Team Titan’s Marvin Rettenmaier is featured in the March 2012 edition of Togel Magazine. The popular poker magazine boldly declares “Mad Marvin Rettenmaier Conquers Europe” on its cover, and headlines its in-depth interview with him by stating that Mad Marvin is “hell bent on card player glory.”
Teammate Sam Trickett has frequently appeared on the covers of poker magazines but this is Mad Marvin’s most prominent appearance.
In its article, CardPlayer deals with Marvin’s attempts to win the title of CardPlayer 2011 Player of the Year (POY). That was why Marvin spent “all of last year hopping from tournament to tournament, grinding extremely long hours at the live felt.”
“I really made it my goal to win this ranking before the year had even started, which is kind of a weird goal. I mean other people try to win money and stuff, but I just wanted to win this ranking,” Marvin tells the magazine.
At year’s end, however, Marvin was ranked fourth on the CardPlayer POY leaderboard, behind Ben Lamb, Chris Moorman, and Oleksii Kovalchuk.
“I tried my best and I am proud that I managed to keep up with all the stress I went through last year,” Marvin says. “And if I would have binked one more of those deep runs I had I could have won it as well!”
Marvin is very positive about the year ahead, stating, “I’m looking forward to a great year ahead. I really feel that this is going to be my year. I will try to have a better work-life balance, play destinations where I have more than poker, not play tired anymore and therefore play my absolute A-game a lot more often.”
Marvin finishes his interview with CardPlayer by stating, “I would really like to win a major tournament, maybe a bracelet this summer, and I’m very confident in my game. I’ve been in so many spots where I was very close to it, so I feel like it’s only a matter of time.”
Bodog Website Seized, Founder Indicted
On February 27th, the United States District Court in Maryland issued a warrant for the seizure of the bodog.com domain, stating that this website had served as an “illegal gambling business” in violation of American laws. Yesterday, the indictment of Calvin Ayre, founder of Bodog, and three other Canadians by a federal grand jury was unsealed. The actions against Bodog come less than a year after the American government took similar actions against PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker.
Bodog had already closed its websites to American customers and moved operations to domains such as bodog.eu and bodog.co.uk in order to avoid this sort of legal action. Arye responded to the domain seizure by saying, “The brand left the market last year and the domain in question has been dormant globally for longer than that. We are only currently doing brand licensing deals outside the U.S. so this domain had no place in any of our current plans.”
“Bodog UK, Bodog Europe and Bodog Asia have never taken bets from the U.S.,” Ayre said in a statement.
Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein announced the actions against Bodog, stating that “Sports betting is illegal in Maryland, and federal law prohibits bookmakers from flouting that law simply because they are located outside the country.”
The indictment charges Bodog Entertainment Group S.A., Calvin Ayre, James Phillip, David Ferguson, and Derrick Maloney with violations of the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA), and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Baltimore said arrest warrants had been issued for the four.
In December 2011, Bodog rebranded its remaining American operations under the name Bovada. Ayre said that the Bodog.com domain has not been in use since operations were switched to Bodog.eu that month.
“I see this as abuse of the U.S. criminal justice system for the commercial gain of large U.S. corporations,” Ayre said of the legal actions. “It is clear that the online gaming industry is legal under international law and in the case of these documents is it also clear that the rule of law was not allowed to slow down a rush to try to win the war of public opinion.”
