Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

Pokerstars have finally started to wake up and add some nice little features to their site.  The latest addition is a rematch feature after you play a heads-up sit n go.  Basically what happens is after you finish playing a heads-up sit and go a window will pop-up asking if you want a rematch, like this one:

I think this is a nice feature, as often it means you can take even more money off a donkey when you find one

Also don’t forget to check out the 2009 WSOP Qualifiers at WSOP.  So far Pokerstars have qualified 315 players, which is the most players of any poker site for the 2009 WSOP.  The next closest site is Full Tilt Poker with 188 players.

Last week Pokerstars.com announced their satellites for the 2009 WSOP. There are 3 main ways to get to the WSOP with Pokerstars, which are: Cash Tournaments, FPP Satellites and WSOP Step Satellites. Below is information on how each of these different types of satellites work.

Why should you try to qualify for the WSOP at Pokerstars?

The best thing about qualifying with Pokerstars is some of their added incentives (which can’t be found on any other poker site). Every player that qualifies at Pokerstars will also receive:
Instant Supernova VIP status – All players will receive 100,000 FPPs in their account to use as they please, plus access to all the special features of being a supernova (special items in the Pokerstars store, private tournaments with added money and much more).
Entry to PokerStars $1 Million Freeroll Summer Spectacular – Not only will you get to go to the WSOP, you will also have a chance to win a share of $1 Million through a series of freeroll activities.
$10,000 Main Event buy-in – The main reason why you want to go to the WSOP anyway.
$1,000 for travel and expenses 8 nights hotel accommodation at the Palms – (Plus extra nights after July 10 if still in the tournament). If you have ever gone to Vegas, you will know that the Palms is probably one of the coolest hotels to stay at.
PokerStars Player Bag – Full of Pokerstars swag and other goodies.
Shuttle Bus to and from the Rio – The Palms is only a short walk to the Rio, but hey, its FREE. VIP Invitation (+1) to July 9 PokerStars Player Party
$1,000,000 in compensation if you win the Main Event (see terms for full details).

Cash Satellites

Qualify for as little as $2 to the WSOP Main Event through a series of Tournaments. This is probably the best way to get there as in some of the higher buy-in cash tournaments you will be against a smaller field with several seats up for grabs.

2009 WSOP FPP Satellites at Pokerstars

Qualify from as as little as 40 FPP credits. Definitely the CHEAPEST way, but you will be playing up against huge fields of players and prizes will most likely only be awarded to first place players in these tournaments which could mean dedicating hours to win nothing several times.

Pokerstars 2009 WSOP Step Satellites

Steps Sit & Go satellites start with a buy-in of just $7.50 or 500 FPP credits. This is one of the cheapest ways to qualify, but these Steps contain a higher than normal rake, but if sit n go’s are your specialty this is probably the best path for you to get to the 2009 WSOP!

Don’t have a Pokerstars Account? Sign-up using Pokerstars marketing code BRB500 and you will receive $50 FREE when making your first deposit of at least $50. That extra $50 might just be the extra boost your bankroll needs to get you to the 2009 World Series Of Poker!

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

Last Friday my friend told me that Aced was running a $100 rebuy tournament with a $30,000 overlay (and its only a $50k guaranteed!!!).  Being the huge fish that I am, I decided to give it a go yesterday and sure enough there was still a massive overlay.  Only 220 players were playing, and of those only 30 actually rebought!  There were no add-ons or anything so it only cost me $100 to play.

My eyes were on the $13,500 first place prize, but after suffering a sick beat late in the game my stack size dropped quite significantly.  I made it through the bubble and continued grinding away.  The competition was overall awful, but the blinds were getting high and I needed to make a move soon.  Finally, I looked down at AK in early position with the shortest stack on the big blind.  With less than 10 BBs I shoved it in and it was folded all the way around except for the big blind.  At first I thought, well, it is probably a coin flip, but he turned over KK and I knew I was dominated.

I ended up busting 1 away from the final table in 11th place, which was soooo sick as every position after that increased significantly in their payouts.  Still, I can’t complain at making $400 in profit for a few hours work.

The overlay is getting smaller and smaller every week, so if you don’t have an account at Aced I suggest you getting one today!  You even get 30% rakeback and a sick bonus up to $1k which is relatively easy to clear.  Check our Aced Poker Review for all the details.  See you there next week!

Matt “MCMATTO” Affleck made one of the weirdest deals in online poker history during the $3k SCOOP Event 8 on Pokerstars tonight.  With a dominating 5-2-2 chip lead, MCMATTO agreed to take a deal that would pay himself $410,000 and his opponents $390,000 (nofingclue11 aka Zach “CrazyZachary” Clark) and $380,000 (Jamie “pokerjamers” Armstrong).

Based on the chip counts, the deal should have been as follows:
McMatto $455,054.57
nofingclue11 $365,988.93
pokerjamers $359,456.51

With the following payout structure for 1st to 3rd:
1: $550,500
2: $393,000
3: $297,000

But, for some unknown reason he agreed to the numbers stated before basically giving his opponents both 2nd place money with a chance at winning $60k more.

Here is a screenshot of the table when the deal was made:

As he agreed to the deal, MCMATTO posted “lol at the forums right now” and he couldn’t have been more right.  Immediately people started posting what an awful deal he made across poker forums everywhere.

Mike “Timex” McDonald posted the following on 2+2, “I could see taking this deal if ur like 300k in makeup and need living expenses, but Jesus Christ, its not like you are busto, you have just made 300k, you’re probably not that bad at poker and at this point you are basically “rolled” to take a 1 time shot at someone paying you 20k to flip a coin for 100k”.

After the deal (well at least a deal for the other two) was made nofkingclue11 quickly busted out pokerjamers when he spiked an Ace on the river in an all-in preflop hand with AQ vs JJ.

nofkingclue11 quickly started to dominate MCMATTO with clearly better playing, but luck was on MCMATTO’s side after he got lucky after getting called by AJ while holding KQ:
PokerStars Game #26813741448: Tournament #200904083, $3000+$150 Hold’em No Limit – Level XXXVII (30000/60000) – 2009/04/07 0:43:45 ET
Table ’200904083 109′ 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 3: nofingclue11 (5051337 in chips)
Seat 6: MCMATTO (4098663 in chips)
nofingclue11: posts the ante 7500
MCMATTO: posts the ante 7500
MCMATTO: posts small blind 30000
nofingclue11: posts big blind 60000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
MCMATTO: raises 75000 to 135000
nofingclue11: raises 270669 to 405669
MCMATTO: raises 3685494 to 4091163 and is all-in
nofingclue11: calls 3685494
*** FLOP *** [Qh 7d Ks]
*** TURN *** [Qh 7d Ks] [8s]
*** RIVER *** [Qh 7d Ks 8s] [2c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
nofingclue11: shows [Js Ac] (high card Ace)
MCMATTO: shows [Kh Qd] (two pair, Kings and Queens)
MCMATTO collected 8197326 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 8197326 | Rake 0
Board [Qh 7d Ks 8s 2c]
Seat 3: nofingclue11 (big blind) showed [Js Ac] and lost with high card Ace
Seat 6: MCMATTO (button) (small blind) showed [Kh Qd] and won (8197326) with two pair, Kings and Queens

With a dominating chip lead, MCMATTO went on to win and picked up the extra $60,000 plus the WCOOP watch.  Even though he won I still think that deal was pretty sick.  GG MCMATTO!

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.