Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

Guy Laliberte and Doyle Brunson were recently involved in the biggest pot ever on High Stakes Poker. The total of the pot was $818K making it the biggest ever on the show! I won’t say too much to spoil it, but what was the loser of this hand thinking?

Deemed a success, Asian Pacific Poker Tour Macau’s main event the Asian Poker Open crowned it’s champion over the weekend. Dinh Le is taking the title back to Vietnam, along with the first place cash of 222,640 USD. Dinh Le made history when he took the final table by storm in the 105^th hand at the final table. Dinh Le and Zhong Wei Ivan Tan, went all in before the flop, in a race. As it turned out Le’s pair of 8’s held up against Tan’s A10 combo. This was a dramatic end to the historic tournament, hosted by PokerStars.

The final table had a unique make up. As the poker competency proved to be across the spectrum and the challenge was still faced by all. The most anticipated winner was Joe Hachem, the former World Series of Poker Main Event Bracelet winner. The underdog was some one who had not played in one live tournament event before the Asian Pacific Poker Tour Macau, Dinh Le.

The final table was made up of truly international representatives of incredible poker talent. Representing the United Kingdom Simon Randall was the first to cash at the final table bringing home more than 16 thousand USD. The first Australian to cash coming in 8^th place was Joe Hachem, of team Poker Stars, he brought home a cash of more than 24 thousand USD. From the United States, the amazing Liz Lieu played well, and cased in at 7 with 32384. William Tam was the second poker competitor to make the final table, finishing in 6^th, and cashing with more than 40 thousand USD. France was not left out of the final table, as Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier came in 5^th behind the Canadian Guillaume Patry. Both men brought home generous amounts from the historic poker event. Sangkyoun Kim who cashed with more than 72 thousand dollars took third place back to South Korea.

This historic and monumental poker tournament, the first of it’s kind in The People’s Republic of China, was one of the most competitive the poker industry has seen in 2007. This would set yet another record for the poker world this year.

In its humble beginning poker was played in saloons up and down the Mississippi. Today’s poker is a long way from the banks of the river that defined the west. As poker continues to grow in popularity today, many are finding new outlets for the game, and new locations are being approved for the game.

In West Virginia the Lottery Commission reported the earning for the Mountaineer Casino Resort and Racetrack. Between October 20^th through November 17^th the new poker revenue totaled 711,352 USD. During the same time the Wheeling Island Racetrack and Gaming Center earned more than 630 thousand USD with their new poker room. Both tracks are only an hour’s drive from the Pennsylvania’s Steel Industry in the heart of Pittsburg.

In response to the release both casinos and racetrack combinations are pleased with the starting numbers. Although the numbers are but a drop in the bucket from what was earned for the total casino revenue. The Mountaineer casino brought in 20.9 million USD, and the Wheeling Island racetrack casino brought in 15.26 million USD. The best part of the first released numbers is that it is already exceeding anticipated projections for the new poker table games.

Bryce Paradis, better known as Freedom25 at Full Tilt Poker, has decided to call it quits from the poker game.

In his lengthy blog entry, Bryce mentioned that though he had started playing poker for the money, it was not the most important thing.

Here is an excerpt from his blog:

“With nearly 3 million in lifetime winnings I have reached a point where, once allocated in an investment portfolio, the funds I have gained through poker will yield enough tool-value to experience all things which I can conceive of as being of large, moderate, small and even moderately eccentric value to myself, at least for the immediate future, and so further time spent on playing poker for money is no longer valuable for that reason alone. Some people may ask, “Why not, then, pursue the academia of poker at the table and challenge Hawrilenko, larger live games, etc. and test your mettle for the sake of that challenge?” I do not believe that that would be a negative experience, and in fact playing poker has not become a negative experience, it is in fact still a good one, but the spotty-action environment and the lack of time-reward in the form of money have detracted from it, and due to the amount of energy required to continue playing at a competitive level I have opted out on the grounds that, while the experience may be good, I intend to find better. I am still rather infatuated with the academia of poker, however, and because of this not only will my involvement with StoxPoker continue in the future, but it will likely increase.”

Bryce plans to spend some time working on his website, taking some courses and doing the things he always wanted to do.

Congratulations Bryce, and “gg”!

Daniel Negreanu announced on his blog the other day that he will be getting divorced. After just over 2 years of marriage, Daniel and his wife Lori have decided to go their separate ways.

According to Daniel it was a mutual decision and everything went very smooth. They hope to remain the best of friends, but unfortunately could not continue as a married couple.

At the end of his post, Daniel made mention that he will be getting back into poker and playing a lot more. Here is an excerpt from the post:

“So what does the future hold for me? Well, I don’t have any plans to find anyone new at all. I’m too busy with other things to even think about that sort of thing. It’s not on my mind at all. I’m still going to be working on my terrible golf game, hanging with buddies playing pool, but I’m planning on changing a few things around the house. More toys, if you will, like www.fullswinggolf.com and a few other things.

As for poker, one of the reasons that I have taken on a lighter schedule both online and live was calculated. I’ve been playing this game long enough to know that if my attention is split between personal issues and poker, the results could be dangerous. So, rather than mess with any of that I’ve been very careful in the amount that I play, and when I do play, I make sure that I REALLY want to play. Hence my decision to skip Foxwoods.

I’ll be back to kicking butt on the tournament trail starting with the 5 Diamond at Bellagio and will hopefully follow that up with a good WSOP in 2008. Despite all of this going on for me recently, I feel like my poker game is super sharp right now and I’m reading people better than ever. That, plus thanks to logging a few more hours in online at PokerStars, my game is as good fundamentally as it’s ever been. I’m looking forward to the 5 Diamond and the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in January. Both are tournaments I’ve had great success in, coming first and third two of the last three years at Bellagio, and cashing three times in Bahamas. I’ve always had “lulls” in my poker year, and they usually happen between September and December.”

Best wishes to Daniel, and good luck in the future!

Also, if you want to buy Daniel Negreanu’s Toyota Tundra, you can find the ebay auction here

Today I will be reviewing Pokkercards.com in my ongoing series of reviews of other poker sites. Similar to BankrollBoost.com, Pokkercards is a portal with a ton of great information for the online poker player. They offer strategy based articles, information about online poker tournaments, discuss some of the better sites to play online poker, plus much more. I will try to break down the site into several sections so you know where to get started when you first visit the site.

As mentioned previously, Pokkercards has a ton of strategy-based articles. I found most of these articles to be tailored for a newer player starting out playing poker online, so if you are just starting your online poker career, this site will have a ton of great info for you. That doesn’t mean that only beginner players should check it out, even some of the best players overlook a lot of this great info so I wouldn’t skip checking it out just based on that. Some of their articles include “Online Poker Bluffing”, “Check and Raise All-in”, and “What to do on the flop”. That’s not all though, there are plenty more!

One of the best things about Pokkercards, is their site is offered in many different languages. For example, their Party Poker Review is available in German (as seen on the previous link), Dutch, Danish, Suomi, French, Russian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Polish or English so if you can read any of these languages, then you will find something of interest on this site! They work very hard on their articles and want to make sure that they are available to everyone.

Since the main focus of Pokkercards is newer players, they have a whole section dedicated to the rules of the different types of poker along with some general poker rules. They start off by teaching the general terminology, and then lead into other topics such as poker betting rules, hand orders and then rules games such as Omaha Hi & Hi-Lo and Seven Card Stud. As a new player you definitely would not want to start risking any money, unless you had some idea of what you were actually doing.

Like many other poker sites, Pokkercards has reviews on several online poker sites. As you can see in this Full Tilt Poker review, they cover such topics as Player Traffic, Sign-up Bonus, Game Variety, and Beginners Tables along with several others.

For the Mac or Linux enthusiast, Pokkercards has a special page dedicated for you. They discuss some of the rooms that allow players using Mac or Linux machines so that you won’t feel left out when trying to find a place to play.

The last and greatest feature of Pokkercards is their tournament listings. When I did this review their actual tournament page was down, but if you check the homepage you can see two main lists: Poker Freerolls, and Poker Tournaments. If you don’t have any money you can find some sites offering freerolls where you don’t have to pay a thing, but if you are looking to win some serious money, then the Poker Tournaments listing is probably more for you.

To conclude this review, Pokkercards is a great site with a ton of info in many languages. Though it is more targeted to newer players, there is definitely something there for everyone to enjoy. Check out Pokkercards today!