As it’s only running until the end of the month, we make no apologies for reminding you so soon of the new Littlewoods Poker promotion to win a trip to one of 13 European cities.

Worth about $3,000, the first prize covers flights and accommodation for two, plus $500 spending money. Cash prizes for second to 40th place brings the total competition value up to $5,500.

If you want a chance to win, you’ll need to participate in our $5,500 European Tournament on May 30 at 21:00 GMT. There are four ways by which you can qualify for this tournament:

1. Buy in directly for Just $20 + $2.


2. Satellite your way in by playing in our daily freeroll satellites (with rebuys & add-ons) where 1 in 10 players will win a seat.


3. Earn 30 more status points than you did in the previous month.


4. Make your first deposit and accumulate just 10 Status Points between May 1-28.

The first prize can be taken between June 13 and October 31, and the destinations available are Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Faro, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Malaga, Nice, Prague, Rome, Seville, and Valencia. (For more details, go to www.littlewoodspoker.com/europe.htm.)

There are all sorts of reasons that you might choose any of the destinations on offer, and it’s not for SFTW to nudge you in any particular direction, but here’s food for thought: two of the cities on our list (Valencia and Seville) boast casinos that are featured on the six-stop Spanish Poker Tour. And in fact, one of those tour legs, the one at the Casino de Valencia, takes place on October 1-3, which is during the period in which our promotion prize is valid. We’d suggest maybe not mentioning that you are aware of this to your partner – better, perhaps, to ‘just happen to notice’ once you reach your romantic destination…

Among the weird and wonderful goings-on during and since the UK’s recent elections, most people will have overlooked the news that one seat was actually decided using a deck of cards. This was not, we hasten to add, for one of the parliamentary constituencies contested in the general election, but a council ward contested in local elections on the same day.

The town involved was Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, where Conservative Bob Peck and Labour’s Charlie Madsen tied on 1,034 votes. After three recounts, the votes continued to tally in the same way, and in our quaint election laws the outcome of such a tie has to be decided not by a re-run election but an act of pure chance, such as tossing a coin.

On this occasion, returning officer Richard Packham, who we suspect to be a man made of the right stuff, produced a deck of cards (as you would expect an election official to do, of course) and invited the candidates to cut for highest. Peck drew a disappointing three, leaving himself only a four-outer for the seat (and three more for a re-cut). Marsden turned a modest but victorious seven, and the election was over.

Perhaps ironically, the result left the council itself tied on Labour 15 seats, Conservatives ditto, so maybe they’d better keep a deck around the council chamber for deciding loggerheads votes. We would recommend an NLHE freezeout as a byelaw clincher – it may be longer-winded than cutting, but more fun, and likely to be better respected by Yarmouth residents than decisions based on a coin-flip.

The World Series of Poker will be taking two types of precaution to avoid last year’s unfortunate situation, where so many players unaccountably decided to play on the fourth ‘opening day’ of the main event, and to not show up until the last moment, that there were hundreds more people trying to register for Day 1D than could be accommodated.

One fix for the problem will be an increase in the floor area of the Rio available to WSOP events, and, therefore, the number of tables in place. This should raise the number of seats available on any given day by several hundred compared to last year.

On top of this, we hear that the ability to choose which of the four opening days you wish to play will be reduced somewhat compared to last year. As we understand it, early entries will enjoy an unfettered choice regarding which of days A, B, C and D they wish to play, but that after a specified cut-off date, new entries will be assigned a particular start day. More details as we have them.

At the end of last year, the United States approved a six-month delay in the implementation of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), assuming that this would be sufficient time for congressman Barney Frank and his supporters to draw up and enact legislation to repeal or, more likely, radically amend UIGEA. But with the delayed compliance date of 1 June rapidly heaving into sight, there’s no sign of Franks’ bill making significant progress.

Indeed, there are credible reports that online poker has been sold down the river by the Obama administration in a deal to get anti-gambling Republicans to stop blocking the appointment of the President’s Treasury nominees. The lack of progress also leaves a grey area concerning the legality of betting on horse racing, which wasn’t the stated target of UIGEA.

In response to the lack of progress, 22 members of Congress have now signed a petition to the Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve Chairman requesting ‘clarification’ on pari-mutuel race betting and that poker be among games exempted from UIGEA. The letter specifically calls for a clause stating that money laid on “peer-to-peer games where the outcome is determined predominantly by the skill of the players, such as poker, chess, bridge, mah-jong, and backgammon” does not class as a “bet or wager” within the meaning of the act.

Mind you, considering the petition is addressed to the very people who reportedly cooked up the opportunist deal with the maverick Republicans in the first place, we’re not holding our breath while we wait to see if they pay it any attention.

Hi SFTW,

What are the correct odds for being dealt a royal flush? I have seen a figure of more than two million quoted, but also one of less than 50,000. There’s an awful lot of difference between those figures!

Craig

Kingswood

“Have your techies failed to notice the arrival of 3D televisions in time for the World Cup?” a slightly disgruntled reader asks. Well, no we haven’t. It’s just that, as far as we know, the World Cup isn’t going to be broadcast in 3D. And in any case, much of the feedback we have received from people who checked out a demo of football in 3D last month, the process really doesn’t add much to one’s experience of that particular spectacle (and more about spectacles in a moment).

Now, SFTW is not (you may have noticed) afraid to look at some very high-end and expensive gadgets. We make few assumptions about how well bankrolled our readers might be. After all, you may win a big tournament at any moment, and have money to burn for all we know. We’re all for 3D, and we don’t even think that, by the usual standards of ‘early adopter’ first models, the hardware is particularly overpriced. But we do like to think that there’s some point to what we’re reviewing, even if it’s a midget submarine, and in the case of 3DTV we’re slightly nonplussed at the moment. As in: well, what are you going to watch on it?

Compare the situation four years ago, when we knew that volumes of high definition TV programming were going to be a bit thin on the ground for a year or two (or four, as it turned out), but that every single World Cup match, whether on BBC or ITV, would be broadcast in HD. Were we sour and sceptical? We were not. We ran out and bought the best 37-inch Samsung of its generation, and have never regretted it. But 3D? Think we’ll, er, watch and wait.

Should you take the plunge, though, do be aware that when you go round to your mate’s house with your Samsung 3D glasses, you’ll find that they are not compatible with his Panasonic TV, and vice versa. ‘What?’ you cry, ‘VHS and Betamax all over again? More HD-DVD versus Blu-ray? Will they never learn?’ Well, not quite. It seems that all the two companies have done is chosen opposite eyes for the two types of polarisation, so all you need to do is turn your ‘incompatible’ specs upside down, et voila! So don’t say that SFTW never saves you any money…