Poker Guru Blog

Google, a company with a very strict advertising policy, has now decided to allow certain gambling ads to be presented on their sites, including YouTube from now on. Youtube, owned by Google, will allow ’licensed entities located in England, Scotland, Wales, Italy, France or Spain’ to display online gambling advertisements on Youtube. This content, however, will only be viewable by users who can verify they are over 18.

The advertising campaigns on Youtube will appear on the homepage of the site, video pages and the advertisers’ own channels. Google has gradually been lifting the restrictions on gambling advertisements, starting in 2008, when they lifted their AdWords ban on Internet gambling advertising in the UK only.

The first company to run a gambling ad on Youtube will be Ladbrokes, presenting their click-to-play advertising campaign booked by TBG Digital.

Phil Ivey, one of the biggest icons in the world of poker, has managed to retrieve his eighth WSOP bracelet by winning Event #37 ($3,000 H.O.R.S.E) after beating Bill Chen in the heads-up. Event #37 was followed by a huge crowd of spectators, as the final table happened to be one of the toughest seen at the WSOP this year. Ivey had to battle Chad Brown, David Baker, Bill Chen, Albert Hahn, Kenneth Aldridge, John Juanda and Jeff Lisandro in order to grab this very valuable 8th bracelet. 

With this first place, Phil has won $329,840, plus God knows how much more, with all the side bets going on. According to PokerListings, for example, Ivey and Howard Lederer have an ongoing 5 million dollar bet that Ivey would not win two WSOP bracelets until the end of 2011. Well, Howard can start trembling, as Phil has plenty of time to win another bracelet, and is quite confident about the subject. This is what Phil commented after his victory: “I think I can win 30 gold bracelets.  I think I can reach that if I keep playing and stay healthy.”

Even Phil Hellmuth seems to have respect for Ivey and his tremendous poker skills. Hellmuth reacted to Ivey's win on Twitter, saying: "Amazing win Phil Ivey: bracelet no 8, congrats! Ivey now best all around player in world!"

With this statement, he condradicts his earlier tweets and comments made before the start of the WSOP, all saying that he, Phil Hellmuth, is still the best poker player in the world, and could probably beat anyone.

With eight WSOP bracelets, Phil Ivey is currently at the fifth place (together with Erik Seidel) on the all-time WSOP bracelet list, behind Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson and Johnny Moss.

Nicholas Beraud, the chief executive of Mangas Gaming (the company that owns BetClic and EverestPoker) made a statement regarding the recently introduced regulations licensing sports betting into the market. According to him, Mangas has now broken all previous records in France since the introduction of the new regulations.

Below you can find his speech on the newly regulated French market, as heard at the CEO Panel at EGR Live:
“On the one side, you pay a huge amount more tax in France, but on the other hand, it’s created a new market, a new business,” he said. “What we see of the French market so far is a boom in terms of new customers that until now didn’t want to play because it was thought that it was illegal to play on the internet.”

Beraud continued: “Now it is legal, we have beaten all our records in the last few days. Of course you include the World Cup effect, but despite that, in terms of conversion and activities, we have seen a huge move in terms of new customers that are joining BetClic to bet on the World Cup.”

He also predicts that the countries to follow suit “after France will probably be in Denmark, then Germany, then Spain. It will create a stable business, and we will have the opportunity to get more customers in these regulated markets.”

H2 Gambling Capital, a gambling data business also shares Bereaud's predictions, stating that regulation can actually increase market size by two, or even three times. These new regulations on the gambling sector also mean that all companies need to acquire a licence in order to provide their services.

Tom 'durrr' Dwan is quite busy at the WSOP trying as hard as he can to retrieve a bracelet, but to make sure he stays in a good mood throughout the whole series, he manages to put some time aside for partying. This video that I have recently found on PokerStatic.com gives you insight into one of his crazy nights at Las Vegas, drinking shots and posing for the camera.

The PokerStars North American Poker Tour (NAPT) has made an official announcement regarding its next venue this November, which will be the Bicycle Casino, situated in Los Angeles, CA.

The Bicycle Casino is a place with a long history and strong local traditions which makes it a truly suitable venue. This is what Daniel Negreanu thinks about the NAPT at The Bike: “I have played at The Bike before. A strong presence of local players is really important for the success of this tournament. That will entice players from everywhere as they know there will be loads of money on the line. I am eagerly looking forward to this event.”

The Main Event of the NAPT will have a buy-in of $5,000.

I have already informed you about the WSOP Main Event ticket frenzy at PokerStars, which was a $370 buy-in mega satellite, organized last Sunday.

After seven hours of play, 281 players still had chips and the line-up included quite a few famous players, such as Team PokerStars Pros Jude "j.thaddeus" Ainsworth, Chris "Money800" Moneymaker, Veronica "Princesa" Dabul, Randy "nanonoko" Lew, Dusty "Leatherass9" Schmidt, Martin AAbenjaminAA" Hruby, Marcello Del Grosso, Grayson "spacegravy" Physioc, Ruben "rubenrtv" Visser, Martin "Goral" Horecki, Thierry "BOWPOWER" van den Berg, Raymond Wu, Julian Thew, Martha "marene" Herrera, Steven Paul, Grzegorz "Da Warsaw" Mikielewicz, Richard Toth, Tom McEvoy, Jorge Arias and Gualter Salles, but none of them managed to satellite their way to the Main Event.

280th place was the first one to provide some money back, $160, to be precise. 279th to 253th managed to get their buy-in back for eight hours of play, while 252nd to 1st were left praising God and starting packing for Vegas.

Congratulations to all the winners!

The WSOP Event #34 – ($1,000 Seniors’ No-Limit Hold’em) has broken all previous records concerning the number of participants. An astonishing 3,148 players took part in this tournament. This might prove all the players that prophesize the end of live poker wrong.

It is funny that Russ Hamilton was found in the form of a $5 memorandum chip from Palace Station 'The Seniors' Poker Player Hall of Fame, eventually won in a splash pot by Jack Ward:

Russ Hamilton allegedly played quite an important role in the UB cheating scandal. Russ Hamilton pulled the strings to develop a super-user 'tool' that cheated friends, associates, and UltimateBet customers out of millions of dollars.

Eponymus’s hilarious photoshop comic strip continues with the third part, in which the online poker community continues to diminish. In other words, it is not only Jimmy ’Gobboboy’ Fricke who plays with the fish. Enjoy!

Getting on tilt is one of the many interesting phenomena in poker that happen because of the human nature, and can have a dramatic effect on our gameplay.  I presume that you guys have also experienced how much a mistake or unlucky twist can influence the way we play the hands following it. But what is the reason behind all this?

I need to note here, that the handling of a ’tilt’ is mostly a capability issue, and the perfection of this is just as important as being able to calculate pot odds or to select the starting hands to play. The so-called bad beats need to be looked upon as something occuring necessarily from time to time. But it is not as easy as that...

Have you ever dreamed of becoming an astronaut or had the feeling just to get out of this world (without using drugs)? Well, Virgin has an aswer for you. Virgin, known for having its hands in many industries, such as Virgin Music, Virgin Poker, Virgin Money, Virgin Racing (they have their own car in the F1, the main sponsor being Full Tilt Poker), Virgin Blue Airlines, now embarks on a new exploration into space with Virgin Galactic.

Virgin Galactic has just recently released its first public space shuttle, given the extraordinary space exploration name ’SpaceShipTwo’.

Click here for larger image

Passengers will not only be able to see Earth from a different perspective, but will also experience weightlessness at a cruising speed of 4200 kilometers per hour. The SpaceShipTwo has room for two pilots and a total of 6 passengers.

The MyPokerCard is a prepaid gold MasterCard created by CashPlus specifically for the UK poker player. This new card which requires no credit checks offers applicants an easy way to manage their poker bankroll.

The MyPokerCard also offers its holders complete privacy, with no need to link it to their bank account. Being a prepaid card, card holders can top up their poker account by cash in over 12,500 participating stores located over the UK. The card can also be used for online purchases, paying bills and is the first debit card to be on offer in the UK with purchase protection.

Of course the card can also be used worldwide wherever you see the MasterCard acceptance mark, so it is easy to spend your winnings the next time you are on holiday.

Romain Jerome only needed one month after the eruption of the Icelandic volcano to put his own design into a wristwatch. The Eyjafjallajökull-DNA is a completely absurd piece, the dial and its decorations are made of real ash and rocks retrieved from the erupting volcano and in case you doubt the authenticity of the rocks, a certificate is supplied with each watch sold, ensuring ‘quality’. The hands symbolize airplanes avoiding the lava storm, and as always, there are no numbers to guide us with the time.

With its lava bubble indent and all the harsh and gloomy-looking material, this watch is not a Rolex, rather a monster on steroids. This is where it begs the question: Who the hell is going to buy this?

The 2010 World Series Of Poker is here, and on 20th of June at 16:30 ET, PokerStars will be holding a WSOP Mega Satellite to the Main Event which will give away 200 packages guaranteed. PokerStars is the wold's biggest online poker room, so we can be sure, that this tourney will generate a lot of attention to draw in the fish.

Although Phil Hellmuth certainly dominated the poker world scene from the eighties until the beginning of the 21st century, his popularity these days lacks that of a truly respected poker professional. With the combination of his claims to be the best in the world and his constant childish behavior, he has become increasingly difficult to bear and tolerate.

So when it comes to a chance to see Phil Hellmuth fall flat on his face you can rest assure that there will be no lack of spectators lining-up to poke fun at him. This was the case in a recently non aired episode of the popular PokerStars show ‘The Big Game’.

In the episode which is still waiting to be aired on TV, it shows how the poker amateur Ernest Wiggins (the Loose Cannon) had a lucky strike in his hand to humiliate Phil Hellmuth by crushing him.

The public has spoken and the votes are in for the top nominated players who will take part in the 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions (TOC). In a recent public announcement the WSOP have released the top 20 vote-getters for 2010.

Lynn Gilmartin from PokerNews announces the 20 nominated players in this video: