Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

Ilari “Ziggy” Sahamies, the Finnish poker pro, is in the red for nearly $3.3 million, which isn’t surprising considering the fact that poker is a game of winning and losing and every poker player who dares to wager should be willing to lose. In 2007, Brian “sbrugby” Townsend lost nearly $3.5 million; in 2008, Tom Dwan witnessed a loss of $4.2 million; and in the beginning of 2010, Patrik Antonius lost $3 million.

Ilari Sahamies, who has been consistently losing ever since October began, is definitely not hiding the fact that he is unhappy about it. Unfortunately, his luck doesn’t seem to be changing for the better. Yesterday, he lost $300,000 while playing a $200/$400 Cap Pot Limit Omaha against Marcello “luckexpress10” and Rami “Arbianight” Boukai. This 27-year-old professional poker player, who can be found at the high stakes tables of Full Tilt Poker, was at the height of his career with a profit of $6.8 million back in 2007; but now his overall profits are $1,654,112.

Sahamies won over a huge base of fans for his intensely eccentric and aggressive style of playing; and the ups and downs of playing poker are not new to him. Last summer, he won a huge pot of $1.7 million and later lost a larger pot of $2.4 million. When questioned about his methods of handling his incredible losses and gains, Sahamies vaguely replied that he doesn’t know and that it is just money and nothing serious.

Sahamies is a formidable force to reckon with at the high stakes tables; and he will definitely be glad when his poker fortune turns for the better and when he will finally be able to separate his opponents of their poker bankrolls. But right now, he admits that he is hardly in the mood and is playing just for the sake of playing.

A veteran poker player called “KAPPIT” got very lucky on Tuesday when she lost at a $0.25/$0.50 poker game at UB.com. Instead of going home as a loser, this 60 year old woman from Ferris, Texas managed to trigger the Bad Beat Jackpot and went home richer than the winner of the poker game that evening!

The Bad Beat Jackpot as offered by UB.com was worth $670,575.38 when it was triggered and issued a six figure paycheck to KAPPIT. KAPPIT had lost the game to a player called CIBV, as she had four nines to his quad queens when he played her on the river. Indeed, it was a bad beat – that turned out to be a good win for KAPPIT and most of the players at the poker table that day!

Several other players, who had lost that day, also went home with heavy pockets as the jackpot was broken up and divided among the losing players who had a bad beat. The jackpot was shared out among a hundred and more players with KAPPIT taking in the biggest chunk of the prize money and going home with $218,115.71, while CIBV who came in at first place took in $109,057.85. Seven other winning players also were rewarded along with CIBV, each of them taking in a $1,000 each for participating.

“I’ve been playing poker for 45 years now, mostly live poker, and I hit a jackpot once in a land-based casino. This is the biggest prize I’ve ever gotten, though. Hats off to UB Poker. It was ‘SO’ my lucky day to capture the Bad Beat Jackpot,” KAPPIT said when asked about her win.

More than 600 other players benefited from UB.com’s Poker Bad Beat Jackpot that day, whom each took home $89.36 just for playing the same stakes.

KAPPIT has plans to buy a new vehicle with her money. “It looks like our dream of trading off our 1995 truck will finally happen. Keep those jackpots coming UB… dreams do come true,” she said.

… because the site is full of retarded players.  Sky Poker must attract some of the biggest online poker donks out there.  Basically people sign-up and play here because they want to be on TV.  They obviously don’t care about the money or else you wouldn’t see this kind of stuff:

*** Special Offer *** Sky Poker has provided us with a special promotion for non-us players.  Instead of the standard bonus of just 500 player points, players that sign-up through BankrollBoost.com will receive a bonus up to £500 based on how many points they accumulate.  So potentially you could deposit just £10 and receive £500 for FREE!  For all details visit SkyPoker.com by clicking the banner below:

For reasons unknown, Full Tilt Poker’s site has crashed at roughly 1:15am EST this morning.  The crash happened roughly 30 minutes ago, and the site is still unaccessible.  Poker Forums are lighting up everywhere with posts wondering what is going on.  Full Tilt’s useless system status page still shows: “All systems are currently operational. Thanks for playing!”, but this is clearly not the case.

Many players posting on the various forums were mid-tournament when the event happened and are left wondering what will happen with the money.  According to Full Tilt’s policy all remaining players will split evenly the prize pool

See Here:
“31.2. If the tournament had not yet reached the money – All players still in the tournament at the time of the cancellation will be refunded their tournament buy-in and tournament fee. Players will have their buy-ins refunded in the same currency they used to enter the tournament (real money, tokens, etc.), unless they earned their entry through a satellite, in which case, they will be refunded the standard buy-in for the tournament. In addition, the buy-ins of players already eliminated from the tournament will be divided up and distributed to the remaining players, based on their chip counts. Guarantees and money added to the prize pool will not be included in the player payouts.”

This is great news for all those players with just a couple chips left about to bust out before the bubble, but what about the dominating chip leaders?  Well, they will be getting the exact same amount as the guy on the short stack.  Hopefully Full Tilt does not do this, but I am sure this is why that policy was put in there in the first place.  That would really suck though if you had been playing a tournament for several hours that was right on the bubble and were in first place.

Anyway, as this develops we will post more on the Full Tilt Crash.  For now, here are funny things that have been posted on various forums about this:
- “Was just about to call my ISP and start bitching because this was the second time in two days, but this makes sense, too.”
- “Beat, my jacks were good there.”
- “asdkl;jf;ojqwerklqwerlkj just fired a 3/4 pot bluff with 8 high into a 400BB pot and dude had timed down all the way to like 10 seconds…they nearly always fold after timing down this low and how he gets his $$$ back FUUUUUUUDGE”
- “fml…in hu mtt on bubble (id lose anyways) but…fml as they wont even reship the bi cuz ftp does not care…fml…again”
- “Who wants a refund, i’m chip leader with 7 to go before the money…yeah its a 3$ Knockout, but still! Thats atleast $6 gone!”
- “I head durrrr withdrew his bankroll and everything collapsed.”
- “guy L. tried to depoist on his goldcard”
- “Apparently I am “just a few seconds away from playing the most exciting games anywhere online”! The anticipation is killing me. It says to be patient while they establish my connection. Ok. Can’t wait. This is going to be so fun…”

Update #1 – 2:30am – Still Down
Update #2 – 3:15am – Still Down
Final Update – 4:05am – Service Restored

While playing Pokerstars SCOOP Event #8 High ($3000 buy-in), Daniel Negreanu made a very costly misclick when he called off most of his chips against the chip leader at his table. Here is the hand history:

PokerStars Game #26778693755: Tournament #200904083, $3000+$150 Hold’em No Limit – Level XX (1250/2500) – 2009/04/06 3:25:14 ET
Table ’200904083 9′ 9-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: RuFio25 (93296 in chips)
Seat 2: plattsburgh (142775 in chips)
Seat 3: BOKPOWER (65956 in chips)
Seat 4: KidPoker (326852 in chips)
Seat 5: sheets (38328 in chips)
Seat 6: rdcrsn (41186 in chips)
Seat 7: rubenrtv (216034 in chips)
Seat 8: Balla-B13 (219776 in chips)
Seat 9: Mi||a.TiMe (34602 in chips)
RuFio25: posts the ante 325
plattsburgh: posts the ante 325
BOKPOWER: posts the ante 325
KidPoker: posts the ante 325
sheets: posts the ante 325
rdcrsn: posts the ante 325
rubenrtv: posts the ante 325
Balla-B13: posts the ante 325
Mi||a.TiMe: posts the ante 325
sheets: posts small blind 1250
rdcrsn: posts big blind 2500
*** HOLE CARDS ***
rubenrtv: raises 3550 to 6050
Balla-B13: folds
Mi||a.TiMe: folds
RuFio25: folds
plattsburgh: folds
BOKPOWER: folds
KidPoker: calls 6050
sheets: raises 16450 to 22500
rdcrsn: folds
rubenrtv: raises 193209 to 215709 and is all-in
KidPoker: calls 209659
sheets: calls 15503 and is all-in
KidPoker said, “oh no”
*** FLOP *** [7d 3d 6d]
*** TURN *** [7d 3d 6d] [9h]
KidPoker said, “that is brutal”
rubenrtv said, “wat”
*** RIVER *** [7d 3d 6d 9h] [2s]
rubenrtv said, “wat”
KidPoker said, “misclick”
*** SHOW DOWN ***
rubenrtv: shows [Kd Ad] (a flush, Ace high)
KidPoker: shows [4s 3s] (a pair of Threes)
rubenrtv collected 355412 from side pot
sheets: shows [Tc Td] (a pair of Tens)
rubenrtv said, “so fkn sick”
rubenrtv collected 119434 from main pot
BOKPOWER said, “mbfn”
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 474846 Main pot 119434. Side pot 355412. | Rake 0
Board [7d 3d 6d 9h 2s]
Seat 1: RuFio25 folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 2: plattsburgh folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 3: BOKPOWER folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 4: KidPoker (button) showed [4s 3s] and lost with a pair of Threes
Seat 5: sheets (small blind) showed [Tc Td] and lost with a pair of Tens
Seat 6: rdcrsn (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 7: rubenrtv showed [Kd Ad] and won (474846) with a flush, Ace high
Seat 8: Balla-B13 folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 9: Mi||a.TiMe folded before Flop (didn’t bet)

This hand caused Negreanu to plummet drastically from his top 10 chip position at the time.  Talk about a personal bad beat.

Playing poker after a few drinks is a BAD IDEA.  All too often it seems that I lose the most money playing poker when I am drunk.  After a few drinks I get “the urge” to gamble, and start making stupid plays based on greed.  Your calling range goes way up and you think that you are probably going to hit your gutshot straight draw. When you drink, all you want to do is WIN, and often this means you will make stupid calls in hopes of sucking out for the win.

Here are 5 tips to avoid playing online poker after you have been drinking:
1) Hide your laptop (or get someone else to do this for you).  If you can’t find your computer it will be hard to play.
2) Pick up a girl/guy when you are drinking.  If you bring home someone from the opposite sex, chances are poker will be the last thing on your mind.
3) Withdrawal before going out.  If there is no money in your accounts, it will make it harder to play.
4) Drink more than usual.  If you get too drunk, you will probably not even be able to turn on your computer as you will probably be spending most of your time hovering over the toilet.
5) Phone a friend.  If you get the urge to play, work out a deal with a friend where you can call them and they will talk you out of it.

Preserve your poker bankroll, and don’t succumb to playing when you aren’t in the right mind state.

Disclaimer for the above points. We can not he held responsible if you:
1) Never find your laptop
2) Pick up an ugly guy/girl
4) Drink too much that you do something really stupid, or hurt yourself.

This post is intended for Entertainment Purposes only, but in all seriousness, DON’T PLAY POKER DRUNK!