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Patrik Antonius capped off a miserable day at the online tables with another losing session in the "durrrr" Challenge, his tenth in their last eleven meetings. Antonius and Tom "durrrr" Dwan met for only a bit over an hour and 364 hands, but the......

Basketball players and poker seem to be going hand in hand these days, Florida is working on getting online poker legal in the state, and a new couple alert; it's all in tonight's Nightly Turbo....

Basketball players and poker seem to be going hand in hand these days, Florida is working on getting online poker legal in the state, and a new couple alert; it's all in tonight's Nightly Turbo....

One of the biggest mistakes you see beginning players make is to habitually slow play big hands. The logic behind this is pretty simple, with players immediately thinking that a trap will be the best way to win a big pot, and they set about their tas...

In tonight's Nightly Turbo we're bringing you news on betting odds for this weekend's NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, the scoop on a charity poker tournament, and more....

One of the most common bad beat stories you will ever hear tends to have the words: 'I was sure he had me beat, but I had to call with my set/straight/flush/full house'. This phrase points to one of the hardest features of poker, and one whic...

One of the most obvious leaks you see amongst weak big bet players is a failure to think about a hand in the context of all of its streets. As in big bet games you can adjust the size of your bets, it gives you the invaluable tool of being able to fo...

One of the interesting features of poker is that how players run directly affects the information you give out - and receive from - your opponents. This is because the strength of the hands you are hitting drastically changes the amount of knowledge...

Lou Krieger is one of the most prolific and well-regarded poker authors around, having written or co-written 11 different books on poker and gambling as well as numerous columns for various publications over the last two decades. Krieger is also the...

Beginner players often seem to completely fail to understand this point, both in terms of making betting mistakes themselves, as well as failing to change their calling frequency when confronted with it. The point is a very simple one, and one that i...

It took roughly eight hours for the 24 players who started Day 4 of the PokerStars.net North American Poker Tour Main Event to play down to the eight-handed final table. The player who played the most fearless poker throughout the day was Sam......

It was a record setting Sunday on PokerStars as the Sunday Million reached an all-time high in number entrants and its prize pool. As part of their 40 billionth hand celebration and the 4th anniversary of the Sunday Million, a guaranteed $4......

Three eight-handed tables returned to the Radisson ballroom today; only one would remain by the end of the day. Following a long nine-handed slump in eliminations, the decision was made to return tomorrow with nine players instead of the official......

888 Poker is giving you 8 ways to win one of 88 packages to the 2010 World Series of Poker**!

How will you win your seat?

• Persistence Pays: Rake the most hands
• Race Your Way: Earn the most status points
• Bring Your Buddies: Refer as......

Wednesday marked the sixth and final heat of the PartyPoker Premier League IV, with all the players still mathematically in contention for a spot at the six-handed final table. In a day that could have doubled as a circus side-show, Daniel......

At all but the highest limits, you always have a genre of player who basically never bluff. They sit back, wait for big hands, and get steadily paid off by the very weak players. They make much less money than good observant players, due to the fact...

Unless you are lucky enough to be a poker professional you will have the unfortunate task of having to juggle your budding poker career with your nine-to-five job.

You probably grind tens of thousands of hands each month hoping to one day wi...

Although paired boards also tend to slow the action somewhat in Hold'em, in Pot Limit Omaha the action fundamentally changes when the board pairs.

This is simply because Omaha is a game where the big hands are usually out there, and paire...

Late Saturday night, Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Patrik Antonius played a blink-and-you'll-miss-it session of the "durrrr" Challenge spanning only 79 hands. After four-tabling for only 16 minutes, Dwan came away a winner, adding $21,790 to his lead......

I was recently watching a beginning poker player friend of mine play a few sit and goes with the aim of me giving them some tips on their play after the session. Like most things in poker, I quickly saw a leak in their game which seemed completely ob...

If you watch mid and high stakes hold'em games, you will quickly see that there is a great deal of pre flop raising and re-raising.

These players are fully aware that they are in a bloody war of attrition for the blinds, and are constantly...

It was dinner break at the Rio. I was helping cover the final table of one of the preliminary bracelet events at the World Series of Poker a couple of summers ago, and was spending the down time eating a sandwich by my laptop. While the players wer...

Previously, PokerNews introduced the first half of the most memorable hands from GSN's famed High Stakes Poker, which can be found here. We're back to finish out the list with the remaining six and reveal the number one most memorable hand from......

Tonight's Nightly Turbo is bringing you the skinny on Tony G being an environmentalist, PokerStars' celebration of their 40 billionth hand, and a raid on an Alabama poker game.

In Case You Missed It

The sixth season of High Stakes Poker is......

With very little high-stakes cash game action running last night, Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Patrik Antonius sat down for a nearly three-hour session of the "durrrr" Challenge. After 883 hands of play, Dwan booked yet another win, adding $314,828 to......

After a great start to the year at the Omaha tables my poker playing has essentially dried up and I simply haven't played over the past week or so. Well that's a lie as I've probably played around 1,000 hands but in the grand scheme of th...

"Is it going to be the 'year of Annette' at this year's World Series of Poker?"

That was a question posed by host Scott Huff on last week's episode of The Poker Beat, recently singled out as winner of the 2009 Bluff Ma...

For the second time in 24 hours, Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Patrik Antonius found time for a "durrrr" Challenge session. The two played for three hours and 18 minutes during the early hours of Friday morning and after 892 hands, Dwan booked his third......

Ending a 36-day drought of “durrrr” Challenge sessions, Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Patrik Antonius met on the virtual felt early Thursday morning for 1,256 hands of $200/$400 pot-limit Omaha. Playing for a bit over four hours, Dwan managed to overcome....

During his tenure as Commissioner of the World Series of Poker, Jeffrey Pollack frequently referred to Harrah's ongoing effort to improve the world's largest and most prestigious series of poker tournaments. Often Pollack would use the word...

Pot limit Omaha is arguably the most action packed and exciting poker game out there. Due to being similar to hold'em, except played with four cards and a pot limit structure, it creates many more hand combinations and extremely wild swings. It i...

One of the key mistakes weak poker players make is to not understand how a player's range changes during a hand, and this can lead them to make huge mistakes in his hands, simply because they do not understand the difference between a players ran...

My Pot-limit Omaha experiment has been going pretty damn well, and I've so far logged around 5,000 hands and am showing a decent profit. However, I now have no records of my accomplishments after buggering up my Holdem Manager database.
...

Poker has never been more popular, and one consequence of its growing popularity is an increasing number of women playing the game. As Barbara Connors notes in her essay "Power Play," appearing in the collection Women's Poker Night (edit...

There are a handful of players who have affected poker as players and as businessmen, but few have had the impact of Australian Tony G. Having amassed over $4 million in live-tournament winnings and who-knows-how-much from some of Russia's......

Although picking when, where, and why to bluff is a complex science, one thing that should always be at the back of your mind is some kind of escape route. Be it a gutshot straight draw on the turn, or a double back door flush draw on the flop in Oma...

Some poker players seem to avoid playing all but the very best hands, seeming to think that any marginal hand must have the plague. They wait and wait, hoping to pick up that big hand and win a big pot for their trouble.

These players can be...

Yesterday, I was trying to explain basic hand values to a friend of mine who has recently turned her attention to poker. I started off with what I thought was the simplest comparison in poker - pocket twos against ace king - the classic race scenario...

One of the key mistakes you see some of even the best players make is to start bluffing with marginal hands. This is particularly noticeable in limit hold'em, where you will frequently see players bluffing parts of their ranges which they really...

Do any of you remember the old Yorkshire Pudding? The one who used to say he was going to play XXX hands of XXX and then within a week or two had completely changed his mind and moved onto the next challenge? Well he's dead and a new Yorky Puds h...

We gravitate toward poker -- we love poker -- for a variety of reasons. One reason why many of us enjoy the game so much is for the stories it produces. As it happens, some of us play poker well, and some of us tell stories well. And then there ar...

One of things that makes heads up poker such a complex and skilful game is that for the most part, you have to be trusting your instincts and making constant marginal plays in order to be successful. Heads up you have to play more hands than in any o...

The term 'implied odds' simply refers to the possible money we could win later on in a hand. The reason we call a raise with a suited connector in hold'em for example, is not because we believe we have the best hand now (which we basicall...

In between the two polar opposites of hands in poker, those of the very strongest hands and the very weakest hands, exist a large number of marginal hands. The best players make most of their money through how they play the marginal hands (after all,...

Ten years ago we all woke up hoping that when we turned on our computers they would still function. Oh, and also, that the world hadn't ended.

Thankfully most all of those apocalyptic "Y2K"-related fears turned out to be unfound...

One of the most useful plays at the low and mid stakes is making the odd well timed lead into a pre flop raiser. Weak players - particularly weak loose players - often really struggle to deal with players leading into them after they have raised pre...

It's that time of year. No, I'm not referring to the giving of gifts, the singing of songs, or whatever other activities you might first associate with the winter holiday season. I'm referring to that custom we seem unable to resist whe...

With the high-stakes online cash game action at a crawl, Patrik Antonius and Tom “durrrr” Dwan were left to face each other for another session in their now ten-month old “durrrr” Challenge match. Logging in close to 2,000 hands over a seven-hour....

Mike Kosowski, a 53-year old from Staten Island, New York defied the odds to eventually defeat Daniel Negreanu heads-up to win a cool $1,000,000....

Poker is a game where the successful player is effectively just making fewer mistakes than their opponent. People often think of the big, fancy moves in poker as the route to success, but in reality the cutting out of mistakes is much more important....

"Isildur1" has been silent and anonymous since he broke into the high-stakes games on Full Tilt Poker back in October. Since then, he has been on a wild ride, filled with million-dollar swings that saw both the largest online poker hand ever......

One year ago, the record for the largest online poker pot ever played belonged to Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Di “Urindanger” Dang for the $723,938 pot Dang won in a six-handed $500/1,000 no-limit hold’em game on October 26, 2008. Since then, that rec...

The term 'cooler' simply refers to a situation where two hands run into each other that are both so powerful that neither can fold. Running kings into aces, getting shown oversets, or getting beaten by higher flushes are all good examples of...

Those who play and/or follow poker might have had reason to pick up one or more of Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling books before. Born in the U.K., raised in Canada, and now residing in New York City, the award-winning journalist has a real knack...

With the recent explosion of high-stakes online poker action, resulting in huge million-dollar swings, the question must be asked: how high is too high? Clearly only a handful of players are capable of even sitting down in these games, let......

Within the last 72 hours, online poker phenom “Isildur1” dug himself out of a $3.1 million hole, only to lose $4.2 million to Brian Hastings in under 3,000 hands. The $4.2 million that Hastings won last night is believed to be the largest......

This phenomenon has led to more bad calls than any other in poker - the simple expectation of winning a hand. When we look down at aces or kings, or when we flop a set, our brain immediately starts behaving as if we have already won a big pot. This m...

On an evening in which Tom "durrrr" Dwan played over 5,000 hands at stakes from $50/$100 to $300/$600 and won close to $1 million, he and Patrik Antonius managed to squeeze in a short session of the "durrrr" Challenge, marking their first meeting......

Seven card stud is one of the most interesting forms of poker, as a typical hand contains vast amounts of information by the end, allowing a skilled player to really hammer home their advantage.

However, due to the limit nature of stud, it re...

This hand - particularly bottom two pair - seems to get weak players in more trouble than any other hand in Pot Limit Omaha, except perhaps overplaying aces.

Like many situations in Omaha, players used to hold'em tend to drastically overv...

The Nightly Turbo has all your top poker news stories of the day. We're searching high and low for them, so you don't have to. Hopefully you're doing something productive with all that extra time on your hands....

With a screen name borrowed from a character in J.R.R. Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings, it only took the player known as "Isildur1" a few short weeks to become the star of his own mythological saga.

Arriving relatively unannounced...

In one of the greatest heads-up battles in online poker history, Patrik Antonius halted “Isildur1’s” spectacular November run, relieving the young Swede of nearly $3 million over the course of a 2,189-hand, nine-hour match that ran from......

Last week I reviewed Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker by James McManus, and mentioned there that I had the chance to interview the author. McManus and I spoke by phone a couple of weeks ago, just before he was about to embark on a book tour to promo...

Is it Monday already? With all that went on since Friday, we lost track of the weekend. It was a busy weekend for poker, live and online. We got down to two in the WSOP Main Event, Full Tilt signed someone huge, gold jerseys were handed out, and more. Wit...

A No-limit poker tournament can completely change over the course of a single hand and that is exactly what happened to Eric Buchman. One minute he was controlling the 2009 WSOP Main Event Final Table, the next he finds himself on the wrong side of t...

Phil Ivey's dream of winning bracelet number eight came to an abrupt end when his hands was outflopped by logger Darvin Moon....

You've come to the right place if you want to save time by getting your news all in one place. We're taking full credit for that improvement in your poker game since we're directly responsible for the extra time on your hands....

Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, the latest offering from James McManus, has finally hit the shelves. The nearly 500-page work carefully compiles poker's colorful history into 52 chapters -- one for each card in the deck -- providing both a han...

The majority of poker players will bet on anything. Whether it is credit card roulette after a meal with friends or betting what flavour lollipop comes out of the vending machine if there are odds available they will bet on it....

A large percentage of the poker players you will ever meet are very tight. They have either been taught - or discovered by themselves - that sticking to only playing premium hands enables them to make money off of weak players, and as a result they s...

One of the key mistakes weak players make (and a very easy one to spot at that, as players nearly always talk about hands in ways which clearly show this concept), is to be results orientated about a play they made....

231 days after it began, the "durrrr" Challenge quietly reached its halfway point on Wednesday, as Patrik Antonius and Tom "durrrr" Dwan played the 25,000th hand in their four-table $200/400 pot-limit Omaha challenge match. Dwan was able to build......

Schedules and time zones at last aligned for Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Patrik Antonius, who resumed their 50,000 hand challenge early Thursday morning after a 25-day break. Though it was a relatively brief session,clocking in at 74 minutes and 400......

One of the best ways to try and identify weak players is to attempt to make them talk about how and why they played a hand. Poker is a game where a lot of factors need to be considered in each hand, and trying to talk to people about which factors th...

One thing that usually really gets on my nerves at the poker tables is really arrogant players. You know the type, the ones who when they win a hand boast at how great they are and when they lose it was never their fault. However, now and again, some...

Tournament poker can be a funny old game. One minute you can't do anything wrong, it seems you always hit the flop hard, your shoves get through and if they are called you usually have their hand dominated. It's great. On the other hand thoug...

A controversial hand took place this week at the PokerStars European Poker Tour Barcelona that got me thinking. Where do we draw the line between the actual rules of the game and the gamesmanship or unwritten rules among poker players?...

One of the key mistakes weak players make when they play poker is to only consider odds and action in terms of what is presented to them there and then....

It's that time again. You're in between hands and you're wondering what happened in the poker world today. Well, here it is, all laid out for you so you can get back to the grind sooner....

Since deciding to turn pro in August 2008, Pawel "verneer" Nazarewicz has made more money playing poker than he did when he was teaching full time and has a lot more free time on his hands to enjoy life! We caught up with Pawel to see how his new......

After a Saturday evening party of presidential proportions, the final nine players arrived at the Galaxy StarWorld Hotel and Casino with a strong coffee in hand for the conclusion of the 2009 Asian Poker Tour Macau Main Event.

Play started three......

Do you remember when you were a teenager and you wanted to beat the crap out of a similarly-aged brother, so you put your hands around his throat and squeezed until he cried out in pain? No? OK maybe that was just us. But it accurately describes......

Poker is a game that requires plenty of stamina and it is often difficult for players to make it through several long sessions. In order to stay alert, many players have turned to energy drinks as a way to stay focused on the task at hand. During......

It's that time again. We've searched high and low to bring you the day's most relevant news stories. Hope you're doing something wise with all that extra time on your hands....

The action at the Full Tilt Pot Limit Omaha tables has been fast and furious this week. We're not even a full week into August, and still, hundreds of thousands of dollars has changed hands. Ashton “theASHMAN103” Griffin is off to a blazing start to b...

PokerNews is proud to introduce The Nightly Turbo, a slew of the days most pertinent news and forum banter. We're scoping out all the sites so you don't have to. With so much extra time on your hands, we expect some serious improvement in your poker game....

The great Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson has often been quoted as saying that in no limit hold'em tournaments that he basically never flat calls pre flop.

He either comes in raising, or if confronting an opening raise, is merely thinking...

Top poker players are used to finding themselves in high-pressure situations where vast sums of money are at stake, but recently professional player Jeraint 'JJ' Hazan found himself under the spotlight with £65,000 at stake.
The BB...

A few posts ago I mentioned that I was going to try and get fit as I had put some weight on, wasn't happy with how I looked and generally felt unhealthy.
One of Mrs P's birthday presents was the new EA Sports Active Personal Trainer for...

The betting market for the World Series of Poker Main Event Final table is quickly taking shape on Betfair with chip leader Darvin Moon the current favourite to take down the coveted bracelet.
Click Here For The Latest Odds

Moon can be b...

The past couple of days have been really exciting for me mainly because the World Series of Poker Main Event was in full swing and some of the big names were still in. Reading and writing about the Main Event has given me a new lease of life poker wi...

Whilst I haven't played an extra 2-4k hands as I originally planned at the end of my last post, I have managed to play around a thousand hands taking me close to 2,000 hands played in five days, which is pretty good for me!
With the amount o...

At the mid and high stakes, you will start to regularly encounter the same players day in and day out, as the group of players grows steadily smaller with the rising stakes. As these players will typically be profitable players, how you play your han...

Day 8 of the World Championship $10,000 No-limit Hold'em Event started at noon Las Vegas time and just 11 hours later the 27 players who started were whittled down until only the November Nine had chips remaining.

With so much at stake, fa...

There is just one more day of play until the 6,494 players who paid $10,000 to enter the 2009 World Championship No-limit Hold'em Event will have been whittled down to form the November Nine.

Sixty-four players returned to unbag their chip...

After five two-hour long levels, just 64 of the last 185 players still had chips remaining and with them the now real possibility of winning over $8,500,000.

Amongst those returning for Day 7 of the World Championship No-limit Hold'em Mai...

Betfair Poker blogger Simon Zammit reflects on his Vegas trip and signs off for one last time.

Back home, re-packing my suitcase as I prepare for my holiday in Spain/ Ibiza starting tomorrow, I still cannot stop thinking about Sin City and my...

On Friday afternoon I finally started my No-limit Hold'em challenge by firing up the Betfair Poker client, sitting myself down at four cash tables with astronomical blinds of $0.02/$0.04 and started to grind towards my goal of 10,000 hands.
...

Of the 407 players who returned to The Rio for Day 5 of the $10,000 World Championship No-Limit Hold'em Event, just two were wearing the colours of Betfair Poker, Sorel Mizzi and tcmoriera.

Mizzi started the day with a healthy 305,000 in c...

There is a certain sadness in Simon Zammit's last blog post about his time at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas with Team Betfair but for me it has been a fascinating insight into a world I knew nothing about. Thank you Simon, for a great ef...

Time is nearly up for our intrepid blogger Simon Zammit in Las Vegas but he still has a few last tales to tell about Vegas nightlife and, of course, the World Series of Poker.

Team Betfair at WSOP 2009 started amassing at the Encore lobby arou...

Five members of Team Betfair returned to do battle at the Rio but by the end of play just two of them managed to survive and keep alive dreams of a life changing sum of money and the title of World Champion.

They were joined by 784 other hopef...

With a few horror stories coming out of the WSOP, including a dealer having his hand broken by a disgruntled punter, it seems a good time to look at etiquette around dealers.

The vast majority of poker players treat dealers well, but a small...

Vegas is starting to grow on me. (writes Simon Zammit) I am getting used to all the great things going on and can really imagine myself being on of the regular visitors to this great city. Last night was another fun dose of everything from meeting ne...

Day 2b saw a staggering 2,924 hopeful poker players return to The Rio to un-bag their chips and fight it out across the felt for a seat in Day 3 of the World's biggest poker tournament.

By the close of play, almost 1,500 players had lost a...

The excellent Simon Zammit completes his first week of blogging for Betfair Poker at the World Series of Poker.

I rolled out of bed and dragged myself into the bathroom and the shower worked wonders as I felt like a new person; recharged and r...

Although poker is a game with a large portion of mathematics in it, at its base it is a game of people. Human beings are creatures of habit, who develop specific styles and views based on how they see the world.

Good poker players not only un...

Today I woke up as fresh as I could hope for, which was great! Richard and I met in the lobby around 09:30 and had a quick breakfast. Today was his last full day in Vegas and he needed to buy some stuff, so off to the Fashion Mall we marched.
Th...

After the controversy of Day 1d, where hundreds of players missed out on playing in the Main Event due it selling out, most were happy to get back to playing and discussing poker. 1,476 players spilled into the Rio and more than 12 hours later only 6...

The two captains have made their first picks to play at this year World Series of Poker Europe invitational event - the Caesars Cup and the writers here at Betfair Poker have selected their own unofficial Americas squad.
Recently in Las Vegas fo...

The most anticipated poker series of the year, what people wait their whole lives to participate in, practice for, dream of and before you know it, with the blink of an eye it has come and gone.
So sad but unfortunately the cliche wasn't ma...

Well on his way to losing his Vegas virginity, the popular Simon Zammit continues his revealing tales from behind the scenes at Betfair's World Series of Poker 2009.

As the alarm clock rang like there's no tomorrow, I slowly got mysel...

Five more member of Team Betfair took to the felt with another 1,691 entrants in the Amazon and Brasilia rooms of The Rio and four managed to survive, with 1,102 others to make it through to Day 2.

Congressman Barney Frank, the man trying his...

When it comes to poker I am what some would call an underachiever. I'm like one of those youth team footballers that looks like they are going to be the next Premiership star but they they disappear off the radar and end up playing for Brentford...

The final event of the 2009 World Series of Poker, the $10,000 World Championship No-limit Hold'em Event started on Friday 3 July and Team Betfair were well represented with a host of online qualifiers and the Betfair Pros.

Day 1a attracte...

Day 3 of Event #56, $5,000 Six-handed No-Limit Hold’em, started with 16 players looking to make the final table and win the final preliminary......

One of the key mistakes hold'em players make when they start playing pot limit Omaha is to continuation bet at a similar frequency to what they do in hold'em. This is nearly always a big mistake in pot limit Omaha though, for two key reasons....

I've been fully immersing myself in the 2009 World Series of Poker these past few weeks, either reading or writing about it or even both. To say I am jealous of everyone out there is an understatement to say the least, I really must get together...

With the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event final table once again being scheduled to play out in November, Event#56, the $5,000 No-limit Hold'em Six-handed event was the last chance to win a coveted gold bracelet this summer.

In total...

Day 2 of Event #56, $5,000 Six-handed No-Limit Hold’em, kicked off Wednesday with 160 players looking to survive the money bubble and work......

The betting market on the WSOP is starting to take shape ahead of the Main Event that starts on Friday July 3rd.

The most popular market is proving to be the "Will They Cash?" with money already changing hands about some of the more p...

Twenty hours and 492 hands after the final table of the $50,000 HORSE Event started it was David Bach who emerged victorious clutching a custom World Series of Poker bracelet, the commemorative Chip Reese Memorial Trophy and $1,276,802 in prize money...

My journey to Vegas started in the small hours of the 30th June at 6am. After stuffing my newly ironed shirts into my suitcase along with a mixture of smart, casual, hot, cold weather clothes I was ready to leave for Gatwick.
Some people are sup...

Introducing Betfair Poker's Simon Zammit who is in Las Vegas for the very first time. Follow his experiences over the next few weeks as he reports on all things Vegas at the World Series of Poker Main Event.

We all remember buying our firs...

One of the strangest phenomenons in poker is that the very highest stake games often play much more like the very lowest stake games than they do the mid stake ones. This is a pretty odd point, as in nearly all sports and games the standard just gene...

Greg 'FBT' Mueller outlasted 571 players in Event#50 of the 2009 World Series of Poker, the $1,500 Limit Hold'em Shootout to become the fourth player of the series to win multiple bracelets.

After a long ten hour Day 1, the 572 ent...

The term 'dangler' simply refers to a card in your hand that does not combine well with the others. The six of clubs in a hand like KhJhAs simply does not work with any of the other cards in terms of building straights or flushes, and thus be...

After two gruelling days of poker, including a 13 hour long Day 2, the $2,500 Mixed Hold'em Event#47 is down to the final nine players and is preparing to hand out another coveted bracelet to the lucky winner.

The first and only mixed even...

When I jumped on the Virgin Atlantic plane to Vegas, the future looked bright. It has been one year since I had returned to London, my eyes darkened with fatigue, my liver choking from alcohol abuse, my wallet thinned by the never ending stream of pa...

The penultimate $10,000 World Championship Event of the 2009 World Series of Poker is in the final stages and it is the English professional player, John 'Large' Kabbaj who leads the way with just 14 of the 275 entrants remaining.

A st...

When 295 players paid the $10,000 entry fee to take part in Event#40, the World Championship Pot-Limit Omaha Event they were informed 27 of them would make the money and earn at least $25,817 but each and every one of them had at least one eye on the...

Spotting collusion and cheating if at a table is one of the key things you should be looking for when playing, be it live or online.

Poker will probably always have some people who attempt to cheat to win at it, and spotting them and reportin...

The truly greatest poker players have no one single gear. All are capable of switching their game up depending on a whole range of factors, switching to the one that they feel is the most optimal for the table situation, and by becoming so unpredicta...

Sorel 'Imper1um' Mizzi once again came within touching distance of winning a coveted World Series of Poker bracelet, but unfortunately finished as runner-up in Event#35, the $5,000 Pot-limit Omaha tournament.

Eleven players returned fo...

The term 'blocker bet' simply refers to a situation in poker where a player has a hand they want to call a bet with, but do not want to be faced with a big bet to call.

By leading out with a smaller blocking bet, often their opponent...

The World Series of Poker is more than halfway through and I have been reading plenty of blogs and stories that have made me insanely jealous of the guy and gals out there. I really need to get my act together and sort a trip out to Sin City at some...

Just been alerted to a juicy sounding promotion on the Betfair Poker main site for any SNG players playing at $12 stakes and above.
It's a Progressive Jackpot with payouts up to $20,000 for players who can win six SNGs in a row on the specia...

As some of you will know, I was in court yesterday to try and sort out a few issue regarding contact with Pud Jr. I really wasn't looking forward to it to say the least as I didn't know what to expect from both the court or what would be drag...

James Butler Hickok was born on May 27, 1837 and was a well-known figure in the American Old West. Better known as Wild Bill Hickok, he had a reputation for being a notorious gunfighter and gambler, both of which would lead to his demise.
Initi...

Although I would not usually advocate flat calling raises with big pairs very often, there are certain situations where you can be fairly confident you may well get re-raised if you do, and in these spots it is often wise to flat call with big pairs,...

We're in the second half the World Series of Poker right now and things have certainly taken a turn for the better for British poker players in Las Vegas. After a dry spell, early on in the festival, the British are now running riot with cashes,...

After a marathon tournament lasting a little over five hours, CLUDGIE emerged victorious in the June 14 UK Regional WSOPE Million Dollar Freeroll defeating Danni1986 after an exhausting heads-up battle and joins the eight other confirmed qualifiers i...

Fold preflop. That's what I should do with big pocket pairs and other premium hands as it seems all I do lately is have them cracked. Obviously I know that is not the case but sometimes it really feels like you just can't get a hand to hold n...

One of the most fundamental mistakes players make in heads up games is making their bets either too big or too small.

This has profound consequences on the likelihood of them winning over the long run, as betting too much or too little fundam...

Even though I was a limit cash game player for over a decade before I started playing tournaments, I was never that excited about playing......

RedDolphin proved himself a bit of a shark in the latest UK Million Dollar Game Freeroll on Betfair Poker when outlasting the 108 other freerollers to book his place in the live regional final later this year.
While the rest of the country watch...

Dealing with players who habitually show you their hands can be an extremely taxing and annoying experience. People play poker for a variety of reasons, be it to make money, relax from their usual routine of life, or in the case of most players who c...

River check raising is one of the most useful plays in no limit hold'em and pot limit Omaha, yet one that is under used on the whole, probably due to players being worried about hands being checked behind them when they have a monster.

Wha...

So far in June I have played on my Xbox 360 more than I have played poker and as a result it is no surprise my bankroll has stayed around the same amount. I don't know why but I am really into my gaming this month, maybe I am like The Curious Cas...

Day 2 of Event #13, $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em, started with 175 players who first would need to......

Being able to fold small full houses is one of the hall marks of great Omaha players.

When you play hold'em, you should basically never even be considering folding full houses unless the board is very tricky (say you have a three on an Ac...

Introducing our very own poker Pro John Tabatabai in a series of videos made shortly before the Welshman landed the valuable Heads-Up Tournament at the Aussie Millions early this year.
John discusses techniques around the bubble in a SNG, how an...

On May 27 the 2009 World Series of Poker began with the $500 No-limit Hold'em Event for Casino Employees, where N9NE Steakhouse Barman, Andrew Cohen won $83,778 and the first Corum bracelet of the series.

However, it was the next day'...

Big bet bluffs are one of the most important areas to understand in no limit and pot limit games.

For the most part, big bets indicate big hands amongst capable players. However, as you are looking to get lots of action on your big hands, you...

Roady is the latest player to take a step closer to winning a million dollars after winning the May 31st UK Regional Satellite in Betfair's Million Dollar Game Freeroll.
Always handily placed throughout the closing stages of the tournament,...

When my dad uttered those words every son or daughter hears at some point in their life, I thought to myself, "yeah, whatever, you silly old sod" and got on with my day. He was of course telling me that "as you get older, time goes by qui...

Sometimes in poker, you just simply feel compelled to call in a situation that makes very little logical sense.

Be it a twitch in the way someone throws their chips into the pot, or simply that you are fed up at being run over by a very aggre...

Creating a good atmosphere at the table is one of the most important things you can do when playing with weak players.

Many people, and quite legitimately, do not play poker to make money. Instead, they like gambling, enjoy the fact that in p...

No matter how high or low a player's skill level and experience is and no matter how cool they are under pressure, all will suffer or have suffered from tilt at some point during their careers.
When a player is on tilt, they will find it ex...

Throwing in the occasional check raise bluff is essential to a well balanced poker game.

As check raising is a tool that is very useful for extracting extra value from a hand when out of position, it is crucial that your opponents know that y...

Popular poker blogger Steve Holden returns with the concluding story from his four-week stay in the Black Belt Poker House.
"I know I could get a few mates to sit with me and pass the bucks into my account through heads up cash but I've...

Sunday night (May 24 2009) saw 108 players sit down for the Weekly Million Dollar Freeroll on Betfair Poker with the prize an entry into the 27 player Live Regional Qualifier in August and a shot at winning a cool one million dollars.
Well done...

On Saturday Pudding Parents had baby Pudding over to sleep so Mrs P and I were looking forward to a relaxing night in and a long 10-12 hours sleep. However, since I run bad at life this wouldn't happen, not even a little bit.
For some reaso...

If you’re looking for a standalone pot-odds calculator for your desktop, PokerNews has now created a brand new......

Re-isolating is one of the most dangerous, yet also potentially rewarding moves in poker, particularly at the higher limits.
"Most middle stake grinders tend to be fairly risk averse due to their background at the lower stakes, and a player...

There have been a number of articles on this site recently relating to heads-up games but a topic that has not yet appeared is betting the flop when the action has not been raised preflop.
When a player has raised preflop it is natural to check...

When I was just 17 years young I had a reading from a clairvoyant who my parents had used previously and highly recommended. At the time I thought a lot of what she told me was way off but when I have sat and thought about what she and the tarot card...

A total of 95 players, of very different standards, lined up for the tournament on Tuesday 5th May. A few players never actually played although they had registered, which was great news for me - the theory being that if I just had a nap for an hour...

One of the key things you need to understand about the psychology of poker is what people's drives and motivations are when in groups.

All human beings seem to have an innate desire to conform to how those around them are acting; be it in...

One of the first signs of a new player's ability when you first start playing with them is if they have the tendency to raise and then fold to a re-raise.
"....but when they get played back at holding junk they fall for the oldest illusi...

It's Week Three in the Black Belt Poker Grading and we are once again delighted to welcome back popular blogger Steve Holden to the Betfair Poker Blogs.

This week the stakes are up to $0.50/$1 NLHE 6max/HU, PLO or $30+3 minimum STTs. Befor...

It's Friday once again which not only means it is the weekend where most of you lucky buggers get 48 hours off from the world, but it also means it is poker blog round-up time. When I write this round-up I try to introduce you to blogs and blogge...

I'm writing this blog from my room in Venice even though I should be in Moscow right now for the Russian Poker Tour because my stupid visa never came through on time. At least I have time for more shopping!
Not much happened at EPT San Remo...

Whilst I have lacked quantity in my play so far this week, I've certainly made up for it in quality and I am progressing nicely. Playing $5.25 HUSNG is never going to make anybody rich but if I continue in the same vein, then I should be moving u...

If you think of the two extreme possibilities of the ante structure in poker, with the first being no ante, and the second being an ante the size of your stack every hand, you can easily see how important the size of the ante is to how you play.
...

It's Week Two in the Black Belt Poker house and we once again are delighted to welcome back popular blogger Steve Holden to the Betfair Poker Blogs
Mid morning I fire up again stacking up another 4 hours at the tables and I'm leaking lik...

This is a useful tell, as it nearly always indicates strength from your opponent. Due to human physiology, when we look down at a monster hand, the excitement of knowing that we are about to win a big pot releases huge quantities of adrenalin into ou...

Poker mirrors life in many ways, none more so than the fact that it is continually evolving. Those who do not change with it, will be left by the wayside. A survival of the fittest if you must. That is life, that is poker.
Every three or four y...

For some reason, unknown to me, most events and happenings around the world do not seem to affect me. I don't know why it is but I seem to be desensitized to most things reported in the media or depicted in films or pictures.
After watching...

There is an old poker saying (I believe coined by Doyle Brunson but don't quote me on it) that a player should: 'Never go broke in an unraised pot'. This simply refers to the notion that you should not be losing your whole stack in what h...

It's been a long and tiresome week in the Pudding household but today is Friday, which doesn't just mean it is almost the weekend, it also means it is time for the weekly poker blog round-up.
This week starts with an entry from Poker Gru...

The single most important area to look at when playing live poker is your opponent's hands.

Most players go to great lengths to keep a straight poker face and limit the movement of their body when playing, but hardly anyone seems to think...

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past year, you will be more than aware that the entire planet seems to be in financial meltdown, with no signs of it letting up in the near future.
Whilst many businesses are struggling during th...

Since the Irish Poker Open I have had the pleasure of playing some relatively local EPTs set in idyllic locations. Firstly, the EPT in San Remo which had an amazing 1156 entrants this year, each paying 5,000 Euros to enter and secondly the Grand Fina...

This is the single most useful tell in low stakes poker games in my opinion. It can easily give you a complete idea of the strength of a weak player's hand, and it is very rare in poker to get such obvious and precise information, being able to c...

Ask any of the big name pros if they have ever gone bust on their way to the top and the majority will answer with a resounding yes. In that case, it looks like my quest for poker greatness has taken a step in the right direction.
After a bit of...

With the ever expanding popularity of heads up games, many of the best spots to play in are now one on one games. Weak players seem to be attracted to these games because the variance is extremely high, which means it gives them a realistic shot at m...

The final eight-handed table has been set at the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour Season 5 Grand Final in Monte Carlo. When play gets underway Sunday......

Most of heads up play comes down to trying to quickly adapt to your opponents playing style(s) if and when they change. This is because heads up poker is primarily a game of bluff and marginal hands, where any predictable behavior can easily be taken...

I've not played much poker over the past couple of days, well not whilst I have been awake anyway! A couple of nights ago I had a really strange dream and I have no idea where it came from!
For some reason I had a dream that Kid Poker had de...

Often in poker you come across situations where although you think you may have the best hand, you want to try and check and make your opponent bluff. These situations often occur when you have a medium strength hand that you do not want to fold, and...

After reading Marcus Bateman's excellent piece about when you should be re-stealing, I thought I'd look at the situations where you should be looking to change your own behavior depending on the stack sizes around you.
Some tournament...

One of the things you will quickly notice about good players in any variation of poker is how they change their game depending on how many people are in the hand. That great aggressive no limit hold'em player who seems to batter you with bets eve...

Regardless of of the stakes you play or whether you are a professional or a recreational player, you should be keeping records of any profits and losses incurred from poker. After all, you need or at least should want to know which particular games a...

I guess I should have known things weren't going to go my way, the second I stepped off the plane in Nice, France. I was packing light for the trip, so I had decided to wear shorts and t-shirt, not realising it was going to freeze 5 degrees on bo...

One of the classic mistakes I regularly see players make live is to change their bet sizes dependent not on what they feel is the correct bet amount, but on the chips available in front of them.
Obviously this never comes up online, where you c...

As someone who plays quite a lot of poker online, a lot of it at the micro and small stakes, I come across new, weak players all of the time. I see the same fundamental mistakes being made day in, day out so I thought I would list some common errors...

Often in poker you have to make decisions based not only on the hand in question, but also on future hands that you will play with the same people. When playing large, low buy in online tournaments or freerolls many of these considerations are largel...

Jack ten is one of the nicest hands you can ever look down at when playing deep stacked no limit hold'em, particularly if it is suited. This is because jack ten is a very versatile hand that often flops monsters, and the boards that give it monst...

Hello and welcome back to my little piece of the internet! It's Friday which means it is blog round-up time once again and this week we have people running well, people running bad and people running bad because they ran well! Does that make sens...

The Paddy Power Irish Open in Dublin is supposed to be one of the most heavily anticipated tournaments of the year - in the past some of the biggest names in poker have turned up for this event such as Antonio Esfandiari and Doyle Brunson and it shou...

Patrik Antonius and Tom 'durrrr' Dwan logged a quickie session of the 50,000-hand 'durrrr Challenge' Tuesday morning, playing a scant 135 hands before calling it quits just before dawn broke over America's east coast. Antonius......

Whilst every poker player worth their salt should have an arsenal of tricks and plays to display at the table, they should also be aware when not to use these tricks and when using them is so wrong it is not even funny. The slow-play is one such move...

'You gotta have two things to succeed kid - you gotta have brains and you gotta have balls. Now you got too much of one and not enough of the other' - Paul Newman to Tom Cruise in The Color of Money.
"Being able to show players that...

Could somebody please leave a comment and let me know what this sleep is that normal, childless people talk about? Jesus I am tired right now and it's only been a week since Baby Pud entered the world!
I am essentially getting by on around 3...

With 64 players returning for Day 3 of the PaddyPower.com Irish Poker Open, a long day's work awaited to determine the eight-handed final table. The day featured bad beats, outdraws, a 'Sole Survivor' crowned and Andrew Pantling......

Action in the PokerStars All-Stakes Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) resumed on Saturday with, among other offerings, Event #19-Hi, $5,200 Pot-Limit Omaha. 190 players were on hand, with the total purse falling......

It was a good Friday indeed when Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and Patrik Antonius gave railbirds a treat by playing a rare daylight session of their $200/$400 pot-limit Omaha 'durrrr Challenge' match. The online foes got in 803 hands......

Most players in tournaments try and avoid the big stack at the table. This is mainly because they can bust you, where as you can't bust them - which gives them a sizable psychological and practical edge over you.
"Winning tournaments r...

For the second consecutive night, Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Patrik Antonius played a session in their 50,000 hand challenge, logging 890 hands over the course of two and a half hours of play. Despite the high stakes and the volume......

Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and Patrik Antonius at last logged some serious hours in their $200/400 pot-limit Omaha challenge match, playing from 2:40 a.m EDT until mid-morning on Wednesday. The two played 2,043 hands over nearly seven......

This is quite a complex principle to understand to most players, as it seems to go against the intuitive logic of how poker works. I have the best hand, surely getting my money in the pot in any way is the right way to play?
This is actually no...

One of the first things you should do when you sit down at an online cash game is to try an identify and categorise the players you will be playing against. You need to recognise which opponents are ultra tight or "nits", who are the very wea...

'More than any other type of poker, Omaha high-low is driven by hand value.' Such is the position advanced by Bill Boston in 'Omaha High-Low for Low-Limit Players'. Focusing on lower-stakes games ($2/4 to $5/10)......

I was playing poker the other evening and after losing yet another hand, the young player next to me mumbled: "Man, I just can't put that old guy onto a hand.......

Poker is a constantly evolving game, and in order to be able to stay consistently profitable a player has to think about how the game will change in the future.

Certain games shift dramatically in popularity, and understanding how and what ga...

The madness of "year end" should now be over for most workers as today marks the start of the new financial year. Companies will have fresh budgets and goals and poker players should be no different.
Whilst I am not setting any more goal...

Bodog has published its annually entertaining list of betting odds on player performance for the WSOP. Rather than focus on the odds of any single player winning – which would be extremely long for any pro in this era......

A lot of people ask me to write some strategy stuff on this blog and it's something I've never got round to for whatever reason....er... laziness!!
These tournaments provide a great way to start a bankroll from nothing, and also give you...

Over the past week or so I have been very excited at the prospect of putting my new found bankroll to good use by moving up in stakes and potentially winning a decent sum of money. However, yesterday my excitement turned to disappointment after a dre...

Just before Xmas 2008, Betfair Forumite, Big Brother Guru, and Specials Poker Team Star Player in Battle of the Forums "The Kitten", aka Chris Cork, was diagnosed with Leukaemia.
You can read about his "coming out" and some of th...

One of the most common excuses for a player to call off a portion of their stack with a weak hand is that they were "priced in." Check the chat box when the inevitable happens and the weaker of the two hands prevails to bust out their unfortu...

Due to the fact that you have to use exactly two of the cards from your hand in Omaha, holding just the ace (or king for that matter) of a suit will never enable you to have the nut flush. It does, on the other hand, bring up good opportunities to bl...

Weak aces tend to be the hand that you see bad players get in the most trouble with at the table. This is because weak aces are usually very far behind most good hands in hold'em, and weak players seem to misunderstand the mathematics of weak ace...

Positive reinforcement is one of the single greatest things about the game of poker. Often in poker, a player makes the wrong move at the wrong time and wins. Instead of making the player feel bad about their particular bad play, the positive effects...

One hour into Thursday morning's session of the 'durrrr Challenge', Tom Dwan found himself on a serious heater. After booking wins in his last two meetings with Patrik Antonius in their 50,000 hand, $200/400 pot-limit Omaha......

The past seven days have been very busy for me this week, what with me taking down tournaments left right and centre and signing contract for training sites and poker rooms.
Well that last bit was a lie but I have been rushed off my feet with t...

The online poker site Bugsy's Club closed its virtual doors this week, having dealt its final hand after just over six years of operation. By arrangement with PokerStars, the 180,000 players on Bugsy's Club have been invited......

Most of the discussion in poker about luck comes down to individual hands. 'My aces got cracked by kings' or 'he hit his back door flush draw after making a ludicrous flop bluff' are typical stories from players who claim to be runnin...

It's been a very busy week of poker, and in particular some long term poker planning.
"I have my own personal poker God. I think everyone should have one, and I got mine on Ebay (£2.80 inc P & P) - his name is Steve, and I speak t...

So you're sitting down with a massive fish and playing heads up cash. The player is very loose and bad, and you quickly realise that you all you have to do is sit back, play tight and just let good hands win lots of big pots. So this is what you...

Nearly eight thousand players were on hand for the latest edition of the PokerStars Sunday Million, and of the biggest names in the online world emerged with the win. Carter "ckingusc" King, winner of Stars' 2008 World Championship......

Between their forays into the day's $500/1,000 HA games, Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and Patrik Antonius fit in a short session of their pot-limit Omaha challenge match, logging 411 hands over the course of 80 minutes......

When I feel like I'm running bad in poker, I tend to slow down a little and start to mix things up.
"Some f*** fish sits with 3.5K and now has 40K in less than 30 minutes. I'd be pissed off too if I was the donator."

This...

A brief analysis of the catalogue of mistakes made in Nick Cantwell's excellent sarcastic piece about how to play a sit and go...
"No hand is a massive favorite in hold'em, and surviving many pre flop all ins is nearly always very di...

One of the most difficult and infuriating players you will face in both the live arena and online is one who plays a Loose-Aggressive (LAG) style.
LAG's have been around as long as poker has, with the like of Doyle Brunson and Stu Unger bei...

Pot limit Omaha is one of the only games where you can ever consider folding the ace flush on a non paired board.
"Good Omaha players know that basically any hand that is not the nuts is always foldable in the right situation..."
[br...

Since I last blogged I have continued to play mostly live and it has continued to be very interesting.
Everyday a new situation occurs which just wouldn't online, whether it's a case of odd tells, or bad etiquette.

Recently I had...

Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and Patrik Antonius were at it again on Friday night, logging another 425 hands in their 50,000-hand challenge match. With the $161,086 he won in this session, Antonius took the overall lead......

I've not been around the blogs as much as I usually do this past week as I am currently recovering from a bout of man-flu that almost finished me off! Female readers will think I have only had a common cold but I swear it feels as if I have fough...

After a fifteen-day hiatus, Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and Patrik Antonius finally resumed their $200-$400 pot-limit Omaha challenge match on Monday evening, completing 914 hands over the course of three hours. Previously down......

Following up on his recent pieces about playing live - Some Basics about Playing Live and Preparing for a Live Tournament - Chris Edwards discusses some aspects of table image.
'If it was anyone else, I'd call,' was the cry of the co...

Following up on his article about how to beat weak tight players, Matthew Pitt looks at another popular style - the tight-aggressive player.

The classic winning style of play for both multi-table tournaments and cash games is widely accepted a...

Frequently in tournament poker you will encounter players who are re-raising your opens at an inappropriate frequency.
"If pulled off correctly it can help someone hugely chip up and push on for the win, if it goes wrong it can just look lik...

One of the great things about playing mixed games is that they give a player who may well be considerably weaker than another player at a specific game (say limit hold'em) an edge if they are a just a slightly better player at the other games.[br...

In my opinion, dropping down the stakes at points is the hallmark of all truly great players.
Although you have many players in poker who seem to perpetually stay in the highest games, the reality is that for every one Phil Ivey or Patrick Anton...

Since my last post I have continued to play tournaments and have seen both the positive and negative side of variance. I played my 100th $3.25 45 man game on Saturday dinner time as I didn't get to see Pud Jr so played some poker instead.
I...

Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics that deals with problems where the number of variables become so high that mathematics ceases to be able to provide accurate explanations about the future.
"Many gamblers become obsessed with these mi...

One of the most boring players you will come up against at the poker tables, both real and virtual, are the ones who play a Tight-Passive style.
"By displaying controlled aggression against tight-passive players, you can push them off pot...

One piece of advice I was given quite early on in my poker career was to try and get into the mind of my opponents. Here I try to get into the mind of a very weak STT player.

I had $94 in my account, so I thought I'd have a game - a $50 ST...

This week's blog round up contains a trip report, a singing Annette Obrestad, the thoughts of an MTT pro, some serious grinding of SnG and pooing behind a bush next the motorway! Let's get started!
When I first started winning at poker,...

Some of the most profitable poker games out there in the current era are pot limit Omaha games.
The mix of fast and heavy action, huge numbers of possibilities with each hand (which induces players into seeing flops with many more hands than the...

As we blast ever-deeper into 2009, I realised that no one bothered to ask me for a review of 2008 (which is a shame as I'm sure it would have been hilarious). I hope, however, that we're not so far into 2009 that I can't still talk about...

After positional mistakes, talked about by Sorel Mizzi , the most common mistakes players make in this format is either calling or folding too much.
"If you can balance your range of hands and become comfortable taking advantage of your opp...

The single most important concept to understand when playing heads up is position. If you do not understand the importance of position and how to use it to your advantage you will be an easy target in any heads up game.
"The most common mis...

Fellow Betfair Blogger, Chris '1Tripz1' Edwards recently wrote an interesting article about "The Gap Concept" for the site and I thought I would elaborate on this a little further. For those of you who have not read it, I highly recom...

Over the past couple of weeks, instead of just playing online, I've been playing more live cash poker...and I'm glad I've done so!
...he threw his cards over the line into the muck and as the dealer was moving the chips into my direc...

My daily routine sees me read literally dozens of blogs and several forums and a common theme in posts and entries is the dreaded variance in poker. My first instinct when I see someone writing about being hit by variance is they are using it as a co...

Heads up sit and goes provide a great opportunity for spinning up a bankroll to the beginner or play money player. The variance is very low in these games, as they combine many features which allow skill to shine through over the short term.
[db...

Wooooow, yet again I have been slipping and didn't post up the final v Alec in the HU champs in Australia.
"This affected Alec and he seemed very tilted that they could screw up a final of one of their bigger side events, I was quite ha...

A lot of people advocate tightening up if you have just been caught bluffing but I don't always heed to this advice. After all, if you've just been caught with your hands in the cookie jar, you're not going to be stupid enough to try it a...

One of the great things about Betfair Poker is the ability to learn the nuances of poker without having to risk a single penny of your own money.
"If you are able to spin up and maintain a play money bankroll and win at the higher play money...

Every poker player understands the sharp sting of the money bubble — coming so close, yet leaving empty-handed after days of work. These ten players, however, dealt with a different kind of professional disappointment......

A warm welcome to everyone reading my new blog at betting.betfair.com. Without too much introduction, I'm just going to jump right into it, and tell you a little bit about myself and my upcoming blogs.
"Depending on my mood (and the thi...

OK well last time I got so far as making it through to Day 2, the semi finals of the Aussie Millions $5,000 HU Event. My opponent on this glorious day was to be David Gent, a fellow UK online whiz kid, who plays under the alias of Genetic, a very goo...

Among poker's many attractions is the way the game manages to produce a seemingly inexhaustible fund of stories. Poker is fun to play, but fun to talk about playing, too, with particular hands usually the focus for such tales......

As dawn broke over the east coast of the U.S. on Sunday morning, Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and Patrik Antonius played what ended up being a very brief session on their way toward the first durrrr Challenge's required 50,000 hands......

After part one ran on for far too long, I have decided to trim this entry down so that it actually contains some poker!
My room-mate for the trip was Snake Eyes and he made a post on the forum about his arrival at the lovely B&B we stayed in, so...

We can see from how wildly random walks differ from the actual odds of an event quite clearly from any of the numerous graphs available.
"Random walks show us not only how to behave in order to realise a small edge in the long run, but they...

A 'random walk' is a mathematical term to describe looking at sequences of consecutive random events and observing the patterns.
"Random walks thus show not only why most players have a love/hate relationship with poker, but the impo...

There is a little-known fact that when choosing a partner in life, men are attracted subconsciously to woman who have characteristics of their mother and females to males who resemble their father.
Strange but true, or at least I think I have r...

The term 'rope a dope' was first made widely known by Dan Harrington in his excellent series of books entitled Harrington on hold'em.
"You have to be extremely careful who you lay these sort of traps down for - against the wrong...

Tom 'durrrr' Dwan's 50,000-hand challenge match against Patrik Antonius continued Monday afternoon with a three-hour, 1,027-hand match over four tables of $200-$400 pot-limit Omaha. Though Antonius left on top after their......

Bluffing in limit poker is much harder than in pot limit or no limit games.

This is simply because the odds a player faces in limit hold'em are nearly always very good - and as a result folding too much is a much bigger mistake than calli...

Sunday's action in major online poker tournaments included another huge turnout for the PokerStars Sunday Million, where 8,800 players tried their luck. 'cmyworth' defied the odds and emerged with the $213,136 winner's......

Following up on recent articles about making the transition from online tournaments to the live arena, Chris Edwards, an experienced live player, offers up some useful nuggets of advice for making progress in the game.
These days I seem to encou...

Over the past couple of months, my love for poker has dwindled away, but after an amazing poker-filled weekend, my love for poker has returned and has a renewed vigour.
I had previously mentioned I had lost focus from my game due to trying to pl...

I'm writing this on the back of a warm glow of winning back to back sit and go games, and my bankroll is currently sitting at its peak.
" They will try to chat up any female at the table, especially a player with an attractive picture -...

Have played two big live tournaments this year so far and disappointed obviously not to have gone deeper in both of them. The Aussie Millions was frustrating when I got tilted when some player I'd never played against before and who had just join...

Action resumed in Copenhagen, Denmark on Wednesday with the second of two starting sessions in the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour Copenhagen main event. 236 players were on hand for the Day 1b session, creating......

One of the most problematic hands to play in hold'em for beginner players are inside, or 'gutshot' straight draws.
" Am I getting the right price to call as the pot odds stand? Or do I have a chance of winning a great deal more l...

Ever since word got out that Tom 'durrrr' Dwan was offering the high stakes poker community $1.5 million to their $500,000 that he could beat them over 50,000 hands played at four simultaneous heads-up NLHE (no-limit hold'em)......

Matthew Pitt believes knowing a bit of poker etiquette will enhance your enjoyment if you are new to to playing poker live.
Many of us play poker online rather than in a live environment and as a result can become lackadaisical when it comes to...

PokerStars held a special Sunday Million Special this weekend in celebration of their 25-billionth dealt hand (the ongoing '25 Billion Bash'). The Sunday Million's guarantee was upped to $2.5 million and the tournament......

Danish poker professional Peter "Zupp" Jepsen has signed an exclusive sponsorship deal with Betfair Poker.
The Internet and tournament specialist joins the "New Breed" at Betfair Poker which includes the likes of Annette Obresta...

Online poker giant PokerStars has stepped in to rescue Fleet Street Games (FSG), one of a growing handful of online sites offering a subscription-fee approach to playing the game online. The global economic downturn......

Matthew Pitt looks at some basic tips that will help anyone's first trip to a casino to play poker more enjoyable and less embarrassing.
My first tip should be done at home, before you even go to the casino It may sound strange but you shoul...

For those of you who read this, let me apologise for the lack of updates recently. I am usually one of the more prolific of the Betfair bloggers but I have not been myself for a few weeks now and it has probably shown in the negativity in the few pos...

After seven and a half years of dealing hands, leading online site PokerStars is edging closer to dealing its 25,000,000,000th hand. To celebrate the occasion, the site is offering players a number of promotions......

For every winning poker player, there are two key things that describe their ability and win rate. The first is the highest stakes that they are able to consistently beat. The second is the games that they can make the most money from.
"By k...

So it's finally all come together, you have had a long winning streak at cash, final tabled a few big multi table tournaments or have just been destroying hundreds of sit and go's, your account is firmly in the black and your feeling on top o...

When beginning in the game of poker one of the first aspects a player learns is what a good starting hand looks like.
I say look like, because a hand might look pretty but actually not be that great, for example K-J in Hold'em or A-K-2-9 off...

The high hand is usually seen as the weaker of the possible hands in hi/lo split games - simply because it cannot win the low as well, where as low hands can frequently develop into high hands which can win both the high and the low end of the pot (...

In Texas Hold'em, being dealt a premium hand preflop or hitting the flop hard is a rarity. A large proportion of your time will be spent needing to draw to extra cards in order to improve your holding and to win the hand.
"Many amateur...

Small ball and long ball poker fundamentally rely on the analysis and knowledge of different types of odds in poker. Long ball simply relies on the odds of the hands of poker.
If you need a brief introduction to exactly what the term 'small...

I am Yorkshire Pudding and I am a small stakes poker player. They say the first step to recovering from anything is to admit there is a problem to begin with. My problem has been trying to run before I can actually walk.
When I first started to...

Last post I was harping on about a new-found interest in properly analysing key hands - something I'd not previously been too bothered about. However, after enjoying Gus Hansen's book 'Every Hand Revealed' I decided to start going bac...

Seems only a few days ago that I was wishing everyone a Happy New Year and already one month has gone. Well, I have been pretty fortunate to have spent that last month in Australia partaking in the Aussie Millions which is just truly, an amazing even...

Seems like it's the Prop Bet season and last year's weight loss bet with Rolande De Wolfe now seems pretty tame compared to what I have in store once the WSOP starts.
"It's a pretty sick schedule, I know, but I'm keen to do i...

The term 'free card' simply refers to any situation in poker where you either 'take' a free card by checking behind after an opponent checks, or by checking yourself, with the intention of 'giving' your opponent the chance to...

When the son of actress Goldie Hawn, Oliver Hudson, paid $10,000 to play in the 2005 World Series of Poker Main Event, he will never have thought he would last just a single hand in the tournament but that is exactly what happened when he butted head...

If you are ever going to succeed in a poker game then confidence is one attribute you need in abundance.
"On the button I looked down at Ad 10d and would usually fold this hand to this action, but decided this time I would take a stand and s...

One of the main traits of the best no limit poker players is their ability to size up the best spots to really put people to the test - to force them to play a pot for all their chips if they want to continue in the hand.
"To be able to acc...

Matthew Pitt looks at why mucking your hand even after pulling off an outrageous bluff might the best long term strategy.
"By showing their opponents, they hope to create an image for later in the session or possibly cause their opponent to...

Howdy y'all! With the majority of us in England snowed in, I thought I would give you a little post to make you smile on this freezing Monday morning
When I was in my late teens/ early twenties I used to go out a lot, and I mean a lot. Thurs...

Howdy y'all! With the majority of us in England snowed in, I thought I would give you a little post to make you smile on this freezing Monday morning
When I was in my late teens/ early twenties I used to go out a lot, and I mean a lot. Thurs...

Mostly when playing tournament poker you want to try and avoid situations where you are playing large pots with a small edge.
"Waiting for better spots or for situations where your stack size forces you to make a marginal move gives you a mu...

Mostly when playing tournament poker you want to try and avoid situations where you are playing large pots with a small edge.
"Waiting for better spots or for situations where your stack size forces you to make a marginal move gives you a mu...

A lot of poker players share a common dream of being able to live a life full of luxury holidays, fast cars and Cristal champagne, all funded by playing poker from their favourite armchair for nosebleed stakes.
"Sometimes as a player, you n...

A lot of poker players share a common dream of being able to live a life full of luxury holidays, fast cars and Cristal champagne, all funded by playing poker from their favourite armchair for nosebleed stakes.
"Sometimes as a player, you n...

If enough poker players played for long enough, eventually there would be one player who lost every single hand they ever played - be it aces or deuce seven off suit - and a player that won every hand they played, regardless of each hands strength.[b...

If enough poker players played for long enough, eventually there would be one player who lost every single hand they ever played - be it aces or deuce seven off suit - and a player that won every hand they played, regardless of each hands strength.[b...

When two of the most aggressive players in the world collide with strong hands, there are bound to be fireworks and fireworks there were when Patrik Antonius locked horns with Phil Ivey in the 'Million Dollar Cash Game.'
Ivey raises the...

Buying in deep has one substantial advantage over buying in short. If you are sitting in a game with another player who is weak and also has a big stack, you give yourself the opportunity to win all of their chips in one hand.
"In low stakes...

Although the basics of being a good poker player are simply tying to work out your opponents possible range of hands, comparing it to your own, and acting accordingly; sometimes your opponents possible holding is not the only consideration you should...

When two of the most aggressive players in the world collide with strong hands, there are bound to be fireworks and fireworks there were when Patrik Antonius locked horns with Phil Ivey in the 'Million Dollar Cash Game.'
Ivey raises the...

Buying in deep has one substantial advantage over buying in short. If you are sitting in a game with another player who is weak and also has a big stack, you give yourself the opportunity to win all of their chips in one hand.
"In low stakes...

Although the basics of being a good poker player are simply tying to work out your opponents possible range of hands, comparing it to your own, and acting accordingly; sometimes your opponents possible holding is not the only consideration you should...

I don't often write about poker on here. I'm not very good at poker and marginally worse at writing.
"If you are at all semi-serious about your poker then give him a read. Even a donk like me can be improved."

However I[sg...

I don't often write about poker on here. I'm not very good at poker and marginally worse at writing.
"If you are at all semi-serious about your poker then give him a read. Even a donk like me can be improved."

However I[sg...

When you sit down at a cash table you immediately have a choice between how much to buy in for. Most online sites allow you to buy in for between twenty and one hundred big blinds, most casinos allow you to buy in around the same amount at the low en...

When you sit down at a cash table you immediately have a choice between how much to buy in for. Most online sites allow you to buy in for between twenty and one hundred big blinds, most casinos allow you to buy in around the same amount at the low en...

One of the hardest stack sizes to play in no limit tournament poker is one of between fifteen and twenty five big blinds. This is because it occupies a sort of awkward limbo, being too much to just shove, while at the same time being short enough tha...

When you first start playing poker, it is often advised to play a simple, tight "ABC" style in order to stay out of trouble or avoid difficult situations. The problem with playing like this is that it can quickly become boring and the style r...

One of the hardest stack sizes to play in no limit tournament poker is one of between fifteen and twenty five big blinds. This is because it occupies a sort of awkward limbo, being too much to just shove, while at the same time being short enough tha...

When you first start playing poker, it is often advised to play a simple, tight "ABC" style in order to stay out of trouble or avoid difficult situations. The problem with playing like this is that it can quickly become boring and the style r...

A mammoth field of 266 top pros turned out for Event #14 of the 2009 Aussie Millions Poker Championship, $2,200 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold'em. 24 survivors returned to the Crown Casino for Day 2, and it was Thomas Lindbjerg......

Germany's Moritz Kranich claimed top honors at the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour stop in Deauville, France on Saturday, winning a crucial pot during three-handed play to assume command on his way to the €851,400 winner's......

A field of 266 players was on hand for Friday's opening day of action in Event #14 of the 2009 Aussie Millions Poker Championship – $2,200 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold'em. Among the entrants were WSOP bracelet holder Jennifer Tilly......

Day 4 would see the end of three great deep runs by Team Betfair players, all falling agonisingly close to a final table finish, but doing themselves proud by reaching the latter stages of the Aussie Millions Main Event 2009.
Obrestad was visib...

Day 4 would see the end of three great deep runs by Team Betfair players, all falling agonisingly close to a final table finish, but doing themselves proud by reaching the latter stages of the Aussie Millions Main Event 2009.
Obrestad was visib...

One of the most feared and respected players in the high-stakes online cash games is Tom 'Durrrr' Dwan.
Ask anyone who plays cash games online who they would avoid like the plague and most of them will mention Durrrr's name. One pla...

For the past week I seem to have lost focus in all directions and have been feeling pretty low. Do not ask my why as I cannot pinpoint a particular reason why I should be feeling down but I have been.
Thinking about it now, as I write, it will n...

The blogosphere has been relatively quiet this past week, with a lot of the big names hanging out at various events around the world and the rest of us mere mortals cutting down on our posting volume, which usually means people are running bad!
...

One of the most feared and respected players in the high-stakes online cash games is Tom 'Durrrr' Dwan.
Ask anyone who plays cash games online who they would avoid like the plague and most of them will mention Durrrr's name. One pla...

For the past week I seem to have lost focus in all directions and have been feeling pretty low. Do not ask my why as I cannot pinpoint a particular reason why I should be feeling down but I have been.
Thinking about it now, as I write, it will n...

The blogosphere has been relatively quiet this past week, with a lot of the big names hanging out at various events around the world and the rest of us mere mortals cutting down on our posting volume, which usually means people are running bad!
...

After three grueling Day 1 flights, 320 surviving players combined into a single Day 2 field on Wednesday at the 2009 Aussie Millions Main Event. The poker players on hand at the Crown Casino in Melbourne included Joe Hachem......

Over on the other side of the world at the Aussie Millions the Betfair Poker Team are performing well.

Today John Tabatabai was crowned the Australian Head Up Champion taking home a cool AU $100,000 (£47,500) and a gold ring after beatin...

Over on the other side of the world at the Aussie Millions the Betfair Poker Team are performing well.

Today John Tabatabai was crowned the Australian Head Up Champion taking home a cool AU $100,000 (£47,500) and a gold ring after beatin...

Betfair Pro John Tabatabai landed the Australian Heads Up Championships at the Aussie Millions on Thursday evening beating Alec Torelli 2-0 in the final winning AU$100,000.
An early casualty in the Main Event, his departure certainly didn't...

Betfair Pro John Tabatabai landed the Australian Heads Up Championships at the Aussie Millions on Thursday evening beating Alec Torelli 2-0 in the final winning AU$100,000.
An early casualty in the Main Event, his departure certainly didn't...

A decision handed down by an eastern Pennsylvania judge has decreed that poker is a game of skill rather than luck, dismissing cases against a defendant jailed after hosting a poker game. The decision also bolsters......

This is one of the most important concepts to be able to understand as you start moving your game up the limits. 'Balancing your ranges' simply refers to making sure that when you make a specific play, you do it with a wide enough range of ha...

Tristan Heffernan reports on an amazing Day 2 at the Aussie Millions for Team Betfair

Day 2 was Girls Day at the Aussie Millions - spearheaded by two incredible performances by the two ladies playing under the Betfair banner. Annette "Ann...

Team Betfair enjoyed a spectacular Day 2 at the Aussie Millions in Melbourne with qualifier Annica Ivert leading the field with Annette Obrestad sitting in second place.
Aussie Millions Day 2 1. Annica Ivert 555,9002. Annette_15 454,8003. Raj R...

This is one of the most important concepts to be able to understand as you start moving your game up the limits. 'Balancing your ranges' simply refers to making sure that when you make a specific play, you do it with a wide enough range of ha...

Tristan Heffernan reports on an amazing Day 2 at the Aussie Millions for Team Betfair.

Day 2 was Girls Day at the Aussie Millions - spearheaded by two incredible performances by the two ladies playing under the Betfair banner. Annette "An...

The image of W.C. Fields, stealthily peering out from under a stovepipe top hat over a carefully-protected hand of cards, is one of the more iconic images of poker playing to come from American cinema. Indeed, for many......

Our man in Melbourne Tristan Heffernan reports from the final opening day of the Aussie Millions Main Event.

The final of the three Day 1s saw only one qualifier from Betfair take part in what was easily the biggest field of the three days at...

Ask any poker player to describe a sick hand they are aware of and I bet at least one of them will mention the Phil Ivey vs Paul 'Action' Jackson when they were heads-up at the Monte Carlo Millions.
With 44,000 chips already in the pot,...

Tristan Heffernan reports on Day 1b from the Aussie Millions in Melbourne with news of the Betfair Pros and qualifiers.

Things really started to heat up for the Betfair Poker team in Day 1a, with 6 entrants taking to the felt, with Annette [d...

Poker can be a cruel beast at times and over the past couple of days I am living proof of that statement. Believe it or not but I am still playing HUSNG almost three weeks after I said I was going to try spend the whole of 2009 playing them, although...

I have recently been coaching a friend of mine who wanted to improve his multi table tournament game. He had been playing lots of small buy in, large field events, but was complaining that he never seemed to be able to conquer such large fields
...

The Asian Poker Tour's Poker Pack and our very own ChipMeUp will join hands at the 2009 Aussie Millions allowing the public to purchase a piece of each pro during the Main Event......

This a common term used by poker players when discussing how they played a specific hand. The term 'texture' in this context refers to what combination of cards have come down on the board, as it will nearly always have massive effects on how...

Shock, horror, Gus Hansen involved in a sick poker hand, this time at the Million Dollar Cash Game.
Finding AdQd in early position, Hansen raises and finds calls from Paul Kemsley (Tc9c), Tony G (As3s) and Eric Seidel with a pair of eights.
[...

Betfair Pro Sorel Mizzi has an excellent chance of landing his second major live tournament in as many months after reaching the final table of the $1,000 no-limit rebuy event at the Aussie Millions.
The Canadian lies second in chips behind the...

Seven Card Stud was the most commonly played poker variant in casinos and home games across the United States of America but the increase in popularity of Texas Hold'em in recent years, has stopped the growth of Stud in its tracks.
The most...

I had just watched a video on Deuces Cracked so I decided to take what I had learnt to the Betfair $NL20 tables. These tables can be pretty weak, but there are a few regulars who you don't want to tangle with.
I loaded up two tables, $20 on...

Imagine sitting there and flopping a set, in a raised pot, against one of the world's most aggressive players. That is exactly what happened to Canadian superstar, Daniel Negreanu in an episode of High Stakes Poker when he re-raised Gus Hansen[sg...

If you take away all the bells and whistles from poker, it becomes apparent that it is essentially a game of mathematics and as a result, players are subjected to what is called variance.
Poker forums the world over, contain literally hundreds...

One of the earliest observations from the 'mad genius' of poker, Mike Caro, about bad players was that they usually act weak when strong or strong when weak.
The reasons for this are actually quite obvious if you think carefully about t...

The term 'overbet' refers to a bet that is substantially over the size of the pot in no limit games. Unlike in pot limit games, where a player cannot raise more than the size of the pot at any point, in no limit games a player can bet as much...

We've all been there, you are sitting with friends or family, someone pulls out the chips and you start up a low stakes poker game. Sooner or later talks of adding extra game comes along, and before you know it you are playing stud hi lo with one...

Nearly every bizarre variant of poker requires major changes to a player's game. This is simply because the addition of wild cards - or extra regular cards to players hands, such as six card Omaha or three card hold'em - makes a huge number o...

A sick hand occurred when Ryan Daut and Isaac Haxton clashed heads-up at the final table of the 2007 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. After finding himself 3:1 down in chips at one point, Daut fought valiantly to turn things around and when this hand...

Everyone likes getting comments on their poker blog, right? - otherwise people would just turn off their comments option. Right?

So here are are three quick tips for getting more comments.
1) Allow comments from everybody

Comment s...

I have had a really nice weekend so thought I would round it off with a quick blog entry, here on my little piece of the internet. Things got under way on Friday when Sister Pud, her husband-to-be, Mrs P and I went for a curry to celebrate my sister[...

Poker players keep blogs for a variety of reasons. For many, writing about how they have played particular hands or coped in certain situation helps to improve their game (through self-evaluation), others enjoy the buzz of getting feedback and comme...

Heads-up in Event#2 of the 2008 World Series of Poker, young British pro, James Akenhead had been slowly eroding away Grant Hinkle's chip-lead and was almost level when a cruel hand was played out.
Hinkle raised to 350,000 with the lowly han...

On the surface, cash games and tournament poker look very similar. After all, the hand rankings are the same, each player has a stack of chips and everyone has the potential to win some money. However, the two disciplines have some fundamental differ...

Early in the $10,000 buy-in 2005 World Series of Poker Main Event, a hand cropped up where a one-outer was hit on the river to decimate the stack of top pro Jennifer Harman.
After raising pre flop with a pair of Queens, Harman was called by Cor...

Whilst the majority of us mere mortals are struggling to come to terms with the start of a global recession, there are a privileged few who seem to have money to burn in these testing times.
During a recent interview, high-stakes cash guru, Tom...

Why and how people choose to play poker is a very personal matter. Some people just enjoy the buzz of gambling, not hugely bothered about their bottom line at the end of the year, and are more there to just play the game and have a good time. Other p...

Channel 4 to broadcast eight hours of action from Betfair-sponsored event - the biggest in European poker.
Beginning late on Friday 9th January (01:35am) UK Broadcaster Channel 4 will be airing eight hours of coverage from the World Series Of Po...

This seems one of the most obvious concepts in poker, yet is one that you see ignored time and time again by weak players.
If you sit in any low stakes cash game and watch a few hands, you will very quickly see a player - or players - checking a...

Back in the late 1990's, there were many billboards around my home town of Leeds that bared the face of French footballer, Eric Cantona and the slogan, "1966 was a great year for English football. Eric was born." If there were to be a sim...

Razz is a game that makes many players roll their eyes back in their heads and talk about how they wish that such a game had never been invented.
Due to it being included in the H.O.R.S.E. Rotation, most players will at some point have to play i...

In all the time I've been playing poker seriously (well, as 'serious' as I ever get about anything anyway) I've never really been much into deep analysis of past hands. Certainly I've pondered briefly after a big hand to considere...

It may come as a shock to some but I have fallen behind on my HUSNG challenge, LOL! I did start playing before the New Year and managed to log over 60 games before deciding to start afresh in 2009, mainly for nice, neat records for me.
I played...

Whilst poker is an exciting and exhilarating game, it can also be an extremely frustrating and annoying hobby.

Sometimes, the 'Poker Gods' (amen) think it would be fun to make two huge hands clash in order for a player to lose most, i...

If you watch any of the great online multi table tournament players on any day where they are playing a full schedule of tournaments, you will see that in the early stages of the game that most of them often just play pretty basic, abc poker - just a...

2009 is nearly upon us, so I thought it time to set some poker and non-poker goals for 2009.
Continue grinding the cash tables and building my bankroll. As long as I can continue playing within my bankroll, and playing hard, my bankroll should l...

Did you all have a good Christmas? I hope so as the Pudding family had a really enjoyable time, even if it was a long, exhausting day! Things got under way at 0500 in the morning when Step-Pud woke up and refused to go back to sleep so by dinner time...

One of the key leaks in weak players games is that they bluff for very obvious reasons.

The most obvious of these is desperation, usually in situations where their hand has missed and the only real option that they have to win the hand is to b...

First things first.

I've had the flu. And being a man, everyone automatically says that I have "man flu" - which is the same as saying "a slight cold". But I have been genuinely ill...you know how I can tell? I haven't...

Nearly all the money you will ever make from playing poker comes from folding.
Although this sounds ridiculous to a newcomer ('surely you make money in poker by betting and winning big pots?' Seems to be the usual thinking pattern), act...

I played in the "John Crawley Benefit" poker game at the Empire, Leicester Square the other week.
John Crawley is an ex-England international cricketer, and the event was put on in aid of Multiple Sclerosis (my mother-in-law has MS, so I...

After three days and countless hands of poker, Brent 'Astrolux85' Roberts bested a field of 178 competitors to stand alone as the World Series of Poker Circuit Atlantic City Champion. The 23-year-old New Yorker adds a Circuit......

Bert and Ernie are sitting in the living room, and Bert is playing the Sunday Million on Pokerstars on his laptop.
Ernie : Bert?
Bert : Yes Ernie?
Ernie : We've got to go shopping tomorrow Bert.
Bert : Yes I know Ernie.
Ernie : W...

Often portrayed in films and soap operas as under-hand characters gambling ill-gotten gains in a dingy, smoke-filled warehouse, poker players have a poor reputation in the eyes of the non-playing public.
I myself have been victim to this prejudi...

Ego has bust more players than any other single factor - except perhaps bad tilt (which is very closely linked to ego anyway).
The inability to swallow your pride, quit games you have no edge in, drop down stakes, or stop playing in all the big...

Dominic Kay, who made the final table of the WSOPE in 2007, recently had another decent live tournament cash at the Luton Christmas Cracker Festival though it was a tournament he very nearly didn't play in....
I travelled down to Luton on T...

The term 'slowroll' refers to when a player is last to act, has either the nuts or a hand so strong they would never consider folding, and is facing an all in, and then sits there deliberating for a while over a choice that they obviously don...

When online poker first started, the only thing you had to know how to do to beat no limit hold'em games was to three bet with hands other than monsters, and make continuation bets at a high frequency.
This was because most of the players in...

The term "bad beat" in poker is reserved for when a player loses a hand, despite being a huge mathematical favourite or when a very strong hand loses out to an even stronger one.
Every poker player worth his or her salt will have suffere...

I was recently playing a bit of $.50/1 no limit hold'em when a true maniac sat down and started to play.
This individual was playing a style that is effectively the quickest way to lose money in no limit hold'em - it is the optimum strat...

One of the most important skills a poker player will develop is the ability to take notes on their opponents. Poker is a game of incomplete information, where players have to make decisions based on betting patterns or tells and as a results, are oft...

Razz is a simple game. It is played identically to 7 Card Stud with one key difference, the lowest hand wins.
Straight and Flushes don't count against your hand, while pairs or better do, so the best possible low hand in Razz is A2345 (or...

This is an effect which is frequently forgotten by online players, although one which has, and always will be, a critical feature of poker.
Being the most dominant player, or 'table captain', can hugely change the dynamic of a game. Live...

Although the fundamental reason that anyone successfully plays poker is to win the forced bets, lots of careful considerations have to be made about quite how you go about it.
This is particularly pronounced late in tournaments, when not only ar...

Cash games are often the bread and butter of a poker professional simply for the fact they have the opportunity to win vast sums of money each and every hand they play, whereas substantial tournament wins are usually few and far between. For someone...

Although for the most part you hardly ever want to tell bad players how bad they really are, occasionally it is profitable and correct to try and get under the skin of bad players through berating them. A great example of this comes from Stu Ungar[sg...

Betfair pro Sorel Mizzi has done what he has been threatening to do since turning professional last year - won a major live poker tournament.
Earlier this week, the 22-year-old beat a 135-player field in Event #5 ($3,000 No Limit Hold'em) o...

After a couple of month of running like what can only be described as dog dirt, I am pleased to report that I am now on some sort of heater, running hotter than the sun and loving playing poker!
Rossi left a comment in my last post saying he was...

In an effort to answer the age-old question of whether poker is a game of skill or luck, Betfair Poker have been crunching through the stats on their site, and the results are intriguing. Below are some of the more interesting things they discovered...

I recently made the transition from playing tournament poker exclusively to playing cash poker whenever I hit the tables. And this has been an eye-opener - and has bought with it a complete change of mindset.
Playing tournaments, if I was holdin...

The field for Day 1b of the PokerStars.com Asia Pacific Poker Tour Grand Final at the Star City Casino in Sydney was larger than Day 1a, with 172 players joining the event. Among the big names on hand were Gavin Griffin, Raymond......

One of the most frequent mistakes you see bad players make is going broke with ace king early in tournaments.
This hand seems to have some kind of special mystique about it, probably from people seeing the massive all ins that are played with it...

Despite what some crazy American politicians may tell you, poker is a game that needs both skills and luck to succeed in the long term, not just the luck factor.
The fact there is skill involved in the game means in time, the better players wil...

I have had the bright idea to write this blog entry at 0330 in the morning after Step Pud woke up screaming at 0230 as he is scared of the dark and the landing light decided to die last night, so bare with me if it is sketchy!
Despite only havin...

One of the most important things you need to learn to become successful at deep stacked, big bet poker, is to be able to exercise pot control on a regular basis.
The reason for this is actually relatively simple - big bets nearly always mean big...

In nearly all variants of poker there are situations that arise where the correct play is to try and give your opponent a free card in the hope that they hit something, due to the massive strength of your own hand.
Whether it is flopping quads i...

I don't often play live poker, but last year I played in a live game - and I managed to get a nice read on an opponent.
Which is good.

However, the read backfired, and it cost me a lot of chips - and here's why:

Being a [db...

You may be wondering why the title of this post mentions the little sod with wings and a bow and arrow when I am with Mrs P, well do not worry, everything is fine on that front but thanks in part to a singing duck, I personally hate the song 'Stu...

About two years ago I was coming home from a late night session of poker in my local casino. My taxi driver was bright and friendly and we enjoyed a pleasant conversation for most of the journey, until he asked the dreaded question; 'How much di...

I was recently playing heads up $3/$6 no limit hold'em with a player online. He seemd to be tilting hard, having dropped two buy ins to me making badly timed (and badly executed) bluffs, both of which I called with very marginal holdings.
He...

As you are probably aware, poker is built on a base of mathematics and grasping the fundamentals will give you an edge over any casual Tom, Dick or Harry who decides to sit at your table.
I have been reading forums and message boards all over t...

Every time you sit down at a poker table you will see people making different bet sizes. Working out what these bet sizes mean, and how much you should bet yourself, is crucial to poker success. Some players tend to raise different amounts with diffe...

Since my last post, I have been on the wrong end of some life variance once again and I have been feeling a little bit sorry for myself if I am honest.
First thing that happened was my bloody computer died for the second time in a matter of mont...

Anyone who plays poker know they have a choice of calling, folding or raising during a hand but few beginners know there are several reasons why a player should be raising the action. Raising not only gives you a chance to win the pot, as your oppone...

If you look at the stats of where a good multi table, or 'MTT' player finishes in a tournament, you will quickly see that they hardly ever bust in the very early stages. Although there will be the odd cooler situation, such as an over set, or...

In the final chapter of 'The Biggest Game in Town,' Al Alvarez' lyrical chronicle of the 1981 World Series of Poker, the Main Event has come down to the final six-handed table. Referring to hold'em's Texas origins, Alvarez reports......

A world class sit and go player can probably hold down a long term roi, or 'return on investment', of between five and ten percent. This obviously adds up to a huge amount of money over many games, but it shows just how small the edge is in t...

Hi and welcome to my new home on the net!

So first I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Nick, but in poker circles everybody knows me as "Cloud" (struggling to come up with an original poker name, I happened to be looking out of t...

Poker can be a cruel beast at times and is one of the few games where you can play perfectly and still lose. Think of it this way, if Manchester United played Accrington Stanley one hundred times, you would expect the current Premier League champions...

With Pud mentioning about how dealing with bad players is often very different to how you deal with good players, I thought it was worth looking at why these players play in a specific way, and why it is important to understand and think about the mo...

You only have to look at how steeply the prize money goes up when at the final of a multi table tournament to realise how important it is to try and get to those all important top three places. This leads to numerous players at final tables trying to...

I will begin by apologising for the severe lack of updates to my little blog this month, I am usually one of the more prolific bloggers on the Betfair site but this is only my second post this month. Bad Pudding!
The main reason for me neglectin...

The term 'the nuts' simply refers to a hand that is the best possible one. In flop games the nuts is quite a regular occurrence, where as compared to a game like five card draw (where the nuts has to be a royal flush due to the five hidden ca...

The stakes will be extremely high when the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event gets underway next month, with the winner set to take home the second-largest tournament payday ever of over $9million, writes Rob Eddy.
Not that it m...

Following on from the look at big flips, it is worth looking at the other common form of gambling at the poker table (apart from just the poker of course) - props. Props are small bets that take place during cash games that can range from total luck,...

Full Tilt's FTOPS X series began yesterday in a big way. Event #1, a $200+16 NL hold'em 6-max tourney with $1,000,000 guaranteed, attracted 5,124 players for a total prize pool of $1,024,800. Some of the most well-known finishers......

He could be playing in Denmark in February or Las Vegas at the height of the desert's scorching summer heat, but you'll hardly ever find Dario Minieri playing a hand of poker without the maroon-and-gold-striped scarf that has......

In one the most recent episodes of the cash game variant of Poker After Dark, a few of the world's best poker players (including Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu) start the game off by flipping for over $100,000 each - for a pot total of around $400...

Though I like to almost entirely ignore poker in my writing (perhaps just including the word "poker" itself as a token gesture in the first paragraph) I thought I'd break the mould and respond to a question I faced recently about an appar...

Although most of the emphasis on player types seems to go on whether a player is tight or loose, aggressive or passive, there are actually numerous other player types that can be identified, adapted to and profited from. One of the best examples of t...

One of the first things that strikes any newcomer to a poker room is the sound of chips moving. Then endless and unique clicking and clattering sound that chips make when shuffled and played with really becomes part of the atmosphere of a poker room....

Sometimes in poker you just have to fold a strong hand - it is as simple as that. Despite the fact that you may be looking down at a full house, flush or straight, sometimes the action simply dictates that you are beat. Poker is a game that is extrem...

Any of you who have read any of my old blogs or know me personally, will know that I have spent a lot of time in the pub trade over the years and think of the pub as my home and the customers as my extended family.
I first started out as a glass...

With Halloween at hand and November set to begin, a pair of big promotions at PartyPoker have kept players at that site busy in hopes of a big jackpot. Tonight is the last night of Party's October-long 'Big Deal' promotion......

Although weak games can occasionally be found at nearly every limit, mostly they are exclusive to the low stakes. Beating these particular games requires a very different strategy to beating games with thinking players - and requires anyone sitting i...

These two concepts are very closely linked in poker. As in any area with probability, the larger your sample size, the closer you get to the actual odds, and the smaller the variance from the correct line there is (as a good example of this, a recent...

I hope you are all sitting down to read this as I have a one-off bit of information for you! Yorkshire Pudding has actually finished a challenge for once, shock horror! In my last post I said I wanted to play 60 HUSnG in a week and I managed to bette...

Throughout poker literature, great emphasis is placed on being 'first in' - that is, the first player to make a bet (usually an all in) in order to win the blinds late in a tournament - enabling a player's survival. Much less frequently d...

This is the polar opposite to the small ball strategy in poker. Instead of constantly trying to pick up lots of small pots, a player is attempting to stick to solid hand values, and play large pots with these few hands.
The main key advantage o...

The concept of 'small ball' poker seems to have first been mentioned regularly by Dan Harrington in his excellent series of no limit hold'em tournament strategy books - entitled Harrington on hold'em.
It has also has gained incr...

The single most important feature of poker are the forced bets. Without these, all the action would stagnate, players would only play aces and the game would have died a long time ago. By forcing players to put in a bet without seeing their hand, you...

After being woken up at 0400 by a Step Pud that would only go back to sleep in my bed and who then spent the next three hours doing a great Spinning Dervish impression, forcing me onto the bed frame with elbows, knees and toes in my ribs, I had an ea...

A great playwright once said, "All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players". A not so great playwright once said, "Give a man a one-day travelcard and the world is his oyster".
So, there I was, one-day tra...

A couple of weeks ago I received a poker e-mail in my inbox. As one of the four hundred poker e-mails I receive daily, I pretty much ignored it - until I noticed the words "win a share of £25k" in the title. Suddenly I was interested.[b...

It is common knowledge that the key to becoming a winning player at the crazy game we call Texas Hold'em is volume, and plenty of it. After all, there are 1,362 possible starting hand combinations (169 if you are not bothered about which order th...

Seventy-seven players were on hand on Tuesday for Day 1 action in Event #4 of the 2008 PokerNews Cup, $550 H.O.R.S.E. The field was sprinkled with plenty of stars, including Joe Hachem, Van Marcus, James 'Andy McLEOD' Obst......

This particular mistake is one that many starting players seem to make - and is one that will cost you a fortune if you don't recognise it and adjust to it. I used to habitually make this mistake until I read some of the work of the great high st...

Most poker players will declare that there is more to the game (or indeed sport depending on your viewpoint) than just luck as many would have you believe, but there appears to be a growing change in official eyes, writes Rob Eddy.
Not so long...

There is quite a common situation that arises on the bubble of sit and go tournaments that can hugely improve your win rate if you can spot and take advantage of it. It usually comes about when playing three or four handed on the bubble of a sit and...

After doubling my bankroll within the first week of October, I have hardly played any poker. Why? I am not sure to be honest! Last month I simply could not stop playing even though I was losing heavily but this month I am winning and cannot find the...

London has been a happy hunting ground of late for John Juanda who became the first American to land a gold bracelet at Betfair's World Series of Poker Europe with his victory in the Main Event earlier this month, writes Rob Eddy.
The man t...

Following on from the previous article about the importance of moving seats in cash games, I want to look at the broader consequences of seats and position in poker. The first key point is that most of any players profit will come from the right. Mos...

Kelly Kim has to know the odds are against him. The 31-year-old poker pro from Whittier, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, is going into the final table of the 2008 WSOP Main Event with just 2,620,000 in chips......

A healthy contingent of star players is expected to be on hand for the main event of the PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour's upcoming Auckland stop, which begins Oct. 9th at Auckland's SKYCITY Casino. It's the third of five......

The last 32 players standing in the PokerStars.net European Poker Tour London Main Event returned to the Grosvenor Victoria Casino to play down to the eight-handed final table. Frenchman Philippe D'Auteuil started the day......

A couple of months ago I wrote an article for Betfair's WSOP site about the chip and a chair story involving Jack 'Tree Top' Strauss. Anyone who is interested in poker will know the aphorism and on Wednesday night, I was involved in a sim...

The prisoner's dilemma is a problem that is frequently discussed as an example of game theory. It is a simple problem that has some key consequences on poker. Game theory is extremely useful for analysing certain aspects of poker, and the prisone...

John Juanda became the first US-based player to win a WSOPE bracelet when finally getting the better of the young Russian Stanislav Alekhin after an epic 22 hour final table battle.
At 10.30 am on Friday October 3 2008, American John Juanda was...

Reigning WSOPE Main Event champion, Annette 'Annette_15' Obrestad, once again butted heads with the 2007 runner-up, John 'Kunkuwap' Tabatabai, this time in the £5,000 Pot-limit Omaha tournament.
Obrestad and Tabatabai fought an...

Although it may have seemed a long time ago since the last hand of the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event was almost two months until the nine remaining players......

When a poker professional is playing well and hitting cards it can be a deadly combination. One player who is doing both at the £1,500 No-limit Hold'em Event at the 2008 World Series of Poker Europe is John Juanda.
Juanda was born and raise...

No-limit hold'em can be a cruel beast at the best of times, but it seems to save its nastiest beast for the biggest poker tournaments, just ask Phil Ivey.
Many regard Ivey as the best poker player of all time and many refer to him as the Tig...

Day 2 action in the Pokerstars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour Main Event in Seoul, South Korea, saw 83 players on hand to start play, the survivors of 165 initial Day 1 entrants at the Walker-Hill Casino. The 83 players worked down......

A stellar lineup of 159 players was on hand on Saturday for the first of two starting sessions in the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event. Day 1a play drew many of poker's biggest stars, including Phil Ivey, David Benyamine......

Poker is mostly a game about people. Although it has cards, a large luck element and different ways of betting, at it's core it is simply a game of psychology. Each player has their own views on the game, their own particular weaknesses and stren...

Poker is mostly a game about people. Although it has cards, a large luck element and different ways of betting, at it's core it is simply a game of psychology. Each player has their own views on the game, their own particular weaknesses and stren...

The European Poker Tour has honoured Season 4's top performers but sadly for Team Betfair pro, Annette Obrestad, she missed out on the award that she had been nominated for, writes Rob Eddy.
The young Norwegian poker star had been in content...

In my opinion, being able to play multiple tables at once is the single greatest feature of online play. The ability to play numerous tables, coupled with the much higher rate of turnover of hands that virtual shuffling allows, enables a player to dr...

Event number two of the World Series of Poker Europe is well underway and the American contingent is doing very well for itself, not least by the man who is known as the 'Tiger Woods of Poker', writes Rob Eddy.
Phil Ivey is arguably the...

This concept shows brilliantly how fluid the general consensus on the 'correct' poker strategy can change. When I first started playing seriously around six years ago, this was a very common strategy advocated by many.
If I think back to...

Playing in a major poker tournament, whilst fun and exciting, can actually be a tiring and stressful experience. Players can find themselves sat in the same position for up to fifteen hours a day, calculating pot odds and working out whether or not t...

Advertising is an extremely important part of any poker players game at the mid stakes or higher (at the low stakes it is useless as mostly the players are too weak to notice it, and/or respond to it).
It is especially important for tight player...

Day 13 of the World Championship of Online Poker on PokerStars proved unlucky for most, but some continued to defy the odds. The WCOOP has already showcased some of the game's best and Day 13 was no exception. Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier......

This is probably the most contentious issue in poker today - which is better, the loose style favored by many successful players, or the super tight style employed by players like Phil Hellmuth? The answer to this is probably neither, and also both....

My very first entry (more...), here on this blog touched on how much I hate public transport and the lack of freedom I have had due to not owning a car. Well, it has taken six months but Pud is finally back on the road!
A few months ago, Puddin...

Texas Hold'em is a game that, on the surface, is very easy to learn. This simplicity makes it appealing to scores of players worldwide. However, things are not always as they seem and once you start to delve deeper and deeper into the psychology...

This is a new addition from last year, and one which appears to be much more like the regular $1.5k buy in events that they hold during the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
With 6,000 in starting chips, hour levels, and 25/50 starting blinds,...

There is a saying I poker that goes along the lines of "Fixed limit Hold'em is a science, whilst No-limit is an art form." Having played a ton of both I can confirm this to be true.
Playing with a fixed limit betting structure ties...

Many players who have started out just playing hold'em or Omaha often struggle with stud games when they first play them. This is probably because stud games require a much greater attention to detail than flop games, due to the large number of c...

There is an old poker saying (I think it is from Amarillo Slim, but don't quote me on it) that 'if you can't spot the idiot at the table than you're it'. This is a good piece of poker wisdom, and it has interesting consequences on...

One of the most important concepts a player has to get to grips with late on in tournaments is the importance of being the first player to bet - or being 'first in'. This is particularly true when you are so short stacked that the only availa...

Isolating a player is one of the most effective plays in no limit hold'em. The term 'isolate' is used to describe a situation where you make a raise that gives you a very good chance of playing the pot one on one with the player you are i...

Last year this turned out ot be one of the most star studded tables of the WSOPE, with Hendon mob regular Joe Beevers, Chris 'Jesus Ferguson' and Jennifer Harman-Traniello all making the final table. In the end it was a surprise player (to mo...

Due to how soft the pot limit Omaha games have become in recent years, there seems to have developed a specific player class at the tables which simply sits back, hits nut hands and takes advantage of any player going too far with a weak hand.
...

The idea of 'fancy play syndrome' was first pointed out by the 'mad genius' of poker - Mike Caro. What he is referring to is when players start making overly complex plays that are simply not profitable over the long term.

A...

The observation and use of hand ranges is critical to becoming a good poker player.
The very best players are able to narrow down their opponents range of hands to a select few through close observation of their stack size, previous tenancies,...

This play has become increasingly popular in recent years, mainly due to the fact that some of the most popular professionals (in particular Gus Hansen), have started to use this move on a regular basis.

It has a few key advantages - firstl...

The term 'floating' simply refers to calling an opponents bet, either in or out of position, with a weak hand with the intention of bluffing them on a later street.
Floating has become a much more effective play in recent years, as the...

Pot limit Omaha is basically the only game in poker where there is a good case to fold the nuts in certain spots. The clearest example of this is the nut straight in specific situations.
To try and illustrate this, I want to look at an example...

There's something magical about returning from a poker game late/early enough that the sun rises as you drive home. Sharing the near-empty 4:30am roads with delinquent foxes kicking over dustbins and smoking cigarettes (I think I saw one lighting...

This is a video of Scotty Nguyen winning this years $50,000 buy in WSOP H.O.R.S.E event.
Link to Video
Throughout the film he is drinking heavily, constantly berating and criticising his opponents, as well as acting in an extremely hypocritic...

You may recall that I had been staked for three of the $55 WSOPE (more...) qualifiers on Betfair and that I had played one with no success. Well, over the past couple of days I have played a further three games with mixed fortunes.
On Thursday,...

I played the first of my three $55 WSOP Europe (more...) satellites last night and despite not winning a seat to the super satellite on September 7 (more...), I left with a ton of confidence. (writes Yorkshire Pud)
Starting with 2k in chips and...

Over the past week or so, I have felt a little depressed and have been very negative in everything I have done. Why? I do not know to be honest but it seems to have passed on now thankfully. I played quite a few hands on Betfair last week and was doi...

Poker can easily become a major part of your life once you start to take it seriously.
The combination of profitability, the rush of making successful plays, and the general recreational aspect of it can quickly make it a big influence on your...

It is common knowledge that poker's popularity across the globe has increased massively over the last few years, particularly online, but, seemingly, growth in the UK over the last 12 months has stagnated, writes Rob Eddy.
I find it a little...

Poker is a radically different game online than it is live. Although the basic mechanics of the game remain the same, there is much less information available live that there is online.
There are no physical tells, like the way a player throws...

On of the most profitable poker games I played in when I first started playing seriously was a £5/£10 limit Omaha hi/lo game run by a bookmaker I knew.
This game would usually run at weekends, and basically be full all the way from Friday aft...

This post should be a bit of a mixed bag today, with some poker, life and silly things in it! For some unknown reason, I am in a good mood today, maybe it is because the sun is shining outside, who knows?
At the tables things have been frustrat...

Texas hold'em is usually played in three different formats - either in full ring games, which usually have between nine and ten players; shorthanded, which is usually six players; and heads up, where players battle it out one on one. Picking whic...

This is a concept which players seem to forget at nearly all limits, time and time again.
When playing hi/lo games (the most popular of which are seven card stud eight or better and Omaha eight or better) the high hand wins half the pot, and th...

First of all, Well done to everyone who took part in this tournament challenge. The poker and banter in this tournament has been fantastic !!!. Thank you everyone. So onto last nights game. 1ST place was taken by Razorcutle who took the 45 points and...

Pot limit Omaha is one of the only variations of poker where you can have draws that are stronger than a made hand. In PLO it is possible to have draws that are favourite over top set, and recognising what types of hands to play in accordance with th...

This is a hand between arguably the worlds best poker player - Phil Ivey, and high stakes cash game player Brad Booth.
Link to Video

It displays some of the great thought processes involved in high stakes poker, where all the players kno...

Poker has a huge amount to do with outside events.
Being able to think about your own state of mind is critical to poker success. I remember learning this lesson the hard way, and would like to recall the events following the first live final t...

It has been five days since my last post (more...) mainly because I just have not been in the right frame of mind to write anything, never mind anything remotely related to poker!
Mrs P's hormones are well and truly kicking in now and Step P...

FTOPS IX Event #12 attracted a field of 1,405 players to the $1,000+60 six-max NLHE affair, generating a prize pool of $1,500,000 and a winner's share of $300,000. With so much talent and skill in the field, there were several big......

In the later stages of no limit hold'em tournaments there is nearly always an ante introduced.
This is typically a sum that adds up to around the size of the big blind when playing nine handed, although it is sometimes more and sometimes le...

One of the reasons that the variance is so high in Omaha is that you regularly encounter situations where players flop such big hands that neither can fold.
Be it your top set vs an opponents 13+ out draw, or middle set vs an opponents straight...

At its heart, poker is a very simple game.
You have a set hand ranking structure, set betting intervals, and set betting options each time. These four basic actions, to check, call, bet or fold, are the basic foundations of one of the worlds mo...

If you want to make some money at poker, come and find my tables and I will gladly donate to you! I am not talking about chip dumping or anything like that, but if you sit down with me, it will become apparent why you will leave with more chips than...

This video is a classic example of a player giving away too much information about their hand with predictable consequences



This video is a classic example of a player giving away too much information about their hand with predictabl...

We have a new league leader ... Another exellent night of poker guys and gals !!! Well done to last nights winner stevesav who grabbed the 45 points and $324.00. Its been a long time coming but well worth the wait steve !! 2ND place went to Katchit K...

Tuesday, August 05, 2008
When Betfair Poker devised their new $100,000 poker promotion they were not anticipating it being won on the very first day! However, that is exactly what happened when redmist1 walked away $100k richer after scooping t...

In the introduction to Doyle Brunson's masterpiece Super System 2 Steve Zolotow writes an excellent piece about which games aspiring players should learn.
As one of the old school generation, who have seen the poker landscape steadily chang...

These are some of the most interesting hands to play in no limit hold'em, and if played correctly, can be among the most profitable.
One of the great things about suited connectors is that they can flop monster hands like flushes and straig...

When baby Pud makes an appearance towards the back end of March, my available poker playing time will be drastically reduced. In addition, as I will not be able to commit a set period of time to play, I have decided to stop playing tournament poker (...

2008 World Series of Poker Europe TM Presented by Betfair.com
Announces Venue Details and November Nine Attendance

Four Bracelet Events Set for September 19th to October 2nd at Empire Casino in London


The 2008 World Serie...

Continuing the Poker Anorak's look at poker hands: Four Sixes...


Six Minutes



Six Years



Six Flags



Six Cards

...

My previous post (more...) started by telling you that I will be making some lifestyle changes but I never actually said why I had decided to take this action. Well now, I can tell you that I have been pondering life etc. as Mrs P and I are expecting...

There is a class of poker player at the Omaha tables who simply play nut hands.
They sit back, call pre flop with big pairs, suited aces and wrap hands, and will only commit chips to the pot with the best possible hand. Although this style is j...

No poker player will ever be successful long-term if they only play one set style of poker.
Although certain styles are extremely effective in certain situations, such as tight aggressive in low stakes cash games, or loose aggressive on the bub...

So many women taking the stage these days! Some say that it happens because of the internet where one doesn't directly confront other players. That might be true, but on the other hand it can only happen......

First Video

One of the big problems facing technically sound players is getting their opponents to call or fold in situations that they would not normally. One of the ways to do this is with a well timed action or comment. This video is...

Tilt is the single hardest thing to deal with when playing poker.
Even the very best professionals lapse into it occasionally, and its effects can be devastating. No matter how detached you try and keep yourself from the money involved in poker...

I have been re-evaluating a few things in my life recently and I have decided that it is time to make some changes. I have some goals, ambitions and dreams that I am yet to even start to try to achieve and I think it is my lifestyle that is holding m...

With the most important aspect of pot limit Omaha covered...
- that of good bankroll management (click here if you have not read the piece explaining why this is so critical), we can move on to the actual ins and outs of the game. Of the variou...

I was recently watching a snooker tournament where a commentator asked the great player Ronnie O'Sullivan how many shots in advance he thought while break building.
Ronnie replied along the lines that it generally was about two or three, al...

If only you could see what TheWaster has seen with these eyes...
I have a tendency to make my life more complicated than it needs to be. Having finally committed to heading out for the WSOP despite a distinct lack of work to justify the time and...

How you play on the money 'bubble' of a tournament is critical to long term tournament success.
As the first money places start approaching, players tend to tighten up their play considerably, desperate to get some return for the numero...

Although I am not obliged to, I have put my full bankroll onto the Betfair Poker site. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it is easier for me to do a full write up of the games I play. The wider travelled readers amongst you will have known exa...

So we enter the final 5 weeks of the league and its still anyones guess who will finish in the top 5. Well done to last nights winner jon16 who gets the 45 points and $378 !!!. This was jon's first week playing in the deep stack challenge and wha...

This is a truly great hand of poker, played between two of the most interesting and dynamic players of the modern game, Daniel Negreanu and Gus Hansen.


What I want to look at here is not so much the individual actions of the hand, but m...

It's not often you can turn some loose change into a big pay out in just a few days but Edinburgh man Tam Gourlay has managed to do just that.

Tam, who's 23 and from Bo'ness , opened a Betfair account on a Friday, played in a $7...

The higher you take your game in the world of poker, the more it starts to become as much a battle with yourself, as with the players at the table.
This is true for a variety of factors, including tilt control, bankroll management, and general...

As we all know, the World Series of Poker has now adjourned for what was a 117-day break with the Final Table beginning in November, and we can all still make money on the event even though none of us will be playing, writes Rob Eddy.
There are...

I have hardly played any poker for the past week as I have been suffering with some sort of virus that has knocked the stuffing out of me. What started as a runny nose and a bit of a head cold has turned into something that has given me a sore throat...

Slowplaying is one of the most over used plays amongst low stakes no limit players
Time and time again you will see inexperienced players checking and calling with their monster hands in an attempt to disguise their strength. Although this play...

Pot Limit Omaha has become one of the most popular cash games in recent years.
There are more high stakes Pot Limit Omaha games running at this point in time than any other game available. It is a true action game, with the extra two cards maki...

Pot Limit Omaha has become one of the most popular cash games in recent years.
There are more high stakes Pot Limit Omaha games running at this point in time than any other game available. It is a true action game, with the extra two cards maki...

This is a film clip of one of the largest cash pots ever seen on television.


It involves an interesting hand between WSOP main event winner Jamie Gold, and high stakes cash professional Patrick Antonius. Although the play of the hand it...

Tam "BigTam" Gourlay opened his Betfair account on Friday and had qualified for the WSOP Main Event by Sunday. Betfair's Estelle Bentall speaks to Tam.
Tam "BigTam" Gourlay
DOB: 28th June 1984 (Age 24)

How long hav...

Oh what a night !!! Well done paddy999 who was this weeks winner taking the 45 points and $348.00 for his efforts. 2nd place was taken by placid netting him 35 points and $232.00. The poker and banter this week i thought was brilliant !!!. Well done...

As mentioned in part one, the ability to play numerous tables at once is a great benefit to playing online.
Some of the best online players can play staggering numbers of tables at once (just look at this LINK. (A video of 2007 WSOP main event...

As the dust settles after this year's WSOP, we can clearly see what a massive effect the internet has had on poker
Players who predominantly play their trade online have won numerous bracelets, as well as a whole host of second places and fi...

So after 4 weeks the league is still wide open and there for the taking !!!. Well done to this weeks winner who is one of my forum team mates EthanJohn who gets the 45 points and prize money of $280. This weeks bounty winner was why do that who gets...

Every year, the World Series of Poker's Main Event creates a handful of new media stars, whose deep run in the world's biggest poker tournament, combined with their personality and affinity for the camera, bring them rather more than......

Implied odds are one of the most important concepts in no limit hold'em games.
The term 'implied odds' simply refers to how much money you think your opponent(s) will put into the pot on a later street. Each player will have slightl...

It is nice to see that the Poker Gods (amen) have not forgotten me whilst I was away for a week and are still providing me with glorious bad beats and cooler situations to raise my blood pressure!
Things started off quite well in all honesty as...

About a week ago I was sat on the sofa, fingers at the ready (writes Yorkshire Pud), about to start an article for the Betfair WSOPE site when my laptop decided to go and die on me!
At first I thought I had just pulled the power adaptor out of t...

Continuing the Poker Anorak's look at poker hands: Four Fives...

Hi-5



Jackson 5



Five Seconds



Five Cards

...

Team PokerStars Pro has added two more members in recent days, in Poland's Marcin Horecki and Brazil's Alexandre Gomes. Horecki, one of the highest-ranking Polish players ever, is among a handful of emerging names who came to poker......

Don't want to believe the following player notes all came from the same poker degenerate but that's what Bill Rini is saying on his blog.

Some classic lines though.....
Stalk this player... he is the worst player... loads of money...

For decades celebrities have been playing in the most prestigious poker tournament in the world. Every year a handful of actors, models, athletes, musicians, and other celebrity types show up in Las Vegas and head to the Rio Hotel......

Continuing the Poker Anorak's look at poker hands: Four Tens...

Three Guys In The Hole



The Magic Number



Three Boys




Three Years Old

...

Continuing the Poker Anorak's look at poker hands: Four Tens...

Ten Card Deal



Ten Commandments



Top Ten



Ten Years After

...

Anyone who knows me from the poker world (writes Yorkshire Pud) will tell you I am a sucker for starting challenges then binning them after a week or so. I mentioned in my last entry that I had started a challenge, complete with prop bets, that I co...

Continuing the Poker Anorak's look at poker hands: Four Jacks...
Channel 8



Eight Legs



Eight Miles



Eight Ball

...

Continuing the Poker Anorak's look at poker hands: Four Jacks...
Video Poker Jacks



Jack-ie Chan



Michael Jacks-on



Ronnie v Jack


...

Although I was in the middle of a run of 13 tournaments without cashing, I decided to offer some of the members on Raise The River some action on a prop bet I made. I took $150 of action that I could make $5,000 profit in 200 days by only playing MTT...

At the end of Day 2 of the WSOP Seniors event, Dale Eberle would win the final hand to edge out Dan LaCourse for the chip lead going into the final table. But at the end of the final table it would be LaCourse, a retired police......

Day 2 of Event #45, the $1,000 Seniors No-Limit Hold'em World Championship, started with 220 players and handily made it past the money bubble early in the day. But it would take until nearly 4:30 in the morning before Dale......

Betfair Poker's latest Daily Freerolls have been a footie fan's dream as the goals fly in at Euro2008.
To celebrate the European Championship, we've been bumping up the prize pool for every goal scored during the tournament. Each f...

I am currently going through a torrid time at the tables, having failed to cash in the last 13 tournaments I have entered! It seems no matter what I do, I simply cannot win. If I have a pair then my opponent has a higher pair, if I have Big Slick and...

THE Monday Video - and a look at the Top Five Poker Slang hands:
KJ - Kojak




88 - The Snowman



QQ - Siegfried & Roy



AK - Big Slick



95 - Dolly Parton

...

Event #31, $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em Six-Handed, had already burst its money bubble in Day 1 action, so Day 2 was a fast-paced race to a six-handed final table. Dario Minieri was one of the chip leaders coming into the day......

It stands to reason that if short-handed tables play fast, short-handed tournaments play fast. Logic ruled and the 1,012-player starting field whittled itself down to just 73 players in Day 1 of the $2,500 NLHE Six-Handed event......

Apart from the obvious general excitement of the tournament, something I'm very much looking forward during the 2008 WSOP is the introduction of Rule 36.
In case you're not familiar with this new section within Harrah's terms and pe...

Cower in fear. Matt Broughton's brain has burst open and the yolk's on you!
Anyone who's ever visited my own 'never-weird or irrelevant' online blog (www.thewasterblog.blogspot.com) will perhaps be familiar with my legendary...

We left off with Russ Hamilton looking down at his hole cards, heads up against Hugh Vincent in the WSOP Main Event in 1994. The hand that won Russ the tournament was pocket queens, just as it was predicted in the mysterious note......

A forum poster recently asked how Annette could have won a 180-player online tournament without looking at her cards.
"With a Post-it Note", came the amusing and only response.

It was probably not the answer the poster was looki...

NO sooner has the Poker Anorak spoken of slow play then a row breaks out on the poker forums.

Says Garybet: "I've heard that slowrolling is the lowest of the low. Does what you did just now make you a lowlife scumbag?"
Garybet...

I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again ‌.. All in is NOT an informational raise!
I’m trying to save you some cash here guys! - Time after time I see people going all in with hands preflop that they could have got away from, only to get called by a monster!
Take last night’s sit [...]...

SLOW play at the WSOP.

On Saturday, the six-handed final table was slow. It took 212 hands to eliminate the last five players. A glance at the statistics shows that the game almost 100 hands without an elimination.
Poker can be slow. Any...

Duncan "Pumper" Bell started the day with a massive chip lead and by the end he was still on top, winning the $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em Event #13 in only 73 hands spread out over just three and a half hours. The win gives Bell his first......

I played K10s and was drawing to a flush after the flop.  There were four of us in the hand and we all called to the turn.  I made my flush on the river but someone ahead of me then raised.  I thought they might have a better flush draw so I just called the [...]...

In the last couple of days I've posted on my blog my profit/loss for 2008, clear for all to see, along with a detailed graph of my cash game winnings.
Frankly, for someone who in the GCBPT Nottingham write-up in many poker magazines was refe...

TO the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, Kas Vegas, for the USA Rock Paper Scissors League's big hand-off (that right?).

Indeed, dear readers, what else to do when in Vegas between WSOP games then keep a supple wrist.
The main event is...

Several years ago I visited Russ Hamilton with a group of friends at a beach house in San Diego, where he was recovering from his stomach surgery. Russ said, 'Tommy, I'm going to tell you a story I've only told to a handful......

CONTINUING the Poker Anorak's look at great poker hands: The Straight...
WSOP Royal Flush



Straight No Chaser



Going Straight


...

It took more than 200 hands to cut the final table field in half in Event #9 No-Limit Hold'em Six-Handed at the World Series of Poker. It took just six more to crown a champion. Rep Porter took home the bracelet and the $372,929......

Heading into Event #7's final table, Theo Tran was looking for a wire-to-wire win, having been the chip leader for the majority of this fast-paced $2,000 NLHE event. But after 161 hands of play, 68 of them heads-up, Matt Keikoan......

Following on from yesterday’s rundown of common nicknames for poker hands, here is part two with a few more different ways to name the hand you hold.

Oedipus

Motown

Jeff Talley

Flat Tyre, No Thanks Barry, The BazzyG

30 Miles of Bad Road

Broderick Crawford, Over and Out, Roger That, The Good Buddy, Convoy
[...]...

Tuesday's action at the World Series of Poker was highlighted by the awarding of the Series' second bracelet, to Grant Hinkle in Event #2, $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em. Hinkle held a sizable lead when three-handed play began, over James......

Poker is a funny old game, none more so than some of the nicknames given to the hands that are made, or the hole cards dealt to each player. Below are just a few examples of some of the crazy names given to those obscure hands.

American Airlines, Pocket Rockets, Bullets.

Big Slick, Anna Kournikova, [...]...

SO who is going to win the WSOP? And would you bet on the outcome?

Welcome to the 39th World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.

Wager on the satellite events if you must but all the real action is on Event 54, the Main Event, the $10,000 buy...

I've still hardly played any poker in the first five days of June mainly because I have been far too busy with life stuff, but I am around $50 to the good so I can't really complain. With the WSOP and Euro 2008 taking place at the same time I...

The poker room at this huge gambling complex is located in the 'Sport of Kings Poker and Racing Lounge.' It's on the second floor in a converted theater, under an enormous chandelier, with terraced seating that promises and delivers......

THE Poker Anorak continues our look at poker hands with the top five poker flush videos of all time (possibly)...
The Cat Flush



The Royal Flush



The Flush Bluff



What The Internet Is For


[br...

I don't know what is going on but I have seriously lost my mojo! No matter what I do I just can't seem to win! I think one problem has been that I've not stuck to one specific discipline and I've played a couple of sessions late at ni...

With the first bracelet event of the 2008 World Series of Poker just a couple of days away, the Rio opened its doors today to the first wave of event registrations and an early handful of single-table satellite and cash-game players......

Everyone knows that pocket aces are the best starting hand in a game of no limit texas holdem poker, but are you familiar with what the worst hands are?
Join me as we go on a trip to the land of Texas Fold’em.

1) 7-2
72 is the #1 worst hand of them all. This is based on [...]...

THE Poker Anorak trawls the web for the best poker videos.

And today continues our poker hands masterclass: Five great pairs...
Two Sugars, No Milk



Two Tone



Two Unfunny



Two The Toilet!

...

Anyone who knows me knows that I change my mind about what I want to play with alarming regularity. In the past I have set myself silly little challenges that I have kicked to the kerb as soon as the going got rough and this has really hurt my game....

May 16 2008 saw over 40 poker players compete in the final of the Poker Player Magazine's Poker Grand Prix for a prize pool of £15,000 including the 1st place prize of a WSOP package of £12,000 with the popular event sponsored by Betfair.
...

The final table of the fifth annual Bayou Poker Classic kicked off at a record pace, with seven players eliminated in less than 50 hands. Once heads-up play commenced, it took another two and half hours for Nick Ceci to put away......

"Don't be afraid to gamble."

So says Daniel Negreanu, who has a vested interest in you gambling because without your cash the gaming industry in which he makes his living would have no money to pay him.
The Poker Anorak also w...

I've not played a great deal over the past couple of days as Mrs P and I were dog-sitting for her mum whilst she had a weekend away in sunny Blackpool. I did take my trusty laptop but I couldn't figure out how to get it to work with Mrs P[sgl...

If you've logged into Betfair Poker today you may have noticed a few new changes...
New icons in the lobby

To improve the clarity of the lobbies to make it easier for you to find the game that you want to play, we've added icons d...

Sorry for the lack of updates (writes Yorkshire Pud) but I have been uber busy over the past few days. I have actually written a piece about a typical poker table but I'm hoping to get that posted on another blog as a guest appearance but I'm...

If you're looking for an online odds calculator with a unique visual touch, PokerNews now has the interactive tool just for you. Available within our 'Poker Rules' section......

The World Series of PokerÂŽ announced this week that it has reached a multi-year agreement with XP Events, a turn-key retail merchandising partner for sports organizations and world-class events, to distribute WSOP merchandise broadly......

It’s always tempting to have either the TV on while you are playing online poker, or to start checking your emails or facebook account when you are not playing a hand.
While this can help to eliminate the boredom from a cold deck, being distracted from your poker game can have very serious consequences if you [...]...

BILL Gates has a touch wall.

It's a 4-foot-by-6-foot touch-screen computer prototype. Gates wants computers in everything, and on everything.

Says Gates: "We're saying it will be absolutely pervasive. When I say everywhere,...

I have a full time job. Not as a poker player, but as a web designer. While at work today, I discussed an interesting hand with a colleague of mine. He came to me with a hand he played in a SNG online tourney last night. There’s nothing special about the hand, but we were [...]...

In almost all situations you are faced with pre-flop, the only two options you should be considering are should you raise, or should you fold? If your hand is not good enough to raise with, then it probably is not worth playing at all.
Raising will allow you to control the hand in play and it [...]...

Let’s say you are playing a hand like AdTd. The board comes down Jd 6s 6d. There’s potential trips, full houses and two pairs out there depending on what your opponents may be holding. You need to find out where you are and quickly.
If you are first to act, or no one has bet yet, [...]...

I've been reading a ton of blogs (writes Yorkshire Pud) over the past week and one thing that became apparent was the amount of people who had a poor month at the tables during April, myself included, and that they all hoped the month of May woul...

Crushing the six seat SNG
Having trouble building your bankroll? Grinding it out becoming too boring?
The six seat SNG will build your bankroll faster than any other game on the planet. Just be prepared to take the game seriously!
In a ten handed SNG we have nine other players to beat to take down the top prize. [...]...

YOU wait, that's what you do - especially if you're a finalist at the WSOP Main Event.

When the tenth player loses, there will be a 117-day break before the final nine get to play the final table.

Why not 118 days, or 30 days,...

I really do love how close poker and life are linked. Its like they both go hand in hand with each other. If ever you are stuck for an analogy for life, chances are you can find the right one if you relate it in some way to poker.
Even driving is like poker. I drive [...]...

A QUESTION for John Grochowski:

Q. What can you tell me about Blackjack Switch?
The Poker Anorak has played the game. It's not easy, but, then, it's no harder than 21.
In Blackjack Switch you play two hands at once. You can swi...

I played a good few hands of Pai Gow Poker Showdown at my local pub yesterday. It was one of those rare sunny days here in the UK where we do go a bit nuts for some sunshine.  Outdoors, bit of sun, couple of pints, lovely.
Pai Gow Poker uses the rules from Pai Gow and [...]...

WHAT does a poker chip look like to you?

It's not a trick question, and, no, there's no GSCE in Chipology for answers of between 200-300 words. Discuss.

It's just that the Poker Anorak has just spotted a 20-year-old Canadian...

I said in my last post that I was going to cut my hair as a sacrifice to the Poker Gods (amen) and for once it seems to have paid off! Since shaving my barnet I have cashed in a tiny buy-in MTT, had a small cash in an Omaha MTT, doubled my money in a...

PayPal have accepted Betfair Poker to handle gambling transactions, allowing poker players to deposit and withdraw via Paypal.
Paypal is an e-wallet payment solution that enables you to securely transfer funds into your PayPal account and then i...

It's been a long time since I posted my WSOPE report but to be honest there's not been a lot going on in between, until recently that is.
I'd just been playing a lot of midstakes poker, uninterestingly breaking even whilst I frittere...

Tyner, a very flamboyant player, took out the first two players at the six-handed final table, including WPT ladies champion Van Nguyen. Nancy defeated Vanessa Selbst in the Five Star final, taking just over two hours to come back......

I will be glad to see April leave us as it has been a very rocky and frustrating time indeed. In one of my earlier posts I mentioned that sometimes no matter how perfectly you play poker you can still come off a loser due to the variance monster lurk...

HURRAH! You've made it to the Main Event WSOP final table.

You and eight others are now vying to win the millions. You're on a roll and keen to get on with it. You're as hot as Vegas on July 14.

But hold on. July? That's...

You need to think about your strategy - just what will your nickname be when you make it big?
The Poker Anorak takes look at some nicknames already out there, and the story behind them:

PHIL "POKER BRAT" HELLMUTH JR.

The cl...

The Straight



The Royal Flush



The Pair



High Card



The Rivering


...

As a poker player, writes Yorkshire Pudding, I look to gain any edge I can over my opponents as any advantage you have over the people you are playing against will, in the long term, yield profits for you. Most players get the upper hand by the way o...

Len69 and Ugabana clash over a $240,307 monster pot
Betfair has been home to some major online poker high stakes recently and this Wednesday night was just another great example of the action you can be a part of on Betfair Poker. Check out this...

THE Poker tell tells you things about the poker player. But what does it tell you?

And if you stare at your opponent are you playing him or the cards? Poker is a game of odds. So do tells really matter?
In this video hereunder, strip poke...

Since my last post I have added another digit to my age (writes Yorkshire Pud) and I'm now the ripe old age of 27! Do I feel any different? In short, no. Not at all. If I think about it I didn't expect to feel any different so I guess I can[s...

If you like action, big pots, and a chance to buy one extra card for a dollar at the beginning of a hand, you need to check out two special $3/6 tables at the Mirage in Las Vegas, Nevada, right away! As you walk into the poker room......

I thought I'd give a little update to how things are going in the life of Yorkshire Pudding! I've still not found a job per se but I have sent my CV to dozens of people and I'm registered with more agencies than I care to remember. The ma...

Anyone reading Annette's latest blog post may well have been duped into believing she had bought a 'lovely' pink house with her winnngs from the WSOPE last September. Indeed, the entry certainly had some posters over at 2+2 very busy. As...

HOW do you win the WSOPE?

In 2007, Annette Obrestad won. Here's how:

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On the forums, "recognise" spots the video - hat tip to him.

And there is debate...

I ended my last post hoping for a nice score in a tournament (writes Yorkshire Pud) but unfortunately it never materialised and I ended up dropping around $70 in MTTs ranging from $1 to $4. A mixture of running bad then making poor plays ultimately c...

POKER pro Daniel Negreanu has some tips on "Dos and don'ts on semi-bluffing with big draws".

As Negreanu says, a pair with a flush draw is a chance to pull off a semi-bluff - "making a bet or raise that you hope will not be cal...

Set For September 19 to October 1 in London

LAS VEGAS - March 18, 2008 - The dates for the second annual World Series of Poker Europe Presented by Betfair have been set, Harrah's Entertainment, Inc., owner and operator of the most prestigi...

YOU can learn to play poker.

You can learn to play poker in a classroom, just as you can learn to drive a car in a dodgem, learn to be an astronaut by playing a game of Space Invaders and learn to be great at tennis by eating strawberries at...

Since my last post it's been a case of so near yet so far with regards to my tournament playing having not cashed in my last six games and I'm break even for the month (writes Yorkshire Pudding). On Tuesday I played five 90 man tournaments wi...

ASKS John Grochowski: "What Would Make You Write Off a Casino?"

"How bad would the experience have to be for you to vow never to set foot in the door again?"

At a guess, the Casino Anorak says the bad experience would in...

There are two fundamental styles when it comes to playing poker, that of the Tight-Aggressive (TAG) and that of the Loose-Aggressive (LAG) writes Yorkshire Pudding. Both styles have their own positive points and obviously their own negative points. M...

Just how much help is TOO much help? Matt Broughton ponders...
In the process of researching for the various articles I write, I get to play with all manner of poker-related toys, many of which - needless to say - are aimed at online players. No...

POKER is a game of skill.

Always.

Well, not always. Or ever...

At Case Western Reserve University, USA, Michael DeDonno and Douglas Detterman are counting the cards.

They are watching students play poker. Data is being h...

I was going to post this entry yesterday but I thought people may have taken it as an April Fool's prank. (writes Yorkshire Pudding) Yesterday I lost my job. No joke, it's entirely true, I no longer have a job after having my contract termina...

TO Italy and the PokerStars European Poker Tour's event in San Remo.

The €5,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em event has pulled in 700 entrants. Well, that's what it says in the brochure.
As Card Player reports, the cap was origin...

Old men clog up the Irish Poker Open, one man's attempt to qualify for the WSOPE, Short-stacked Shamus plays live and a look at some online poker tools. It's all there as we take a look around the world of Texas Hold' Em.
The Irish P...

IT was a time of heroes.

OK, not heroes exactly, more six MIT students who "were trained to become experts in card counting and subsequently took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings".

That's what it says on the tin. But i...

If, like me, you have played poker for a couple of years and are a naturally observant person, you will have noticed that many situations you find yourself in at the poker tables, both online and live, will mirror situations that you will find yourse...

WHEN Manchester was told it would host the new supercasino there was much snapping of braces and popping of bottle tops.

When the Government decided that there would no supercasino in Manchester there was much gnashing of teeth and popping of...

"DO chimps like to gamble?"
So asks the Daily Mail of its readers. The question is rhetorical because very soon the Mail tells us: "You bet they do."

Know that: "When given the choice between a safe bet and a high risk...

YOU got to know when to gold 'em, know when to fold 'em..."

You gotta la-la-la-la-dum-dum, la-la-la dum-da-kerchum...

Who can forget the rousing theme song to the England rugby team's World Cup bid?

But not all p...

Everyone experiences obstacles or hurdles during their life's journey, but how one handles the adversity is the measure of his character. Archie 'The Greek' Karas did what no other person on the planet has ever done, when he started......

The hand (from an entertaining episode of "High Stakes Poker") -- Blinds: 300/600 with a 1200 straddle. Gold's stack: ~$391,000; Farha's stack: Over $391,000. Neither player's stack is actually given specifically during the hand......

For the first time ever, we're lucky enough to welcome the strategic musings of brand new Betfair Sponsored Pro, Sorel "Imper1um" Mizzi - a veritable colossus in the world of online poker! See when it is OK to fold AA.
"In satell...

Ever since my (non-poker related) bankruptcy two and a half years ago, I've never had a car of my own and I've either had to rely on borrowing a friend's car or use the pile of cack that is public transport to get to and from work and fro...

POKER fashion. Shiny T-shirts and Comfi-Slax.

Until now.
Over the PR newswires, the Poker Anorak learns of DonkeyGear.net, a poker apparel and accessories company.

The company has been selling poker apparel and accessories since 2...

The hand: Nine players remain in the 2007 WSOP Main Event. Phillip Hilm sits with 19,240,000 chips to Yang's 25,010,000 chips. The blinds are 120,000/240,000 with a 30,000 ante. Hilm is in the SB, Yang on the hijack......

WHAT kind of a press does poker get?

The game is more controlled than many others. Think of cheating in athletics and allegations of corruption in football.

But still poker can toss up the headline: "Online Poker = Cheating, Robbery...

The 2008 PokerStars.net European Poker Tour Polish Open kicked off with 190 players taking the field in Day 1a at the Hyatt Regency Casino in Warsaw, Poland. Notable players on hand included defending champion Peter Jepsen, EPT Baden......

A poker game in New Mexico has decided the outcome of an election.

It is democracy in evidence.

Well, it beats deciding who wins on Hanging Chads.
Over in the United States, Josie Richards has a pair of nines.

The game is fi...

A look at Annette's recent online win, how NOT to turn down a player's sponsorship attempts and asks "Are you a donkey?"
Here the place where we hope to bring you a collection of interesting, thoughtful and downright strange exit...

POKER is not all fun. Poker can be - whisper it - dull. Oh, come on, all that waiting for the next player to move, sitting down and looking at your hands...

Pass the time by learning some new tricks:

...

There are many Stu Ungar stories from his glory years, and some consider him the greatest tournament poker player that ever lived. However, what is perhaps Stu's most famous hand occurred in a heads-up tournament against reigning World......

IT'S the award season.

And Annette Obrestad has been awarded the Golden Hand prize plus two other accolades at the second annual Scandinavian Poker Awards in Copenhagen.

Annette thanks her mum, her dad, her cousins, her first teache...

In his 20-plus years of police work, Scott Diamond has witnessed first-hand the devastation faced by families of officers who die in the line of duty. Those families often struggle to make ends meet. Diamond decided that he needed......

Students attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have an abundance of poker options at hand. Because of the many choices available to UNC students, it's been a great year for the game -- even though the school......

Team Betfair's new signing Sorel Mizzi gives us a quick rundown on the who, what, when, where and hows...
1 - Can you tell us about your family and background?
I grew up with my mom, dad and two older brothers in Toronto, Ontario. I'...

Tournament Directors Association Rule #12 reads: 'No Disclosure / No Advice / One Player to a Hand' -- Players are obligated to protect the other players in the tournament at all times. Therefore, players, whether in the hand or not......

Matt Broughton discovers that holding the nuts isn't always everything it's cracked up to be...



On a recent press event I was chuffed to finally get to interview a couple of my favourite poker personalities; namely Howard Led...

The Grand Final of the PartyPoker Premier League saw big hands, big draws and a big payday for Andy Black, as he came from behind during heads-up play to claim the $250,000 first-place prize. Black overcame five of the top players......

The following is an early-tourney hand from young player Michael 'Timex' McDonald at PokerStars EPT Dortmund. After a fine Aussie Millions showing, McDonald went on to win the Dortmund main event. This hand has generated......

After my last column when I explored a decision to fold a four-flush on fourth street, I've had some questions about other, similar situations. Since poker is a game of decisions, try your hand at figuring out what to do in the following......

On Saturday, February 2, 2008, history was made in poker, with an audience of the game's stars on hand to witness the induction of Linda Johnson, Barbara Enright, Susie Isaacs and Marsha Waggoner as the inaugural class of the Women......

The distinctly American holiday known as Super Bowl Sunday resulted in reduced attendance across the board in the largest of Sunday's online tourneys. Still, solid turnouts were on hand at PokerStars, Full Tilt and PartyPoker, and each of......

Hand History: Both Terrence and the villain in this hand have been the two most aggressive and active players at the table, tangling numerous times. It's late on Day 1 of the APPT Sydney Grand Final Main Event......

The second annual UltimateBet Online Championship (UBOC) series, hosted by UltimateBet pros Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth Jr., kicks off tonight at 8:00 p.m. EST with a $200+15 six-handed no-limit hold'em tournament, featuring a $100,000 guarantee......

Howard Lederer never seems to tire of saying that poker is a game of imperfect information - and I have to agree with him. We live in an information age, so why can't players just throw their hands away and go on to the next......

In a recent letter to US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, two House of Representatives Committee Chairs and six other lawmakers criticized the agency's handling of the current WTO issues relative to online gambling, stressing that the Bush......

You are much more likely to pull off a bluff if there are only a few players involved in the hand. In an ideal situation you should only have one or two other players to push off the pot. The more players you face in the hand, the more likely it is that someone will [...]...

Never let a bluffer force you to walk into a better hand. Let’s say you are right that they are bluffing and your semi-strong hand is enough to beat them. however, if there is a third player involved in the pot, especially one who plays a little tighter, you might end up beating the bluffer’s [...]...

The most common types of poker game you are likely to encounter are listed below as well as tips for adjusting your poker strategy accordingly.
1. Tight Poker Games
When the opponents you face are playing a tight game, you should lower your starting hand requirements and bluff a little more often.
2. Loose Poker Games
If you find [...]...

It is not only early on where you need to show aggression, but also on the second round of betting. More often than not, you will fail to improve your hand on the flop, but then again, neither will your opponents. If a table of players do not hold a hand of any value, then [...]...

Over the last couple of weeks we have covered many different topics. You should now know how to calculate poker pot odds and how to play good hands from a good position. You are already streets ahead of many other poker players out there. However the key that strings all of these strategies together is  [...]...

Starting to play poker should be fun and the important learning process is part of getting yourself experience, which sadly some players forget. The first mistake that is commonly made is the over play of hands. All beginners want to play and believe that playing is betting every round and equate betting with playing. So they decide to play most of the hands that are dealt. This often includes hands such as J 4 unsuited, which will more than often doom the player. Learning patience is crucial to...

We continue to tackle the problems a beginner poker player faces. One of these is the inability to understand and properly calculate pot odds. With the understanding of pot odds, beginners call too many hands that should have gone to the muck or throw away hands by being too conservatives but more than often the former is true. The most common example of this problem is the calling of suited cards. Many new players associate suited cards to carry the same value as connecting cards. The power of...

This is an short article on what the different poker hands are....

An Atlantic City councilman has decided that his city should protect its residents against the dangers of second hand smoke in casinos only when other states take that initiative.
...

A clear distinction has been made in the gambling odds to win American Idol this year, David Archuleta and David Cook are favored, and everyone else is a long shot.
...

It has taken David Cook almost an entire American Idol season, but odds makers have finally put him on equal ground with former favorite David Archuleta.
...

Australian gamblers are furious over the news that Crown has reduced the odds for blackjack at their casinos. The new odds for hitting blackjack at Crown casino are 6-5 at all $5 and $10 tables.
...

The Democrats and Governor David A. Patterson had grown tired of the Republicans stall tactics, so they took things into their own hands and finalized a deal to bring casino gambling to Aqueduct.
...

Much thought goes into the designing of a new casino, the one thing that developers are looking for is to keep people with their minds on the gambling task at hand.
...

A new study released by a professor at UNLV is indicating that harmful secondhand smoke is traveling from Nevada casinos into eateries where patrons are being put in harms way.
...

Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut has been dealing with many of their employees moving towards unionization, but the casino will now have a bigger problem on its hands with the Senate passing a new casino smoking ban Bill.
...

The state of Kentucky has its hands full after Churchill Downs announced on Monday that they are creating a subsidiary that will focus on expanded their online gambling operations.
...

The state of Colorado has a good problem on its hands. Extra money will be coming in thanks to lighter gambling laws, and state lawmakers now believe they know where that money will be going.
...

Dancing With The Stars, the hit reality television show, has announced its line up for season six, the gambling odds on who will win will not be far behind.
...

Four employees at Planet Hollywood Casino in Las Vegas have been arrested last month for cheating the casino out of money. The details of the case surfaced on Thursday, and had to do with poker high hand payouts.
...

A Pennsylvania casino has been hit with a $20,000 fine for allowing a fourteen year old girl to gamble inside their casino, the fine was handed down by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.
...

Gtech Corp. feels that the process in which Ohio selected a new company to handle their gambling lottery operations was done inadequately, and has filed for the decision to be reconsidered.

...

Indiana Live, the latest casino gambling establishment in Indianapolis, opened on Friday with much fanfare as Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel were on hand at the ribbon cutting ceremony.
...

In the United States the casino industry has taken one of the biggest hits during these tough economic times. Dubuque Greyhound Park in Iowa, however, has defied the odds and is ahead of their financial expectations.
...

The people of Kansas cannot possibly be happy about the prospects of putting their casino hopes back in the hands of the state Lottery Commission, but that is exactly what is happening.
...

Wednesday was a good day in the state of Maryland for those who have been awaiting casino gambling. The state handed out the first ever casino license to the owner of Ocean Downs racetrack.
...

A Baldwinsville Mayor, Joe Saraceni, has taken the law into his own hands and put a stop to gambling that was taking place at the Canton-Woods Senior Center, even though the gambling taking place was legal.
...

American Idol Season Seven is almost down to the part of the show where many more fans start to watch, and with the latest odds on who will win, this may be the time for gamblers to beat the sports books.
...

Planet Hollywood absorbed the $500,000 fine that was handed out for not overseeing activities at nightclub Prive, but paying the fine did not stop the nightclub from losing its liquor license, and being forced to close.
...

The Democratic ticket has finally been set after Barack Obama chose his running mate today, the choice of Joe Biden has not altered the gambling odds for the election yet.
...

The UCR Extension has decided that they are lending a helping hand to anyone interested in learning about problem gambling, they will be offering a course on the subject on Friday.
...

Nevada casinos have ignored workers' pleas to do something about the dangerous secondhand smoke. Now, a former employee at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas is suing the casino for not doing enough to save their employees.
...

The Seminole Indians came out blazing with high limits at all of their blackjack tables in Florida's Hollywood Hard Rock Casino, but now they have dropped the limits at some tables down to $10 a hand.
...

Casino proponents are always pointing to the positive changes that casinos can bring to an area, Southwest Michigan is learning that out firsthand.
...

The state of Kansas is starting what could be a dangerous trend for gamblers. Kansas will be the first state to outright own a casino, and they will be setting the odds on all the software that powers the slot machines.
...

Tropicana Entertainment LLC and bondholders are at odds over money that is due to the bondholders, the squabble and court battle are causing problems in the potential sale of the Atlantic City casino.
...

The Wynn Las Vegas casino has now become the second Las Vegas casino to be sued for the dangers of secondhand smoke. The latest suit comes from employee Kanie Kastroll.
...

It was one of those nights where everything was on my side. My reads were on, the draws were coming in, and variance was giving me a neck massage. It was one of those nights where I felt smart, even if I was getting lucky. I was posting a decent win and thankful for it.

In fact, I was ready to call it a night and go home a modest winner.
The game was about to break and most of the money on the table sat in two stacks. Gucci Rick had about $900 in front of him. I had exactly $1,003...

The outside walls are warped metal and the parking lot is pot-holed gravel. To park, one has to pull in on the right side of the building, drive around the dark backside of the bar, and then around to diagonal spaces the left side. If it wouldn't seem so perfectly trite, the dark parking area would be the ideal place for a drunken fight with a switchblade and a pool cue.

It was raining hard when I pulled into the lot last night and turned off the ignition. If I'd had a collar...

Message to the whiners: Who cares if there is no Cinderella?

In fact, I'll take it a step further. It's a good thing there's no Cinderella! It means the best teams are still playing. Sure, Cleveland St. and Western Kentucky were fun stories, but they're just not the same quality as the teams we have left. Instead, we have a selection of truly outstanding matchups:
Midwest

#1 Louisville vs. #12 Arizona: Don't let the seeding fool you. I was dead wrong abo...

Lucky in love, unlucky in cards.

I've heard it quite a few times since I've found Lady Luck. Many a blogger have mentioned that my luckboxing abilities have likely diminished or disappeared since I've found love. I don't believe it, but my experience Saturday night didn't exactly assuage my fears.
Cliche #1: The Smoke-filled Poker Room

Okay, so it wasn't quite that bad. But as I entered Casino Aztar for the first time, I did have to push the smoke out...

The biggest television juggernaut is back. Well, it's been back for weeks, but it only really counts when we get to the Top 12 13. It's been an unusual year so far with lots of changes. We started with 36 instead of 24. We had the judges fill out the final spots of the Top 13 on a wild card show. And this year, the judges will get to save one performer who they feel has been unfairly voted off (see: Hudson, Jennifer and Daughtry, Chris).

In the first week, we said goodbye to...

Police in Charleston called it the result if a "ten month investigation." They arrested 27 people, including an assistant prosecutor at an underground poker game.

The Charleston Post says the game was run out of the bottom floor of a two story house with games spread on several tables. The host started the games last year and they "just grew."
From the Charleston Post:

A Sheriff's Spokesman described an efficient operation that ran like a business. "T...

I started really looking foreward to last Friday's game a full week in advance. Of course, that guarantees a bad night. As a rule, the more excited I am about sitting at a game the worse I'm likely to play.

Add to that the following problems and I've got almost no chance:
1. An Unfortunate Table

Dealer/1s: Broccoli
2s: Wes Nile Virus
3s: Falstaff
4s: TeamScottSmith
5s: The Anti-Christ
6s: BadBlood
7s: G-Rob
8s: Gucci Rick
9s: Drizz[...

It's one of my favorite scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Well, I'm not dead yet! I feel happy! I feel happy!

You see, the rumors of my (and this blog's) demise has been greatly exaggerated. Sure, I've been virtually non-existant for a few months, but I've gone through a little change... in order of importance... a new wife, a new job, a new house, a new city and a new car. I've been a little busy. I haven't played a hand of poker since my bach...

The closest casino to G-Vegas is up in Cherokee, North Carolina. They don't have poker because they don't actually use cards. I've never bothered to go since the appeal of digital blackjack machines is pretty limited.

Still, it is possible to steal from the casino...not in the counting cards, brilliant MIT, Ocean's Eleven sense....but to just plain STEAL.

To wit : Please enjoy this wonderful story of moron-ity from the Asheville Citizen-Times :
Cheating ring...

The closest casino to G-Vegas is up in Cherokee, North Carolina. They don't have poker because they don't actually use cards. I've never bothered to go since the appeal of digital blackjack machines is pretty limited.

Still, it is possible to steal from the casino... not in the counting cards, brilliant MIT, Ocean's Eleven sense... but to just plain STEAL.

To wit: Please enjoy this wonderful story of moron-ity from the Asheville Citizen-Times:

Cheating rin...

I'm crushed.

This was the horse. The horse to beat the unbeatable Big Brown. The horse to make history by being the third straight horse from the same mare to win the Belmont Stakes. The horse to make me a little cash.

And now, he's scratched. A bad left hind hoof didn't heal fast enough. After this morning's workout, Casino Drive was clearly favoring that leg. Forcing him to run would have risked serious injury. It's the right and responsible decision....

(Posters Warning : CJ told me this blog now has a more diverse focus. I still plan to stick to gambling in some sense. Because I am a problem gambler, this still leaves an immense range of topics about which I can, and will, post. I just felt like writing again.)

I saw a wookie bounce off the hoods of three cars. He streaked past me, with clumped hair flapping and woozy knees wobbling, presumably running FROM something that only he could see. With wookies there's an equal probabi...

Live from a fifteen minute break at the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo, a hand that has caused significant debate, specifically between Lee Jones and this humble correspondent. Your opinion--while, like mine, largely insignificant--is valued.
Quick background: Antonio "The Magician" Esfandiari has been running over the tournament for two days. With the chip average just over 600,000, he has 1.6 million or so. He's been moved to the TV table with a rather loose-aggressive Dane...

I'm not sure why--because, I haven't in years--but I have watched every episode of ESPN's 2008 WSOP poker coverage this year. Last night's $5,000 Mixed Hold'em event was, for obvious reasons, the best yet.

I am not here, however, to applaud ESPN for good coverage. I'm here to applaud ESPN for finally presenting the game in a somewhat more journalistic fashion.
I nearly fell out of my chair (and it's a really comfortable chair) when the commentators offered...

Luckbox has been doing most of the heavy lifting in this fifth birthday of Up For Poker. I'm wrapped up in other activities right now, but couldn't let the time pass without a brief submission. Some of these are repeats, some are original, but all of them will stick in my memory as long as I'm playing.
Five most memorable hands against a poker blogger

5. vs. The Rooster, December 2007

It might have been my emergence from focus that ended up losing me the tournament...

If you're like 99% of the adult population in America, you're working on your NCAA bracket this week (due by Noon ET on Thursday). And if you get it just right, there might even be some money in it for you. Here are five rules for picking your bracket that will give you an advantage over anyone who hasn't read this:
Number 1: Don't trust the SEC.

Only three SEC teams made the Big Dance this year and only two of them were even worthy (Miss. St. won the SEC tourney to [...

G-Rob and I missed the driveway into the pub and busted a U-turn in the middle of a busy highway. Our tires crunched on rock as we slid into the small gravel parking lot. The entire bar could've fit in the downstairs floor of my house. It was barely big enough to hold G-Rob's hair, let alone his ego and my enormous sense of self-loathing.

It was a Friday night around 7pm. Nobody reasonable goes to places like this, least of all suburban fathers with mortgages and firm grasps o...

My good friends here at the Up for Poker blog hate it when I write about something other than poker itself. This is not the "Up for Whatever Is on G-Rob's Mind" blog. Frankly I agree that such a blog would be the most irrational sort of nonsense on the web... which is setting the bar pretty low.

That said, I do love to gamble on nearly anything at all. One year Otis and I spent an entire Super Bowl betting on whether the next commercial would be "Car, Food, or Beer.[dbl...

Good god! Gambling leads to depression! It's true! There was a scientific study.

In the world of obvious investigation, this study "Gambling Linked To Depression" stands out.

Right now, I'm depressed about the fact that I got down to four handed in a sit-n-go and then went broke with a flopped set of Queens. He turned a set of Kings. Such is a depressing life.

That said, look at this awesome information:

GAMBLING is often a symptom of mental healt...

My shoulder hurts.

It's probably the number one reason why I find Wii Sports Resort to be one of the more realistic sports games I've ever played. The pain I feel in my shoulder is similar to the pain I experience after a round of frolf. Is that sad?
Disc golf is just one of the two dozen plus games offered on Wii Sports Resort. There's bowling, golf, ping pong, archery, canoeing, water skiing, and more. And most of the games offer multiple variations.

The key to...

It was a mildly chilly night in Monte Carlo, but the northern Europeans and those who live on wind-slapped islands were smelling summer. We, a large and eclectic group of poker players, writers, and marketers, sat at a cafe table overlooking a croaking frog pond and man-made wetlands area.

At the table were two Germans. One, Jan Heitmann, was making the guys jealous and the girls swimmy with an impromptu magic act. Beside him sat Geoge Danzer. His is a familiar face on the European Po...

Was it really only two and half years ago? It seems like an eternity since I splashed around in a pool of my own hubris. It was as comfortable as the good Vegas beds and as dangerous as putting your money on Big Brown. Poker felt like such a sure thing. Everything made sense. The hours spent were profitable. The handle on the game was like the baseball bat owned since childhood. I remember thinking, "Damn, I could do nothing but this if I really wanted to." Blind arrogance is suc...

The poker room of the Fiesta Casino in the Ramada Herradura just outside of San Jose, Costa Rica is a six or seven table area that is just big enough to fit the players, a couple of aimless cocktail waitresses, and Humberto Brenes.

When the men get massages, they do it with their shirts off and buxom, camel-toed therapists kneading away elbow-deep at their fat-backs. Out of simplicity and in the face of a 540-1 colones to dollar exchange rate, the poker games are played with dollar-value...

Nobody ever became a better poker player during a winning streak. I'm trying to remind myself of wisdom like that while I watch another of my favorite sports teams get crushed again. I'm sure there's some glory to gain from all this misery.

Note : The Bengals would be much better if they could actually tackle. When I was growing up we called this full-contact football "Tackle football" to distinguish it from two hand touch. I don't think the Bengals play "T...

Pardon me for flying so low beneath the virtual radar. Only my fabulous flying disks have left a G-Vegas signature this week. I played frolf for the first time in 5 years this weekend. I shot fairly well and my daughter had fun.

Then, on Monday, Otis and I "Frolfed" together in searing 9000 degree heat. We played again Tuesday. Then, again, on Wednesday. Those were Otis' first three rounds of the game since the Luckbox left town. Suddenly a game we were totaly sick of b...

I showed up early for Monday's South Carolina Senate subcommittee hearing. Up for debate and public input were two bills that would effectively make legal home poker games and charitable raffles.

South Carolina is one of two states in the country that bars raffles (thanks to Utah for making us seem less antiquated and ridiculous). The Palmetto State also makes any game with cards or dice illegal (read: poker, Monopoly, bridge) etc.

With that in mind, you might expect the decri...

POST RACE UPDATE: Big Brown. Wow.

*****************

Here is your Kentucky Derby winner.

Monba

How did I arrive at this pick? It took three easy steps...
1. It started with a text message this morning from BG:

"$21 to win on BOB BLACK JACK, $10 to win on MONBA"

With a brother named Bob, and the obvious gambling reference, BG would be crazy NOT to bet on Bob Black Jack. That's where his heart is. That means his head must be with Monba....

We stood on our chairs that weren't actually chairs. They were long wooden benches. We held steins of wheat beer in our hands. The mugs themselves were bigger than our heads. Across the room, Joey Two-Hands was attempting to hold an identical stein out in front of him for as long as possible. It was a contest the Hofbrau House held every night. We, a group of 14, had decided not to participate, save Joey Two-Hands who had sneaked into the competition at the last minute with his own una...

Is there better poker television than GSN's High Stakes Poker? If there is, I haven't seen it. While it may lack some of the flashy production value of ESPN's WSOP or the various incarnations of the WPT, it's still better than them all.

Here are 5 reasons why High Stakes Poker is the best poker show on television:
1. We don't know the outcome. When it comes to the WSOP and the WPT, we know who wins these events long before it ever reaches our television screen....

I'll keep this short for those of you who don't care about horse racing (and therefore, don't care about making awesome amounts of money based on my handicapping insights!).

I'm eyeing a horse you probably haven't heard of. And his name is poker-blogger worthy, Casino Drive.
Back in 2006, I luckboxed my way into a pretty big pay day in the Belmont. I keyed in on Jazil and managed to hit the win, the exacta, the trifecta and the superfecta for a $1250 payout. I ha...

I remember the long nights my father spent at the office, his tired face, and his hours of undone work that we helped him do in the middle of our living room floor. I remember the business trips, the budgets, and the work ethic. Most of all, I remember what he said when I questioned why he worked so hard.

"Making money takes hard work, son. No one can become a millionaire overnight."

Dad was wrong.
Vina del Mar, Chile is not the kind of place an American can get by with...

Last Saturday afternoon I played poker at the House of Blood and, again, had a blast. I mean, sure, I went out of his tournament on an absolutely insanely disappointing bad beat, but other than that it was good.

Badblood always hosts good games. The room is always lively and fun but the poker is serious. There are drinks but nobody gets drunk. I like seeing my old friends there and have made new ones too.

Along with Gucci Rick, Blood is the best host around.

So what do t...

Some people are just unlucky. Some folks don't have the skills.

Some people handicap races like our friend Luckbox.

At first blush it may seem like the 'Box is lousy at this kind of thing. If that's your feeling now, you've not thought about it from a distance.

Step back from those busted picks and wasted dollars. Look at the immense beauty of the whole body of Luckbox disaster.

Check this out:
The Santa Anita Pick 6 Ticket

The Luckbox lau...

So, I think my last horse racing advice post was a little ambitious. Winning the Pick 6 is hard. So hard that when you do win, the payout is in 5 or 6 figures.

Saturday, BG and I put our handicapping skills to the test... and lost. I'd say it was close, but it wasn't the closest we've ever been. We lost because the very last horse we left off our ticket ended up winning the first leg of the Pick 6, and a 15-1 longshot (a horse I liked and a horse who shared the name of my...

Full disclosure: I've never won the Pick 6.

On Sept. 3 of last year, BG and I put together a Pick 6 ticket that came within a nose of winning. Five out of 6 paid a few hundred bucks for us, but we were that close to a big pay day. The day before, we lost one race by a head and another by a half-length. Close yet again to a really nice pay day.

If there's one truism in betting the ponies, however, it's that close doesn't pay the bills. And yet, here I am, imparti...

There are few things in this world that will turn a person into an absolute idiot with no regard for their own dignity. For a starving man, it may be a Big Mac. For a lonely man, it may be a naked woman who wants to sleep with him. For an addict, it's that cigarette or shot of whiskey. For G-Rob, it's any of those things.

For a lot of people on TV these days, it's money.

Exhibit A: The appropriately named "I Love Money" on VHI.
If you're not familiar...

It was a quote handed down through several generations, so it's possible that the deputy said, "If you play poker, you deserve to get rubbed." That would make sense. We leather-assed grinders get many a knot in our collective back. A ten-hour session is the perfect excuse for a rub-down. If we play poker, we deserve to get a massage.

However, by the time the quote reached me through the poker community's version of the Telephone Game, it sounded like, "If you play...

Hello dear blogging world! I've missed you terribly. You know, according to this blogging widget we're using here I haven't posted since the middle of February. Kinda pathetic methinks.

I've made a commitment to change that from here on out. We'll see how that holds.

So how does a one-time frequent blogger return to the page? By fighting with his good friends of course!
So I'm in a pot with BadBlood and Gucci Rick. I've had a decent night and I[...

I'd been absent from the blogger tournament poker scene for far too long. It feels good to be back and, for that, I must thank the fine folks over at PokerListings. When they first reached out to me for the Run Good Challenge, I wasn't sure because I was rather out of practice.

My first time out, I worked my way into 5th place. In round two, I secured a second place finish, $300 and a guaranteed spot in the finals. In round three, I was pretty happy with my play, quickly movin...

Game is about to start.

Here are the groundrules :

1. We're ether playing ol' fashioned NLHE with a $300 buyin and $1/$2 blinds OR we're mixing in alternate rounds of PLO8. We'll vote when the rest of the folks arrive.

2. We've got props! Badblood's tuned the 400 sq. ft. TV to Charter Cable's "Classic Rock" channel. We'll try to predict the songs. Each player picks a band and song. Band pays $5 from each player, song pays $10....

Otis' last post was a great idea. So now I'm going to blatantly rip it off. Here's my list:
1. Quads, June 2005

I had just moved from the deadly $2-$6 game to this fresh $4/$8 1/2 Kill game. I was joined by the rest of the G-Vegas crew (Otis, G-Rob, and Bad Blood) and ScurvyDog. The tables was filled out by a few grizzled locals, including an older woman who wouldn't be there too much longer.

The cards are dealt and I look down at the most powerful hand in poke...

I should feel more guilty about those times I play badly and win. I should. I don't. I've played well and lost too. These things happen.

The key is not letting those mixed results distort our perceptions.

Here's an example from GucciRick's on Monday night:

I'm on the button with Kh9h and Otis is the small blind. I've button straddled and Otis limps in from my left. DammitBobby and Frank the Tank both muck before Dr. John raises from $5 to $20.[b...

I once wrote a couple of posts here about a famous mountain moonshiner named Popcorn Sutton. Popcorn's had some legal trouble lately, in part because he didn't seem to object to allowing TV folks a look into the way he makes illegal likker.

So I took particular interest a story we aired a few days ago about a moonshiner in Spartanburg County who was arrested for the second time. He's an old retiree who sells decent booze to pay for his wife's cancer treatment. When we...

I once wrote a couple of posts here about a famous mountain moonshiner named Popcorn Sutton. Popcorn's had some legal trouble lately, in part because he didn't seem to object to allowing TV folks a look into the way he makes illegal likker.

So I took particular interest a story we aired a few days ago about a moonshiner in Spartanburg County who was arrested for the second time. He's an old retiree who sells decent booze to pay for his wife's cancer treatment. When we...

"But everyone gets dealt a stiff hand in this bust from director Robert Luketic," writes Boston Globe movie critic Ty Burr in a column titled, "Blackjack morality tale '21' doubles down on cynicism."

Bill Gibron of filmcritic.com writes, "This is one case where, no matter the bet, no one wins."

At USA Today, Claudia Puig comes right out of the box with, "21 does not offer audiences a winning hand."

And these people are getting paid to...

It was two years ago this month when I first introduced you to Jena. Here's a taste:

She pressed her knee into my leg. She was sending me a message, hidden under the table from the rest of the players. It was different from when she placed her hand on my arm or whispered in my ear. I knew exactly what she was trying to tell me here, and it excited me.

It was that day that Jena learned how to wield the Hammer. It didn't turn out well for her the first time, but, like sex,...

I sat cross-legged in the hotel room. The carpet was new, clean, and better than what I had in my house. The balcony doors were open, letting in a wind and exposing a view you can't buy--it's only available for rent.

A few feet away from me sat more than $30,000 in cash. Most of it was wrapped in ten-grand bundles. A private dealer had been summoned to the room, a cache of one-of-a-kind chips littered the floor, and a setup of cards was being counted down. I speak of all of t...

As I mentioned in my last post, there was a lot of resistance to Harrah's decision to delay the final table of the WSOP. A quick glance at the nine players left seems to validate this radical idea.

Here are the names: Ivan Demidov, Peter Eastgate, Kelly Kim, Craig Marquis, Scott Montgomery, Dennis Phillips, David "Chino" Rheem, Ylon Schwartz and Darus Suharto.

This has to be the most anonymous final table in the history of the World Series of Poker. These massive fiel...

Imagine my surprise when my mother called to mock my singing in the Billy Joel singalong posted below. I tried to post a suitably embarrasing clip of Otis dancing with his wife and it got all switcherooed into my mother noting that "you seemed pretty hammered there".

Fantastic!

I got back from CJ's wedding on Sunday afternoon but didn't feel better until Thursday. I had that moment at the reception, about 4 martinis in, when I looked at the...

Week 1 of the PokerListings Run Good Challenge v.2 was moderately successful. Despite not finishing in the money, I was happy to find myself in the final 5 and I never got all my money in behind (um... perhaps that was my problem).

Here's how it went down:
My starting table looked like this:

s1: Benjo (Everyone's favorite Frenchman)
s2: Michelle (The Cougar)
s5: Jason (The Tennessee Spaceman)
s6: Kid Dynamite
s7: The Original Luckbox
s8: Pokerati Dan
s...

It's Santa Anita.

After looking at the possibilities, BG and I decided to look west. The California track seems just right for us. It's four dirt races and two turf races. We've got a claiming, a maiden special weight, a couple allowances, a $100K stakes race and a final maiden claiming. Lastly, the fields are sufficiently large, 9-12 horses each race, making for a nice potential payday.

In case you're wondering, last Saturday's Pick 6 at Santa Anita paid mo...

A new article in TIME magazine is a really great read. It's called "Candidates' Vices : Craps and Poker".

In short, the writer wonders what it means that John McCain loves a loud and social game of craps and Barack Obama prefers a backroom game of cards.



Among other things, I think it indicates that on top of being a secret muslim antichrist, Barack Obama makes more rational decisions. That's a full plate.

As for the title of thi...

A good friend of mine was part of a poker bust near G-Vegas several years ago. He and about a dozen other really hardened gambing types, accountants and the like, were playing a freeze out tourney in the clubhouse of a suburban subdivision. The cops had an "informant" and raided the place, charging everyone with a violation of the state's 200 year old anti-gambing law.

The same law makes it illegal to play chess on Sunday.

So after the bust, my friend hired a local...

A good friend of mine was part of a poker bust near G-Vegas several years ago. He and about a dozen other really hardened gambing types, accountants and the like, were playing a freeze out tourney in the clubhouse of a suburban subdivision. The cops had an "informant" and raided the place, charging everyone with a violation of the state's 200 year old anti-gambing law.

The same law makes it illegal to play chess on Sunday.

So after the bust, my friend hired a local...

It's worth noting that I wasn't invited to BadBlood's house because the NBA game was especially signifigant. He's a Boston native and has a lazy bandwagon interest in the Celtics. I liked the Celtics too, back in the Larry Bird days.

In fact, I had a giant life-size cutout of Larry legend all the way through college. As a youngster I shopped for the same converse shoes Larry Bird wore. I only wached games in which he played. Larry Bird was the reason I cared, to the e...

I know a guy with a job that requires he spend a lot of time at the movies. Knowing my connection to the poker world and loose connection to the movie Deal, this friend delights in pointing out that Deal, after several weeks in the theater, still has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This makes Deal, if not the worst, at least tied for the worst reviewed movie of the year. Way to go Hollywood.

PokerNews.com editor John Caldwell asked a good question today. In his column, Caldwell points...

I know right now one of my closest friends is down in the dumps, nearly buried by bad beat stories and the human waste of wealthy diseased minds. I actually didn't feel much sympathy for this friend's situation until very recently. Now I think I understand just how much his situation sucks.

I shared one type of perspective with him last night and wanted to share it here as well. We all have our poker and life tilt to handle.
Swimming

Last night I was unhappy about fol...

Remember that time you four-bet pre-flop with aces, flopped your set, and got your opponent to get it all in? Remember when he shoved his chips in and then asked, "Do you have the ace?"

You probably thought, "What is this guy doing playing poker?"

We sometimes think the same thing about the search referrals we get here on the Up For Poker Blog.

Here are just a few recent questions that Google has thrown our way.
Q. Who is the High Stakes Poker guy who look...

I am not a Pot Limit Omaha player.

I am, however, someone who managed to finish 3rd in the last Saturdays with Dr. Pauly. I'd like to attribute it to my skill, but I think my reputation precedes me. Nonetheless, I was a massive chip leader with three players left, holding more than 50% of the chips in play. It didn't last... and I think that's because I don't know how to play PLO.

Perhaps you can help me. Here are three key hands that I may have played poorly.[b...

It's a challenge to write in Las Vegas. A friend once equated the bunker mentality with a bunch of old school war reporters. The challenge of ducking bullets and telling good stories is harder than it probably appears. Of course, there is rarely real ammo here. The dangers are hedonism and fatigue. I'm doing well on this trip, though (as mentioned in the posts below this one) not entirely innocent of running rampant in the pit. I've run well, though, and for that I feel pretty...

It was December 11th, 2004 when about 30 bloggers gathered in Vegas for a seminal moment in the explosion of poker blogging. None of us really knew what to expect and none of us were disappointed by what we found.

Many of the experiences were hard to describe, yet we spent thousands and thousands of words on dozens of blogs telling our handful of readers what they missed. By the time the next poker blogger event rolled around, our numbers had surged past 70. It wasn't long before w...

I've now played in my third blogger tourney since my return from oblivion. I had forgotten just how much I enjoyed not only the cards, but the company as well. Amazingly, I've now gone three straight events without sucking out. How long do you think that's going to hold up?

Saturday was Round 2 of the PokerListings Run Good Challenge v.2 and I managed to improve on my 5th place finish from Round 1.
Fifteen players made it to the tables this Thanksgiving weekend, and my s...

This isn't the post I was planning to write this morning but sometimes we play the hand we're dealt.

I have this neighbor, we've become friends, who joins me at the gym about 5 days a week. I've learned to enjoy a good workout and I've found having a friend there with me pushes both of us to do more.

Wednesday, I heard something at the bench press that made me excited about poker.

Later, I heard something in his pickup truck on the way home that made me...

Two years is a long time.

Two years ago, no one knew who Jamie Gold was. The Detroit Tigers were 28 games over .500 while Tampa Bay was 12 games under. Oh, and they were still the Devil Rays. Andrea Bargnani was the #1 pick in the NBA draft. Yeah, I still haven't heard of him. The nation was preparing for a Hillary vs. Rudy presidential election.

And that's the last time I was in Vegas.

The good news is that until the terrorists win, or some Socialist takes over...

I have a scabbed over gash that runs from the top of my left triceps down past the elbow. The left hand has a few nasty scratches that make it look like I lost a catnip fight with a panther. My special "frolf shoes", actually Teva trail shoes, are so badly torn I haven't even tried to wear them in a week.

Plus, I had to buy a new skeeter.

Still the worst part of my past week was the following admonition from my wife :

"I don't think you should play alon...

I am naturally suspicious of people who use phrases like "call to action." It's one of those marketeer phrases that makes me cringe. That said, if you are a South Carolina poker player or one who travels here to play in some of the best home games around, you should be interested in this. Moreover, if you live in Greenville, South Carolina and don't join me on Monday night, you don't care about poker and your right to play it.

Monday March 30 at 5:30pm, South Carolina...

I've written about it twice before and, frankly, if you were still playing at Ultimate Bet, you are a damned fool. The site is lousy and the software sucks. There is poor, or non-existent, customer service.

Oh, and it IS actaully rigged.

Before I get all cranked up, check out the posts I wrote 3 full years ago!

Ultimate Bet Cheats On A Tournament
Ultimate Bet Has Bad Tournament Software
Here's the thing about online poker, it's worth keeping in mind, most...

Sox was the type of guy who would stand up after winning a hand--one in which he had called off his entire stack with pocket jacks and won--and scream, "Don't you know who I am?"

We knew who he was. He was the guy who got off the phone and started muttering about how stupid women were, presumably because his girlfriend wanted him to come home. He wore baggy workout shorts, a baggy hoodie, a flat-billed White Sox cap, and a beard that was manicured to look messy. He was the...

An informal poll at European Poker Tour Grand Final revealed nothing surprising. Three of the final eight players were considered to be the best players at the table with the best chance at winning. Luca Pagano was the most consistent--a record nine cashes on the EPT, including three final tables. Antonio Esfandiari was the proven live tournament winner. Isaac Baron was the online tournament king--2007 CardPlayer online player of the year, and, to his credit, a guy who knew how to act like h...

There are people who suggest the former Soviet Republic of Armenia is where Adam and Eve first looked at each other's nodules. I don't know this to be true, but I have no reason to say otherwise. As far as I know, original sin popped up a few nights ago at some backwater McDonalds, so the last thing I am going to do is deny Armenians their place in biblical history. A Garden of Eden theme park could be in the offing if the former Communists really put their minds to it.

As long...

It's like that one link to softcore porn on an otherwise boring afternoon. It's a bowl of those tasty M&Ms at a boring party that are sitting on a perfect table in the corner of the room such that eating the candies is both a bad nervous tic and a good way to avoid people you don't want to see.

It's like a metaphor that sucks its writer past the point of good sense but the urge to pull it off takes said writer to, well, exatly this point... (here).

I like to play o...

On December 1st, 2005, I wrote this:

I haven't discussed this with Otis or G-Rob, but that's okay. They're just going to have to deal with my bravado whether they like it or not.

Up For Poker is issuing a challenge to any other threesome in a last-longer for the WPBT Winter Classic. Here's how I figure it will work:

1) Final results of the three entrants will be added together, lowest total wins.
2) Each member of each team will throw in $5 and the winning...

Four of us sat in camping chairs around a cooler serving as a table and with nothing to help us see the cards except the glow of a fire and a few dim lanterns.

"It's gray," G-Rob said.

"How gray?" Otis replied.

"Charcoal."

Yet again, Uncle Ted and I were running over the table. We, frankly, couldn't be stopped. Call it collusion if you want, but in this game, we didn't mind. In fact, in this game, you can't win without it.[br...

Bobby Medford is a convicted criminal. He's guilty of extorting money from gambling operations. He's guilty of money laundering. He's guilty of conspiracy to run an illegal gambling operation.

When he was breaking those laws, Bobby Medford was the sheriff of Buncombe County, North Carolina. That's Asheville. The story of backroom kickback and illegal operations was just laid bare during a federal trial this week. The US Attorney prosecuting the case says Medford wa...

Let's start with the breaking news:

PokerStars will be adding $2000 to the Luckbox Last Longer Challenge prize pool.

Let me say that again.

The awesome folks at PokerStars are once again showing their support for the WPBT by adding $2000 to the prize pool for the Luckbox Last Longer Challenge at the Winter Classic (and find it on Facebook).

Let's just say this little contest of pride and wills just grew into something awesome. Now let's get to the details...

Tonight.

Mondays at the Hoy.

The Luckbox is back.
To be honest with you, I can't remember the last time I played in a blogger event. From what I've read, my get-in-behind-and-suck-out technique seems to be the preferred method for winning these events. All the really talented players are being felted by players who have copied my patented strategies.

Now it's my turn. Buoyed by my luckboxing in the Pick 4, I think now is the perfect time to return to the vi...

Before entering Sunday night's Blogger Big Game, I decided whoever busted me would get to be the latest edition of Up For Poker's "The Nuts." I feel bad, because it was really Astin who crippled me. Short-stacked, I made my stand with A9o vs. his pocket 3s. Miami Don had also folded 3s on that hand. But, nonetheless, I lost the race (I forgot my running shoes and was 0-3 in races).

Down to just 78T, I was forced all-in out of the SB. My 89o never improved against Kati...

Wonder how the Absolute Poker cheating scandal broke wide open?

Got a question about who was cheating players on Ultimate Bet?

Wonder why your page rank suddenly dropped from 3 to 0?

Curious as to who launched the poker database that tracks online tourneys and players?

If you do have these questions, that means you haven't been reading one of the most imformative poker blogs on the web. Nat Arem has been a poster on the 2+2 forums for a few years and was central...

So I actually played some online poker yesterday. It was the first time I sat down at the virtual felt since before I got married. It wasn't much. A little FPP tourney at Stars to start. Then a couple of $30 SNGs (busted 9th and finished first). Then the $20K guarantee. I played pretty well there through the first break before waaaaaay overplaying pocket Ts.

It was fun. I didn't realize I missed it as much as I did. It was nice getting that rush again waiting to see if my...

After a few days of handicapping, the picks are in. BG and I have put together a ticket we believe has a great chance of bringing in a payday. Interestingly, we were on the same page in almost every race. That doesn't always happen. We're hoping that means we're locked in and not that we're both idiots.

Both of us used the early program to handicap. That means we were not influenced by the morning lines created by some random handicapper who may or may not know what h...

I'm not sure I can write it any better than my good friend G-Rob. I suck at handicapping horses. And that pretty much puts me in the category as 95% of all handicappers out there.

Playing the ponies is hard. We're gambling on the whims of some big, dumb animals ridden by tiny men.

So what went wrong for me?
The Kentucky Derby

Frankly, I didn't spend a whole lot of time on this race. I didn't exactly make that clear in my post, although in ranking the f...

We at the Up For Poker blog don't tell bad beat stories. There is actually a clause in our partnership contract that reqires the teller of a bad beat story to play five uninterupted hours of Razz on Full Tilt. If said player doesn't finish up for the session, he has to start over.

Because we don't tell bad beat stories, our group insurance has a variety of plans to help with our therapy. Our wives frown on the local Stress Away Spa Plan (something about them actually not be...

The day Harrah's officially announced the much-anticipated final table delay, my IM machine and e-mail struggled under the pressure. Among those instant messages was from Up For Poker blog co-contributor Luckbox with a simple question: "Pro or con?"

I barely thought for a second before answering, "Con." CJ has since written down his thoughts about the WSOP final table delay. I guess it's up to me to take the opposing role. To be honest, it's hard to get u...

You can start by re-reading this post in which G-Rob explains just how bad I am at picking the ponies. When you're done there, come back here.

Okay, so it's well established that in G-Rob's mind, you're better off betting against me. In fact, while in Vegas, he and I decided to do some pony prop bets. It didn't go well for me...
Sitting in a casino cafe that can be found in every casino on the strip, and waiting for our food to arrive, I noticed a race getting re...

In December of 2004, G-Rob and I survived one long night on a Las Vegas diet of car bombs and cover stories. During one conversation that still haunts me to this day, I was a surgeon, G-Rob was a minor league pitcher, and the third member of the mind-meeting was a...buckaroo.

One of us wasn't lying.

That's the kind of thing that happens when you put a bunch of poker bloggers in the same city with a bunch of cowboys in town for the biggest rodeo of the year.
If you'...

I'm in a big pot with Rick. I play a lot of big pots, of course, but this one is especially large for the stakes and this one hand will make or break the session for one of us.

I have pocket kings in late position in a straddled pot and there are a half dozen callers ahead of me when Rick calls to my right. I pop it to $30. Naturally, everyone at the table calls. Including Rick.

The flop comes 4d 8c 10c. There are checks around to me and I make it $100. Everyone folds exc...

"I am not a biblical scholar," Rep. Barney Frank admitted of his inability to understand. The conservative mores of his colleagues on the other side of the aisle are confounding to some members of Congress. "But I can't find an exemption for horse racing!" The sport of kings' absence in the good book notwithstanding, Frank had a point.

The scene was Wednesday's House Financial Services Committee's Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Polic...

You wouldn't know it by reading here, but I am enjoying poker right now more than I have at any point in the past three years. I look forward to it. I play at every chance I give myself. I read poker blogs every day. I think about strategy and record every session in a nifty little iPhone app. My hourly rate is fantastic. In fact, I can look at my phone and see I have played 59 hours and 46 minutes since January 1.

Why so little?

I haven't played a hand of online poker sinc...

Bad news for all you good people who come here for good writing (Otis) or "I love my fiance/wife" paragraphs (CJ), everyone else is drifting away. I don't blame CJ as he's just gotten married and he's now moving to a new job in a new state.

Also, I don't think he plays much poker.

Otis, on the other hand, is crippled again by self-loathing and alcoholism. He still posts over at his other blog. The good news is that many of his recent posts are on my new f...

The first year I played a World Series event, I found myself at Table 2, Seat 1. I was nervous beyond my normal "There's a good chance I'm dying" standard of anxiety. The buy-in money had come out of my own pocket, there were thousands of players in the room, and I had friends and family on the rail. Yet, despite it all, I found myself dedicating an inordinate amount of thought to one subject that had nothing to do with how to play ace-king under the gun.

Table 2 was in...

When playing Pai Gow, there's an extra bet on each hand for the "bonus." Play that bonus for at least $5 and you're playing the special "envy" bonus, which means you get paid on everyone else's bonus hand too.

I didn't hit many bonuses at Pai Gow. I didn't hit much of anything at the table games. I did feel a great deal of envy.

Here's what else happened during my 3.5 days in Las Vegas, Nevada.
ENVY

I got up at 3AM EDT here in...

I will be wheels up for Vegas in about 24 hours, but I can't really think about it.

You see, I'm currently at the end of an 18 hour work day that started after just about 2 hours of sleep. It's all because some crazy guy decided to shoot up his workplace after getting into an argument with his boss. He even called his girlfriend two hours earlier saying, "I'm going to shoot my boss." She apparently didn't believe him. Six people are dead, including the gunm...

I'm a big believer in the power of the mind. You get lucky because you believe, truly, deep down in your heart, that you're going to get lucky. It's not that you hope you'll get lucky. It's not that you declare you'll get lucky. It's that you have no doubt, no doubt at all, that the card you need is about to fall.

For a year or two, that was me. I knew I'd get lucky more often than not. I'd ask the dealer and the card would fall. It was simple....

Saturday afternoon, I'm heading to the "World-Class" Casino Aztar for my first foray into E-Vegas' only legal poker room. And I need your help to decide just who I'm going to be when I sit down.

Here are my options:
The Online Poker Jopker

I'll break out my Full Tilt Poker hat and my PokerStars T-shirt. I'll take my Check 'N Raise poker card capper (yeah, that's real old school). I'll talk about playing thousands of hours multi-tabling...

Sometimes I look back and wonder how I became the gambler I am today. To be honest with you, I was right on that edge. I knew just enough about casino gambling to be a really good loser. I think it started when my father passed on his love of roulette. That's right... roulette!!

I loved it. There was a rush every time that wheel was spun. Then I learned craps. Talk about a rush...

Blackjack, Pai Gow, Let It Ride, Three Card Poker, Keno... I lost and lost and lost... and...

Do you remember the first time you stood up on the footrest of your Pai Gow chair and yelled across to the roulette players, "Who is winning over there? Because we are winning over here!" Do you remember the first time you took an inordinate interest in your dealer's country of origin and how to pronounce his/her name? Do you remember your first Greyhound? What about the first time you won a monster by betting the dragon bonus?

Or, let me ask you this, dear reader:

...

In the time it took me to leave my bed Thursday morning to the time I went to bed Friday morning, I nearly could have driven from G-Vegas to Las Vegas. Thursday night, as I sat in the one-seat at a Pai Gow table, this fact didn't occur to me. In fact, very little entered my mind except for the probability that I would own the Imperial Palace before morning and that my wife might be a little curious why a pretty Asian girl was shoving her elbow into my back.

Beyond that, it was all...

The rubdown girls at the MGM poker room wear black shirts. A tired designer in some backroom Las Vegas t-shirt shop has created an Old Vegas logo on the back of the uniform. The one word logo looks like it was based on a casino sign from Fremont Street. It's gold, blocky, and has just the right amount of of flair to give a sense of importance and drama.

I was working on a decent amount of sleep--six hours--and was not the least bit hungover. Further, I had only sipped a couple of...

The elevator was out-performing its capacity specifications. It had reached the point at which, when we stopped on every floor, the people on the outside took one look and said, "We'll wait for the next one."

A not-too-worldly girl was pressed against the mirrored wall in the back. Tight quarters and a need for attention forced her to say something. She went with, "Gawd, it seems like half of Australia is here."

I was too tired to correct her. She'd figu...

As I left the MGM, I heard Miami Don's voice behind me.

"Otis, I think your luck just changed."

I couldn't help but believe him.

We walked across the catwalk and into New York, New York. There appeared from nowhere one Shane Nickerson. He bought me a beer for no other reason, apparently, than I was standing in front of him.

It made me believe Don even more.
Despite laying a spirit-breaking beat on Scott at the MGM, I was beginning this Saturday...

I began my Saturday in Vegas like I begin most Saturdays in the city. I was tired, mildly hungover, and stuck. Had it not been for winning a dime playing Pai Gow and sucking out on a fellow blogger in a poker game, the roll in my pocket would've been a lot smaller. Regardless, my stomach and eyelids had met somewhere in the middle. As a result, I had a lump in my throat and had a hard time putting down the cheesesteak at the Venetian food court.

The only thing that felt right...

WPBT Holiday Gathering: The End, Pt. 1

When I found a certain make of Moleskine notebooks, I knew I would never again have a reason to ignore notetaking as part of the writing process. The notebooks have a soft cover that feels a lot like a paper shopping bag. They fit perfectly in my back pocket and mold to my ass.

Throughout the Vegas trip, I had taken a lot of notes and continued to do so up until we hit 20 players in the tournament. Then, apart from writing down who was si...

Somewhere in the middle of the Nevada desert, the folks at Harrah's rang one hella-big bell, and no amount of bitching and moaning is going to un-ring it. No matter how many times I say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," it's still going to be fixed in one way or another.

The thing is, the WSOP Final Table was was broken, at least in terms of how people watch it live.

So, since I have yet to put on the yoke of perpetual cynicism, I've chosen to think...

I'll admit it... I'm a sucker for the Olympics. I'm a red-blooded American who loves watching the USA beat up on other countries. That means I especially enjoy sports like softball, where the rest of the world doesn't have a chance. No wonder the International Olympic Committee voted to get rid of it (Commie terrorist bastards!). But I digress...

Whenever an event rolls around, I start to wonder who among those involved might make for a good poker table. Let's loo...