the supposed pro does well in a tournament, they will pay the backer a percentage of their winnings (pretty much staking). Some of the most popular fake poker profiles are based on Daniel Negreanu, Mike Matusow, and Phil Hellmuth.
People have especially complained that fake Matusows have been offering a piece of the action in major tournaments. Cardplayer Magazine also mentioned how a con artist scammed people out of money by posing as famous poker pro Willie Tan.
One of the techniques people use to set up these fake accounts includes finding pictures of a player and using one of these pictures as the profile picture. Once the account is set up, the scammers will research the poker professional to increase the legitimacy of their offers.
The best advice for avoiding these scams is to avoid any contact with these “poker pros” unless you personally know them. If you don’t know any famous poker pros, don’t fall for the notion that they’ll add you as a friend just because they noticed your skills in some $5 sit and go tournament.
Though not nearly as big as its World Poker Tour counterpart, the Canadian Poker Tour is still trying to make strides with each passing day. In the midst of making these strides, the CPT has decided to sign poker hottie Lacey Jones to be the new face of its organization. Jones has been a model, major poker personality, and even a player in the past so she could definitely help the CPT out a lot.
The city of Baltimore, Maryland is getting Senate and Mayoral support for poker tables in their slots casinos.
The ninth annual European Poker Awards turned out to be a very special occasion for Vitaly Lunkin since he won the 2009 European Poker Player of the Year award. The Russian player now joins previous winners such as Marcel Luske (2001, 2004), Garry Bush (2002), Dave Colclough (2003), Rob Hollink (2005), Roland De Wolfe (2006), Alexander Kravchenko (2007), and Bertrand Grospellier (2008).
Known for its bacon, hockey, mounties, bad beer (yah, I said it), maple syrup, lesser side of Niagara Falls, river boat trading circa 1857, duty-free goods, full contact lap dances, and Crown Royal — Canada will soon to be famous for its legalized provincial gaming.
Towards the end of 2008, it seemed like all we heard about was US swimmer Michael Phelp’s foray into the poker world. Phelps was playing cash games and tournaments in Las Vegas, hanging out with poker greats like Doyle Brunson, and teasing multiple poker rooms into thinking he would sign with them. Then Phelps went back into preparation for the World Championships of swimming and has yet to be heard from as far as poker goes.
With his second place finish in the Aussie Millions $100,000 AUD buy-in event over the weekend, Phil Ivey surpassed Mr. Peanut, the Monopoly man, Mr. Burns, and God as poker’s all-time tournament winnings leader, with over $12.6 million highlighting his illustrious career. The title was previously held by Daniel “Kid Poker” Negreanu, who relinquished the title back to the pro poker community from 2006 World Series of Poker champ Jamie Gold before he fell into obscurity.
