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The qualifying period for the second $5,000 freeroll in the Victor Chandler $10,000 MaxStack promotion is now open! Earn VIP points and build your stack...
One debate that frequently arises in discussions of no-limit hold'em strategy concerns the relative importance of suitedness. For many, when faced with a marginal decision over whether or not to play a hand, having two suited cards will tip the...
The much-anticipated full schedule for the 2012 World Series of Poker was released on Wednesday afternoon. This year's WSOP will feature a record-breaking 61 gold bracelet events, starting May 27th and extending through July 16th. The Main Even...
After nearly a week's worth of poker down under at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Oliver Speidel emerged as the last player standing from the 659 who entered to win the 2012 Aussie Millions Main Event. Speidel earns a payday of $1.2 million (AUD...
In a tourney that ended up reuniting a number of Team Full Tilt members, the Aussie Millions $250,000 Challenge played out on Saturday and well into Sunday morning, with Phil Ivey emerging as the winner after defeating Patrik Antonius heads-up for a...
Since I began teaching my "Poker in American Film and Culture" class I've come to find out about other college-level courses being taught which highlight poker. One such course has been taught by Professor Bruce McCullough at Drexel Univ...
They've played down from 659 to just 12 at the Aussie Millions Main Event, with the Canadian Yann Dion finishing Day 4 as chip leader with 2.67 million. Bjorn Li of Hong Kong sits nearby in second with 2.471 million, followed by Mohamad Kowssari...
Omaha/8 (a.k.a. Omaha Hi/Lo Split-8-or-Better) has grown in popularity over recent years thanks in part to the fact that online poker rooms are now regularly offering it not just in its traditional fixed limit format but also as a pot-limit or even n...
The Aussie Millions $100,000 Challenge, the first of the "high roller" events on the schedule, has completed with Dan Smith of Las Vegas outlasting Mikhail Smirnov of Moscow after a lengthy heads-up duel to win the title and $1 million-plus f...
There is $10,000 to be one across two freerolls in the Victor Chandler MaxStack Promotion, exclusive to Pokernews...
We're all focused on the NFL playoffs here in the U.S. right now, what with the Super Bowl being just a few weeks away. The playoffs are a time when individual players often emerge as stars. However, football remains a team game, with every big...
After coming from behind heads-up versus a red-hot Jonathan Duhamel, Leonid Bilokur of Russia claimed the $25,500 buy-in High Roller event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure on Saturday, earning a handsome $1,134,930 for topping a tough field of 1...
After a week's worth of play at the Atlantis Casino and Hotel, John Dibella, a 43-year-old stock trader from New York, has won the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event title, outlasting a field of 1,072 players and a tough final table t...
Sander “Berndsen12” Berndsen emerged as the week’s big winner after profiting an impressive $631,432 in 11,318 hands spread across 88 sessions....
The Victor Chandler MaxStack is a unique and exclusive promotion which will award $10,000 to PokerNews players....
They are down to eight players at the Atlantis Resort and Casino in the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event, where after an especially long Day 5 Faraz Jaka continues to lead the way. Jaka ended the night with 6.47 million chips -- just b...
The National Football League playoffs are in full swing, with the final eight teams competing in playoff games this weekend as the march continues toward Super Bowl XLVI on February 5. All four of the upcoming matchups are intriguing, but by far the...
I've been enjoying the recent posts from our friend Matthew Pitt, a.k.a. YorkyPud, in which he's kept us up-to-date on "Pud's Poker Progress." Lately the Pudster has found himself playing a lot more pot-limit Omaha. I also gravi...
After four days of play, just 24 players remain at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, with Faraz Jaka currently enjoying a big chip lead with a massive stack of 4.114 million, a little over 1.4 million ahead of his nearest challenger, Alex Fitzgeral...
We take a look at the number one way to stay healthy and avoid colds while you're at the poker table -- washing your hands....
Sweden's most famous online poker player has added a major live title to his poker résumé, as Viktor "Isildur1" Blom took down the $100,000 buy-in PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Super High Roller event on Saturday. Blom earns a cool $1...
While some of the poker world's attention will be on Ireland over the next few days where the World Poker Tour is hosting a Main Event, many will be following the action from the Bahamas where the eighth-annual PokerStars Caribbean Adventure will...
The Victor Chandler MaxStack is a unique and exclusive promotion which will award $10,000 to our players....
For poker players, the start of a new year often occasions at least a couple of familiar ideas. Like everyone else, poker players are inspired to make resolutions when the calendar turns to January 1, perhaps even listing certain habits or intended...
As the year 2011 came to a close, a newly-publicized opinion by the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the legality of online gambling created a mini-stir in the online poker community. In an apparent change of position, the new opinion states the...
The Victor Chandler MaxStack is a unique and exclusive promotion which will award $10,000 to our players....
Has it already been a year? On the one hand, the last 12 months felt like they rushed by at the speed of a turbo sit-n-go. Then again, so much transpired in 2011 in the poker world those early days of January seem especially distant, not the least...
One of the most important factors in determining how to play a hand and approach the game of poker is the dynamics of the table, that is how the table is playing and how the action is flowing. For the most part table dynamics are completely out of ou...
Years ago -- before the tidal wave of poker strategy advice and theory that accompanied the "boom" and collectively improved the thinking and skill sets of many -- one frequently heard players describing themselves betting or raising "for...
After a lengthy fifth and final day of play in the Epic Poker League "Mix Max" Main Event, Chris "SLOPPYKLOD" Klodnicki came away the winner after making it to heads-up with Andrew Lichtenberger, then winning two straight matches in t...
Andrey Pateychuk continued his remarkable year at the tables this week by besting a field of 568 players to win the World Poker Tour Prague event. The Russian adds another $630,263 to his lifetime earnings with the victory while also picking up a fr...
Starting raking hands and you could win a WPT package in the unique and exciting PokerNews $5K WPT Dublin Brawl freeroll....
We all know that in no-limit hold'em it is important to think beyond our own hand and give some attention to figuring out what our opponents might be holding. Of course, that's easier said than done for a lot of us, especially those among us...
Four days of poker in Marrakech ended Sunday with Morocco's own Mohamed Ali Houssam besting a field of 274 to win a World Poker Tour title and the €199,825 that went along with it. For his victory, Houssam additionally earns himself a seat int...
After four hard-fought days of poker, including a lengthy final day in which the last 15 players played down to a champion, Randy "nanonoko" Lew of Canada emerged Sunday as champion of the 2011 Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau Main Event. Lew o...
The Main Event of the Marrakech leg of the World Poker Tour has reached the unofficial nine-handed final table and amongst the last nine surviving players are three massive names in poker. Arnaud Mattern, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier and Jonat...
I love all sorts of music. I could probably live without my iPod if I absolutely had to, but it's definitely on the short list of items I'd choose to keep if I were forced to pare down my possessions to a few essentials. I guess that makes...
Yesterday's six-handed World Poker Tour final table at the Jacksonville Poker Room began with Anthony Ruberto in the chip lead, and that's how it ended as the Floridian outlasted everyone, including Lisa Hamilton in third, to take the WPT tit...
While the European Poker Tour finished up its first-ever stop in Loutraki, Greece where Zimnan Ziyard of the U.K. took the title, a couple of other tournaments are taking place this week in the U.S. In Jacksonville, Florida, they are down to a final...
!P0krparty¡ was the week’s big winner after a big Thursday-night rush, earning $499,257 in 13,307 hands spread across 76 sessions throughout the week....
The comprehensive, nearly live coverage of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event final table was -- as commentators reminded us repeatedly -- unprecedented. While we've seen experiments in recent years with start-to-finish coverage of the fi...
Being dealt a small pocket pair in no-limit hold'em is like receiving one of those fortune cookies containing a vague promise that something good may happen in the near future. You know, something about being "prepared to accept a wondrous o...
A long final day of play at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino culminated just after midnight with the 22-year-old Pius Heinz of Germany outlasting a tough heads-up battle versus Martin Staszko of the Czech Republic to win the 2011 World Series of Po...
The World Series of Poker Main Event is down to three players, and the odds in Vegas have changed to reflect the massive chip lead by Pius Heinz....
With the world watching on television and online, the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event final table has played down to just three players, with the aggressive Pius Heinz of Germany leading American Ben Lamb and Martin Staszko of the Czech Republi...
If you want to try your hand at rummy, then why not play in the Lucky Dollar tournament at Rummy Royal....
After nearly four months of waiting, the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event is almost ready to resume, with the nine remaining players -- a.k.a. the "November Nine" -- having returned to the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas to b...
The World Poker Tour World Poker Finals at Foxwoods concluded on Tuesday after an eight-hour, 200-hand final table. Daniel Santoro won the title and $450K....
In a final table that lasted exactly 200 hands, Daniel Santoro won the first $10,000 buy-in event of World Poker Tour's Season X, capturing the World Poker Finals at Foxwoods in Mashantucket, Connecticut.
After grabbing the chip lead ear...
Most of us first began playing poker by learning one particular variation of the game. Very likely we didn't necessarily choose the game, but it "chose us" -- that is, we played whatever game our friends first invited us to try, or whate...
Most of the money that you make from No Limit Hold'em cash games will come from the weak players at your table, this should make perfect sense and need little explanation. A common trait shared by weaker players is they play a loose style of poke...
Chilipoker is playing host to a rake race this November, with players eligible to play in exclusive freerolls simply for playing in any raked hands at the real money poker tables....
Ilari "Ilari FIN" Sahamies was the big winner with $270,150 in profit over 2,536 hands spread across 24 sessions, while Davin “mTw-DaviN” Georgi banked $175,030 in 15 sessions/1,295 hands....
The 2011 World Series of Poker Europe has finally wound down, with Elio Fox claiming the last of the seven bracelets in the Main Event after outlasting Chris Moorman heads-up. One could say the New Yorker's victory culminates a breakthrough year...
The other day I was sitting at my usual low-stakes online game -- six-handed pot-limit Omaha -- when I realized an opponent seemed to be doing a lot of minimum-betting after the flop. And when I say a lot I mean practically every single time he had...
After four hard-fought days of poker, then a Day 5 lasting another 201 hands, Elio Fox emerged on Thursday as the 2011 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event champion. The leader to start the final day of play, the New Yorker maintained the chip ad...
An exciting Day 3 at Cannes saw the field for the 2011 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event trimmed to just 25 players. Two U.K. players sit atop the counts overnight, with Max Silver and Chris Moorman almost even in chips with 1.78 million and 1...
Two more bracelets were awarded in Cannes, France on Saturday as both Events #5 and #6 were concluded. Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi topped a tough field of 125 to win the unique €10,400 "split format" no-limit hold'em tourney...
In one of the more unusually-structured bracelet events in World Series of Poker history, Tristan Wade of the United States took bracelet #4 at this year's WSOPE in the €3,200 No-Limit Hold'em Shootout. Wade won three differently-sized tab...
If you think about it, the World Series of Poker has always been kind of clever with the naming thing. Going back to 1970 when Jack and Benny Binion decided to name their humble gathering of mostly-Texan gamblers a "World" Series, that was k...
We all have love-hate relationships with the blinds, I think. On the one hand, playing from the blinds mostly stinks. They're doubly disadvantageous, really. Not only are we forced to commit chips without seeing our hole cards, we then have to...
After five days of poker in Cannes, France, the first two bracelets have been claimed at the 2011 World Series of Poker Europe. In Event #1, a €2,680 buy-in Six-Handed No-Limit Hold'em event, Guillaume Humbert of Switzerland claimed the win by...
Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi has joined forces with the Breeder's Cup to host the First Annual Breeders’ Cup Celebrity Invitational, and the AGCC is reviewing how it handled the Full Tilt Poker situation....
Antanas “Tony G” Guoga announces a massive legal action against the AGCC claiming negligence in the handling of their licensee, Full Tilt Poker....
You've noticed it, I'm sure. Players in later stages of multi-table tournaments are no longer raising three times the big blind -- at one time a universal standard, it seemed -- often preferring instead to raise 2.5x or 2.2x or even the mini...
Benny Spindler -- among the chip leaders the entire week at the European Poker Tour London Main Event -- grabbed the lead early at the final table on Thursday and never let it go, knocking out six of his seven opponents there to win the title. For t...
It was a relatively short Day 4 at the European Poker Tour London Main Event as the field shrunk from 62 to 24. Soon after the last hands were dealt on Tuesday, the Swede Mattias Bergstrom was bagging up the most chips with 1,838,000, but only barel...
From a starting field of 691 just eight remain at the European Poker Tour London Main Event, with Martins Adeniya of the U.K. the final table chip leader with more than 4.7 million. Adeniya's nearest challenger to start Thursday's finale wil...
They've completed three days' worth of action at the European Poker Tour London Main Event, with James Mitchell of the U.K. enjoying the overnight chip lead this evening as the only player among the 62 remaining with more than 1 million chips...
In a development that comes as little surprise in the wake of last week's action by the U.S. Department of Justice versus Full Tilt Poker, today the Alderney Gambling Control Commission announced that it has revoked the FTP's license to opera...
Last night saw the final day of Major League Baseball's regular season punctuated by some thrilling conclusions to multiple games. With playoff spots in the balance, no less than three different games had come down to the losing team's final...
I enjoy playing all games. I favor pot-limit Omaha, limit hold'em, and no-limit hold'em, both cash and tourneys. And I stick primarily to the smaller stakes thanks to my "short-stacked" status. (Or mindset, but that's a differe...
The poker world was rocked once again early Tuesday afternoon when news broke that the U.S. Department of Justice had filed a motion to amend its "Black Friday" civil complaint in order to add further allegations against Full Tilt Poker that...
The Partouche Poker Tour Main Event has played down to its version of the November Nine, having reached its nine-handed final table Saturday night. When play resumes a couple of months from now in Cannes, France, England's own Sam Trickett will...
Play is about to get underway for today's Day 5 at the Partouche Poker Tour's Main Event. Of the 579 players who started back on Tuesday in the €8,500 buy-in tournament, just 18 survived to make this fifth day of play, with the Italian Mus...
It has been a rocky few weeks for poker, overall, with all sorts of off-the-felt battles and stories not exactly helping to present the game in the most favorable way. As Dusty Schmidt, author of Don't Listen to Phil Hellmuth (reviewed here), as...
Most experienced poker players recognize the importance of learning how to quit sessions when it is in their interest to do so. Psychologically speaking, it can be incredibly difficult to leave a game when down. One becomes figuratively "stuck[...
As part of the PokerNews Book Review Series, we've decided to take a look at the new book by Jonathan Little, Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker Volume 1: Fundamentals and how to handle varying stack sizes....
It took nearly 300 hands and over 12 hours (with breaks) before Canadian Mike McDonald finally emerged as the winner of the second Epic Poker League Main Event, topping a field of 97 to earn a $782,410 payday and the champion's ring. The player...
Full Tilt Poker has more drama on its hands. Find out more on that and which players are captaining the Caesars Cup teams in the Nightly Turbo....
Yesterday at the Epic Poker League's second Main Event they played down from 23 to a final table of eight, during the course of which period the tourney reached the money. (As it happened, they also reached the money over at WPT Paris, as Matthe...
The starting field of 97 for the Epic Poker League's second $20,000 buy-in Main Event has been whittled down to a final table of eight. David Steicke and Erik Seidel both lead the way with just over 1 million chips apiece, with Isaac Baron not t...
Last week in my "Poker in American Film and Culture" class I did something a little unusual. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest it might have been the only college class happening in the entire country on that day where t...
After last month's inaugural Epic Poker League Main Event drew 137 entrants, just 97 entered the league's second $20,000 buy-in ME, and following two days of play the Frenchman Fabrice Soulier leads with 23 players left. Soulier's stack...
Less than a couple of weeks ago it looked as though the District of Columbia -- that small quadrant located in between Maryland and Virginia where reside 600,000 residents and the United States capital -- would become a test case of sorts for "in...
After five long days of play, Martin Schleich of Germany has bested a field of 811 to claim the Season 8 European Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event title. Schleich survived a hard-fought, 14-hour final table that finally came to an end with his elimin...
Back during the World Series of Poker I recall a certain "WSOP Hand of the Day" between Matt Matros and Jonathan Lane that came up during Event #52, the $2,500 Mixed Hold'em (Limit/No-Limit) tournament eventually won by Matros. The pair...
A relatively short Day 4 at the European Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event saw Spaniard Tomeu Gomila preserve his start-of-day chip lead throughout the six-and-a-half hours of play to enter tomorrow's eight-handed final table as the chip leader. G...
A long Day 3 at the European Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event saw the field trimmed from 141 players down to the final 24, with Spain's own Tomeu Gomila ending the day atop the counts with 2.547 million. Fellow Spaniard Raul Mestre finished not...
The official six-handed final table of the World Poker Tour Legends of Poker has been reached and it is Will "The Thrilla" Failla who is the man they have to catch when play resumes at 1600 local time....
Day 3 of the European Poker Tour's Barcelona main event will start with 141 players still gunning for part of the €4,000,000-plus prize pool and €850,000 first prize. The top 120 spots pay, meaning the cash bubble should be bursting not long...
"It's like the difference between driving a car and flying a small airplane." So explain Mark Tenner and Lou Krieger early in Mastering Omaha/8 Poker, referring to the extensive differences that exist between hold'em and O/8.
[b...
I was playing short-handed pot-limit Omaha the other day when a hand occurred that demonstrated a couple of truths frequently encountered when playing low limit PLO online. One was how a lot of players -- likely influenced by hold'em -- routinel...
The last decade has witnessed unprecedented growth in the popularity of poker worldwide, with the World Poker Tour having been a significant part of that story throughout. Today the WPT had a press conference to announce it was kicking off its 10th...
One area that many poker players struggle with is playing against an aggressive opponent who has position on them. For the most part good players try to avoid these situations but sometimes they cannot be avoided and the player just has to grit their...
Over the past couple of months I have been grinding away at the short-handed cash games and doing pretty well for myself. Although I was only been playing micro-stakes I managed to win something like 19 buy-ins over the course of 25,000 hands, which...
A wild, drama-filled week in poker culminated just a few hours ago with the crowning of the first-ever Epic Poker League Main Event winner, David "Chino" Rheem. For besting a field comprised of 137 of poker's toughest players -- includin...
They have played down from 137 to the final six-handed table at the first-ever $20K buy-in main event for the newly-launched Epic Poker League. With $400,000 having been added to the prize pool, that means more than $2.46 million awaits those six wh...
This week the World Poker Tour announced an addition to its Season X schedule, a new stop in Portomaso, Malta happening next month. The WPT will land at the Mediterranean archipelago for the week of September 17-24, during which a couple of side eve...
While your faithful Betfair poker bloggers are traveling the world covering poker tournaments -- Matthew Pitt over at EPT Tallinn in Estonia and yours truly at LAPT Punta del Este in Uruguay -- much of the poker world's attention over the next fe...
Since my last update I was mainly playing cash games at the Venetian and although I had some fun there, I can't really remember any hands that were too interesting. But I did play the $5k event at the Wynn, which was their Main event and in that...
"Always with a pen in my pocket and an eye on the outrageous." That's how poker player, writer, and coach Tommy Angelo refers to himself in his newest offering, A Rubber Band Story and other Poker Tales. The book follows Angelo's hi...
The Nightly Turbo is bringing you the day's top poker news stories including a look at PokerStars' 65 billionth hand, the WSOP on ESPN schedule, and more....
Try your hand at rummy with this $7,000 guaranteed offering from Rummy Royal this month....
One of the key changes that has affected all games in the last twelve months or so has been the massive increase in the number of players refusing to believe flop bets. It used to be the case that weak players generally folded too much on flops when...
PokerStars is awarding milestone bonuses for every millionth hand dealt at their tables on the way up to its 65 billionth hand....
Play has ended for the summer at the 2011 World Series of Poker, with the Main Event's November Nine having finally been determined around 2 a.m. this morning. Martin Staszko of the Czech Republic will be the tourney's chip leader for the ne...
It was a day full of fast-paced action yesterday at the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event. Day 7 saw the field shrink from 57 to 22 over the course of five 120-minute levels. That meant an average of seven eliminations per level, many coming be...
Yet another exciting day at the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event, as the field has now shrunk to 57 players. After starting Day 6 with only 750,000 chips (102nd of 142), Ryan Lenaghan enjoyed a day full of big hands and huge pots to end as the...
Yesterday's Day 5 of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event saw more exciting hands and rising drama as the field shrunk and the prize money increased. Your humble scribbler was stationed over at the feature tables yesterday, racing back and...
Day 4 of the World Series of Poker Main Event saw players make the money early in the day (during Level 16), then came lots of eliminations as big stacks began to appear around the Amazon Room. By day's end more than 40 players had at least a mi...
Are you all sitting down? Good. I Matthew Pitt has actually stuck to something poker related and managed to play 10,000 hands so far this month. Impressed? Didn't think so, but you should be....
It was another exciting day and night at the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event yesterday. As the field shrunk down to 853, there were numerous big-pot confrontations and dramatic eliminations. Adding further buzz was the ubiquitous presence of...
Like the previous Day Two, Day 2b of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event saw lots of chip movement and eliminations occurring, with just 1,042 of the 2,490 players who started the day surviving. If my math is correct, that means there will be...
Phil Hellmuth has had a rather amazing World Series of Poker but his Main Event, his last chance this year of winning a WSOP bracelet on Las Vegas soil, almost came to a premature end without him even playing a single hand on Day 2...
The first of the Day Twos played out yesterday at the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event, with the Russian Aleksandr Mozhnyakov ending the day bagging up the most chips of anyone with 478,600. As on Day 1, players played five more 120-minute leve...
As expected, Day 1d of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event drew the largest field of the four Day Ones, with 2,809 entrants choosing Sunday as the day to start their tourney journeys. While most thought Sunday would be the biggest Day One, few...
Day 1c of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event saw a big turnout of 2,181 players, more than doubling the sub-1,000 player fields on each of the first two Day Ones. And word is there will be more than that coming out for the final Day 1d today,...
Among the stories swirling about the Amazon Room during Day 1b of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event, a couple in particular stood out. One concerned the turnout, with ongoing speculation regarding what the final tally will be. The other had...
The 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event kicked off yesterday with Day 1a, the first of four Day Ones. A total of 897 entrants turned out on Thursday, down from last year's Day 1a total of 1,125. While the Main Event features a unique structur...
An incredibly exciting finale last night to Event No. 55, the $50,000 Poker Player's Championship, ultimately won by Brian Rast following a lengthy heads-up duel with Phil Hellmuth. (See Matthew Pitt's full report of the final table here.)...
Yesterday I played in Event#56 of the World Series of Poker but unfortunately busted out on the very last hand before the dinner break meaning I am now sitting here eating fried chicken wings and soured cream, which is just brilliant.
The tour...
Day 4 of the $50,000 Poker Player's Championship (Event #55) ran quite long last night, not stopping until just before 6 a.m. when the sun had already risen over the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino. They began the day with 29 players and played d...
Leading into a preflop raiser can be an extremely profitable play to make in low stakes games, even more profitable than check-raising them. The reason the play works best in these games is the fact they are often frequented by weaker players and the...
There were a number of intriguing hands from Day 3 of Event #55, the $50,000 Poker Player's Championship in which players rotate through a mix of eight different games until they reach the no-limit hold'em-only final table. By day's end...
I've been in Las Vegas for three days now, well I think it is three days because in Vegas you never leave your hotel, don't get to see any sunlight and there are no clocks anywhere! The first day I was badly jet-lagged, in fact I think I stil...
One thing that really separates No Limit Hold'em from Pot Limit Omaha is the huge difference between raising and cold calling ranges between the two games. In No Limit Hold'em, generally the initial raiser (or re-raiser) will usually be the f...
Event #53, the $1,000 Ladies No-Limit Hold'em Championship, concluded yesterday with Marsha Wolak the victor, besting a whopping field of 1,055 to take the bracelet and $192,344 first prize. As always, the event stirred a lot of debate regarding...
Poker author Matt Matros won his second WSOP bracelet in as many years last night, outlasting a tough final table that included Matt Hawrilenko, Nikolay Losev, and Noah Boeken to take down Event #52, the $2,500 Mixed Hold'em (Limit/No-Limit) even...
Lots of action and excitement at the WSOP yesterday. While many are looking ahead to the $50K Player's Championship (starting today) and the Main Event (starting Thursday), the last of the preliminary events have been providing poker fans a lot o...
Joe Ebanks was already one of online poker's millionaires, having won more than $3,000,000 from online tournaments and now he can say he is a live poker millionaire after he won the largest prize of the 2011 World Series of Poker so far, a cool $...
Yesterday was another busy day at the World Series of Poker, with no less than six different events happening at some point during the day. A couple of bracelets were won yesterday, including one in Event #49, the $2,500 Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw e...
Wednesday's WSOP Hand of the Day comes from Event No. 47, the $2,500 Omaha/8-Stud/8 event that attracted a star-studded field of top mixed game experts. The top five alone -- Scotty Nguyen, Scott Bohlman, Abe Mosseri, Michael "the Grinder[db...
Event #46, the $10,000 No Limit Hold'em Six-handed Championship is down to its final 22 players and Britain's Chris "Moorman1" Moorman finds himself well chipped up in second place and in with a very realistic chance of winning his fi...
It was another busy day yesterday at the World Series of Poker, with several events going on at once. Two events got started, two more played out their second days, and three others finished up. Aside from Event #45, the $1,000 No-Limit Hold'e...
As noted yesterday, the World Series of Poker has instituted a new "hard stop" rule this year that requires tourneys be halted once ten one-hour levels have been played. A consequence of this rule has been the interruption of many final tabl...
Matthew Jarvis has become the $5,000 No Limit Hold'em Six-handed Champion after outlasting a star-studded field of 732 to win his first World Series of Poker bracelet and boost Canada's haul to five wins at this year's WSOP....
Sunday's WSOP Hand of the Day comes from Event #40, the $5,000 No-Limit Hold'em Six-Handed event won by 2010 November Niner Matt Jarvis (see final table report here). This tournament featured a tough field of top pros among the 732 who enter...
Today's WSOP Hand of the Day was an easy one to choose, a huge five-way all-in hand from Event No. 42, the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship involving Ivan Freitez, Dario Alioto, Emil Patel, Aaron Schaff, and David Ewing. The hand was expertl...
While luck certainly plays a role in deciding which players make it to the final tables of World Series of Poker events, more often than not those who have outlasted the field to put themselves in position to claim the biggest payouts have demonstrat...
Thursday's World Series of Poker hand of the day comes from Event #36, the $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em event that played down to a final table before stoppping with five players remaining. Thomas Middleton, supported with great fervor by many of...
"I'm out lost 150k pot with J's up to straight. On river." So reported Mike "the Mouth" Matusow on his Twitter feed not long before midnight last night. Matusow was playing Day 2 of Event #37, the $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. Champion...
Event #35 of the World Series of Poker is the $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha Six-handed tournament and two of the biggest names in British poker have made it to the last 15 places. Both Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott and Chris "Moorman1" Moorman wi...
It pains me to write this but Phil Hellmuth Jr is one of poker's true greats. There I have said it. It kind of stuck in my throat on the way out but I have to hold my hand up and admit that I may have been a little hasty in my negativity about [d...
There were a number of familiar faces sitting around the final two tables of World Series of Poker Event #35, the $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha (Six-Handed) event, late in the day yesterday. Among those still with chips with 18 left were Greg Brooks, David...
Day 21 is done. Kirk Caldwell and Eric Rodawing win bracelets on Monday while Vanessa Selbst leads the first ever six-handed PLO Event at the WSOP....
Back in December 2010, Rui "PepperoniF" Cao made it very clear that he wanted to take on Viktor Blom in his so-called SuperStar Showdown, a heads-up battle where Blom and an opponent sit down at four cash game tables with stakes of $50/$100 a...
Chris Moorman is going to have to wait a little longer to get his hands on a coveted World Series of Poker bracelet after he crashed out of Event #26 in third place, narrowly missing out on the glory that he will inevitably one day revel in....
"I slept on a bed of hundred-dollar bills to simulate winning the WSOP stud8 event today. Plus I prayed to my personal God that I could cash." So tweeted Norman Chad, the wisecracking co-host of ESPN's World Series of Poker coverage sin...
Back on December 14, 2010 a man pulled up on a motorcycle outside the Bellagio hotel and casino, Las Vegas, Nevada walked inside the casino and made his way to the craps table. When he arrived here, still donning his motorcycle helmet, he produced a...
For the past five years Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier has returned from his World Series of Poker adventures relatively empty handed. Despite winning cash the one thing that eluded him was a gold WSOP bracelet, something he and every other poke...
Most players are aware of how 'good' or 'bad' a card can be on the turn or river in Hold'em or Omaha. Good cards can throw up great bluffing opportunities, make your hand much safer to proceed with, or make you the stone cold nuts...
"Strange thing," tweeted 11-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth a little after 1 a.m. Sunday morning. "I finished in 2nd place & Won $270,000, but I feel c[o]mplet[e]ly awful + i am unconsolable..." Hellmuth was referring, of co...
Event No. 16, the $10,000 buy-in Deuce-to-Seven Draw Lowball (No-Limit) Championship, has seen its star-studded field of 126 entrants whittled down to just nine players. Richard Ashby, a 2010 World Series of Poker bracelet winner and one of the many...
2010 was no fluke, it appears. After claiming five bracelets at last year's World Series of Poker -- the most by any country other than the United States -- U.K. players are proving themselves once more through the first 10 days of play at this...
It has been a wild first week at the World Series of Poker. Heck, it's only been half a week, really, but the number and magnitude of the stories have been so big it has seemed longer. And in fact, many of those stories have had little to do wi...
The PokerNews GIANT needs 15,000 rebuys to meet the $30,000 guarantee - we like the odds of an overlay in this one....
Most players see poker as a game of action - a world of big calls, well timed bluffs and constant aggression. However, arguably the biggest part of poker revolves around the simple fold button, and understanding just how important it is is crucial to...
After a long and uneventful five thousand hand break even stretch online, I recently took a break and started to wade through Poker Tracker to see if I was just running bad, or if something much worse had been creeping into my game. One of the genuin...
Hard to believe, but it's just a few days until the first hands of the 2011 World Series of Poker will be dealt at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. On Tuesday, May 31 the $500 buy-in Casino Employees no-limit hold'em event ki...
Back at the 1988 World Series of Poker the Main Event had been whittled down from 167 entrants until just the final two players remained, Johnny Chan and the then unknown Erik Seidel. Although television coverage of poker tournaments was nothing like...
Many people approach poker with one single aim in mind - get it in with the best hand. They reason that as you can compare the direct odds of hands, that the overall aim of poker is simply to make sure you have the best hand in each pot. However, ult...
On Monday, more indictments were handed out to gambling websites, this time by the U.S. Attorney of Maryland. As part of the indictments, eleven bank accounts and ten domains were seized; in addition, three people were indicted....
The ante and/or blinds is effectively what makes poker work. Without forced bets, every player would simply wait for aces, and it is the simple fact that you have to pay before you even get dealt a hand that makes all the complexity of poker happen....
Any poker player who is even a little bit serious about the game has given some thought to bankroll management. In theory, anyway.
Players who have demonstrated long-term success all seem to talk about the importance of preserving one's r...
If we were to imagine poker players as pictures, then each piece of information given out by them would be akin to a pixel in the picture. Each pixel would be improving our resolution and understanding of what their play looks like as the dots builds...
A topic first introduced to the general public by Barry Greenstein in his excellent poker book Ace on The River, the 'steam point' of a player is roughly defined as the amount of money/number of beats they need to lose before they go on tilt....
One feature that truly unites all the greatest poker players is their undying observational skills. Weak players generally just focus on the hands they are involved in (and often not even on that), but absorbing and following all the action is crucia...
Phil Galfond hit the ground running this week on High Stakes Poker, but it was businessman Bill Klein who played the sickest hand of the night....
Without online poker, the American handicapped community is struggling to play. Josh Cranfill, a victim of Werdnig-Hoffman Disease disease, explains why....
It has been two weeks since I've played a hand of online poker for real money. I did sit down for a couple of play money sessions here and there over the last few days. For example, the other night I managed to be the bubble boy in a 100-plus p...
We are now well and truly into our fourth week of our "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" promotion and things are really hotting up all over the Master Leaderboard. It looks like everyone wants to get their hands on the $10,000 World Series of...
All poker players feel confusion at some point. Very few hands ever make 100% sense to even the best players, and wading through the huge number of variables that go into poker decision making is an exceptionally hard business. However, this is in la...
This week we present the second half of my conversation with poker player, author, and commentator Jesse May. After focusing primarily on May's 1998 poker-themed novel Shut Up and Deal (see part 1), we turned our attention to the early days of [...
If you missed the news this week, you missed the details of PokerStars' 60 billionth hand, the partnership between Full Tilt Poker and Station Casinos, and more....
When it comes to poker-themed novels, Jesse May's Shut Up and Deal (1998) stands out as an especially accomplished entry in the genre, a book that brings alive the unique and fascinating world of the cash-game grinder of the mid-1990s.
I...
A week ago Daniel Negreanu played the first of his two 2,500 heads up matches against the enigmatic Viktor "Isildur1" Blom and got owned by both the young Swede and the deck. In fact he was that badly beaten that he became the first of Blom[s...
PokerStars dealt its 60 billionth hand on Tuesday. We'll tell you what it was and who won it, along with how Mike Sowers double final tabled the $1K Monday on Full Tilt Poker, and more....
After being manhandled for $150,000 in just 1,439 hands last week, Daniel Negreanu was down early in his SuperStar Showdown rematch with Viktor "Isildur1" Blom, but he somehow managed an epic comeback to notch a $26,500 win....
Having won the APAT professional title in 2010, popular circuit player Steph Boyd will be representing Betfair in a number of live tournaments in 2011. You can follow his progress on the Betfair Poker websites where he will give a behind-the-scenes v...
In the early morning hours of Friday, Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Daniel "jungleman12" Cates squared off in a 780-hand match. Check out a recap of the action and who's ahead in the "durrrr Challenge."...
"To play poker with a joker is a lower-class game."
Such was the lesson taught to young John Lukacs by his mother in Hungary in the 1930s. Lukacs tells of his early poker-playing days in a 1963 essay titled "Poker and American Cha...
As all the 1.01 backers have found out to their cost over the Cricket World Cup, sometimes in life people just make insane comebacks from situations that you would never expect them too. Poker is no different in this respect - after a while at the ta...
Poker at it's heart is a game of ranges and patterns. Certain key factors continually affect our perception of these factors, and one of the most important is the number of possible hand combinations available. A Hold'em hand where you hold t...
Daniel Negreanu's SuperStar Showdown match against Viktor Blom saw “Kid Poker” dismantled by "Isildur1" in just 1,439 hands. It took about four hours for Blom to win Negreanu's $150,000 bankroll and improve his SuperStar Showdown record to 4-1....
A convergence of recent experiences and events got me thinking a lot about "image" and poker. I'm not referring to image in poker -- that is, the impression someone projects at the table regarding what kind of player he or she is. Rathe...
The term 'snowing' simply refers to a practice in draw poker low-ball games where you make a bluff based on the fact that you have a multiple number of important low cards in your hand, but ones that pair and actually make your hand very weak...
The dream hand to look down at in poker variant seven card stud hi/lo, three suited babies refers to any hand that has three low, suited cards in it. These are by far the most profitable hands in the game, and playing them well is key to long term su...
The new season of High Stakes Poker, the popular cash-game show appearing on Saturday nights on the Game Show Network in the U.S., is underway with the first two episodes having aired thus far. Already the new season has drawn a lot of attention and...
This is a concept that drives most people to distraction in all forms of poker, but perhaps nowhere more so than in Pot Limit Omaha. You raise a nice looking hand, you flop a monster like top set, you suddenly get action off of a big fish....
If you have logged onto the Betfair Poker client recently you may have noticed a couple of symbols in the top left hand corner. The latest symbol will link you directly to the online roulette tables via Betfair Games....
One of the core hands that strong poker players win a huge amount of extra money with, and also lose far less than a weaker player will, is top pair bad kicker. This is a complex hand to play in most spots, and one that can get you in a great deal of...
The 2011 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship gets underway today with action kicking off around noon Las Vegas time in the poker room at Caesars Palace. This is the seventh year for the 64-player tournament, modeled somewhat after the tournamen...
We're beginning to understand why Tom "durrrr" Dwan spends a lot of time in Macau, and so will you after you find out about a hand he played worth multiple millions of dollars. On top of that, Zynga PokerCon is coming to Vegas, and more....
In any form of draw game, eventually you are going to get dealt hands that need no discards to improve. These are referred to as 'pat' hands, and how you play them makes a huge difference between you and the opposition over the long run in dr...
The 28 days that make up February have been and gone and my first month of playing NL50 is completed. I am pleased to report a pretty good winning month but one that could have been much better had it not been for my all in EV been all over the place...
One of the areas that really separates weak players from strong - particularly in loose short-handed and heads up games - is the inability to make a stand early enough to define the game well and keep their opponent off guard. Short-handed poker is a...
This week BLUFF Magazine announced its annual "Power 20" list which catalogues the 20 most influential people in poker. This marks the sixth year the magazine has produced such a list, which tends to include major figures from the business s...
Deuce To Seven Triple Draw is one of the most popular rotations in mixed games, and it is a true action game that can at first seem to have a dizzying number of combinations and possibilities. Other than the generally obvious rules of only attempting...
This is one of the true devil hands in Pot Limit Omaha, and one which can get you into more trouble than perhaps any other. It's difficulty arises in both how strong it can be, but also how hugely weak it can be against certain ranges, a state of...
If you are an online poker player starting your first forays into live games, one of the most crucial adjustments you need to make is taking three bets much more seriously than you typically do online. The internet game has developed at a much faster...
The World Poker Tour Celebrity Invitational kicks off on Saturday and scores of celebrities will be on hand to play for the Chrysalis organization and a $25,000 seat to the WPT World Poker Championship....
Poor Phil Hellmuth. Despite winning 11 WSOP bracelets, earning more than $11 million in tournaments, and authoring several popular poker strategy titles, everybody's picking on him!
The rise of poker forums over the last decade has provi...
This is perhaps an overused term in modern poker, but one that frequently comes up in big bet analysis, and one it is important to be familiar with if you are to get maximum value out of your marginal hands. The term 'polarised range' simply...
In the first betting round of seven card stud, the 'bring in' bet forces the lowest (or highest card in razz) to make a forced bet to kick off the action. Generally the action then falls to the player with the highest (or lowest in razz) to p...
There's something about that select group of poker players who play for the highest stakes that tends to encourage the rest of us to think of them as somehow not of our species. I'm talking about those players we see routinely competing for...
As a reader of many poker forum posts each week I frequently see new members posting their hand histories from micro-stakes games asking how is it possible to beat the fish who will call you with raggedy hands regardless of the action before them. Th...
Jack Ury, the oldest-ever participant at the World Series of Poker, passed away this week at the age of 97. Ury leaves behind a large family of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren, having been married more tha...
Following on from the excellently written article by Marcus Bateman on "Raising With Sets" I thought I would use a couple of hand examples from my own database to show the different approaches you can take in order to get your money into the...
Pretty much every player who has played No Limit Hold'em will have known the feeling of flopping a set with a small pair and wanting to sit back and set a trap with their now monster hand. Sets don't come around too often in Hold'em, and...
Last week I made the decision to stop being a wuss and start to play for stakes a few levels above what I usually do. Whilst I've not been rubbing shoulders with Tom Dwan and company, I have been playing a few hands of NL50, which I guess is five...
The 2011 Aussie Millions Main Event came to an exciting conclusion over the weekend with 71-year old Australian, David Gorr emerging victorious, defeating popular British poker pro James Keys in an intense heads-up battle that lasted more than 200 ha...
In Silver Blaze, one of the fifty six Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one of the key clues in solving the case comes in the form of a pack of guard dogs not barking when a supposed break in occurred. This is an important po...
In 1564, an Italian by the name of Girolamo Cardano wrote a book about various games then occupying the attention of many of his contemporaries, including dice-based games, card games, and even backgammon. His book, Liber de Lude Aleae or Book on Ga...
Five card draw is relatively unique amongst poker games, in that it only has two streets of betting. You have a betting interval once you are dealt your cards, a discard phase where you can attempt to improve your hand, and then one final betting rou...
Last weekend came something of a landmark moment in the history of televised poker. Poker fans around the world were able to watch every hand from the final table of the PS Caribbean Adventure Main Event (on a one-hour delay), with hole cards!
...
Annie Duke looks set to become the commissioner of a brand new poker league that is looking to become for poker what the PGA is for golf. Although no name has been officially released yet it is thought the new league will be called the Federated Poke...
We all know the archetypal poker scene - smoky rooms, dim light, frozen faces enveloped in dark wraparound sunglasses staring down at the green felt as huge sums of money trade hands. However, in recent years sunglasses have become quite a point of c...
Pot-limit Omaha has continued to grow in popularity over recent years. By now most hold'em players have at least experimented with the four-card flop game, with many taking it up in earnest. Along with the growth of the game have come a number...
After nearly six hours of play we are down to an eight-handed final table led by chip leader Chris Oliver. Oliver amassed an impressive 19.67 million-chip stack today and was responsible for six of the fourteen knockouts.
There were 22......
The 2011 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is just about halfway completed and it's been a great series to kick off the new year. PokerNews[/i[ has been on hand to provide all the live coverage from the $100,000 Super High Roller, the Main Event, the......
This is a term that is frequently used in poker analysis, but is surprisingly ill defined, and understanding what typically constitutes deep stacked poker and the effect it has on games is crucial to understanding what games to sit down in and why. [...
The PartyPoker Weekly is back in 2011. Sign up to PartyPoker via PokerNews for a free $50 bankroll and to play in the exclusive $1 million hand promo this month....
Poker is not just a game about how you play each hand. There are many other important considerations to think about when you view a table, and one of the most important is how much you buy in for.
I remember playing a short handed game when I...
Many poker players see the start of a new year as a chance to wipe the slate clean and begin again whilst others use it as an excuse to set themselves huge challenges such as playing a million hands throughout the year or earn $100,000 in 12 months....
It's the last day of the year, a day when many poker players are looking back on 2010, delivering final verdicts on whether it the year was up, down, or break-even -- verdicts that will either be true, false, or somewhere in between.
Suc...
When Patrik Antonius announced he was going to be the first player to take up Tom "durrrr" Dwan's offer of three-to-one odds on being able to beat him over 50,000 hands of heads-up poker the poker community literally went mad with anticip...
'Tis the season, once again. That time of year when everyone is making lists -- and I'm not just talking about those made to help with the gift shopping. Rather I am referring to those year-end compilations looking back on the top stories f...
Jonathan Karamalikis' unique online handle got our Rich Ryan to thinking: what's in an online poker name?...
Matt Savage is a name well known to anyone who spends any time at all on the professional tournament poker circuit. One of the most respected tournament directors around, Savage has played a significant role in the poker's growth and development...
Local player Markus Stoeger won the second Betfair Poker LIVE! event in Austria on Sunday evening December 5 taking home a bumper first prize of €30,680 after a long heads up battle with fellow Austrian Christian Kern.
Despite chaotic weathe...
On Tommy Angelo's website -- where one can find many of his articles, blog posts, "Tommyisms," and more -- the Ohio native and California resident is described as "a top tier poker coach, poker writer, and philosopher." To that I...
Jack ten is one of the most interesting and useful hands to look down at in any form of flop poker, and understanding it's importance and capabilities is crucial to maximising your value in Hold'em and Omaha. The key thing about jack ten whic...
This week on the PartyPoker Weekly, Tony G is sulking after failing to win Peter Eastgate's bracelet and the craziest hand you will ever see....
Like our friend YorkyPud, a.k.a. Matthew Pitt, one of my partners in crime here at Betfair Poker, I have also been doing a bit of traveling of late. While Matthew was in Barcelona, Spain, reporting on the recently-concluded European Poker Tour event...
Poker has finally landed in the City of Brotherly Love and our own Rich Ryan had an opportunity to check it out first-hand last week....
With land based casinos open all hours and online poker sites, such as Betfair Poker, open for business 24 hours a day, does it really matter at what time you sit down and play a few hands of poker? Many will say no but I will without a single doubt...
The durrrr Challenge resumed on Friday between Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Daniel “jungleman12” Cates in a 2,120-hand match....
One of the most crucial concepts to understand - particularly in short handed or heads up games - is the importance of inducing bluffs in key spots in poker. It is often a big mistake to start firing at the pot with certain hands in certain situation...
One of the most interesting conflicts of hands in Omaha hi/lo arises when we look at how kings and aces compare to each other on various boards. Although aces appear to be a much stronger hand, when looking at high only hands they actually have one k...
The 'ante' in poker is simply a wager you have to make before you see your cards. It is the fundamental reason why poker is a game of skill, as these endless blind bets force players into making plays with hands outside of the very best ones,...
One of the most complex aspects of Hold'em is understanding how hands which appear stronger than others can actually be much weaker than those below them, simply by comparing them to the range of hands your opponent has....
One of the most dangerous and problematic hands in Pot Limit Omaha, suited kings are often strong enough to lean you towards getting a lot of your stack in, but weak enough that you will often be saying goodbye to it when you do....
One of the biggest mistakes made by weak pot limit and no limit players is to over estimate just how much money they can win later on by calling with a weak hand, hoping to hit a big flop and win a big pot cracking a big hand. Although implied odds a...
No need to worry about "spoilers" anymore. It's all over. It took many months, but finally the 2010 World Series of Poker has reached its conclusion, with Jonathan Duhamel having become the first-ever Canadian WSOP Main Event champion....
Had an odd hand last night I thought was worth writing about as it raises some interesting Hold'em concepts and is generally a weird spot that required some thought. I was blind on blind versus a very tight player at the tail end of a pub sit and...
The 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event Final Table is heads up and PokerNews is the only place where you can find hand-for-hand coverage from the event....
The Nightly Turbo is bringing you the day's top poker news stories including news Vanessa Selbst winning the Partouche Poker Tour, betting odds for the 2010 WSOP Heads Up battle, and more....
Jonathan Duhamel has been crowed the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion after he defeated John Racener in just 43 hands of their heads-up encounter....
In 2003, Chris Moneymaker single-handedly blew up the poker world by winning the World Series of Poker Main Event. Have recent champions had a comparable impact?...
As always, PokerNews are bringing you the very best live coverage table-side at the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event Final Table! The November Nine are just about to take their seats and the crowd is roaring! To follow our hand-for-hand......
A recap of the midweek's online high-stakes cash game action. Gus Hansen continues to win big by handing "DrugsOrMe" and Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies big losses....
It has been 111 days of waiting. Finally, tomorrow, the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event resumes with the start of the final table. It's finally here -- the "November Nine"!
We've heard a lot already about how Harrah[s...
The Nightly Turbo is bringing you the day's top poker news stories including the news on Full Tilt Poker's latest software update, handicapping the WSOP November Nine, and more....
Thomas Marchese will have to wait until WPT Marrakech to get his hands on his first World Poker Tour bracelet after he failed to take advantage of his chip advantage at the final table of the Foxwoods World Poker Finals Main Event yesterday....
Thomas Marchese is looking to cap off an outstanding breakthrough year by winning the WPT Foxwoods World Poker Finals later today. The New jersey based pro will go into the six-handed final table as an overwhelming chip leader, with more than 1,000,0...
One of the most interesting and profitable spots that can arise in Pot Limit Omaha is a scenario where you flop the nut full house, and actually want to bet out immediately. This usually comes in the form of hands where you flop the nut full house wi...
We're getting close! The final table of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event -- a.k.a. the "November Nine" -- is just a little over a week away. On Saturday, November 7th, the nine players who survived those frenzied two weeks of p...
One of the most common questions put to forum members and magazine columnists is from players asking how to beat the micro-stakes cash games online. The majority of the questions mention the fact that the weak players often found in these games do no...
"Neighbor, you sure have a funny way of saying things."
So said "Amarillo Slim" Preston to a reporter from England during the heads-up portion of the 1973 World Series of Poker Main Event. The two were among the crowd watching...
I'm a big proponent of how powerful the forms of tilt that can largely go ignored by even quite skilled players can be. Everyone understands and reacts to the huge swings of a player recklessly raising every hand, but many people completely miss...
For once in my little fat life I have managed to stick to one discipline long enough to obtain a decent sample size of hands, 10,124 of short-handed Hold'em to be exact. It has been a really strange affair so far, crushing one minute and being cr...
Following the first world war came a period of relative growth and prosperity in the U.S. which saw a number of social and cultural changes occur. Schoolkids learning American history are taught to remember the "roaring twenties" as booming...
As always we've got you covered with the worlds most important poker news in one handy place. Tonight's Nightly Turbo brings you the return of a lot of televised cash game poker, Tony Dunst being announced at the host of the World Poker Tour Raw......
Since my last post a week ago my playing volume has dropped off somewhat and I have only managed to play an extra 2,491 hands from the 4,028 I had played the previous week. Not only was the number of hands much less, so was my profits, which were so...
The 2010 World Series of Poker Europe has concluded, at which five more WSOP gold bracelets were awarded. Phil Laak and Gus Hansen each claimed his first ever bracelet, and 2009 WSOP Player of the Year Jeff Lisandro picked up his fifth. And a coupl...
One of the key hidden areas of EV in tournament poker is how well you are prepared for the game(s) when you sit down. Unlike cash games, where a bad day at the office can be stopped at any point, tournament poker can lock you in until the very end, a...
In the past ten days I have managed to play 4,028 cash game hands and although some players log that many hands in a single day, averaging 400 hands a day for me is pretty good, even better when I am winning at a quite ridiculous rate too!...
There was plenty going on this week, and in case you missed any of it, we're here to fill you in. Dwyte Pilgrim won his first major title, by taking down the World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open, PokerStars dealt its 50 billionth hand, and more....
If you're looking for a place to find a World Poker Tour recap, the news on PokerStars' 50 Billionth hand, and much more, then you've come to the right place. Read on to find out the day's top poker news stories....
In the history of poker, the game which has probably had the most money traded over it is probably Seven Card Stud. It blends luck and skill perfectly, and is arguably the most complex and skilled form of poker out there.
However, it differs...
In all forms of poker you have certain groupings of hands that fundamentally separate good players from bad. One of the most obvious and fundamental of these is the trouble pairs in Hold'em. By 'trouble pairs', we are usually referring to...
Phil Laak won his first World Series gold bracelet yesterday in Event No. 1 of this year's World Series of Poker Europe, a £2,650 buy-in, six-handed no-limit hold'em event in which Betfair's own John Tabatabai took seventh. Laak bested...
A recap of ESPN's coverage of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event. This week, the money bubble burst, the top 747 players guaranteed at least $19,000 while many walked away empty-handed....
The 2010 World Series of Poker Europe is in full swing with Day 1 of Event#1, the £2,650 No-limit Hold'em Six-handed tournament completed. A host of big names failed to make it through the first day but one who did was Betfair's very own Joh...
The PokerStars WCOOP has been running for a little over a week now and plenty of prize money has been handed out so far. Check out the results from the ninth day of play....
For a lot us who play poker, it's much more than just a game or hobby. It's a passion. We simply love to play. When we are not playing, we are thinking about playing. And when we are playing, we want to keep playing.
That desire...
As a general rule in poker, you should be modifying quite how hard you push any likely edge you have depending on the skill of your opponent, and understanding why this is true is crucial to maximising your likely returns against different players. [...
One of the best feelings in poker is to call a raise with a small pocket pair, such as a pair of fives, and then the flop comes down As-5d-Qh giving you a set and a good chance you will be paid off handsomely by a hand such as Ace-King or Ace-Queen....
Anyone who has followed this blog or any blog I have kept in the past will know all too well that I struggle to keep focussed on the task in hand and stick to one particular poker discipline. This is one of the major reasons I have not progressed as...
September is the month the poker world turns its collective attention toward London, where a number of important events on the professional circuit calendar are taking place.
Currently, the World Poker Tour's London stop is coming to a c...
ESPN's coverage of Day 2b of the 2010 World Series of Poker aired Tuesday night. If you missed it, you missed a controversial hand that Prahlad Friedman played and more. Lucky for you, we didn't miss it and have your recap here....
One of the best ways to play good draws against weak players is to put in a flop raise in order to gain a free card on the turn. This allows you to both take control of the betting initiative, as well as often allowing you to see the hand through wit...
When Tom "durrrr" Dwan announced that he would play anyone, except his good friend Phil "OMGCLAYAIKEN" Galfond at heads-up Pot-limit Omaha or No-limit Hold'em and beat them, offering them three-to-one odds on doing so, the online...
Particularly if you are playing short handed or heads up poker, the observation and reaction to this concept will win you a huge sum of money in the long run. As players start to tilt, their game deteriorates in a pretty steady flow, and keeping up w...
Arguably the most dangerous hand you can flop in Omaha in a weak straight. 'Weak' straights simply refer to any straight that is not the nut straight, and it's danger lies in the fact that it is strong enough to get you in involved in big...
One of the most important principles to understand if you are just starting out in tournament poker is the crucial importance of maintaining fold equity with your stack. The term 'fold equity' simply refers to having enough chips in relation...
Some of the very best starting hands in Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo are referred to as 'suited babies'. These are hands with three low (by low we mean any cards between an ace and an eight), suited cards, and recognising their strength and how to p...
A few days ago I was watching a documentary about a musical group, and in the film each member of the band recounted how he'd first gotten involved in music. One explained how as a youngster he coveted his own guitar, and his parents promised hi...
How many times have you been playing poker, be it in a cash game or a tournament scenario and have just known that either your hand is now second best or that your lowly second pair will be enough to scoop the pot? How many times have you called desp...
One of the most obvious mistakes that people seem to make against habitual bluff artists is to assume that when they check they have basically given up on a hand. The general line of thought seems to be something along the lines of: 'Well they al...
One of the hands that seem to get new Pot Limit Omaha players in a huge amount of difficulty when they first start is the flopped straight. Anyone used to playing Hold'em immediately recognises this as a monster hand (which is usually the nut han...
Matthew Pitt recently posted a hand in the comments section of my piece on top two pair in Pot Limit Omaha that was not only an interesting hand in terms of top two pair, but also in the fundamental importance in PLO of having as many options in your...
Although most people think of tilt as the massive spewfest where players start throwing all their chips in every hand, there are actually many, much more insidious ways to tilt, and one of the easiest and most dangerous forms is to fall into robot ti...
As the continuation bet has become such a familiar and well understood concept in No Limit Hold'em, so the check on the flop has changed in statue to become something very different than it formerly used to be. When Hold'em first leapt to pop...
This hand is one of the key hands in Pot Limit Omaha that weak players and newcomers really struggle with. As it is usually a monster hand in Hold'em, people find it very difficult to adjust their thinking when they hit this hand in PLO, but it i...
Often when players used to big bet games try their hand at limit games, they fail to adjust their check raising frequency enough to suit the limit games. Check raising is much more important in limit games than in big bet games, and nowhere is this m...
One of fundamental features of all good flop poker game poker players is their ability to fully understand how changes in the board affect the flow of the hand. As poker is a game of relativity, where your hand is only as strong as the likely possibl...
This week’s installment of GSN’s coverage of the 2010 Aussie Millions took us to Day 4 of the Main Event, where 18 players remained in the hunt for a seat at the eight-handed final table. The tournament format gave us a rather interesting look......
In a recent piece, I described a hand where an elderly player made a big over bet into me when I was holding top pair and an open ended straight draw (and a back door flush draw if we are really getting nitty). Going through the equities involved, it...
Home at last. After seven-and-a-half weeks away watching other people play poker, I have finally returned to my home on the east coast of the United States. Most of that period was spent in the Nevada desert, where the temperatures outside were exc...
Wondering what's going on in poker today? Well we're here to tell you. PokerStars has appointed a brand new CEO, and we've got your November Nine odds. Go ahead, read on, you know you want to find out more....
An interesting hand came up a while ago that I had been talking to Matthew Pitt about and he suggested I share it as a good example of ranging and equity in action so here you go....
One of the things that always become apparent when watching the very best in the game go at it in a show like High Stakes Poker, is that the strongest players in the game will have a purpose and a plan for pretty much every possible route that a hand...
If you are used to playing hold'em and start playing seven card stud, one of the first major leaks that will probably develop in your game will be misplaying small pairs. In hold'em, small pairs very rarely are hands to go to war with when un...
The 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event has reached that criticial, exciting stage. Just two more days of play and we'll know which players have survived the field of 7,319 to be this year's version of the November Nine.
I've be...
Day 5 of the 2010 World Series of Poker came to a close after the elimination of 368 November Nine hopefuls, and when the final hand was dealt and completed for the night it was Evan Lamprea who had the biggest stack, with a total of 3,569,000 to......
A relatively new addition to the sit and go scene, the Double or Nothing sit and go provides one of the most useful and low variance ways of starting up a bankroll. Usually played either six or ten handed, these tournaments simply run until half the...
Sunday night saw 75 of Betfair Poker's best players take to the virtual felt all with one common goal, to win the $12,000 first prize on offer. A mixture of ill-timed bluffs, bad beats and cooler hands saw the field whittled down to the final tab...
Gutshot straight draws (those where you have only four outs to one exact card) have an endless mystery about them in poker, and opinion amongst weaker players seems to be very confused as to how to play them. Gutshot straight draws can vary from actu...
The WSOP Main Event is now underway, and I remain at the Rio both this week and next to help cover the Series for PokerNews.
Anyone who comes to the World Series of Poker to report on it likely comes into contact at some point with Nolan Dal...
No player can win long term from the blinds in any form of flop poker. If you use a piece of software like PokerTracker or Hold'em Manager, use the position statistics option and look at how you do from each position. Over a decent sample size, y...
It was quite fitting that the WSOP’s inaugural $25,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em short-handed event was won by a 21-year old Villanova University senior playing in his first year of eligibility. Through online tournament play, Dan “djk123”......
The term 'floating' in poker simply means calling a bet with the intention of trying to move a player off of a hand on a later street. Say a typically tight and scared player raises from early position and you call with a hand like 9c10c to t...
Before the online explosion, short handed games were much harder to come across in poker, simply because casinos basically always just ran nine or ten handed games to save on dealer costs and floor space.
With the explosion of online poker ho...
The grind continues here in Las Vegas. The final preliminary bracelet events of the 2010 World Series of Poker are now underway, and on Monday begins the big one -- the Main Event which will occupy us all for the next two weeks.
I'll be...
Poker is a game predominantly played nine or ten handed. This means that the average game you will encounter throughout your playing time will involve trying to analyse situations involving this many people, and understanding how it affects your game...
Particularly at the lower stake games, you regularly encounter Omaha players who only really re-raise big pairs, and isolating who they are and how to respond to them is fundamental to maximising your win rate in these games.
Only re-raising...
I mentioned in my previous post that I was on a mission to get out of the micro-stakes for good and I began this quest on Friday by playing a ton of hands of full ring Rush Poker. Never again!...
Jesse Rockowitz won his first World Series of Poker gold bracelet with a hand that most players never want to see: Rockowitz eliminated Raymond Coburn with the seven-deuce of hearts to end the tournament and secure over $700,000 in prize money......
With a large number of players being in Las Vegas for the 2010 World Series of Poker and thousands of English players all crying into their beer after England's humiliation at the hands of Germany in the World Cup, there was a slightly smaller fi...
It has been an action-packed couple of weeks at the Rio. We've pushed past the halfway mark of the 2010 World Series of Poker, with more than 40 of the 57 bracelets having already been won. With four, five, or six events going every single day,...
One of the most common and obvious problems you see players make in sit and go's is a failure to understand how important short stack play is to winning these games. Although all sit and go's start with quite low blinds, they rise quickly, an...
I was in my old home town this weekend and popped into my regular pub to play a bit of pool. A poker game usually ran after the pool matches, and I sat down with the old crowd for a bit of low limit sit and go action after hours. An interesting hand...
There is no simple answer to this question, and it in fact constitutes the very thing that makes poker such a complex and interesting game. Although poker is fundamentally a game built around a simple chart of hands that goes from weak to strong, in...
This week, Inside Gaming is all about betting big. Sports books across the globe are handling an influx of World Cup bets, and Las Vegas books are doing their best to prepare for a public learning about soccer on the fly. France prepared for World......
In all forms of short handed poker you have to start playing more loosely, but nowhere is this more true than in limit games. Unlike in big bet games, where you can still afford to play tightly if there are very loose cannons at the table, in Limit H...
If you are used to Hold'em and you start playing Seven Card Stud regularly, it can seem obvious that any time you have an under pair to your opponent's board, you should fold. However, unlike in Hold'em, where if you have a low pair you t...
Day 16 of the World Series of Poker is in the books, and it saw John "Tex" Barch and Richard Ashby both take home WSOP gold bracelets. The ladies event, and the six-handed limit tournament are both nearing a champion, and big name pros came out in......
We're busy bringing you the scoop on the goings on in the poker world. In tonight's Nightly Turbo, you'll find out how a handful of poker pros plan to put a bad beat on cancer on Day 1 of the World Series of Poker Main Event, June's top 10 poker......
With Las Vegas a mere week or so away, it seems somewhat futile to blog about my poker exploits, given that all the interesting poker hype is focused towards Nevada at this present time.
I decided not to travel for the start of the World Seri...
Many players used to No Limit Hold'em habitually bluff far too much on the river when playing Limit Hold'em. As you can construct your bet sizes in no limit games, you can create prices that will force players off even quite strong hands by l...
Event #16 of the 2010 World Series of Poker attracted 1,663, a record for a six-handed no-limit Hold'em tournament and it was Carter Phillips from Charlotte, North Carolina who won every single chip in play to win his first-ever WSOP bracelet....
While you're handing out bad beats at the Rio or refreshing the Live Reporting page and sweating your buddies in all the WSOP tournaments we're searching for the news. What's going on today? Well, Brian Townsend will no longer be leading the way......
It's a common occurrence for players in a PLO eight or better game to get caught up in playing a pretty expensive hand, based only on getting the low. While this is not completely true in higher stakes, players seem to be making it more of a habi...
Day 4 of the $50,000 Poker Player's Championship saw the remaining 21 players get whittled down to the final table of eight with five players going home empty handed but each of the final table hopefuls will all be taking home at least $182,463....
Most of the money you make in all forms of poker actually comes through folding. By discarding junk hands, you put your self in a position to frequently be ahead of those people playing poor hands, which over the long run turns to profit. In Omaha th...
Most people who first start playing Omaha simply look down at all the possibilities in their hand, think something along the lines of: 'Well I have to see a flop with so many options' and simply flat call a large percentage of hands. Then whe...
"Many people have criticized me for sticking my nose into subjects that I haven't mastered." So begins a chapter in David Sklansky's newest offering, DUCY? Exploits, Advice, and Ideas of the Renowned Strategist, written in collaborat...
The true marginal hands of Omaha hi/lo are the high only hands. Hands with the potential to 'scoop' both the high and the low are pretty easy to play, as are hands that only hit the low (as the hand combos are so simple with the low that you...
We all know about the guy at the table who always seems to have a harsh word to say during a hand. Many players have taken this to a fine art, able to wind up and tilt even the most battle hardened grinder, and as a result, being able to deal with th...
Let’s admit it. We’ve all gone off on an opponent in the chat box at one time or another. Snippets of vitriol like “Nice catch donkey,” “How can you call with that &*#%,” or even “Die in a fire” are dealt with the frequency of junk hands...
We all know the player type. They seem to be calling pre flop with basically every hand, endlessly calling with the strangest holdings in the weirdest spots. They usually go home broke - but they certainly don't go home curious....
Although it is commonly said in poker that only idiots ever chase long shot draws, it is in fact only the idiots of poker who ever say this, and knowing when and why it is good to stick around with very marginal draws is crucial to extracting maximum...
Hard to believe, but in just two short weeks the first hands will be dealt at the 2010 World Series of Poker. While players all over the world plan their trips to Las Vegas to participate in the 57 different bracelet events, those who will be report...
Day 4 of the World Poker Tour Grand Prix de Paris saw 25 players begin the day all hoping to get their hands on the €633,902 first prize and ended with eight men left standing, all guaranteed at least €70,000 and their place at the first WPT event......
Years ago, most players in no limit and pot limit games would vary their bet size roughly in line with the strength of their hand. Even in the books that arguably spawned the modern era of poker, such as Harrington on Hold'em, emphasis was often...
Phil Galfond has launched PokerStatic.com, a site that will host video interviews, poker shows, and more. Also, Josh Arieh tried his hand at something other than poker on Monday and Kara Scott thanks poker bloggers in her latest blog. We'll tell......
It was a short Day 3 in Paris for the World Poker Tour Grand Prix de Paris as play went from 48 to 25, with the final 27 all finishing in the money. Making the most of a day that was short on time and hands because of a long hand-for-hand session on......
One of the key things that separates good players from mediocre ones is their ability to radically change how they would play a hand in an identical situation - against different players - depending on history.
Good players will do totally di...
Poker players love to gamble. Be it on the colour of the next flop, what hand one of their opponents held or who will last longer in a particular tournament.
These are standard bets placed by a large percentage of the poker community but it...
One of the most important and fundamental aspects of improving your game when you first start out is to review your sessions well. Poker is a game with so much information that it is very hard to go through it all while playing, and carefully reviewi...
One of the most dangerous sets of hands in Hold'em are weak aces. By 'weak aces' we are simply referring to pretty much any ace below around ace ten/ace nine. This is simply because these hands can get players into all types of trouble on...
With the 2010 World Series of Poker just three short weeks away, not only are the players all busy making preparations for the event, but so are the many who will be there at the Rio all summer reporting on the action. I thought it would be interest...
When I first started playing Hold'em, one of the big winners in the home game I played in I always considered just incredibly lucky - until I started understanding and closely considering his game. This player would frequently seem to make a big...
If you are new to poker, the first playing style that you should be looking to master is the tight aggressive, or 'TAG' approach. This involves playing a select few of the most powerful hands in poker, but also playing them extremely aggressi...
The World Poker Tour has announced a new stop, the European Poker Tour handed out awards over the weekend, and we've got a story about Ziigmund and Paris Hilton - you'll have to read on to find out more....
In all forms of big bet flop poker, it is possible to manipulate bet sizing in line with how the flop has turned out, and this can provide an invaluable tool when considering the best course of action in a hand.
Often weak players fail to con...
For the third day in a row, Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Patrik Antonius put in a long session of the “durrrr” Challenge, leaving them with only a little over 11,000 hands to go in their 50,000-hand match. Although the session was marked with dozens of.....
After posting losses in 11 of their last 12 sessions, Patrik Antonius at last booked a win in the "durrrr" Challenge, taking $60,696 off the tables on Tuesday afternoon. During the 46 days his 50,000-hand match with Tom "durrr" Dwan went dormant......
Omaha is a game that is usually traded around the big hands of poker. Straights, flushes, and full houses are typically the bread and butter hands of ring game Omaha, and as a result certain boards should cause you to immediately slow down when encou...
One of the most important concepts to get your head around when learning Omaha is the importance of your hand working in multiple directions. In other words, you want your hand to have the maximum possible number of ways to win the pot, and one of th...
Jesus Christ! This game can be so frustrating at times it makes me want to throw my laptop against a wall and kick the cat! For the last 5,000 hands, I have been fighting a losing battle with variance and basically breaking even, whilst being owed a...
Anyone who has watched poker on television over the last few years -- or happened to have been at the Rio during the World Series of Poker Main Event in either 2008 or 2009 -- is surely familiar with Kara Scott. Scott has hosted several different po...
Anyone who has watched poker on television over the last few years -- or happened to have been at the Rio during the World Series of Poker Main Event in either 2008 or 2009 -- is surely familiar with Kara Scott. Scott has hosted several different po...
Although arguably the key area of poker discipline is bankroll management and tilt control, it is important in other areas of the game, and here I want to look at having the discipline to execute plays properly.
If you watch poker on TV, stud...
The World Poker Tour’s eighth annual $25,000 World Championship kicked off Sunday at the famed Bellagio in Las Vegas. This event is lumped into an elite handful of events that boasts the toughest field of players on the circuit. Although numbers......
Last week I reviewed Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time, Volume 2 by Eric "Rizen" Lynch, Jon "PearlJammer" Turner, and Jon "ApeStyles" Van Fleet, a new release from Dimat Enterprises, the publishing company founded b...
Last week I reviewed Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time, Volume 2 by Eric "Rizen" Lynch, Jon "PearlJammer" Turner, and Jon "ApeStyles" Van Fleet, a new release from Dimat Enterprises, the publishing company founded b...
Poker is not just a game about how you play each hand. There are many other important considerations to think about when you view a table, and one of the most important is how much you buy in for.
I remember playing a short handed game when I...
The 2010 PokerStars.net NPT Mohegan Sun $25,000 High Roller Bounty Shootout took place Monday with 35 players taking to the felt for action. The format called for six tables to be in play, with five of them being played six handed and the other......
One thing that many online players find difficult when they first start playing in serious live games is keeping their table presence calm and constant. Poker is a game where it is important not only to not give off tells about the strength of your h...
In this follow-up to their well regarded 2008 book, Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time: Volume 2 finds Jon "PearlJammer" Turner, Eric "Rizen Lynch, and Jon "Apestyles" Van Fleet once again describing in detail their thou...
Although at the lowest stakes, poker is primarily a game about just hitting hands and betting them well (something which is more than good enough to win the money against the very weakest players), as you get higher you have to start thinking about h...
Last night, UK pro James Mitchell became the 2010 PaddyPowerPoker Irish Open Champion when he bested a record-equalling field of 708 to take home the coveted title and the big comedy check with the serious €600,000 figure.
The final hand came......
College has traditionally been a time when young adults build upon years of schooling with more advanced study, rounding out their formal education in order to prepare themselves for future endeavors. Of course, college also generally represents a t...
At the end of my last blog entry I said I planned to play around a thousand hands of NL10 as I was feeling pretty good about at the moment, well I actually stuck to my plan for once and I am pretty pleased that I did so....
I'm sure you've heard -- Isildur1 is back.
To be honest, up until a few days ago I hadn't really followed the sequel to the Isildur1 saga all that closely. I was aware he'd started showing up again over on Full Tilt Poker in...
If you are a regular hold'em player, you will be aware that 'back door' flush draws, that is, flushes that are only completed by the turn and the river being of the same suit as a flop card, thus completing a possible flush, are pretty ra...
This week the World Series of Poker announced an additional, non-bracelet event to be added to the schedule this summer -- a new version of the Tournament of Champions which this time will feature a field mostly composed of the top vote-getters in an...
Most of my volume over the past week, around 12,000 hands, has been possible because I have been playing the new craze that is Rush Poker. Though I have thrown in the towel to save my own sanity!...
One of the most obvious and hard to disguise tells amongst live players is their hands shaking. This tell nearly always indicates strength contrary to what seems to be the intuitive explanation for such a tell - that someone is nervous and probably b...
The European Poker Tour made its latest stop at Berlin last week. While in many respects the event was another huge success -- attracting a whopping 945 entrants to the €5,000+€300 buy-in Main Event -- an armed robbery took place on Day 4 (Satur...
Re-raising more hands than just aces in Omaha is key to taking your game to the next level. If you only ever re-raise with hands that include aces in them, you make it extremely easy for your opponent just to call your raise, try and flop two pair or...
For once I have actually played some poker, 3,612 hands of it since my last update to be exact and my God has it been a frustrating time at the tables....
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...