Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

After the recent events of Black Friday, the US online poker community has been floundering looking for a reliable online poker room to play in. The loss of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker has left US poker professionals looking for good US poker sites where they can enjoy poker tournaments.

To meet this need, Jeffrey Pollack, the man behind the behind the World Series of Poker, has decided to launch an international live poker tournament only allowing poker professionals to participate in it. This move has not surprised the online poker community despite Jeffrey Pollack’s strong views on poker being a game of skill for anyone who has the skills. This tourney will be an event that is exclusive to poker pros who have a huge bankroll.

A $20000 buy-in league will be held at the Palms Hotel and casino, where four main events will be held during August, September, December and February. The top 27 players will move on to the championship on February 13-14 and will play for the $2.6 million prize.

Jeffrey Pollack wants all the biggest names in poker to be showcased at the event and hence online poker participants will include Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Vanessa Selbst, Chris Ferguson, Scotty Nguyen and Phil Ivey. The participants for this poker event are not just poker pros but also have to be consistent winners with good poker bankrolls. This means, one time poker champions like Jamie Gold, the 2006 WSOP winner and Chris Moneymaker, the 2003 WSOP winner have not been included in the same.

Although, Chris Moneymaker was regarded as a potential candidate based on his past contribution to the poker industry, he is still “on the bubble”. The list will be finalised after the 1^st of August 2011, after this year’s WSOP main event takes place.

Hung-sheng Lin from China was recently declared the winner of the 2011 Macau Millions and took home a large prize amount of HK$400,000.

The Macau Millions poker competition bears a very different structure to normal poker tourneys, in which the players were required to compete in seven events, with a probability of receiving rewards for every event. Every day, the players had to play up to the top 7% of the field and each of them was promised a HK $8000 on pay day and a day 2 seat.

In this tournament, all of six players managed to make money more than once and even so, many of them thought that the structure of the game was very lucrative.

The Macau Million 2011 was a very successful poker tournament and had a turn out 1329 players. So far, in the history of poker tournaments in Asia, this is one of the biggest live poker tournaments that have taken place. The event saw a handful of well-known poker players on the field apart from the resident players, namely, Bryan Huang, Celina Lin, 2010 WSOP Champion Jonathan Duhamel and Raymond Wu.

On Day 2 of the tournament, a total of 93 players qualified and the number came down to 34 on the last day wherein, Hung-sheng Lin dominated the table as he was the chip leader. This gave him an edge over anybody else and led him to win the pot.

On the final day, the most fascinating turning point happened at the three handed play, when subsequent to the commencement of the pot by Huy Khiem from Germany, Lin made a three bet pre-flop having A-6. The former took the call and the series was A-3-T and a wager of 850,000 was made by Lin for the same. Nguyen decided to go all in and had a T-7 but Lin inevitably had the best cards and definitely had the edge over Renaud.

Tyson Marks who uses the handle ‘potterpoker’ recently won the 2010 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) and took in one of the largest prizes to be given out online. The Main event of the WCOOP attracted 2,443 players for the $5,200 poker game and had a staggering prize pool and was recorded to be one of the biggest poker tourney events in online poker history. The first place prize of $2,278,097 was won by Tyson ‘potterpoker’ Marks, a relatively new poker professional from Montana who had learned how to play poker from his grandmother. “I sort of always had a knack for card games and poker in general, my grandmother taught me how to play 5 draw when I was probably 6 years old,” Marks stated.

The main event game went on for a couple of days and drastically dwindled to 271 players by the second day. The online poker competition got tough after that point eventually dropping down to 27 players and then nine who went on to the final table. Tyson Marks got very lucky as soon as the table hit 15 players and was able to take a then 3 to 1 chip lead which he took to the end. Marks stated,

Later in the game, Tyson Marks took his lead a bit further and ran 5 to 1 against joeysweetp. Marks win some big pots that day which attributed to his chip count and placed him well ahead in the competition.

As for the money that he won, Marks has a good attitude about it and stated, “Being able to say: “I’m online poker world champion” is something that still doesn’t feel real to say… I don’t feel like it’s going to change who I am at all. I have an amazing girl and friends and family who are amazing….this money is really just gravy.”

One of the most controversial plays at the 2010 World Series of Poker occurred on Day 2 B of the event, between poker professional Prahlad Friedman and Ted Bort. The hand involved a last second call made by Prahlad Friedman that was declared dead even though Friedman made the call in time as read by the dealer. In the play, Friedman went all in and had everything at stake, and if his call was wrong he would have been busted. When the hand was declared dead, Friedman escaped with his money which he would have lost since he held a 9-5 against Bort’s J-9.

Prahlad Friedman recently came on ESPN’s Inside Deal and explained the whole event. During game play, Bort made his call, which left Prahlad Friedman with 10 seconds to make his move, at which point, Friedman waited for the last second and then made his call.
According to Friedman, “Anyone knowledgeable about poker and poker rules can understand where I’m coming from, especially in this situation. I said ‘call’ at the very last second because I honestly didn’t know what to do, not because I was pulling any kind of angle or anything like that.”

When watching a replay of the event, it is possible to note that the call was indeed made within the last second mark. However, after the hand was declared dead, the players at the table reacted in an outburst beginning with Mike Mustafa who shouted at the WSOP floor staff that Friedman should have been eliminated.

Friedman responded to this when he went on air by saying, “Everyone argued that I should have been out of the tournament, but I don’t know that it affected play from there on out. Everyone just went back to normal. In my mind, it felt like I was freerolling because the ruling could have gone both ways.”

Back in 2006, if you thought major poker tournaments, automatically
World Poker Tour would come to mind.  They had big names, big prize
pools, and for a while there, the buy in for a WPT Tourney was as big
as the World Series of Poker.  This worked well for them in a lot of
ways.  It attracted big names, it got armatures playing on the same
table, and even made some armatures household names (the Mizrachi clan
comes to mind..Michael got his start on WPT).

But, in recent
years their WPT Championship has been hemorrhaging chips, and players. 
During their 5th season, the championship game had 600+ players
competing for a prize pool worth tens of millions of dollars.  Then in
2008, they saw a dip in players, but nothing concerning. 
However last year, there was only 300 players showing up for the
tourney.  Not only does the pageantry of the tournament suffer, but so
does the prize pool.  People who come to these tournaments for the
money took notice, and this year only 200 players showed up for the
tourney. 

Daniel Negreanu, who is attending the tournament,
commented to Poker Listings “The EPT and the NAPT, and anything
PokerStars does tour wise, kicks their ass. The thing that the WPT was
always way too foolish to understand, what completely destroyed their
model as a company, was not attaching themselves to online satellites.
They need to compete and get these events popular by running online
satellites. All the PokerStars tours work because of the satellites.”

When
Partypoker purchased WPT in 2009 they had intentions of adding online
satellites to the big tourneys, however most brick and mortar casino’s
in the USA are not legally allowed to accept online satellite money as
a buy-in to a tournament. 

For now it looks like the WPT will
have to abide by the rules of the land, and have to hope for a change
in the near future.  In the mean time it seems that the WPT has
tentatively scheduled a season 9 World Poker Tour Championship to take
place may 21-27th, but so close to the WSOP?  Not sure how that’ll
play…

Hmm..so, has anyone ever heard of the World Team Poker Event?  Me
either.. But apparently it’s a pretty big deal, and it’s happening on
May 19th. 

The tourney will take place at The Golden Nugget,
and will have team representation from China, Australia, Israel,
Vietnam, England, Brazil and Greece.  As you can imagine, some of the
biggest names in poker will be representing their countries.  The
events will be PLO, LimitHoldem and No Limit Holdem, but no word yet on structure, or weight of the games, weather cumulative, or if the No limit game will crown the best in the world.  

The team from the USA will have many well known faces as well, and be anchored by Phil Helmuth and Doyle Brunson. 
Phil brings the most World Series of Poker bracelets to his name (11 of
them!) to the team while Doyle, who is largely considered the
“Godfather” of modern poker brings years of experience and some recent
major tournament wins.   Unfortunately, Phil Hellmuth has been on a bit
of a down swing these past 2 years, and his last bracelet win was in
2007.  If it were me, i would be choosing a more stable player to
co-anchor with Texas Dolly.  The total bracelets for Team America is 47
and includes these huge poker names: Jennifer Harman, MikeMatusow, Allen Cunningham, Chris Ferguson, Erik Seidel, and the brother/sister combination of Howard Lederer and Annie Duke.

It’s a shame that Canada hasn’t announced a team yet.  Come on Negranu!

Because this is a tournament that is suppose to be determining the best in the world, there will be no satellites to the event, but as always you can satellite into World Series of Poker at any of the major poker rooms!

The
even will also be broadcast on TV but as yet, no one holds the rights
to broadcast. But seriously, has anyone ever heard of this?