Ira Rubin Refused Bail
Ira Rubin, one of the indictees connected with the Black Friday events on 15th April, has been 
denied bail by a magistrate judge in the United States. Rubin is believed to have been trying to evade capture using a fake passport to flee to Thailand when he was arrested. This is clearly the reason why bail was denied.
Rubin is believed to be the man behind the payments processing system set up to try to bypass the federal ban on transferring money to online casinos. Not surprisingly Rubin’s lawyer, Stuart Meissner, thinks the prosecution is all a waste of time and that the money the trial will cost would be better spent on, for example, the war on terror.
WSOP Attendance Defies Expectations
Phil Ivey may not be attending this year’s World Series of Poker but many others are, despite 
the problems and bad publicity resulting from the events surrounding Black Friday. Many prospective players still have significant amounts of money tied up in the various affected websites and it was thought that this would mean players would be short of buy-in money.
Non-U.S. poker pros were also thought to be having second thoughts about attending due to the lack of online gaming available when the live tournaments were not being played. Is there any reason why a European cannot connect back to a European based website at which they have funds already deposited? This reporter is not sure. After all the gaming itself is not illegal, just the money transfer.
There was also supposed to be a shortfall of sponsorship due to the problems affecting some of the biggest prospective sponsors – PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker – and although that may be the case there are plenty of pros wearing clothing sponsored by the various disgraced companies, despite the Nevada Gaming Board having prohibited the displaying of these logos.
The WSOP has a history of variable attendances and the decrease in this year’s numbers is so small as to not be noticeable. It’s been in far worse predicaments before and presumably will be aginf at some point in the future – this year’s tournament however, is fine.
