2011 Word Series of Poker

I love Australia. It’s a sick good country to live in. We have sunshine, beaches, great people, a relaxed view on life, and a quasi-religious dedication to the cathartic benefits of beer and bbq. There’s only one minor issue with living on a big assed island in hemishphere south that arises around about this time each year…we are ****en miles away from Las Vegas!

Fortunately, this year we’ve actually managed to get our act together, and with the help of the good crews of Qantas, will be hitting LV right in time for the start of the WSOP 2011. AWWWWWWWW YEAAAAAH!
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Texas Hold`Em is incredibly popular and a wealth of information is available to help the novice. Whilst great if you are a new player, the downside is that games become more and more difficult as the standard of players increase. Since you can only win a game by getting someone else to make a mistake, if the other players are well versed in strategy it can become very hard to make a profit.

As a result, many players look for other games to play. Switching to Omaha high Low is a good option as the concepts are similar and many of the people playing Omaha do not have a solid understanding of the game. Many treat Omaha like a game of Hold`Em and overplay hands that, in reality, they should not even be playing to start with.

In Omaha High Low you are given four cards rather than two and if you don`t get lucky with the best five card hand you can win 50% of the pot with a low hand where all five of your cards have a value lower than an 8.

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The 2010 WSOP Main Event November Nine have made their way through several gruelling days of poker and are ready to resume their seats come the 6th November. Our final table runners are:

Seat 1: Jason Senti (7,625,000)
Seat 2: Joseph Cheong (23,525,000)
Seat 3: John Dolan (46,250,000)
Seat 4: Jonathan Duhamel (65,975,000)
Seat 5: Michael Mizrachi (14,450,000)
Seat 6: Matthew Jarvis (16,700,000)
Seat 7: John Racener (19,050,000)
Seat 8: Filippo Candio (16,400,000)
Seat 9: Soi Nguyen (9,650,000)

Payouts from the $42M ME purse will be as follows:
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If you’ve spent anytime foraging around the online poker community of late, you might have noticed the number of disgruntled or disillusioned players of online poker stating that the ‘games are dead’. Even if you’ve only stuck your head in the twoplustwo forums for a minute or two you’ll see people go so far as to joke that ‘there’s no money in $2NL, everyone’s solid’.

Whilst its fair to assume the standard of play at micro-limits is still pretty bad, the real message behind those sorts of wry sentiments is that making significant money at poker is harder than ever. Is it true?
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In case you haven’t been keeping tabs on the winners of the 2010 WSOP Event Winners, you can find all the details below. This years world series is drawing to a close with the $10,000 No Limit Hold Em Championship underway, with nine days of play culminating with the November Nine, set to resume on the 1st November.

There’s been a healthy scattering of pro’s amongst the bracelet winners this year, with a notable near miss from Tom Dwan, who narrowly missed out on securing a bracelet and a myriad of prop bets which Durrrr has said would have netted him the single biggest payday of his career.

Here are the results:
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Just in case you missed it, Phil Ivey wins his eighth bracelet in the WSOP 2010 Event #37 $3k HORSE event, making him level pegging in the bracelet race with Seidel, and kicking his live tournament winnings to over $13,000,000.  Sick!

Having waded through a 478 strong field, only Bill Chen stood between Ivey and that coveted 8th bracelet.  Playing Razz, Ivey made a 65 wheel and took the event down.

The $329,840 payout for first is nothing to sniff at but no doubt Ivey’s made substantial gains on bracelet prop bets.  Here’s the video of the winning hand.

Proving once and for all that he can take degeneracy to new levels, the Phil Laak Poker Endurance Challenge has not only broken its 108th hour as at the time of writing, but has well and truly crushed the previous Guinness World Record of 78 hours, 25 minutes and 45 seconds held by Paul Zimbler.  What’s Laak been doing for the last four odd days?  Playing poker obv.

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Its that time again, where decency gives way to degeneracy and thousands of would be punter hero’s put their money where their mouths are and pony up the cash to wage war on the felt.  The World Series of Poker 2010 has begun.  From the Rio Casino and Hotel, five events have already seen bracelets deposited on the arms of the winning players, and the race for contention for the 2010 Player of the Year is also underway. The World Series is a time where past beats can be forgotten, new strategies unveiled, and long standing dreams become a reality.

If 2009 was the Year of the Pro its going to be interesting to see how well the regulars fare against the sea of newcommers or part timers looking to rake in their own piece of the action.  Quality of quantity, skill or luck, gamble or grind.

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Seems having the first name Brian might be an advantage against Ilsidur1.  We’ve only been railing this match for half an hour or so, where Full Tilt Pro Brian Townsend is going toe to toe with Isildur1 across 4 tables of 300/600 PL Omaha. 

This match is sicker than a 150 pound teenager after a slab of beer and a shady prawn cocktail.

Here’s some of the bigger hands thus far.  As at the time of writing, Isildur1 looks to be about $300k down, which isn’t saying much, considering he was $650k down ten minutes ago. The Isildur1 and townsend rematch is heating up.
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As a poker player you’d pretty much have to have been living under a rock not to have heard the whispers of anticipation over Isildur1 escalate into a montage of jubilant cries, excited exclamations and gut wrenching groans as Full Tilt Poker railbirds across the globe lie privvy to this online phenom’s rollercoaster ride of urban legend heaters and soul crushing beats. 

Up $5 million one day, busto the next, it seems Isildur1 is well and truly back in the saddle and is set on either leaving those who face him on the felt broken and littered behind him as he cuts a swarthe through his opponents…or making them hundreds of thousands better off.  The decision isn’t yet out on which way Isildur1′s variance will run in this second round of explosive online action.

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Gratz to Tyron Krost, the 2010 Aussie Millions winner, and fellow skip.  Nice work keeping the title on home soil .  There were less runners than anticipated with only 746 players taking the felt over the first 3 levels of Day 1.  At only 23, Krost has added a significant $2M AUD payday to his hip pocket.

Other notables at the final table were Sorel Mizzy and Annette Obrestad, who were both forced to succumb to Krost at the final table.

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Well, Day 1a of event 1 in the 2010 Aussie Millions started yesterday and Day 1b is currently in progress.  We had a fun lead up to this years Millions and wrapped up our Golden Ticket tournament.  Our mate who managed 29th in last years Millions took down the mantle and the honour of representing the group this year.  The best player certainly won, with a good show by second who was only a few points behind.  Both are playing today so I wish them the best of luck.

Yours truly only managed a third in the Golden Ticket tourney, which earned me a phase 2 to the Main Event.  I’ve turned that into a phase 3 ticket which I’m hoping to make use of in the next few days, and am likely to make a few more runs through the satellites if time permits.

With 327 runners in Day 1a and 310 in Day 1b, with the new repecharge rules, expectations are high that the prize pool will top a Million dollars.  Not too shabby.  I hope the lads can put in a good show.

Big things all round this week with the breaking news that Full Tilt Poker have finally signed Tom “Durrrr” Dwan as a Red Pro, further elevating the stable of players aligning themselves with the online poker behemoth.  Online forums have practically reverberated with speculation of late as to when Tom Dwan joins Full Tilt and what deal would be struck in the process.

The site held an official press conference yesterday which was attended and introduced by Howard Lederer, who was joined by Full Tilt Pro’s Patrik Antonius and Chris Ferguson, and of course Dwan himself.

A regular at the Full Tilt tables, Dwan will now be sporting the Red Pro status and will no doubt be suitably plastered with FTP paraphernalia when playing live.  As Dwan has largely become synonymous with Full Tilt Poker’s nosebleed stakes, the match seems a good one.

Here’s the press conference:

Congratulations to Joe “The Kid” Cada for winning the 2009 WSOP Main Event!

Outlasting 6493 competitors, the kid with the freakish nose has taken down the biggest event in poker, with heads up play between Cada and Darvin Moon lasting 87 hands. Just eight days prior to his 22nd birthday, Cada is also now the youngest player to win the Main Event.

For those on Team Ivey it was a disappointing finish to yet another impressively deep run by arguably the best in the business.

Cada was the only man able to finish the dream run of Moon, who despite his self proclaimed good luck also showed significant poker smarts for a guy who was ‘new at this’ (at least until he hit the final table).

We’re sure we’re not the only ones already looking forward to next years Main Event.

Here are the official standings and payout:

$ 8,547,042      Joseph Cada
$ 5,182,928      Darvin Moon
$ 3,479,670      Antoine Saout
$ 2,502,890      Eric Buchman
$ 1,953,452      Jeff Shulman
$ 1,587,160      Steven Begleiter
$ 1,404,014      Phil Ivey
$ 1,300,231      Kevin Schaffel
$ 1,263,602      James Akenhead

Its been done before – hell, its even been done well…but if the recent murmurings on 2+2′s BBV forum are anything to go by, no one’s going to be complaining if we throw in our two cents worth and post our own 10 Hottest Women of Poker 2009.

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The game of poker is a game that is won by good decisions made at the right time.  There is no clear cut winning poker tournament formula.  But, there are poker tournament tips that can serve to guide any poker player in winning a tournament.  Playing a poker cash game is entirely different from playing in a tournament.  The ultimate goal in playing in a tournament is to win all the chips in play.  A more aggressive poker tournament formula is necessary to implement as part of poker tournament tips that could result in major winnings on the table.

At the end of this article I’ll direct you to what I have found to be some of the  best poker tournament formula to be found in books.  I generally advocate poker training sites as being preferable to texts, but these are stand out publications that are basically a must read for tournament players.

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Guest Author: Grant Kennedy

Taking a bad beat in poker can be a really frustrating thing.  A bad beat, in poker parlance, is losing a hand that is initially thought of as a winning hand.  This often happens for example when someone who has a hand of a pair of aces or any suited cards continues through the betting rounds upping the ante every time only to lose to a player who simply gets lucky when making an improbable draw or hitting a miracle card.  Poker bad beats such as this happens all the time, is part of variance, and is considered to be a normal occurrence that any good poker player should know how to accept.  Not all good hands result in winning the pot, good hands also result in poker bad beats.

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Turbo poker tournaments have gained immense popularity of late, especially on the World Wide Web and online poker sites. Almost all major online rooms provide a good combination of turbo, super turbo as well as extreme or hyper turbo poker games. In this article, we will focus on the basic Turbo poker tournament strategy in its’ various stages.

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Press Release

Online skill development site PokerVT.com adds Jon “PearlJammer” Turner to
current roster of online pros

LAS VEGAS, Sept 22, 2009 – Online, he’s known as PearlJammer. Off-line, this poker champ goes by the name Jon Turner – a name that’s just been added to the roster of online poker pros at virtual poker training site PokerVT.

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Just an interesting little tidbit which has reared its head this morning.  Apparently PokerStars has been experiencing a software glitch that enables players to accept the ‘rematch’ option after playing a heads up SNG…even if they don’t have enough cash in their account to foot the buy in.

Predictably, this has resulted in players with well off friends taking advantage of the glitch and fleecing this online poker bohemoth for thousands in short order.

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Despite its propensity for higher variance, heads up poker is increasing in popularity in both ring games and sit n go’s.  Its diversity from other forms of poker necessitates a different style of play, and we’re now going to take a look at some effective strategies for 4 man heads up sit n gos.

As most 4 man HU SnG’s involve a flat payout to the winner, clearly that’s our goal.  Getting there usually requires a combination of understanding the general concepts behind winning heads up play, and being prepared to be adaptable to ensure we’re playing optimum poker irrespective of the style of our opposition.

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After having just extolled the virtues of bankroll management it seems only appropriate that we now focus on a young Australian who is renowned for exercising little to none of this very discipline…which hasn’t stopped him from tearing up some of the highest online stakes for PLO.

Playing as “KaiBuxxe” on Full Tilt and “RealAndyBeal” on Stars, this former Magic the Gathering guru has rapidly moved from $25/50 to the nosebleed stakes with a loose aggressive style, and recently found some footing…or did he?  Here’s what Pokernews.com had to say about it.

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Poker bankroll management.  Dirty words for some, and the foundation of winning poker for others.  If you’ve ever been busto and were foolish enough to complain about it, chances are you’ll have had at least one person provide an unsympathetic response and helpfully point out that if you had just exercised some proper bankroll management you wouldn’t be feeling like a broke degen.

These are usually the same people with the discipline to ascribe to the Ferguson bankroll management school of thought, and the ones I most want to beat with an empty trash can after monkey tilting off my entire roll to some inbred who rivered two outters three hands running and plonked ‘ty’ in the chat box.

Unfortunately…they are right (our bankroll nit friends that is, not the douchebag who just fleaced us for our stack).

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Well, I’ve seen out this years World Series of Poker in relative blog silence but have enjoyed the coverage offered by the crews at WickedChops and PokerNews.  Being downunder its not quite as easy as jumping on a flight for a few hours (twenty maybe) and being in the middle of the action.  Still, it looked to be an interesting series and I’m suitably jealous of those at ground zero.

It looked a sick run for some of the pro’s this year, not the least of which was Mr. Phil Ivey himself, and its brilliant to see a final table with a home name pro in the thick of it.

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It’s been a while…and that’s not just the title of a good song (hell of a song actually, better DL it on iTunes while I bat this out).  Nope, my fingers, a keyboard and poker haven’t made a collective gasp in almost a month.  Had I lost inspiration?  Suffered a stroke inducing bad beat playing heads up 4 rollz and given up poker?  Absconded with half a million in corporate trust funds? 

Nup…But here’s what I have been doing.

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