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The talk of the poker world the past few days has been the mess the World Series of Poker found itself in on Friday when it was discovered that a data entry error led to the Player of the Year point totals being incorrect. After fixing the mistake, presumed winner Daniel Negreanu was bumped down to third place and Robert Campbell was annointed the new and proper Player of the Year.

In a blog post on FullContactPoker.com, in which he said he was not upset about the news, Negreanu also offered up his suggestions for changes to the POY system. The timing might look suspect on first blush, but he did tweet out these same ideas a few days earlier and has been pushing for changes for years. Negreanu is known in the poker world as a bit of an obsessive when it comes to the Player of the Year chase, so he has had his mind on it a lot.

“We want the stretch run to be about people chasing final tables and wins, not max late regging, hoping to double once, then grab the points from a min cash. It’s silly, and I felt silly doing it,” he wrote.

Here are his five suggestions, straight from his blog post:

1. Limit the number of cashes that count towards your total to 12. This gives more people a chance to win POY and focuses on quality over quantity. It no longer incentivizes people to chase min cashes down the stretch.

2. Decrease the value of a min cash in mutlti-heat [sic], large field reentry events. It is not an accomplishment to cash in Colossus when you have 9 heats with a reentry in each.

3. All min cashes should not be treated equally. A min cash in a 3000 player field is much easier than a min cash in a 100 player field 10k buy in mixed event. It’s significantly harder to cash in the latter, while the former is hardly an accomplishment at all, especially when you are paying 15% of the field.

4. Decrease the main event points awarded. You would still make this the premier event when it comes to points and get a ton, just slightly less than you do now. This is important when decreasing the number of cashes that count.

5. Divide points by number of entries. If you play in an unlimited reentry event and use 4 bullets, your point total should be divided by 4. So for example, lets [sic] say you win an event that would get you 1000 points, but rebought three times. Now, you would get 1000/4 for 250 points. I’m less invested in this one, but many people seem to feel strongly about this one.

“I was proud of putting in the hard work necessary to win, but when I win POY I don’t want there to be any doubt in anyone’s mind as to whether or not I was deserving,” Negreanu added. “I hope for a system that rewards quality over quantity, and I do believe the WSOP will work towards that and get it right eventually.”

The post Daniel Negreanu Has Some Ideas for the WSOP Player of the Year System appeared first on Poker News Daily.

Those of you who are fans of PokerStars’ two-year old novelty game Power Up had better get your fill now, because the game’s days are numbered.

According to PokerFuse, PokerStars is preparing to pull the plug on the poker/deck-building love child. No end date has been provided.

“PokerStars has made the decision to remove [Power Up] from the poker client,” a PokerStars representative told PokerFuse’s Poker Industry PRO. “Designed to bridge the gap between poker and video games, Power Up had a strong and loyal following.”

No specific reason was given for the decision. Though PokerStars says the game had a “strong and loyal following,” Power Up almost certainly didn’t make a lot of money for the site, compared to other games. If it did, it wouldn’t be saying goodbye.

Power Up is an oddball game

Power Up is a three-handed Sit-and-Go game in which players are dealt special Power cards in addition to their hole cards. The Powers can be used to change the game dramatically.

For example, the Disintegrate card can be used to erase a card from the current street. Intel lets the player who uses it see the top card on the deck for the rest of the hand. And Upgrade lets a player draw a third hole card and then discard one.

Each Power comes with an energy cost. Players begin with 10 energy and regain 2 energy after every hand up to a maximum of 15 energy.

Here is a list of all of the Powers:

Clone: receive a copy of the last power played this hand (2 energy)
Deploy: an additional card is added to the board, usable by every player (3 energy)
Disintegrate: destroy a selected card on the current street (4 energy)
EMP: prevent the use of any more powers on this street (3 energy)
Engineer: choose the deck’s next card from three options (5 energy)
Intel: view the deck’s top card for the remainder of the hand (3 energy)
Reload: re-draw one or both hole cards (5 energy)
Scanner: view the top two cards in the deck and choose to keep or discard them (4 energy)
Upgrade: draw a third hole card and then discard one (5 energy)
X-Ray: all opponents must reveal one randomly selected card (2 energy)

The winner of the hand is still the one with the best five-card hand or the lone person who doesn’t fold, just like in any other Hold’em game. It is entirely possible to play a regular Hold’em hand in Power Up without using Power cards, but that wouldn’t be fun, would it?

Capitalized on eSports surge

PokerStars launched Power Up for real money play in October 2017 after working on it for several years. The company actually built an entirely new game engine for it.

The idea behind Power Up was to try to blend poker with the quickly-growing eSports industry. The concept of using the Power cards takes a page from deck-building games like Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering. Aside from the poker factor, one primary difference between Power Up and games like Hearthstone and MTG is that players do not build their own Power card deck in Power Up, whereas they typically do in traditional deck-building games.

The post PokerStars to Power Down Power Up appeared first on Poker News Daily.

Massachusetts judge reminds America of that little thing called the Fourth Amendment

The seizure and search of phones and laptops at the US border is unconstitutional, a judge said Tuesday in a landmark ruling.…

“Drama” was the word of the moment in the poker world last week. Shaun Deeb needed went into the final day of the WSOP Europe Colossus event needing to finish fifth to win the 2019 World Series of Poker Player of the Year award, but when he was eliminated in eleventh place, that honor went to Daniel Negreanu for the third time in his career. Then, on Friday, it was discovered that Negreanu had accidentally been credited with a cash during this summer’s WSOP in Las Vegas and thus had more POY points than he should have had. After an investigation, the WSOP made it official: Daniel Negreanu lost those points and Robert Campbell is now the WSOP Player of the Year.

Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V

In a statement posted on Twitter, the World Series of Poker explained what happened. As one would expect, there is a person who works for the WSOP who manually inputs the tournament results in a database/system/what-have-you. When that person uploaded places 32-46 for Event #87, he or she also inadvertently copied them into Event #68, overwriting the existing records for that event.

Thus, Negreanu and 14 other players were awarded points for Event #68 that they should not have been given. Those additional 213.1 points helped elevated Negreanu to the Player of the Year title.

The World Series of Poker listed the corrected POY rankings as follows:

Robert Campbell – 3,961.31
Shaun Deeb – 3,917.32
Daniel Negreanu – 3,861.76
Anthony Zinno – 3,322.00

WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart expressed his regrets, saying:

We’d like to offer our sincere and public apology to those players who chased the award. It is an amazing thing when poker players pursue history and a sense of sporting honor, and thus it’s a terrible embarrassment for us to stain a great race for the title. We’re going to take the next few months to overhaul the POY and many of our procedures that have gone off course.

He added that the WSOP has reached out to those most affected by the mistake.

Players’ reactions a mixed bag

Daniel Negreanu, who moved from first to third, said that he spoke with the WSOP’s Seth Palansky about the situation and came away satisfied. He said that he is not upset, that mistakes happen.

Shaun Deeb, on the other hand, was livid upon hearing about the data entry error. Deeb moved up to second, but for him, the frustration comes from what he would have done differently had he known the correct standings.

As Earl Burton pointed out this weekend, Deeb thought he needed to finish fifth in the Colossus, but really only needed to place ninth. He ended up in eleventh place, just shy of the mark. Had he known, he might have changed his strategy to try to stay alive a couple more spots to nab the POY crown.

“I’m in shock and really frustrated time to check all my cashes and see if they missed any I know there was a 1500 6m that was missing from 25k fantasy for a while,” Deeb tweeted on Friday.

He went on to accuse Negreanu of cheating (it seems like he believes that Negreanu, someone who pushes hard to win POY every year, knew that the points weren’t correct, yet didn’t say anything) and suggested that he and Campbell share the award:

Two things Its amazing Daniel wouldn’t bet on me with poy cuz he was afraid I would cheat when he’s the one caught trying to cheat. Second the only acceptable move from @WSOP is co poy with me and @SonicJaxx2019

— shaun deeb (@shaundeeb) November 9, 2019

The post WSOP Officially Corrects Points Error, Awards WSOP POY to Robert Campbell appeared first on Poker News Daily.

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