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After numerous complaints by poker players and poker industry leaders, most notably Tony G threatening the Aldernay Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) with a lawsuit, the AGCC has authorized an independent review into the regulatory agency’s handling of Full Tilt Poker over the past year.

The AGCC released a statement on Wednesday detailing the review process, which will be headed by former Chairman of the British Gambling Commission, Peter Dean, and at the same time the AGCC denied any wrongdoing, “We believe we acted appropriately and fairly at all times…”

Dean will have until the end of March to report his findings, and we can only hope that the AGCC fully cooperates with the investigation –I’m extremely curious to see what type of correspondence took place between the AGCC and Full Tilt Poker in the months before and after Black Friday.

Here is a look at the full statement released by the AGCC on the independent review:

“As soon as we became aware that there were possible irregularities in relation to FTP’s operational integrity AGCC acted to discharge fully our statutory obligations.” said AGCC Executive Director André Wilsenach.

“We believe we acted appropriately and fairly at all times but, following our own internal assessment and the inevitable questions that have been raised by third parties, the Commission decided that it is in the best interests of players, licence holders and AGCC itself to commission an independent review and to make the outcome public.

“I am delighted that Peter Dean has agreed to conduct the review. He has many years of experience at the top of the British Gambling Commission and commands wide respect from operators and regulators alike. He has been asked to review fully the actions taken by AGCC in respect of FTP and to focus specifically on the appropriateness, timeliness and fairness of those actions.”

In a story made more dramatic than it actually is, a website called HHSmithy.com released a video detailing how players (with quite a bit of effort and expertise) can get around the new Anonymous Tables feature at Bodog and run tracking software such as PokerTracker and Holdem Manager.

In the video there is also a throw-away line about the “potential” for a security leak from this information, but it would appear no more viable than knowing a person’s screen-name, as you would at virtually every other online poker room. Here is a look at the video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctd9SJz_igw&feature=player_embedded

In response to the video, and the small uproar created in its wake, Bodog responded to customer inquiries via E-Mail:

Thank you for contacting Bodog Poker Customer Service.

It’s very understandable if our players are very concerned about the security of their accounts because of this video that has been posted on the Internet but we are assuring all of our players that all your account information is secured. We are aware of this video and we are investigating looking into this.

As per the anonymity of our poker tables, for the vast majority of our players, they will not know who they are playing against as they can’t see a screen name or account number while at the tables; however, if someone wants to and has the technical skills to develop the software you saw on the forum they are able to — we are confident this will only be pursued in very isolated cases between now and a future upgrade which will prevent it from working.

If you are worried about the security of your account, having access to an account number is similar to having a screen name in the past. You still must have a password or the answers to your private security questions in order to access any personal or banking information.

A second video has been promised by the site HHSmithy.com in the coming days further explaining the security leak they claim to have exposed. My guess is Bodog will have a new update in the very near future that will further thwart these data-mining efforts.

The final table of the £2,500 buy-in Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT) Grand Final featured an uneven field of nine players from the UK and a lone German, Fabian Quoss. Stacking the odds even further against Quoss was the inclusion of three of the UK’s top players in the forms of Triple Crown winner Jake Cody, long-time poker pro John Gale, and James Mitchell.

But, when all was said and done, it was the German Quoss who would lift the GUKPT trophy over his head in victory, after a hard-fought heads-up battle with the talented Jake Cody, who recently signed with PKR Poker.

1. Fabian Quoss (Germany) – £138,750
2. Jake Cody (UK) – £96,300
3. Lalit Khajuria (UK) – £59,700
4. Alex Elias (UK) – £36,550
5. James Mitchell (UK) – £28,050
6. Tamer Kamel (UK) – £23,150
7. John Gale (UK) – £18,300
8. Nathan Watson (UK) – £13,400
9. Jonas Ovestad (UK) – £9,750
10. Jonathan Beck (UK) – £8,550

The GUKPT will be back in action this January, when the tour kicks of its 2012 season (which will mark the sixth season of the GUKPT) with a stop in Manchester, from the 23^rd – 29^th of January, 2012.

Winners during Season 5 of the GUKPT included Sky Poker Pro Julian Thew (who picked up his record setting third GUKPT title during the 2011 GUKPT season), Andrew Peters, Charles Chattha, Alan Mansbridge, Hendon Mobber and UK poker legend Praz Bansi, and Peter McAdams.

Jesper Hougaard may not be the most well-known Danish poker pro who shaves his head (that distinction goes to Gus Hansen) but his resume is quickly growing to legendary proportions, which likely prompted the online poker room Bet24 to sign the rising poker superstar.

Hougaard has the distinction of being the first player to win bracelets at both the World Series of Poker (2008) and the World Series of Poker Europe (2009) as well as being amongst the very select group of players who have won multiple Sunday Million tournaments at PokerStars, where he played under the name “kipster”. Some of his other accomplishments include three cashes in four years in the World Series of Poker Main Event including a 108^th place finish in 2010.

What makes his tournament success all the more impressive is that Hougaard is mainly a PLO cash-game player. When asked about his signing with Bet24 Hougaard had this to say: “I’m very excited to be signed by Bet24.com and I’m sure that with me as team captain Bet24 I can be a great ambassador to makeBet24.com the leading betting company and the natural choice for poker players in Denmark after the legislation. It feels very good to be on the winning team,”

With over $1 million in live tournament winnings, a similar number on online tournament winnings, and an impressive cash-game record, it’s plain to see why Hougaard is considered one of the top European poker players in today’s game.

With the news earlier this week that Bodog had switched their entire poker client to Anonymous Tables (basically making the site go dark to all data-mining sites and data-mining software) the first poker network to introduce Anonymous Tables in October of 2010, Microgaming, announced they would be expanding the number of Anonymous Tables offered just a few days later, according to PokerStrategy.com.

Microgaming’s Anonymous Tables can now be found in just about every Holdem game and at every stakes the site offers, and ALL of the network’s Heads-Up No Limit Holdem Tables will now be Anonymous. Along with Bodog (Party Poker has also offered a small number of Anonymous tables since November of 2010) Microgaming is leading the charge to eliminate data-mining from the game, giving recreational players a chance to play on equal footing from an information standpoint.

The questions revolving around Anonymous Tables has always been that they create a friendly environment for colluders and poker bot users (since players cannot discover suspicious play by poring over databases and comparing the play between certain individuals). While most of the poker world would gladly make the trade-off of fairness for the addition of a few more cheaters in our midst, this is something we will have to keep a close eye on, and we will have to wait and see if Microgaming (as well as Bodog) has devised any safeguards that will help them identify these nefarious activities.