Former Amaya CEO David Baazov’s trial is underway. Oddball Omaha variant tried out in final EPT stop. Another $1 million Spin & Go payout is hit. And more.

Wait, Which Fake Identity Am I Denying?

Former Amaya CEO David Baazov’s trial is underway, though still in its early stages. The specifics of what he’s accused of are being laid out, and unsurprisingly, the attorneys on both sides are already going at it. The charges facing Baazov involve his alleged use of fronts to trade stock in advance of Amaya’s takeover of Rational Group – parent company of PokerStars – in 2014.

The first battle being waged in what is likely to be a protracted war has to do with the charge itself; the prosecution has stated only that Baazov is accused of using a front to engage in insider trading, but has not identified the entity in question. The defence is arguing that it cannot properly prepare its case without knowing the times, amounts, people and corporate entities involved, etc., but white collar crime is notoriously difficult to prosecute for this reason; that it generally takes place over multiple steps, each of which is plausibly deniable on its own.

Baazov’s trial will be an interesting one to follow, but one expects that the outcome will hinge on whether the prosecution succeeds in building a big picture which is beyond reasonable doubt, or the defence manages to pick the story apart and establish reasonable doubt for each fact individually.

Quick Hitters

– Season 13 of the European Poker Tour will be its last ever, and the current series in Prague its last stop. That has apparently pulled the stops on experimentation, as Event #94 involves a Pot-Limit Omaha variant which has three separate flops, two turns and a single river. Some of the details about which combinations of community cards are valid are still unclear to those not present, but we’ll take a look at this variant in coming days.

This is reallyan official tournament they're running at the last ever @PokerStarsLIVE EPT Prague. Sounds like fun. pic.twitter.com/Z3O0D8ZSot

— Frank Op de Woerd (@webjoker) December 19, 2016

– It’s been a while since we’ve heard about a $1 million game in a PokerStars Spin & Go, but on Friday evening, a user going by “jrww86” added his or her name to the list, which now includes 16 players. Like most jackpot winners, jrww86 elected to keep their identity a secret, but did reveal they live in Bermuda teaching history.

– Fabrizio ‘SixthSenSe19’ Gonzalez is current the highest-rated online player and should hold that title for many months to come. Because of the volume of play, online poker rankings are typically much more volatile than live, yet Gonzalez currently holds a lead of more than 1000 points over his closest competition, in Alex ‘alexd2’ Dimitrov, while gaps of just a few hundred are more typical through the rest of the top 10.

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