Poker Guru Blog

PokerTableRatings (PTR) has introduced a new feature on their website. Their 'Top Poker Countries' section shows you which nation's players are to be avoided at the online poker tables, and it also provides details on which country has the biggest fish.

PTR's new list, named 'Top Poker Countries' currently contains statistics of Full Tilt Poker and Party Poker players, but more poker sites are to be added later on. They have collected details of around 9,663 players and 49,389,675 hands for every country. The list has a full, a yearly, a monthly and a weekly view. I had a closer look at the yearly list.

It is interesting to see, that while almost all the high-profile players in the poker world are in Las Vegas at the WSOP, competing for money and glory, Peter Eastgate is still missing. 2008 WSOP Main Event champion Peter Eastgate was questioned by PokerStarsBlog about his absence.

The Danish poker player revealed he intends to play only in the Main Event this year. He is about to go to the World Cup in South Africa instead. Eastgate told he has little motivation to play in the smallest events.

Ferrari‘s latest supercar, the 458 Italia impressed and drew in the crowd when it made its debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show on the 15th September 2009. The 458 Italia which is the replacement for the sought after F430, and is considered one of the most wanted supercars.

Despite it costing around $280,000 USD, buyers worldwide are still lining up to get their hands on the new 458 Italia. But having the cash and going down to your local dealer will not get you seated in your new 458 Italia straight away. Buyers will have to wait to enjoy their new ride with Ferrari recently announcing that there is a 2 year worldwide waiting list.

This is not an uncommon occurrence for Ferrari to let its customers wait for their new car because of the simple fact that every Ferrari is built to order. Every single car is different.

After two years PokerNews' official poker training and coaching site is back with big names in its line-up. No doubt that this time around PokerNews is looking to make its training site called PokerNews Strategy to work and last. Although there is huge competition in this field, PokerNews is a site backed by reputation and a strong brand name. Tons of poker players visit it on a daily basis.

They have signed Randy "Nanonoko" Lew, who is one of the biggest names in online poker. Nanonoko will be making training videos for the site.

Landy "Nanonoko" Lew

Randy "Nanonoko" Lew will be joined by Josh "LitleBastrd" Tieman, who just won his first World Series of Poker bracelet in Event #6. Tony G and Dustin “neverwin” Woolf and other well known names will also be part of the team line-up.

The site's model is based on its main competitors. As I see they have nothing unique on offer compared to their rivals, even the structure is totaly the same. So they will have to heavily rely on the help of PokerNews.com's traffic and Nanonoko to take off.

Anyone can make a poker training video but can you make a good one? Cardrunners is looking for poker players who are willing to record and comment on their play in order to make a training video out of it.

It’s fast and easy. Submit your training video using the form on cardrunnersvideochallenge.com website to enter the challenge. There you can also find a video production guide and a video tutorial to help you every step of the way in making a good training video.

Cardrunners latest competition will have five winners with the first prize being $5,000 and an offer to become a cardrunners instructor. CardRunners members will vote to choose the top five finalists.

With the World Cup 2010 starting today, bookies are getting ready to cash in on the multimillion dollar betting industry which is tired to the game. With the odds stacked up-against them, gamblers who place bets at the World Cup usually base their betting decisions on knowledge of the game and sometimes just rely on quick guess. But some gamblers believe they can improve their chances of predicting match results and have turned to South African voodoo magic in order to do so.

South African Vultures

It is claimed by smoking the endangered South African Vulture brains it will give the user visions of the future. The so called custom stems from a traditional medicine in South Africa known as muti. The dried out brain of the vulture is said to sell for around $6.50 for a tiny vial of it.

WSOP Academy organized an exclusive invitational SNG freeroll to decide who they will sponsor to the WSOP Tournament of Champions (TOC). This SNG freeroll was won this Thursday by the well known French SNG specialist Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier. Other players at the table included: Gavin Smith, Andy Bloch, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Gus Hansen, Don Cheadle, Sorel Mizzi, Michael Mizrachi, Liv Boeree and Paul Wasicka. But in the end it was the Frenchman who took the first place and the free ticket to the one million dollar freeroll tournament.

Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier celebrating his win

WSOP Tournament of Champions (TOC) is an exclusive one million dollar tournament with one winner. In total, 27 people are allowed to participate in this event, out of which three places are already taken by previous TOC winners (Annie Duke, Mike Matusow, Mike Sexton) one by the winner of last year’s WSOP Main Event (Joe Cada) and one by the 2009 WSOP Europe Main Event winner (Barry Schulman). Twenty of the remaining places will be left to voters and two so-called sponsored players will also take part. WSOP Academy has the right to choose one of these two sponsored players, and they have decided to choose this player by this exclusive invitational SNG tournament.

ESPN has just this week announced its schedule plans for live on-line streaming of the 2010 WSOP coverage.  The schedule which has been presented has been broken down into five selected events that will be covered and can all be viewed live on ESPN3.com.

Lynn Gilmartin the reporter for Pokernews caught up with Annette Obrestad after her first cash finish at the WSOP 2010. Annette, who is a Full Tilt Poker Pro managed to walk away with about 10k prize in the 5k NL Holdem Tournament (Event #17). In the video interview Annette talks about her win and about other WSOP events she is looking forward to. She would like to participate in as many events as possible.

I recently wrote about the new iPad released by Apple. I was amazed to find out how simple and easy it was to use. I was wondering if it can be used for online poker, too.

Upon looking for videos on the iPad I came across this toddler first encounter with an iPad. Is it really so easy to use iPad?

With the World Cup 2010 just around the corner, starting tomorrow in South Africa Unibet is getting into soccer fever with its newest promotion "World Cup 2010 Game - The Predictor game for real players". If you are a fan of soccer and have a fair idea how the teams are going to stack-up against each other then this game is for you.

Randy Lew, also known as Nanonoko has made a blog entry on his official site which features him playing a hyper turbo HU tournament. It is a quite interesting video, and could help with your gameplay, definitely worth a watch.

This summer’s soccer World Cup will be starting this Friday, 11th June in South Africa and betting offices have already made their odds official. Current European Champion Spain are once again one of the possible favourites, with 888 offering odds of 7/2 if they win the World Cup. Their scorers David Villa and Fernando Torres are said to be in excellent shape and it could pay up to 12/1 if Torres won the golden boot.

England is another favourite this year, they work with odds around 6/1 and 7/1. Rooney has had a fabulous season this year, and if he wins the golden boot, gamblers can have a winrate of 11/1 with 888. Bookmakers across England are expecting the national team to be heavily backed ahead of the World Cup, so they are bound to pay out huge sums of money if the English National Team wins the World Cup.

Brazil are available at odds of 5/1 if they manage to secure their sixth World Cup win and Italy, the current champions are at 14/1.

The soccer frenzy will start on the 11th June, with South Africa battling Mexico and the competition will come to an end on the 11th July.

Who would you place your bets on?

2+2 user Eponymous has posted the second part of his hilarious photoshop comic strip, in which we see the Full Tilt crew clash with the Cereus Network.

This comic strip is based on the hit classic, The Godfather, created by Francis Ford Coppola. Things get even more complicated with a few twists and turns in this latest edition, with Jimmy ’Gobboboy’ Fricke being the biggest loser in this brutal poker tale. Enjoy!

WSOP Academy is giving the opportunity for one lucky and talented player to take part in the WSOP Tournament of Champions (TOC): one SNG will determine who gets to participate in the one million dollar event. This event is an exclusive invitational freeroll poker tournament, usually only for WSOP champions. For several years, the TOC has been missing from the WSOP schedule. It has made its return only in recent times. It is a non-bracelet event, and the winner will receive a WSOP Trophy on top of the cash prize.

In total, 27 people are allowed to participate in this event, out of which three places are already taken by previous TOC winners (Annie Duke, Mike Matusow, Mike Sexton) one by the winner of last year’s WSOP Main Event (Joe Cada) and one by the 2009 WSOP Europe Main Event winner (Barry Schulman). Twenty of the remaining places will be left to voters and two so-called sponsored players will also take part.

Joe Cada - 2009 WSOP Main Event Champion

One player will be chosen by the WSOP Academy. They are on the hunt for someone who is not yet a WSOP champion, but have the ability to be the next one. In the end, they have chosen nine players to battle it out with a SNG on the 10th June to get that one entry into the TOC.