Weekly Poker Roundup: September 10, 2018

PokerStars to Introduce Six-Plus Hold’em

PokerStars has been having fun introducing novelty cash games for limited durations and PokerFuse has been having fun figuring out what they are before they launch. Right on schedule, PokerFuse has unearthed table graphics that indicate the next new game will be Six-Plus Hold’em.

The game is called Six-Plus Hold’em because all of the cards in the deck are value six or higher; all of the twos through fives are removed. The game became popular in the Macau high stakes games in 2015 because it is much more action packed and the iPoker Network introduced it online a couple years ago.

Because the makeup of the deck is different in Six-Plus Hold’em, the hand values have changed. In this game, flushes are rarer and straights are more common than before. Thus, a flush is worth more than a full house and a straight moves below three-of-a-kind in the pecking order.

Jon Kyl Back in U.S. Senate

Former U.S. Senator Jon Kyl, one of the men who wrote the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA), is now a current U.S. Senator. He was named by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey this past week to fill the seat of the late Senator John McCain.

Kyl has said he will not seek re-election and therefore there will be a special election held in Arizona in 2020 to choose someone to finish McCain’s term, which ends in 2022.

Kyl was one of four men who not only wrote the UIGEA, but got it tacked on to the SAFE Port Act, a must-pass port security bill, allowing it to become law with no debate, save for a few empty protests late at night before the SAFE Port Act vote. The UIGEA’s regulations didn’t go into effect until 2010, partly because some lawmakers wanted to properly define “illegal gambling,” and important part of the law. Kyl threatened to block six of President Obama’s Treasury Department nominees and thus the regulations were enacted with no further editing.

Lansing, Michigan Bans Gambling

The Lansing, Michigan City Council adopted an ordinance that bans all gambling aside from that which is licensed by the state or approved for charitable purposes. The measure passed easily by a 7-1 vote.

Critics of the prohibition – including Fourth Ward Council Member Brian Jackson – say that it is too broad, that its language makes it so that even low-stakes, private games among friends could be raided by police, with money and property confiscated. Other council members said that any enforcement of the ordinance would be based on complaints, that there wouldn’t be cops busting down doors of $5 cash games.

“Unfortunately, these gambling operations are disproportionately affecting our impoverished neighborhoods,” Third Ward Council Member Adam Hussain. “It’s the people who have the least to lose who are losing the most and I have a problem with any business that exploits people in that way.”

Hussain said that one reason such an ordinance was needed was because it was previously up to the state to enforce gambling laws. As the state doesn’t commit enough resources to that, issues often took a long time to solve.