The Muck Daily

Daily Brief

09/19/26  ·  Day 014 - The Ninety Percent Edition

A House committee voted 38 to 5 to repeal the rule that taxes gamblers on money they did not keep, which puts poker's biggest legislative fight in fourteen months one floor vote, one Senate vote and one signature away from being over. Across the Atlantic the arithmetic ran the other way, with Britain's online casino tax at 40 percent and partypoker's parent cutting another 400 jobs. An Australian Hall of Famer won a debt case, settled it, and then lost it outright when a judge decided he had been the bookmaker all along. And in Atlantic City a man drew $150,000 out of a drum and left with two fifths of a $500,000 prize pool.

Today's Big Question

House Ways And Means Voted To Repeal The Gambling Tax. Five Members Voted No.

What happened

The House Ways and Means Committee voted 38 to 5 this week to advance HR 6985, the bipartisan FULL HOUSE Act. The bill repeals the One Big Beautiful Bill provision that has limited gamblers to deducting 90 percent of their losses, in force since January 1. The practical content of that provision is that a player can finish a year exactly even and still owe tax on the tenth of the losses the code refuses to see. Bill sponsor Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada said the tax puts at risk the livelihoods of dealers, housekeepers, restaurant workers and small business owners in a state that depends on visitors. All five no votes came from Democrats. The bill moves next to a full House vote and then to the Senate, where Sen. Dina Titus has pushed the same repeal through her FAIR BET Act for more than a year and attached it to a tax package this week. Titus said the fix had finally passed out of committee after fourteen months of uncertainty.

Why it matters

Fourteen months is a long run for a rule whose entire substance is the gap between 100 and 90. Erik Seidel announced in April that he was playing a reduced schedule because of it, which is the form of protest available to someone who no longer has anything to prove. Josh Arieh said he could not imagine being one of the five, and Daniel Negreanu laid out the arithmetic in public: bet a thousand and lose, bet another thousand and win, finish level, pay tax. Neither got an answer from anyone who voted no. What the vote does not do is change the law. Titus has watched this same repeal fall out of a defense bill in 2025 and out of a spending bill in January, and a committee vote is three steps short of the President's desk. It is, however, the first time in fourteen months that anyone has had to go on record about it.

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In the Spotlight

Britain Took The Online Casino Tax To 40 Percent. Entain Cut 400 More Jobs.

What happened

Entain, which owns partypoker and Ladbrokes and half of BetMGM, is eliminating 400 jobs after a previous round of 500, and said around 1,000 of its betting shops in the United Kingdom could close. The British government raised the tax rate on online casino operators from 21 percent to 40 percent in April, and the rate on online sports betting rises from 15 percent to 25 percent in April 2027. Chief executive Stella David said the new taxes could add £100 million to the company's bill. She also cited independent modelling from EY indicating that a 40 percent machine games duty rate could produce up to 1,470 betting shop closures and 15,900 job losses, and a net loss to the Exchequer of around £120 million. The Betting and Gaming Council puts industry job losses since the tax plan was approved at roughly 4,500.

Why it matters

Entain is not alone in the numbers. Evoke, which owns William Hill and 888poker, planned to close about 270 shops. Bet365 is cutting around 340 roles across its European hubs, roughly 3 percent of its workforce, and named tax-related costs as the reason. Flutter, which owns PokerStars, cut 100 positions in July in a wider restructuring. Three of those four companies own a poker room most players could name, and all three spent this year explaining redundancies rather than guarantees. The timing is the part to sit with. In the same week a US committee voted to hand money back to players, on the theory that taxing a loss shrinks the activity, Britain is running the experiment in the other direction. It is publishing the job numbers as it goes.

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The Explainer

A Court Ruled Gary Benson Cannot Collect The Debt Because He Was The Bookmaker

What happened

The Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney dismissed Gary Benson's claim to recover almost A$50,000 from fellow poker player Michael O'Grady and ordered Benson to pay legal costs. The court did not find that O'Grady had failed to place the bets, or that the sum was wrong, or that no agreement to repay existed. Judge Scott Nash found that a ledger recording 211 betting transactions between May 2022 and February 2023, together with agreed odds, a running balance and credit extended to O'Grady, amounted to acting as a bookmaker. Benson was unlicensed, and the New South Wales Unlawful Gambling Act 1998 makes a debt from unlicensed bookmaking unenforceable. On one day in August 2022 the ledger recorded A$70,000 of wagers, two of them totalling A$20,000 inside about two minutes. Benson had already won a judgment over the same debt in July 2023 for A$45,035.94, then surrendered his enforcement rights under a later agreement for A$48,711.84 that O'Grady was to pay out of future tournament winnings.

Why it matters

The repayment plan was future poker tournament winnings, which is the detail worth sitting with for a second. O'Grady has more than $1.6 million in recorded live earnings and has cashed for $387,002 since the year the first case was filed. Benson is Australia's first WSOP bracelet winner, from a $1,500 seven card stud event in 1996 worth $148,200, and has more than $2.8 million in recorded results. He has also worked as a chartered accountant since 1985, advising Australian players on their American tax obligations. The ruling is not about whether either man behaved well. It is about volume. A private arrangement between two people who know each other becomes, at some number of transactions the parties are not counting, a business the state licenses, and neither of them found out where that number sat until a judge went looking.

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Follow the Money

Aaron Pinson Pulled $150,000 In Bounties Out Of A $500,000 Prize Pool

What happened

Aaron Pinson won the $2,200 Big Big Borgata Mystery Bounty at the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City and left with $199,825, close to 40 percent of the event's $500,000 prize pool. The tournament guaranteed two $50,000 bounties and two $25,000 bounties. Pinson drew both of the $50,000 slips, a $25,000, a $10,000, a $5,000 and four $2,500s, for $150,000 in bounties on top of $44,825 in prize money. He and Matt Glantz chopped the remaining prize money heads up and flipped for the trophy, which Pinson won, and then went to the drum holding one unpulled bounty against Glantz's six. Pinson drew first and took the last $25,000 out of it. Glantz finished with $44,825 and $30,000 in bounties. Pinson, from Maryland, has more than $2.4 million in recorded earnings and had never won at the property.

Why it matters

A flat payout structure pays nine people nine predictable amounts. A drum full of envelopes does not, and that is why casinos and tours around the country have adopted some version of this format over the past couple of years. What the format also does is let a player take two fifths of a prize pool without ever holding two fifths of the chips. Pinson said he came into the day with a bottom third stack and gambled a lot, an accurate account of both the day and the payout. Michael Wang, eliminated in third, handed Pinson the chips and told him the bounty he was about to pull would be the $50,000. It was. The drum is now a larger variable in these events than the final table is.

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The Circuit

Benjamin Hammann Beat 827 Entries In Liechtenstein And Closed It With Six-Four

What happened

Benjamin Hammann won the CHF1,500 main event at the WSOP Circuit stop at Grand Casino Liechtenstein in Gamprin, taking a ring and CHF190,392 from a field of 827 entries. The event built a prize pool of CHF1,071,792. Eight players came back for the final day and the last hand landed in level 33, with blinds of 250,000 and 500,000 and an ante of 500,000, meaning the ante had grown to the size of the big blind. Hammann finished it holding the six and four of clubs.

Why it matters

A CHF1,500 buy-in turning into a seven figure prize pool is the WSOP Circuit's actual business model. It is why the tour currently has rings in the air in Liechtenstein, at Texas Card House in Austin and at Horseshoe Council Bluffs, all in the same week. The ring is identical in all three rooms. The prize pool is not, and nothing in the branding tells a player which is which before they sit down. Running a structure out to level 33 with a 500,000 ante is what a field of 827 buys you, and the six-four of clubs at the end is what a structure that long eventually produces.

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Beyond the Felt

Three More Players Passed $30 Million On Triton. Ponakovs Is $135,171 Short.

What happened

Daniel Dvoress, Danny Tang and Punnat Punsri each passed $30 million in career Triton Poker earnings, taking the tour's $30 million club from four members to seven. Dvoress moved to $34,821,982 and fourth on the all time list, having won five titles this season, the most recent a $30,000 eight-max no-limit event in Jeju he took for $942,000 from 135 entries. Tang cashed 10 times across the Montenegro and Jeju II stops for nearly $5.8 million, including the $100,000 Montenegro main event for more than $3.5 million, and sits sixth on $32,298,454. Punsri also cashed 10 times at those two stops, added more than $2.3 million and sits seventh on $30,016,130. Bryn Kenney still leads on $51,314,802 from five titles. Aleksejs Ponakovs is eighth on $29,864,829, which leaves him $135,171 outside the club.

Why it matters

The Jeju II stop alone awarded more than $103.2 million over two weeks, which is how a list with four names on it in April has seven now. Punsri's Triton results account for more than three quarters of his $39.6 million in total tournament earnings, and he currently leads the Card Player Player of the Year race. The shape of the top ten is the interesting part. Kenney leads the money list with five titles and 27 cashes. Jason Koon is second on $40,914,284 with 12 titles and 81 cashes. One of those is a record of showing up and one is a record of running well in the biggest events, and the tour reports both under the same heading.

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Also Filed

WPT Prime Australia's Day 1a Top Ten Was Ten Australians

What happened

The AUD 1,500 WPT Prime Championship opened at The Star Sydney with 235 entries in Day 1a, and every one of the ten players in the reported top ten chip counts was Australian. Travis O'Grady bagged the lead on 717,000, with Kenta Ito on 674,000 and Adam Kharman on 601,000. Thirty-two players advanced to Day 2, just short of the money, after 16 levels of 40 minutes from a 40,000 starting stack. Kharman took the long route, finishing third in the AUD 1,200 Outback Survivor Bounty for AUD 11,929 and then max late registering the Prime Championship the same day. Roberto Damelian won that Outback Survivor Bounty from 148 entries, coming back heads up against Michael Kanaan for AUD 24,975 and the event's boomerang trophy. Three starting flights remain.

Why it matters

WPT Australia runs 21 days and carries two championship events, a Player of the Festival race, a Team of the Festival race and an AUD 5,000 WPT Passport for whoever wins the points. Yushun Ji leads the player standings on 600 points after taking the Australian Poker Cup, with Thomas Lee on 585 and 24 events still to be counted. The team standings are led by a five-man outfit called Not A Hobby on 1,005 points. That is a lot of scaffolding for one festival, and it is the honest answer to the problem of asking players to fly to Sydney for a single tournament. Give them four things to be in contention for and the flight starts to price itself.

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One More Thing

Johannes Straver Won Super Tuesday Twice. The Bigger Field Paid Less.

What happened

Johannes "Jepser8" Straver won WCOOP 49-H, the $5,200 Super Tuesday High Roller on PokerStars, for $90,420, beating Guillaume "Nolet20" Nolet heads up out of a 67-player field. He had won the same event a week earlier for $106,622 out of a 23-player field. Elsewhere in the series, Joao "Naza114" Vieira took his 14th WCOOP title in the $1,050 World Championship of PLO8, beating 121 entries and Markku "markovitsus" Koplimaa heads up for $27,202, after finishing runner-up twice earlier in the same series. Renan "Internett93o" Bruschi won his 11th title in the $1,050 NL 2-7 Single Draw for $16,715 out of a 39-player field, his first in the format.

Why it matters

A 23-player field paying $106,622 for first and a 67-player field paying $90,420 for first is the sort of pair of numbers that does not explain itself, and the reporting does not try to. Whatever sits behind it, Straver defended the title against roughly three times the opposition for about sixteen thousand dollars less. Vieira's 14th title puts him level with three other players and three behind Benny Glaser, who reached 17 earlier this week. Bruschi has two titles this series after entering the all time top ten last week. The series remains deep enough that a $1,050 no-limit 2-7 single draw found 39 players willing to sit down for a game almost no cardroom in the world spreads.

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Hardware Won

Six titles decided across four continents and one client. Dates are as reported by the covering outlet; where a results page did not carry a dated finish line, the report date is used and the note says so.

Out

Three of these were beaten by the drum rather than by a hand.

On the Watchlist

  • HR 6985 on the House floorThe FULL HOUSE Act cleared Ways and Means 38 to 5 and now needs a full House vote, a Senate vote and a signature. The same repeal has already fallen out of a defense bill in 2025 and a spending bill in January.
  • WPT Prime Australia ChampionshipThree starting flights left at The Star Sydney after 235 entries on Day 1a. WPT Australia's own championship follows from September 24.
  • WSOP Circuit, three rooms at onceLiechtenstein and Texas Card House Austin both close out in the next few days while Horseshoe Council Bluffs, which opened September 17, runs to September 28.
Hardware Watch · Big Stack Energy · Bustout Board · Race Watch See The Full Board →
In The Air Right Now

Stops with cards in the air on this date.

WSOPWSOP Circuit - Grand Casino LiechtensteinLiechtensteinWSOPWSOP Circuit - Texas Card HouseTexas, United StatesBorgata2026 Borgata Big, Big SeriesBorgata Hotel Casino & SpaRGPS2026 Mississippi State Poker ChampionshipHorseshoe TunicaRGPS2026 RGPS Golden Expedition JoplinDownstream Casino ResortRGPS2026 RGPS Golden Expedition ArubaHilton Aruba Caribbean Resort & Casino
♠   ♥   ♦   ♣

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