By Hugo Martin
Truly, Madly, Sickly
Bluescouse’s latest post on his blog is titled Depressed and it sums up the equilibrium of a sicko perfectly. Like many compulsive gamblers our favourite internet degenerate does seem to possess a self awareness, but has yet to work out how to employ this useful self-knowledge. I guess the ‘scouse is still young and maybe learning how to slow down only comes with age. Still, the urge to gamble is strong. “put £10k borrowed money back in and spun it upto £44k on $100/$200 in the morning/afternoon. withdrew the £10k leaving my £34k bankroll. in the evening i played $250/$500 and lost it all.”At least it looks the Bluescouse paid his debt back. Most players usually... Read More...
High Stakes Action Down Under
Well the Aussie Millions is over and nobody went to Tunica so all the blogs are quiet again. Brandon Adams gives us a final taste of high stakes degeneracy on his blog at Always Bluff:“A fit of gambling insanity took place after the 100k Fox Sports Cash Game that took place two days ago. The Cash Game was pretty eventful for me. I lost 54,000 despite being dealt QQ, AK twice, AA twice, TT, JJ, 99 twice, AQs once.”Mind you, that’s just the sort of hands you get dealt when you lose a bunch of dough playing Holdem. Of course Adams is a renaissance man and gambles on a whole host of other pastimes. Also it seems that the poker is merely a sideshow to the real gambling that... Read More...
Brandi is Back!
The forums have been lit up this week with the return of some juicy Brandi Hawbaker gossip. About time too. In a 900 plus thread on TwoplusTwo we hear from pimprexel who tells a rather sad story about how he was in love with Brandi and felt that he could save her from what is now looking like her inevitable Las Vegas stripper’s fate. The long and short of it is that after being engaged (!) the relationship has gone south and, according to pimprexel, Brandi has stolen $40k’s worth of stuff from his apartment and run off to the Commerce Casino in L.A. All pretty standard stuff and I apologise for not having any decent quotes to pull from this huge thread, but after a while it gets to be too much trying to follow... Read More...
Rollercoaster
Continuing with the theme of looking back at the past year Praz Bansi at the Hitsquad has written a review of his 2007. It’s an excellent glimpse into a year in the life of a poker pro. The ups and downs are well documented in this post.Praz sums up the agony of getting close in the WSOP:“I ended up bluffing all my chips off and finished in a painful 10th place. I remember getting up from the table and people going crazy knowing they have made the final, all there friends and family going wild on the rail as I walked away from it all. I remember looking back and it felt like it was all in slow motion, like i was walking away from a massive car crash and my head was... Read More...
Pistols at Dawn!There’s nothing like a good spat to start the year off so look no further than Biggerdeal.com where Grub Smith and Patrick Marber have reached the “gloves off” stage. Many years ago, long before the poker boom, Marber wrote an excellent play set around a poker game called Dealer’s Choice. It has recently been revived with much success so Grub Smith being the keen poker player/journalist that he is not only went along to see the play, but was also asked to conduct an interview with Marber himself.Seeing as he has a blog at Biggerdeal.com Grub wrote an entry concerning their meeting which revealed some sort of history between himself and Marber. It appears that Smith... Read More...
One Player Per Hand?
With all the recent hoopla and controversy surrounding the prevalence of multi-accounting and “ghosting” in online poker, here’s some footage from Nat Arem’s blog which confirms what many suspect is what really goes on.
Annette in Prague
Perhaps the best blog I’ve read this week is from wunderkind Annette_15 and it is very much yer trad poker-content-type blog. By that I mean she talks about a couple of hands she played in the EPT Prague main event.There are many blogs out there where bloggers write about hands, but many tend to be either disguised bad beat stories or just downright boring. So why do I bring your attention to Annete’s efforts? It’s not that different from other players’ attempts to document “interesting” hands they have played in a tournament or cash game.I guess the main reason is because it’s Annette and her tournament record speaks for itself and this particular blog entry gives... Read More...
Imper1um for HireOne of the big things that happened in the last week in the poker world is the Sorel Mizzi (aka Imper1um) and Chris Vaughn (Bluff Journalist) account buying scandal. I don’t have much to say about it as personally I think online poker is still the Wild West. In other words, anything goes and don’t be surprised when you end up with empty pockets.Always Bluff however have a definite point of view and seeing as these guys take their online poker seriously I’m going with them:“There is a joke that goes something like this “you build bridges your whole life, you give to charity but you just suck one cock and you are a cocksucker forever”. Such is the fate of... Read More...
Lucky Jim in his Element
Gambling has always been a seedy and cynical business which leads me nicely to Lucky Jim’s latest entry on his blog. Jim has finally moved out of his parents’ house and now seems to spend his time (when he’s not too busy with hookers) playing poker in a 24 hour internet café. Now I’m sure, like me, you have played poker in some rather shady places, but this gaff sounds like the mother of all spielers. “When I walked in, the poker player I'd talked to the day before was asleep in the corner. When I spoke to him later, he told me he'd been there two days. He was waiting, he said, for a tournament. And for Godot, I suppose.I sat at the... Read More...
Have You Peaked at 19?
Is poker a sport? Is there more skill than luck? We all know it’s a tough way to make an easy living. Besides knowing all technical maths and strategy stuff what else does it take? Brandon Adams has written an excellent piece entitled Life Cycle of a Poker Player that was put up as a thread on 2p2 via Always Bluff.
“I was talking with a friend of mine who’s one of the best no-limit players in the world. He told me that in two years, the crop of top no-limit players would be scary, much better than those at the top of the game today. I agree with... Read More...
Fancy a Swap?Poker, as we all know, can be incredibly frustrating and if tournaments are your bag then you’d better welcome frustration and disappointment. One thing that many regular players and pros do to soften the blows is to swap percentages. But where do you draw the line? Karl Mahrenholz at the Hit Squad poses this very question:
“I tend to do 5%'s with a few people but the thing is, you're never going to make a life changing sum from 5% of someone and yet by giving out multiples of 5 in yourself, if and when you do get a big score, the amount you have to give out is actually very significant. If and when I take down a big tournament I'll want the money to be life changing. If i'm only in for... Read More...
It’s Tough at the Top
Beanie at Always Bluff sounds like he has been around for a while. In his latest blog he takes a look at the always interesting question of where the high stakes players get all their dough from. The answer? From each other it seems:“There are a number of factors making poker players broke these days. If you aren’t borrowing you are loaning, it is a fact of high stakes poker. Let’s say you are up 500k and the loose action is broke, everyone at the table is counting on you to float this guy 100k, if you don’t, well, there goes your game selection.”Jeez, just think, you spend months and months (or if you are an internet player a couple of days)... Read More...
Here, My Dear
There are many poker couples out there; Phil Laak and Jennifer Tilly, Chip and Katrina Jett, Norman and Beverley Pace, and er….well, I’m sure you can think of a few more. What happens when one knocks another out of a tournament? No sex that night? Sulking by the loser for hours on end? Or maybe they have an agreement that the weaker player out of the couple must dump chips to the stronger player if they ever find themselves on the same table? Not that I’m suggesting the couples above would do that. Besides I’m sure each half of a poker playing couple always secretly thinks they’re a better player than the other.
Anyway, Snoopy’s latest blog addresses this uncomfortable... Read More...
Poker in PortugalRoy Houghton has been on holiday in Portugal and managed to find a poker game in a local casino. Usually when Brits are abroad they find plenty of things to moan about – the food’s greasy, the beer’s horrible and so on. Basically, they’ve gone away, but they’re annoyed because everything is different. Well, Roy managed to find himself a different way of playing Holdem, that’s for sure:
“The button is the small blind - and if you decide to raise, you are not allowed to look at your cards for the rest of the hand?!”
I dunno Roy, it doesn’t sound too far removed from some of the games you tried to introduce to players at the Barracuda or the Stakis back in the... Read More...
Tony G in the RedTony G is in Moscow and playing in some big cash games. He writes that he has been winning until,
“this week I took a beating on Monday and dropped 300k in the 200-400 Pot Limit Omaha game”
Now a lot of professional players I know take a break or maybe drop down a level or two when they suffer a big loss, but we’re talking about the G-man here, not some nitty grinder.
"after the big loss I decided to move up a level and sat down in the 1k-2k PLO game 500k min. buy in with no cap.”
That’s more like it. Tony probably couldn’t take the other game seriously so no wonder he lost in it. How did he fare at these nose-bleed... Read More...
Nostalgia For An Age Yet To ComeMichael Craig gets nostalgic on us and posts the first thing he ever wrote about poker which was way back in ’93. For those of you who can’t even imagine a world without the internet this post is a very accurate description of what poker was like in downtown Las Vegas. “After dinner, we checked out the poker room at the Fremont. A dingy little room, they had two $1-4 hold ‘em games with a seat open…It was a very familiar group, mostly locals. The biggest talkers were seat four (a guy in a wheelchair), seat eight (a guy with a big tattoo on his chest), and seat nine (a guy with an eye patch). Between the war-gnarled... Read More...
Would the real Martin Johnson please stand upBen Grundy, the Milky Bar Kid, has put up links on his blog to three articles at telegraph.co.uk by Martin Johnson who he gave a couple of poker lessons to before the WSOPE. Now I have it on good authority that Johnson was put in by Betfair, who were sponsoring the WSOPE. Fair enough, I hear you thinking, Betfair is primarily a betting exchange with a nice sideline in poker so why not get the guy who captained England to it’s historic win in the Rugby World Cup a few year’s ago to play in the tournament? A nice bit of promotion for both the WSOPE and Betfair.So imagine the look on the PR/ marketing bods’ faces when some middle-aged sports journalist turns up asking for... Read More...
Ballas On FilmThe Ballas are back! Ok, they never went away, but over on Nat Arem’s blog he has put up a trailer for thepokerfilm, a documentary he has produced. As you can guess from the title it’s about the sick little game that we all love/hate and it’s about four young online players who may not even be old enough to play in a casino.
Now if you have read this column since it’s humble beginnings you may remember a couple of piss-takey paragraphs where it appeared I was ridiculing these young whippersnappers who are raping us of all our money these days. Was I jealous and bitter? Probably. Anyway, some punk kid got hold of something I’d written and posted it up on Nat’s blog to which they all poured... Read More...
Million Dollar Cash Game
What with the WSOPE and the upcoming EPT event there has been a lot of cash game action going on in London. One of the games that has been going on is the Million Dollar Cash Game which featured mostly Full Tilt pros and Tony G, Patrick Antonius and Brian Townsend. This was filmed and is Full Tilt’s version of High Stakes Poker. Michael Craig has written 28 entries on his blog about this as he railbirded the whole game. Evidently there was plenty of action; not just poker, but a load of prop betting on the colour of the flop, certain cards appearing on the flop etc.“The pot…between Phil Ivey and... Read More...
Snoopy is Unimpressed
When Late Night Poker first appeared on our screens all those years ago part of the novelty for poker players then was seeing the various faces that one regularly played with on the box. Fast forward a few years and suddenly they are all “famous” plus there is also a new influx of players making names for themselves and now if you’re not sponsored you might as well forget about poker and take up tiddlywinks instead (mind you, I’ve heard that the tiddlywinks scene is very bitchy – you don’t want to make a mistake in a tiddlywinks tournament let me tell you, the post-mortems on the tiddlywinks forums are brutal).Where am I going with all of this? I have no idea except that I’m continually bemused by the thought of poker players becoming celebrities in our... Read More...
Lucky Jim Goes to a GA MeetingLucky Jim’s blog continues apace with further missives from his wretched existence. From the 2nd September he posts his experience of the Luton branch of Gamblers Anonymous:“A dozen people attend each week, drawn from a pool of twice that number. The average age is 40 and the look is life-scarred blue-collar…These men have had their share of divorce, imprisonment and desolation…newcomers howl with desperation of the unbearable misery gambling has caused them; "I've reached rock bottom" they declare, their first learnt phrase, and the next Tuesday they don't come back…Only once has a woman attended one of these meetings, and... Read More...
Jesus the Bankroll Builder
Some poker players seem to have amazing recall. You’ll hear them talking about a pot that happened 10 years ago and they seem to have every detail perfectly memorised down to what drinks the cocktail waitress was serving to whom that day. Then again, some poker players can’t even get the most basic details of a hand they just played 20 minutes ago - you know the type: “Ok so the flop was K-J-Q all diamonds...no wait, there were two spades and a pair of 6s out there...no hold on, he re-raised with the 6s on the button...sorry I think he was the small blind...” You get the picture. What we do all remember are the significant pots that pop up now and again on the long road that is poker. That massive pot you lose where you’re playing big for the first time and... Read More...
Introducing Lucky Jim
What got you into poker? Why did you start playing? To win money? It’s never as simple as that really. People have many different motivations for playing. Lucky Jim is a frequent poster on the Gutshot and 2plus2 forums and he has started his own blog. “My name is LuckyJimm and I am a 29 year old losing poker player”Well, it’s nice to read something honest I guess. I suspect Jim answers the questions I set at the top of the page when he writes,“I am not sure why I continue to play. I love the adrenaline rush of winning a big pot, outplaying my opponents and being in command of a table.”Most players who start... Read More...
Vanessa Rousso went to Duke
When not checking out the blogs for all of you lot out there, I often have a look at the 2 Plus 2 forums. Topics often descend into sophomoric humour and put downs for the sake of it, but what else is a poker forum for? Recently there was a pretty funny thread on Vanessa Rousso aka Lady Maverick (wtf thought that nickname up?) which Wicked Chops Poker have picked up on. They have put up a quote of hers in which she repeatedly mentions her alma mater, Duke, a somewhat venerable university in the United... Read More...
More on AI
Further to last week's mention of the Polaris v Phil Laak and Ali Eslami match, Richard Whitehouse gives us the full story at biggerdeal.com. In an interesting post Richard gives us a little bit of history of games-playing Artificial Intelligence. Apparently it all started with Chinook which played draughts (or checkers as the Americans call it), supposedly the easiest game to translate into computer based thinking.
Chinook, which was developed by Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer, a research professor at the University of Alberta, Canada, took on Dr. Marion Tinsley who was the Phil Ivey of draughts basically, except even... Read More...
Jerry Yang Prays for a SetAs we all know by now Jerry Yang is the new World Champion of poker, or something like that. We all also know that he is a devout Christian and there were several reports of him down on his knees praying to God in the bogs at the Rio. Pauly at the Tao of Poker (yes, I know I mention it every week) overheard Jerry’s interview with ESPN’s Norman Chad:"Do you think this is the most poker that the Lord has ever watched over?" joked Chad."The Lord was watching over me," replied Yang. "When I had 4-4 and I was all in I prayed, 'Lord, give me a set.' Then the flop had a 4 and I survived that hand. I have seen the miracles of God at the World Series of Poker."Read More...
1st Place is all that Matters
We all know what it’s like to lose, but what about if you are knocked out of the Main Event of the World Series? Tony Holden writes an amusing entry on his biggerdeal.com website reflecting on the paradox of being knocked out of the Big One in the money. Fellow scribe David Flusfeder, who normally writes for the Daily Telegraph, did very well this year; not only did he get PokerStars to put him in, but he went deep finishing in 321st place, which was good for $39,445. Holden writes, "What an achievement – the best ever, to my knowledge – by a British poker-writer!"Flusfeder is “quietly satisfied”, and why not? He’s won almost... Read More...
Robert Who?
In a small nod to the Horseshoe’s Wall of Fame this year the Amazon Room at the Rio has adorned the walls with big pictures of former Main Event champions. You look up and see them all looking down on you – Scotty, Stuey, Phil, Johnny, Doyle, Puggy.
We know ‘em all by first name basis, the poker culture being an informal one at the best of times. These men have all achieved the one thing all poker players dream about – winning the Big One. In these post-boom times maybe some of the older champs from the past are a little more under the radar than recent winners; I’m talking about players like Mansour Matloubi, Russ Hamilton, Hal Fowler, Hamid Dastmalchi, Jack Keller and Jim Bechtel.
But recent winners are tattooed permanently on our sick poker player brains –... Read More...
Brian Townsend plays Cash at the Bellagio
Everybody is at the World Series of Poker and as a consequence all of their blogs are the same and, dare I say it, a bit boring. There’s only so many times you can read about how somebody got knocked out of a tournament and then went and had dinner with some pro whose name is only recognisable to only the most dedicated poker junkies. These days the WSOP is all about the bracelets and the glory (fair enough), but there was a time when it was all about the side action. Thank God for Brian Townsend aka sbrugby, currently one of the biggest cash game winners online. He gives us a little flavour of the old days blogging about the massive cash game he’s been playing at the Bellagio during the Series. Taking the form of ½ pot limit Omaha and ½ no limit... Read More...
Problems at WSOP
Unsurprisingly most poker blogs at the moment have a World Series of Poker theme and also even more unsurprisingly most of these blogs are complaining about Harrah’s and their corporate fisting of the A.G.M of hustlers and degenerates.
Joe Pelton had the good fortune of making day two of a tournament thus making it impossible (alright it’s not impossible to multi-table at the WSOP, but on the whole most players don’t do it) for him to play in an event he had already registered for the next day. Naturally he unregistered and got on with playing the tournament he was still in. Fast forward a couple of days and now Joe is trying to find his seat for... Read More...
2008 Poker Events: WCOOP 2008 Tournament Schedule | Qualify for WCOOP 2008 | WSOPE 2008 Schedule | WSOPE 2008 Live Updates | WSOP 2008 Results
WSOP 2008 November Nine Final Table: Kelly Kim | Craig Marquis | David Rheem | Darus Suharto | Ylon Schwartz | Peter Eastgate | Scott Montgomery | Ivan Demidov | Dennis Phillips
Top Online Poker Players: Canada | France | Germany | Italy | Norway | Sweden | United Kingdom | United States | Top Online Poker Player Database | Featured Online Poker Players | Advanced Online Poker Player Search
Online Poker Player Profiles: Clarkatroid | PURPLEPILS99 | Lynette Chan | jagz7 | DaEvils | Browndog19 | stevesbets | eisenhower1 | Zuleh | Markus Golser | AJKHoosier | iMsoLucky0 | SteveSung | basebaldy | KaiBuxxe | iweargoggles | mig.com | OMGClayAiken | JP OSU | Kongsgaard | Stamdogg | Brett Jungblut | VietCutie / Viethottie21 | Jenn415 | Dutch Boyd | Round42 | DuckU | vietcong01 | rdcrsn | Sowerss | AJunglen7 | BokPower | Jovial Gent | Pwnasaurus | $tinger88 | TheWacoKidd | number1pen | PearlJammer | SCTrojans | Jeffbeesdat | Bill Ivey | AaronBeen | shaundeeb | jcamby33 | pbdrunks | THE_D_RY | AK87 | lilholdem954 | Andy McLeod | THAY3R | MrSmokey1 | Tmay420 | Gotcha55 | amichaiKK | Ch0ppy | t soprano | Dario Alioto | Patrik Antonius | Durrrr | WestmenloAA | Asiandude77 | The Camel | busto_soon | Imper1um/zangbezan24 | thorladen | Luca Pagano | KrazyKanuck | RandALLin | ActionJeff | Dario Minieri | Traumatize | sbrugby | gobboboy | Annette_15 | JohnnyBax | apestyles | ZIGENAAREN | BodogAri | BeL0WaB0Ve | Rizen | kwob20 | Sheets | Jennicide | ZeeJustin | bad_ip | Crazy Cypriot / polpolpol | serb2127 | GB2005 | The-Toilet | Top Beginners | Pascal Perrault | NoMercy | ocrowe | Buzzer | Roothlus | FlopSpanker | Erik123 | The Best Online Players Revealed | Fancy Playing Against Me? | Fast_Freddie? | Ozzy87 | Short-Handed Masters | Lacey Jones | ElkY | Legato | H@LLINGOL | Erica Schoenberg | strassa2 | Telefonkiosk | Gurre | Fast_Freddie | Mats Iremark | JP 5-time/MavFish |
Pro Poker Player Interviews: Jon Kalmar | Nebuchad | Sorel Mizzi | Moorman1 | Ben Grundy | Annette_15 aka Annette Obrestad | Apathy123 | Andy Ward | Michael Greco | Julian Thew | Dave Clarke| Dave Colclough | Dave Smith | Jerome Bradpiece | Karl Mahrenholz | Sorel Mizzi aka Imper1um | John Tabatabai aka Kunkuwap | Jhub3000 | SlippyJacks | Karl Mahrenholz | Doctor Fun| MrRain | Liz Lieu | Hevad Khan aka 'RainKhan' | Jamie Gold | JohnnyBelow | Mats Iremark aka "Quzzo" | Allinstevie | fouruhaters | Jay Doshi | UFPokerStar | Buzzer | Rekwob | Purr Of Aces | dmmikkel (Part 2) | dmmikkel (Part 1) | HEFFERNAN | Reraiseallin | yellowsub86 | Fast_Freddie | Dario Minieri | Moorman1 |
Recommendations: Here is a list of the top online poker rooms hosting some of the well known players There are many free poker sites where your can test yourself before playing for real money.
Useful Online Poker Links: WSOP official site; online poker info from Wikipedia; poker directory from DMOZ; poker directory from Yahoo; poker news from Topix.net. Search For Poker On: AltaVista - A9 - AOL - Ask - Google - Lycos - MSN - Yahoo
Best Online Poker Rooms: Paddy Power Poker | Poker Stars | Sun Poker | Betfair Poker | Bodog Poker | Party Poker | Ladbrokes Poker | Titan Poker
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