Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

Team PokerStars pro Viktor “Isildur1” Blom was not a grand success at online poker tournaments last year, but he surpassed all expectations at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure 2012. This year, Blom’s performance was spectacular, and at the end of the event, he emerged as the online poker winner of a large prize of $1.2 million.

Commenting on his spectacular victory, Blom said: “This was more fun than winning the same amount in a cash game. I’m not used to making it this far in a tournament. I didn’t expect it. It feels great – very different to playing online.”

Blom played against a field of 30 players. While it is not a great achievement to buy-in to the event with $100,000, winning the $1.2 million prize pot is the greatest achievement ever. Blom has earned the online poker community’s respect forever with his great win. While stating how terrible he felt when he participated in the PCA last year, Blom said: “It feels so good to succeed. I really appreciate this win, and I love the Bahamas.”

Blom knocked Galen Hall, the champion of the PCA 2011 main event, when he was in the third position, after which he systematically knocked off Dan Shak and Humberto Brenes.

The other players who raked in profits at PCA 2012 were Jonathan Duhamel and Daniel Negreanu. Negreanu, who finished in the second position in 2011, was knocked off in the fifth position this year. He collected a cool prize of $250,900 for his efforts. Duhamel, who is still recovering the recent assault made on him at his residence, finished fourth and collected a prize of $313,600. Later, Duhamel posted a tweet on Twitter, stating “Yeah that was a good rebuy.”

Poker fans are now looking forward to the super high roller events of Aussie Millions, which is round the corner.

Getting one’s name into the World Series of Poker’s Poker Hall of Fame is the most prestigious award that a professional poker player can receive, and over the years the WSOP has included many great US poker players.

Recently, after being voted in by a panel of 35 members, Linda Johnson and Barry Greenstein have been included into the Poker Hall of Fame and they are now at the 41^st and 42^nd place. The official induction will happen on the 8^th of November at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. All this is being done in keeping with the November Nine festivities.

Barry Greenstein, is sponsored by PokerStars and is a recognized online poker player also known as “the Robin Hood of Poker” and he has collected over $7.5 million in live poker tournaments and has also won two World Poker tour titles and three World Series of Poker bracelets.

Linda Johnson is also known as “the First Lady of Poker”. Linda came in fifth in the first WSOP tournament she ever played and hence decided to become a professional poker player. She won her first bracelet by winning the $1,500 Seven-Card Razz event in 1997. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Poker Players Alliance and the Ladies International Poker Series.

Barry Greenstein was honored and said, “I’m happy to be inducted into the Hall of Fame alongside my friend Linda Johnson who has been the most fervent ambassador for poker for as long as I can remember.” And Linda Johnson was also honored and said that, “I am extremely proud and humbled to be voted into the Poker Hall of Fame, I feel lucky to have been involved in many facets of poker over the past 35 years. Being recognized by the industry is a tremendous honor.”

Black Friday has affected many online poker sites in the US and many online poker players, and it was based on the US attorneys criticizing and indicting online poker sites of illegal payment processing operations in the US.

One online poker site, Full Tilt Poker has been affected the most, because most government authorities seemed to have found the maximum faults with this online poker site. Alderney’s Gambling Control Commission also suspended Full Tilt’s license on account of various allegations which they had not taken care of. Now, the Alderney’s Gambling Control Commission themselves are being criticized by a professional poker player Tony G, stating that if they had done their work on time, then Full Tilt need not been suffering this way now.

Tony G has also stated that the AGCC has not succeeded in protecting the players and that they should have acted quicker. The AGCC’s executive director, Andre Wilsenach said that, “We do have an obligation to protect players and we do so by keeping the industry free of crime to ensure the games the players play are fair. Our operators do not exploit the young and the vulnerable. As far as players’ funds go, we have never set ourselves up to underwrite these funds; no regulator in the world does that. The problem is that if an operator wants to deceive you deliberately, he may be able to do so and may well succeed to do so for some time, it’s happened before.”

“A decision to suspend and ultimately revoke a license is not a decision that is taken lightly. We believed it was best to get rid of them as we didn’t think they were suitable to hold a license anymore,” he added.

The AGCC has been reviewing the current scenario and they will also do the best they can for the betterment of the players.

Christian Slater, the heartthrob actor best known for his performance in movies like Broken Arrow, Untamed Heart, Bed of Roses and Interview with the Vampire, will now be taking on a poker movie, much to the delight of poker enthusiasts and Slater fans everywhere.

This poker movie scheduled to be released next year, will be called “Guns, Girls and Gambling” and will feature Slater, Megan Park, Gary Oldman, Helena Mattsson and stand up comedian Dane Cook, who will play the sheriff in the movie. Based on a poker game gone horribly wrong, “Guns, Girls and Gambling” is sure to give poker fans a lot of action to watch on the big screen.

IMDB also known as the Internet Movie Database has this movie pegged as follows: “The story throws Elvis impersonators, Indians, modern cowboys, a six-foot-tall blond assassin, a frat boy, a corrupt sheriff and a prostitute into a chase for a priceless American Indian artifact stolen during a poker game at an Indian casino.” Slater fans may be surprised to note that their star will be playing an Elvis Impersonator for a small portion of the film.

Slater will play the role of John Smith while Megan Park will act as the character of Cindy. The script for the film has been written by Michael Winnick, who will also direct the film.

Poker and gambling movies appear to be becoming very popular as was evident from movies like Blackjack, Lucky You and The Grand. Guns, Girls and Gambling will be an action movie and has been described a ‘stylized crime thriller.’

The movie is currently being filmed in Utah, in the desert areas of the state to provide that Wild West look to the film. The film is set to be released in the US and in Europe in 2011, although the date has not yet been confirmed.

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.

The WSOP is in full-swing, and Tony G isn’t seeing the kind of results he’d been hoping for. The Lithuanian born poker player known for telling his opponents to “get on the bike” talked big and expected to get some serious action at the tables at the WSOP. He even hinted that this was going to be his year to take home a bracelet, something he hasn’t achieved despite over $400K in cashes at WSOP events. It doesn’t look like that’s in the cards, though. He keeps busting out of events. In the $5K no-limit, he said “was good pre-flop and ran into bad endings that killed me.” He explained that he is experiencing burnout and is no longer having fun.

He was also highly disappointed at losing out on the opportunity to play for a spot at the the Tournament of Champions competition. In his blog, he wrote that he feels the WSOP is unfair in their way of choosing the competitors for this final spot. Annie Duke suggested that it should only be open to bracelet winners, perhaps the next nine players on the list after those selected by the voters. That would create a fair wild-card spot. Tony G commented that “I feel some of the choices are good ones, others are just wrong, and I would like to know who made the choices and why they made them. The WSOP is being unfair with this decision…”

Tony G is now back in London and says “I am really glad to have some time off and away from the WSOP.” In response to those criticizing his leaving the WSOP, he says “I play when I enjoy playing and I do my best. I don’t have to play on their schedule or on their idea of how I should react.” Despite earlier writings to the contrary, he plans to be back at the WSOP for the main event.