If there’s one thing you never want to do, it’s getting on Tony G’s bad side. He’s a bad-ass both on and off the poker table. Unfortunately for CardPlayer, they’re doing just that.
PokerNews.com, owned by Tony G, has a deal (a valuable one) with Harrah’s, to be the exclusive provider of live updates and chip count numbers for the WSOP this year. They have over 40 reporters running around getting the latest chip count updates and news for the PokerNews site.
Cardplayer had this deal last year, but for whatever reason, they lost it. Probably a combination of not bidding high enough and doing a poor job reporting the events. But that’s not stopping them from ‘reporting’ the live chip counts this year. Now they’re simply stealing the live updated counts off of PokerNews and putting it on their site, without giving any credit to the source.
Tony G is understandably ticked off at this situation. He posted about it on his blog and literally threatens the Shulmans, who own the CardPlayer site.
I am from the street and when you steal from me, you are playing with fire. This is no different than taking money out of my pocket when it was all I had, which wasn’t that long ago. I’ll bet the Shulmans never thought they would be stealing from me two years ago when they were on top and PokerNews had three employees and was just getting by. I urge the Shulmans to think about what they are doing to me now. They should think about how people feel when they are robbed.
Another thing to note is that CardPlayer actually ran into a similar situation during last years WSOP. They caught a Bluff Magazine reporter stealing from their live updates, and made a huge deal about it. In reference to the situation, one of the reporters said, “All I have to say is that it’s unfortunate that the hard work of one crew (CardPlayer) can be so easily be copied by another (Bluff Magazine).”
I really think it’s a horrible thing that CardPlayer is doing, especailly after the way they reacted to Bluff Magazine last year. It shows how greedy and dishonest they are. It’s going to be interesting to see how they react to the negative press they are getting from this and threats from Tony G.
pokerlistings did the same thing