On the recent announcement of the departure of Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth from the UB Poker stable, Annie Duke is going to be at anything but a loose end. She recently got engaged to Joe Reitman on Christmas morning, is currently writing a poker strategy bible with Vanessa Rousso and is planning to hit the felt at the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship as well as the Bay 101 Shooting Star events, but has planned a “light” poker schedule for the spring. There are any number of other given things she has going on in her life, so, leaving Unibet Poker, will leave anything but a gap in what already appears to be a busy life.
She recons she will be busy during the World Series of Poker and has planned to enter a good deal of events, but will also be addressing a conference for 16 year olds -Adventures of the Mind, where she works on the committee. She has appeared on Celebrity Apprentice as a contestant, and is a great ambassador all around for the image of female poker in a male dominated environment. So, if anyone thinks poker players only play poker and don’t do anything else; guess what, they are real people too, although the “real people” things they get involved in seem to be so much more larger than life.
Currently Unibet is busily re-strategizing their brand after having come out of a huge scandal relatively unscathed. They are the third biggest poker brand online and are just too big for it to all come to an end. They are also getting ready to make an announcement regarding their new poker pros and this is apparently going to be huge news.
As Annie believes the biggest poker story of 2010 was the Harry Reid bill; this is one for the History Books. Just as Washington State declares playing online poker illegal and gets Poker Stars and Full Till to depart from the state – mark down January 10, 2011, as an historic day for online poker!
New Jersey State has just won the race to get legislation for regulating and licensing online poker in the US. The State’s Assembly voted 63 -11, making it a unanimous vote – to get a bill approved for making Internet wagering legal for the residents of New Jersey, through hubs which are compelled by law to be based at Atlantic City casinos.
While we don’t believe that Washington State residents will be rushing to relocated to New Jersey, just so’s they can play online poker, this is still very good news for both the industry and fans. Although we cannot help but be worried about some hue and cry – as like the Harry Reid bill, this bill called for a moratorium for current (illegal) online poker operators in the US. This would effectively mean that New Jersey casino operators would be given licensing preference, before any offshore operators could even think of applying. Also the fact remains that servers must be resident in this city and taxes must be paid. Most offshore poker operators are not going to like paying taxes too much for operating out of New Jersey.