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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This is a quickie but a goodie.  I realised one thing we didn’t cover when we took a look at calculating poker pot odds and our discussion of implied odds earlier was simply what percentage we had of making our hand depending on the number of outs in the deck.  Remember that ‘out’s are cards in a deck that make our hand.  For example, if we are on a heart flush draw with two hearts on the flop, we typically have 9 outs (nine heart cards still left in the deck that make our five heart flush). 

Now, we did take a look at one easy way to calculate our pot odds, but if you kick ass at counting how many outs you have, it also pays to commit to memory the percentage likelihood of hitting our hand depending on our number of outs. 

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Ok…this post doesn’t have all that much to do with poker but I’ll get around to our favourite topic anyway.  Anyone have ninemsn.com as their default home page?  I’ve been sitting here today browsing the headlines as I am want to do whilst procrastinating about work, and the only thing that comes to mind is WTF?!?

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The Aussie Millions has come to an end for 2009.  It was a particularly exciting year for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that a good mate made an impressive run, finishing a very respectable 29th and cashing for a cool 40k…you’re a champ Leo.  Another was that the title was finally taken down by an Aussie. 

Our group has had our inspiration inflamed by our friends finishing tally and our home game series, which will see at least one of us complete in next years main event, kicked off last night.

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If you’ve spent any time at all playing poker online one of the things you will have learned to pay attention to (or block out competely depending on the situation) is table chatter.  Often it can be harmless banter, but often it gets personal, but there’s nothing more boring than profanity censored rants which really do nothing more than make the aggreived player look like a twat.  Recently though,  I’ve been privvy to a couple of decent little poker sayings and come backs, so I’ve documented them as best I can remember.  Playing poker well is one thing, having the mouth to go with it can be a thing of beaty.

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You know you’re a poker junkie when…

1. Every time you see a map reference like K 10 you instantly equate it with a group 6 Sklansky starting hand.
2. You know the full name and moniker as well as every major tournament achievement of your favourite player, but are only vaguely aware that your first child was born ’some time in February a couple of years back’.
3. You spend more time browsing the two-plus-two forum and pocket fives site than surfing for porn. Read the rest of this entry

One of my best friends father was a chronic alcoholic. It was a serious and debilitating disease which ultimately took his family away from him, and then later him from them. I start this post with a slightly downbeat tone because it ties in with one of the morals of the story, namely that no matter how bad things can be, they could always be worse, and a frame of reference can help give us perspective. Ok…enough serious stuff.

So how does my mate’s dad liking a mid morning nip relate to poker I hear you say? Well, on a much smaller scale and on the frame of reference of poker alone, there is an equally debilitating disease which, much like an addiction, can be an unwanted influence on our health. By health I mean the size of our bankroll, and I am of course talking about tilt.

I used to tilt. I used to tilt a lot.
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It’s here, it’s started, and the bloodletting has already begun at this years Aussie Millions 2009 Main Event. If you’re a pro or spectator from the States or UK the prospect of a 2 million guaranteed first prize tournament might not warrant a gruelling 23 hour plane trip. It is, afterall, one big buy in event in a Country far far away. But for we skips down under, it’s the biggest event in town, and even though the official numbers are expected to drop from last years entrants, the Aussie Millions has still managed to yield a star studded field.

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Is this all leading somewhere? Yeah, at the end of this post you’ll find our favourite Michelle moment where she gets pwned by Norman Chad. But in the mean time, take a look at some of the other (less than) memorable moments in the following video clips.
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