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e-pokerUSA.com Launches Real-Money Tournaments

A bridge expert has developed a unique twist to the game of poker that he is confident will give the game more 'legality' in the USA by overlaying the rules with the duplicate scoring elements of bridge to eliminate the luck of the draw.

Pinhas Romik is a highly experienced bridge player with international credentials who built Duplicate Inc., an online card room for bridge players. The site quickly enjoyed commercial success, leading to a sale to the World Winner.com group in 2004, giving Romik the space, financial security and time to develop other innovative gaming concepts.

His newest brainchild, e-pokerUSA.com, launched for real-money tournaments this week and is scheduled to offer real-money ring games in the next month.

e-pokerUSA.com empowers players to compete against one another in Texas Hold'em "duplicate poker" matches. Players at one table are dealt the exact same hole cards as players at other tables. The flop, turn and river are also identical on all tables in play.

Players start every hand with the same number of "hand chips," which are merely used for scoring and not for monetary purposes. At the end of each hand, the chip totals for each set of players are compared with those who played duplicate hands. Results are not determined by who wins the hand, but instead by who maximises winning hands and minimises losing ones. If you finish with more chips than your counterpart at another table, you win that round.

"I believe that this is going to be a revolution in poker," Romik says. "In a normal game, you are dependent on how good the cards you get are," Romik says. "In a duplicate game, your hands are compared with other people who played the same hand as you, so it's immaterial whether your hand is good or bad. Every hand is interesting, every hand is an interesting story."

Gaining acceptance for a new gamestyle is not always easy, and Romik does not underestimate the size of the task ahead. Convincing the traditional poker playing population to support a game where winning a pot might actually mean losing chips is likely to take some doing. However, Romik remains optimistic and already has plans to run duplicate poker tournaments in live venues and even on television to help educate an audience for the game.

But the difficult online gambling legal environment in the States is a strong argument for a game dependent more on skill than luck, and Romik thinks this could be a major factor influencing market acceptance.

"Maybe [Internet poker rooms] will dry out and the players will come to us," he says. "We are just a normal game of skill, so maybe it will work out even better for us."