Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

Doyle Brunson has been trying to put together the ultimate poker team, and when you look at the results in this year’s WSOP, it seems like he’s doing a great job. Even though the pro himself hasn’t had a great run this year, his team is doing quite well. So far, the DoylesRoom team has cashed more than $1 million at the WSOP. It’s true that the cashes have come from a large number of players, but there have been some impressive cashes. All six members of the Brunson 10 have cashed, with the highest cash going to Amit Makhija who brought home $208,148 in two events. The others haven’t disappointed, though. Dani Stern cashed in an impressive $161,934. Chris Moorman and Zach Clark each brought in a five figure cash. Alex Kamberis and Steve Gross haven’t quite paid off their entry fees yet.

Doyle Brunson himself hasn’t cashed at all this year and he lost his stack in the Tournament of Champions on day 2, but Todd Brunson has brought in over $26,000 in the two events he managed to cash in, so the family name retains its honor. Allen Kessler is a DoylesRoom pro who has been doing very well this year. He’s already cashed in seven different events, earning over a third of a million dollars.

Among those competing for a place in the Brunson 10, the competition has been fierce. David Sands, Daniel Kelly, Faraz Jaka, and Michael Martin are competing for the seventh place. Currently Sands leads, but a cash in any event by any of the other three could change that, particularly if it were a high-place cash. There are only a handful of events left, so it’s an exciting time.

Overall, it’s been an excellent year for DoylesRoom as a poker room and for the team overall, even if the Texas Dolly seems to have lost his touch for the moment.

If you follow online poker news, and you’ve seen the news about the latest arrests of hackers in South Korea, you’re probably more concerned than ever about your online safety. The reality is that the South Korean hackers found a security gap that poker sites cannot fix. Imagine if an intruder placed a camera in your house and could watch your computer screen while you play poker. Of course they would have an unfair advantage, and after a number of games, you might realize that something is wrong. Suppose, however, than they had planted these cameras in a thousand houses and that there were thirty of these thieves working together. You’re beaten in hand after hand, and people seem to fold whenever you have a good hand, but it’s not always the same person beating you.

Before you have a chance to get suspicious, they simply move on to a new target, let you play with regular players for a while, and then send in a new member of their crew to take you on some more. It’s hard for poker players to notice that there’s anything unusual going wrong. The poker rooms have difficulty tracing the unusual play patterns. The only way to find out is to find the camera.

What the South Korean hacker gang did was place a computer program that acted just like a camera in the computers at seven hundred different internet cafes around the country. Those programs could show the hackers everything that was done on every computer screen in every internet cafe that they infected.

How does one keep safe from an attack like that? First, use your own computer to play online poker. Second, use a personal firewall and anti-virus software to prevent malware from attacking your computer. Third, scan your computer for malware, spyware, and viruses regularly, at least once a week. If you find anything and you can’t heal it, delete it, or quarantine it, do an internet search on how to get rid of it or ask a computer expert for help in getting rid of it. Viruses don’t just slow down your computer. They can cost you money.

One twenty-one year old won’t be asking his parents to borrow the car this summer, because he’ll be able to afford his own after winning a bracelet at the WSOP. Steven Kelly turned 21 on May 1st, making this year his first chance to play at the WSOP. At event #39, which was a $1,500 no limit holdem shootout event, Kelly claimed a modest prize, by WSOP standards, of $382,725.

Kelly has been playing Texas holdem since he was 15, playing at the free sites until he turned 18. He prefers to play ring games rather than tournaments, but has played some tournaments. Early on, he won a tournament with a $5 entry fee, bringing in $6000.

Kelly is a California resident, meaning that he’s been able to play at live events at tribal casinos since he turned 18, and Las Vegas law only allowed him to join the party once he turned 21. He’s the fifth youngest player to win a bracelet.

Kelly was interviewed after his win, and he said “I play mostly cash games online, but I have had some tournament wins online, but nothing over $100,000,” said Kelly. “This is definitely my biggest cash.”

The tournament was a serious tournament. Play started with close to 1,400 players, beginning with 140 tables. Among the players in the event were former gold bracelet winners J.C. Tran, Steve Hohn, Randy Holland, and Robert Mizrachi. Annette Obrestad, who holds the record for the youngest bracelet in the WSOP, not only played, but managed to cash in the tournament. Robert Mizrachi, who took 136th place for about $5,600 took 5th place at event #2 this year, with his brother Michael taking the bracelet. Mizrachi has cashed on events #31 and #43 as well, but has not seen anything higher than 5th place yet this WSOP.

The news online has been abuzz with claims that poker rooms are sometimes frequented by robots. Let’s set the record straight. First of all, they’re called bots, not robots. To be a robot, it would have to be more than just a computer program. It would have to be an actual computerized piece of equipment capable of movement. Second, to create a bot to play poker at a commercial online poker room is more than a little complex.

The code, or the inner workings of the poker room software isn’t available for everyone to see, so it’s not easy to make another computer program interact with that program. It’s not impossible. There are people who can do it, but it isn’t easy. The next part is more complicated, though. Once you’ve somehow connected an automatic poker-player bot to poker software, you need to program that poker player bot.

There are some excellent poker tutorial programs out there, but very few allow you to plug in the cards and the actions of the other players. Almost all require you to play their own games. If you do find one that allows you to plug in the action on the board, though, it can only make moves defined by the type of player it has been programmed to play. That is, it can be a tight-agressive player, a loose-agressive player, a tight-passive, or a loose-passive. If you don’t change it frequently, it’s easy for the other players at the table to catch on and predict the player’s every move.

Bots cannot control a bankroll the way that a real player can. Bots might win, meaning that the bankroll is not a problem, but if they lose too much, they’ll simply bust without any way to reload.

There’s another thing to consider here, too. Most players in the low to medium stakes rooms are mostly in it for the challenge and the fun. There is very little fun in leaving a bot to play your game.

If you do think you’re playing against a bot, though, say hello. If they answer, it’s probably a real person.

At this year’s WSOP Women’s Championship game, not all of the women were, well, women. In fact, eight of the contestants were men. In particular, Shaun Deeb was noted for having shown up in drag. Due to laws against discrimination, the WSOP organizers couldn’t count the men out of the tournament, but that didn’t mean that the women who had lined up to play were pleased. Shaun Deeb put up a video on YouTube explaining that he’d lost a bet and he had to play in the tournament. He also promised to give any winnings to charity. Moreover, he claimed that since poker is a mind sport, rather than one of physical prowess, there shouldn’t need to be division of the sexes.

Linda Johnson, one of the pioneers in women’s poker, disagrees. She said that many women view poker as the territory of men, and having a women’s only tournament helps them overcome the feeling of intimidation felt when stepping into a man’s world. Moreover, the socialization during a women’s tournament is different. By having women’s tournaments, top women poker players get to meet, socialize, and experience poker without feeling like outsiders. For Johnson, her first Women’s Championship thirty years ago was a turning point. Although she only placed fifth, it gave her the confidence she needed to move into the world of professional poker.

Annie Duke, one of the best known women in poker, took the opposite stance, though. Duke claims that having separate tournaments for women implies that they are not up to the level of competing with men, and she would prefer to do away with them.

If anyone is concerned as to whether women and men can compete on a level playing field in poker, there’s no need for concern. The top ranking man in the WSOP Women’s Championship took 103rd place. Vanessa Hellebuyck from France took the bracelet and $192,132.

If you’ve ever thought that you needed performance enhancers to keep you on your game when you’re playing online poker, then maybe instead of drugs, you need better glasses. Much of the fatigue in online poker play is due to staring at a digital screen for hours at a time. A relatively new company called Gunnar Optiks might have just the performance enhancer you need to stay focused and awake without impairing your judgement or creating health risks. Their unique glasses are designed to filter out certain types of light, and to help prevent eye strain for people who spend hours in front of the screen.

According to Gunnar Optiks co-founder, Jennifer Michelsen explains that “Any digital device that is viewed in the near distance for long amounts of time will create digital eye fatigue. The smaller the screen, typically the closer the user puts it to the eye, and the more the eye will strain to see it over extended periods. “

Gunnar’s technology, known as i-AMP helps increase contrast much like shooter glasses. Comparing the Gunnar glasses to shooter glasses, Michelsen says “The difference is that Gunnar glasses are very specifically tuned to the type of light found in artificially lit environments and computer screens.”

According to Michelsen, most of Gunnar’s wearers will experience an immediate improvement in optical resolution, contrast, and detail. She says that over time, instead of fading, the effects actually increase, and that Gunnar advises customers to try the glasses out for at least a week before they try to gauge the results. Prices aren’t terrible either; you can pick up a pair online for around $100, as long as you don’t need a prescription. With a prescription, the price gets closer to $250, depending upon your frames.

If your eyes burn at the end of a long tournament, these glasses are definitely worth looking into.