The World Series of Poker is at full swing and we are already at event eleven. It’s hard to keep interest up with so many events going on – I mean, what does a WSOP bracelet mean these days when there are at least 55 of them up for grabs. I am still waiting for the big ones like the $50,000 HORSE Event and the (in)famous Main Event. But things are already getting interesting with the controversy between Tony G and the Schulman family.
CardPlayer lost to Bluff
The Schulmans are the main owners of CardPlayer magazine and used to be the ones providing live coverage from the WSOP, but not this year. The exclusive rights to provide the live coverage, including the chip counts, this year went to Bluff Magazine. They in turn sold the rights to provide live chip counts and updates to PokerNews.com where Tony G is one of the main owners - and this is where it is getting interesting.

Tony G goes ballistic
I can imagine that it is quite costly to buy the rights for the chip counts from Bluff and then have a 40 person staff running around the tables counting chips. And it is understandable that you would go ballistic (especially if you are Tony G) if someone uses that information on their own site as soon as you make it available, which is in fact what CardPlayer seems to have done.

Tony G could off course not stand for this and he wrote a threatening statement in his blog where he talks about how he is from the streets and would not stand for anyone stealing from him, yada, yada, yada. But the question is, is providing chip counts that are made available on the internet stealing? Probably not.

You can’t own public information
NBA recently lost an interesting case against Motorola. Motorola developed a delivery system for real-time statistical updates of NBA games and was sued by NBA for doing this without authorization from the league. The district court in New York ruled in Motorola’s favor and stated that: “federal copyright statute forbids ownership of purely factual data”. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t see any difference between this and what CardPlayer is doing and it will be really interesting to see how the issue will develop.

Well, well what do you know. While I was writing this text Tony G put up another post on his blog. It says that CardPlayer has agreed to stop posting PokerNews chip counts’ and follow the WSOP guidelines for media reporting from the events. The two parties are supposed to meat in Vegas in about two weeks to discuss the matter.

It is too early to say what will happen now. But I will definitely keep you posted.

No matter if you are going to Vegas or not; keep your head cool and good luck at the tables!
Mike G.