UK bookmaking giant William Hill made big news today after inking a deal with the The Football Association (FA) to become the official sponsor of the England Football Team. The basic summary of this deal involves William Hill heavily advertising with England’s national football club for the next two and a half years, which includes the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

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William Hill CEO Ralph Topping spoke about his company’s recent business by saying, “The deal with The FA is an excellent one for WilliamHill as it provides us with a strong platform for our brands and products both in the UK and internationally.” Topping went on to say that the England Football Team deal goes along nicely with their sponsorship of the Scottish Football Association and Scottish Cup.

Going back to The Football Association, FA Head of Sponsorship Peter Daire commented on the matter by saying, “We are delighted to have William Hill on board. They have a strong track record in sports sponsorship and a considerable online and high street presence that will enable us to strengthen our communication platforms for England and The FA Cup.” He added, “In return, William Hill will benefit from an association with two of the highest-profile football sponsorship properties in the world.”

William Hill, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, has experienced plenty of success lately. They reported profits of £274 million last year, and they are projecting an equally successful year this time around too. Seeing as how they’re now advertising partners with the FA, they could very well reach their goal and beyond.

Canadian poker pro Daniel Negreanu has become one of the biggest enemies of Full Tilt Poker and its former owners Howard Lederer, Ray Bitar and Chris Ferguson. And he recently aired out his hatred towards them through a recent blog post at FullContactPoker.

Negreanu was speaking about an interview he did with PokerPlayer Magazine when he talked about the Full Tilt trio. In the beginning, he was saying that he didn’t agree with some of the ways that PokerPlayer tried to spin his words. However, he was eventually able to reconcile with them and come to an agreement about the interview.

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Following this, KidPoker got into the good stuff after he started talking about the former Full Tilt Poker owners. His insults began with the following:

They edited down my comments about Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, and Chris Ferguson, but they definitely got the gist of my vitriol towards them. I’m disgusted by them and what they’ve done to smear the game with putrid decision making. Ray is a buffoon, Howard is arrogant, condescending, and incompetent, and Chris is a liar and has the warmth of a snow pea. These were never my friends, I never cared for any of them. I never trusted them for a second, and my “read” was always that these were not my kind of people. Why are they different from the rest of the group?

Getting past his initial comments, Negreanu started getting into some more specific reasons why he thinks Lederer, Bitar and Ferguson are more guilty than anybody in the FTP scandal. He said the following about this:

These three were on the board, admittedly making all the decisions, and jeopardizing millions of dollars worth of players money that still hasn’t surfaced. You guys suck. I hope to never see any of your faces at the WSOP anymore, and I hope you live with the shame you deserve for the rest of your lives. Your own personal, private hell. You deserve all the wrath you’ve received from the poker world, and much more. You are scum and each of you absolutely deserves a few swift baseball bat swings to the groin area, old school Vegas style.

Judging by these statements, it’s pretty clear that there’s no love lost between Negreanu and his non-friends at Full Tilt Poker.

Daniel Negreanu recently did a very revealing interview with a site called PokerPlayer where he discussed his “conquering” of online poker, as well as what he thinks of Howard Lederer and Full Tilt Poker. The only problem is that Negreanu himself contends the interview “twisted everything” with regards to what he said.

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Beginning with the actual interview, which was titled “What’s Wrong With You?,” Negreanu said the following when talking about how he improved at online poker:

‘In 2010 I sucked at online poker and I wanted to get better at it,’ said Negreanu when we spoke to him at the end of 2011. ‘I thought, that’s an area of weakness and I will fix it. I think what surprised friends of mine is things that took them years to learn I got in a week or two, and within a month I was going from playing $100/$200 with a waiting list a mile long to people going, “Okay, he’s got it”.’

The discussion got more serious when KidPoker was asked about Howard Lederer, to which he responded with the following:

I’ve spoken to all of them. They are embarrassed and have disdain for their leaders. They trusted Howard [Lederer]. I didn’t. I don’t trust that family. It’s a family of scoundrels. They don’t do the right thing. They put their faith in the guy and it’s blown up in their face.

Apparently, Negreanu didn’t appreciate the way his words were displayed, and/or thought the interviewer changed some of the quotes around. He got on TwoPlusTwo to voice his opinion, and wrote the following:

We can start with the cover that says “How I conquered Online Poker” something I’d bet a billion has never come out of my mouth but it’s inferred that I did. The list is long within as well, mostly changing drastically the tone of what I said by actually changing the words. If you quote someone then it should read ad exactly what was said and it definitely wasn’t.

Someone who is affiliated with PokerPlayer (possibly the interviewer) got on 2p2 to fire back at Negreanu with this bit of writing:

That’s just simply not true. There is nothing in there that is not an accurate representation of what you said. I just listened back to the audio file so I know that to be true.

Do you not think this infers you conquered online poker? And by that it obviously means conquered in the sense of went from being OK to being very good. Not conquered in the sense of defeated everyone ever.

Eventually, the two came to an understanding about the article, and you can check it out in the aforementioned 2p2 thread.

Alan Meltzer, who was one of the most popular amateur poker players to appear on the TV show High Stakes Poker, made big news today after it was revealed he left his limo driver and doorman $1.5 million collectively.

The millionaire and music mogul passed away last Halloween, which saddened many throughout the poker community because he was so liked. And this reputation has only been furthered after his will left $1 million to driver Jean Laborde, and another $500k to doorman Chamil Demiraj.

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The 54-year-old Laborde spoke to the New York Post about Meltzer’s generous gift by saying, “He was always joking. He never looked down on anybody. He was such a nice guy. He left me money, but it’s not a good deal for me because it means he’s no longer here.’’

Demiraj also commented on the money he received by saying, “I appreciate it. He was a generous guy. He was a really good friend of mine, and I was a good friend of his. It’s a surprise. Peace and rest to him. That’s all I can say.”

Unfortunately, not everybody is a fan of Alan Meltzer and his presents – most notably his ex-wife, Diana. When asked about Meltzer’s choices with his inheritance, she said, “He can leave it to whoever he wants to. I’m doing fine. I could care less. If he wants to give it to the bums, he can give it to the bums. He could f–k a nun. I couldn’t give a s–t. He can give his money to whoever he wants. We’re divorced. The man is dead.”

The two were married for 13 years, and they split last year. Because of the divorce, she didn’t receive her guaranteed 33% of Meltzer’s inheritance, which could have contributed to the bitterness.

High stakes poker phenom Phil Galfond recently did a very interesting interview where he discussed some big downswings, and how he’s looking to sell his multi-million dollar condo in New York City.

First off, he mentioned losing roughly $680k in a recent session of $1k/$2k PLO. What’s bad is that he lost another $340k shortly thereafter, which amounts to over $1 million in losses in a very quick span. He then started talking about how, towards the end of a bad session, the losses really hit him. Eventually though, he’s able to get over the losses and get back to business. Galfond also talked about how much money he’d be willing to put back on PokerStars after taking such heavy losses, for which he never gave an official number.

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Following a massively unsuccessful session, Galfond said that players need to avoid the mentality of, “Okay, I’m up $10k today, which means I’m only down $680k.” Instead of thinking this way, he advised that, “You need to kind of reset your mind because you don’t have the bankroll that you had for that session. It’s like, you’re starting over, and you work from the point where you’re at now.”

Another good point Phil Galfond made is that you should play smaller stakes after suffering through a really bad session where your bankroll is affected. He said players need to drop down a little lower in stakes, and realize that their losing streak may not quite be over yet.

One interesting off-beat topic that Galfond discussed is how he wants to sell his multi-million dollar condo in New York City. The reason why is because Galfond’s not sure when he’ll be able to live there again, and the mortgage is pretty expensive for a place where he’s not living. You can see the whole video below:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has always had a special connection to the gaming world ever since the MIT Blackjack team
crushed casinos across the globe for a countless fortune. Perhaps this elite educational institution is at it again because they are running a class on playing online poker along with a poker bot contest.

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As for the actual class, this will be taught by Canadian poker player Will Ma, who is a second year PhD student at MIT and has $685,015 in live poker tournament cashes. PokerFuse wrote about what Ma will be teaching with the following:

The course work consists of playing in a private home game league on PokerStars for play money where students can apply the concepts taught by Ma in his lectures. Though the course is at an introductory level, the topics covered may seem quite advanced compared to those learned at the kitchen table. As a result of the recent evolution in the teaching of the game, topics such as preflop ranges, flop analysis, variance and ICM theory are now introduced to students at the earliest stages of learning.

Along with this basic course on online poker play, there’s also a poker bot competition course where student teams will put programming, game theory, bankroll management, probability, statistics and machine learning together in order to create a bot. Players will have one month to complete the poker bot, and over $30,000 in prize money is on the line.

Fortunately, poker is a complex game so the odds of these poker bots crushing online poker is fairly small. After all, they make plays based on statistics and patterns, and don’t have the same critical thinking as human beings. However, some recreational players might find the going rough against these future MIT poker bots.

If there’s one thing we can tell you about Daniel Negreanu, it’s that his game away from the poker tables is just as solid as it is on the felt. Negreanu’s past dating resume includes Hungarian model Krisztina Polgár, Asian poker hottie Evelyn Ng and reporter/poker hostess Amanda Leatherman. Now some people have begun to wonder if there’s a new girl on Negreanu’s arm in fellow poker pro Maria Ho.

The primary catalyst behind this rumor is the sheer volume of tweets that the Canadian sends out where he’s either with Maria Ho, or planning on partying with her. Now this isn’t any concrete proof of them dating, but plenty of people at TwoPlusTwo have already begun their own speculation. The original poster started the thread by writing:

According to each others twitter, it seems like they have been spending alot of time with each other the last few months, this is a confirmed relationship?

DN is known for loving the asians ladies, seems like it would work.

Assuming there were any truth to Maria Ho and Daniel Negreanu dating, this would definitely be one good poker-playing couple. KidPoker is ranked second all-time in poker tournament winnings with $14,901,458, and he’s basically the face of the world’s largest poker site in PokerStars. Aside from his poker contributions, Negreanu has also been in some movies such as X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Lucky You.

As for Maria Ho, she is one of the most successful female poker players of all-time having compiled $1,148,678 in poker tournament winnings, which ranks her 18th among women. She has gained considerable fame in the television world for her appearance on CBS’ TV show The Amazing Race, along with other appearances on American Idol and The Bonnie Hunt Show.

Most micro stakes players are lucky to average a dollar or two in profits a day because the stakes are so low. Nathan “Blackrain79″ Williams, on the other hand, is a different story because he’s made over $30,000 playing $0.01/$0.02 and $0.02/$0.05 cash games at PokerStars. And what’s funny about this tale is that nobody even took a second notice at Williams until people found out his profits came at such low stakes.

He talked about this by saying, “When PTR came out my exploits at the lowest stakes became public knowledge and it became interesting for people to talk about.” He added, “I guess because no one was playing as many hands as I was and getting such high win-rates, people just thought it was crazy.”

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Williams has decided to take his impressive micro stakes poker career, and turn it into a book called “Crushing the Microstakes.” This book is quite different from the other poker strategy pieces on the market right now because it’s advise is unconventional to say the least. He talks about making preflop raises of at least 10bb or more with premium hands because micro stakes players tend to be calling stations. Also, he says that, with the nuts, you can shove your stack into tiny pots and hope for a call because the money is so low.

The micro stakes pro discussed his work by saying, “I realised that the players you make the most from playing lower stakes are just recreational players – the recreational players really aren’t doing anything to improve, and that’s where most of your money is coming from at the micros.”

Gabi Campos, who served as the CEO of PokerStars from 2010 to the present, is apparently out of a job. Now keep in mind that PokerStars hasn’t officially came out and made a statement on this matter, but several poker sites have reported on Campos no longer being with Stars.

PokerPlayerNewspaper was the first site to report on this matter as they wrote, “the buzz emanating from the Isle of Man offices of Poker Stars is loud and clear; Gabi Campos, as he is better known within Poker Stars, has left the building – after a reign of less than two years.”

Campos used to serve as the boss of 888′s Dragonfish division where he handled business-to-business matters for the site. Then he rose to prominence after taking over CEO duties from Isai Scheinberg and his son Mark Scheinberg; these two still own the company, they just took a backseat on the management side. A big part of Campos’ original hiring was his success with Dragonfish, where he guided the 888 wing to a 16% increase in profits over 2011. But for undisclosed reasons, it appears as if Campos wasn’t able to recreate the same magic at PokerStars.

Interestingly enough, Gabi Campos isn’t the only big-time figure to leave the company recently since ex-PokerStars partner and former European Poker Tour CEO John Duthie also chose to distance himself from the site. As for Duthie’s reasoning, it’s believed that he wants to pursue other opportunities, and didn’t want to be tied to Stars or the EPT anymore.

Additionally, EPT Tournament Director Thomas Kremser also decided not to come back for an eight season with the EPT/PokerStars. In a statement issued by the former tourney director, Kremser merely offfered that “the time is right to explore new adventures.”

Over the past couple of years, Dan “Jungleman12″ Cates has become one of the most-discussed online poker players for his unparalleled profits in 2010 ($5 million), association with known cheater Jose “Girah” Macedo, and his involvement in the Tom “Durrrr” Dwan Challenge. So it’s no surprise that we were quite excited to see that Jungleman12 did a recent interview with BlackBeltPoker.

One of the first interesting things that Cates discussed during the interview involved how difficult Black Friday was for him. The US-born poker pro told BlackBeltPoker, “Black Friday affected me negatively; there’s a lot of long-term things that really stunk it up: it made money transactions way harder, which is something I’ve learned. It’s made playing in general a lot more difficult, and I still have tonnes of money stuck on Full Tilt, and also Ultimate Bet. The numbers are pretty private, but it’s seven figures.”

Since that time, Cates has moved to London so that he can continue playing at the top poker sites like PokerStars. But while the move may have helped with Black Friday, Cates hasn’t been able to avoid questions about his association with Jose Macedo. Cates said, “It’s not exactly gone; people still needle me about it occasionally. I think Haseeb (Qureshi) and I took way too much shit for it, more than we should have. Maybe other people disagree, but it’s more or less blown over, I guess. In terms of my dealings with other people, the Girah scandal didn’t really affect my reputation in that sense.”

One more big subject that Cates talked about was the aforementioned Durrrr Challenge, which has remained largely unchanged over the past year. Cates explained why to BlackBeltPoker by saying, “We’ve played around 20,000 hands, but we’re not really done yet. He has not settled. However, if he’s incredibly flakey about following up with the Challenge, and it doesn’t seem very high on his priority list, then I would like him to settle, or play out his hands pretty soon. Technically, it’s still on, but it’s not really going anywhere.”

It sounds like Cates is busy getting back on track with poker and life, and hopefully we hear more from him in the near future.