Gambling911.com Hires Veteran Gaming Writer
Gambling911.com is pleased to announce the hiring of veteran gaming writer Tom Somach.
Somach has covered gambling for more than a decade and has written for numerous print and online publications.
Among others, he has written about gambling for the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times Syndicate, the Edmonton Journal and the Las Vegas Sporting News, as well as websites Poker Helper (www.pokerhelper.com), Compatible Poker (www.compatiblepoker.com), Rolling Good Times (www.rgtonline.com) and Bettors World (www.bettorsworld.com).
Among the topics he has covered are poker, sports betting, Internet gambling, the casino industry and Las Vegas.
Before he started covering gambling, Somach, who's been a journalist for over 30 years, worked for several newspapers in Pennsyvlania and Massachusetts, covering at various times crime, education, government, politics, business, sports and entertainment.
He won a prestigious journalism award, the Keystone Press Award, in 1991, while working at the Bethlehem Globe-Times in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA, for his reporting on a fatal fire at the Hotel Bethlehem that killed several people.
He was also honored by the Associated Press for his assistance to the wire service in its coverage of the fire.
While working for the Las Vegas Sporting News, Somach for several years wrote the LVSN Watchdog column, an action line-type consumer column for gamblers who've been ripped off by crooked Internet and offshore sportsbooks, handicappers and other gambling entities.
For example, when sports bettors won monies from sportsbooks and the books refused to pay, Somach would expose the crooked books in his column and that would usually get them to pay up.
Sometimes just the threat of being exposed by Somach was enough to get the scam sportsbooks to come up with the money they owed.
In four years writing the LVSN Watchdog column, from 1998-2001, Somach recovered more than a half a million dollars for winning bettors who were stiffed by crooked online or offshore sportsbooks.
Somach is also a radio producer and broadcaster, having produced and/or co-hosted several gambling-oriented national radio shows for the Business Talk Radio Network, an American radio network of about 200 radio stations.
Among those shows was "Poker Night," a weekly one-hour radio show he produced and Los Angeles sportscaster Fred Wallin hosted in 2004 that was the USA's only weekly national radio show about poker.
Among the stories he wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle was one about the efforts to legalize Internet gambling, which can be viewed at online here
For Poker Helper, Somach broke the world exclusive scoop that former U.S. Senator Al D'Amato would head the top lobby group looking to legalize online poker, and that story can be viewed at online here.
Gambling 911 readers may already be familiar with Somach's work. Gambling 911, which picks up news stories from other news sources, as well as posting its own original news stories, has occasionally picked up stories Somach has written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Poker Helper.
We are thrilled to welcome Mr. Somach to our family.
