Author: horse-racing-free-tips

I realize we are all guilty of colossal mistakes in our lifetime, but as bad as I have been several times in my life, I cannot hold a candle to Isiah Thomas of the New York Knicks. While I’m on a roll, I may as well throw in the name James Dolan the owner and chairman of the New York losers.

These two gentlemen are responsible for the latest multi-million dollar blunder that will see them issue a cheque to ousted coach Larry Brown in the amount of $40 million. Last summer they hired Brown to a 5-year $50 million contract, with the high hopes that he could inspire a bunch of over paid prima donnas.

I mean to be fair to Thomas it was Dolan that hired him after Thomas had done his best to destroy the Pacers and Raptors organization.

Here’s what the Boss had to say!

“We hired Larry last summer with the expectation that he would be with the Knicks for a long time,” Dolan said. “Sometimes decisions work and sometimes they don’t. After careful consideration, despite the best intentions from everyone involved, this current structure did not work for us last season and I did not think it was going to improve next season.”

As for Brown this guy will now have received $59 million in alimony from his past three employers, Philadelphia, Detroit and New York. Rumor has it that Brown owns a home in the Hampton’s, next door to the owner of the Golden State Warriors.

Next stop for Larry may be San Francisco!

Bob Acton

Online Sports Betting

Online gaming sites are always changing — upgrading software, improving features and functionality, getting rid of bugs and bad ideas, inventing new offerings, etc. — all in a furious effort to remain competitive. A consistent leader of the online gambling pack, Party Poker, is often at the cutting edge of these new and improved releases. Not only has Party Poker done it again with their latest upgrade, but with the elimination of one of their programs (skins), and brand new partnerships with other leading edge online casinos and online poker rooms.

The first thing to be aware of with Party Poker’s new upgrade is that all the bugs may not yet have been completely ironed out (which simply means updates to the upgrades will be forthcoming). There have been some reports that uninstalling earlier versions of the Party Poker software after installing the new upgrade could lead to problems, so we would hold off on that uninstall if we were you. Of course, now that we said that, some of you may be wondering why you would even bother downloading the upgrade. Here’s why:

re: Lobby
– Games are listed by blinds rather than maximum buy-in
– Hands per Hour are included amongst the lobby stats
– Cash games are divided into Limit, No Limit, and Pot Limit
– More limits added to Cash Games
– Player’s available cash and Party Points are prominently displayed
– Filters are given to help narrow down your selection of tables/games
– Tables are given names rather than numbers
– The news ticker has been made more prominent
– Tournaments are divided into groups for easier searching

re: Tournaments
– Tournament buy-ins now include entry fees
– Tournament players start with more chips (Sit-and-Go’s: 2,000, Multi-Table: 3,000, “Events”: 5,000)
– There’s a new tournament blind structure
– More buy-ins available for Sit-and-Go’s
– Sit-and-Go levels have changed so that now they are based on time rather than hands played
– The payout structure is flatter

re: Party Poker Accounts
– Players can easily switch between Party Poker and Party Casino all from one place
– The Account Page has been streamlined for greater efficiency and ease of use

re: Miscellaneous features
– Players can shrink windows for multi-tabling
– Optional automatic window tiling and cascading

As you may know, a skin is an independent site that uses another site’s software (in this case Party Poker’s) in exchange for a percentage of revenues. PartyGaming, parent company of Party Poker as well as host of Party Casino and Party Bingo has decided to terminate its skins, instead purchasing those sites as secondary PartyGaming sites (and presumably raking in 100% of the revenues).

In place of their newly defunct skins, Party Poker is now joined by the following new members of the PartyGaming family: IntertopsPoker, MultiPoker, PlanetLuck Casino, PokerNow, and Starluck Casino Online. Party Poker’s most recent acquisition, as of February 2006, was former Party Poker skin Empire Poker, which they purchased for $250 million. Those Party Poker folks are building quite the Empire (some bad puns just beg to be voiced).

Party Poker, who according to Reuters signed up a record number of new players last year, is a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange.