Poker Guru Blog

The two-time WSOP champion Michael ’The Grinder’ Mizrachi has gotten himself in serious financial trouble. Despite his $7,000,000 career winnings, even his house is getting sold by auction.

Michael 'The Grinder' Mizrachi

Full Tilt Poker has now signed a contract with one of the most talented players of the new poker generation, the 22 years old Andrew ’luckychewy’ Lichtenberger. Lichtenberger, born in New York, gained reputation as an online cash game player, and this year he was already a regular threat at the Full Tilt Poker high stakes tables. His current earnings exceed $602,094, which secure him the 19th place on the poker room’s yearly profit leaderboard.

What a year it has been for the Finnish high stakes poker professional Patrik Antonius. Not many of us could say we would have kept our cool and to continue playing after having a rough downswing period as Patrik went through. At the start of the year he was like a skinning ship and nothing was working out right for him.

With over $3 million dollars down Patrik was in trouble but with his strong perseverance he managed to turn this around and even post a small profit in just two months.

In this month’s issue of CardPlayer magazine there is an in-depth interview with Patrik Antonius where you can read about these pass couple of months and his future outlooks to getting back on track. Patrik also talks about ways to relieve your stress and the top competition out there he faces.

Steve Jobs, one of the biggest IT gurus of our time, showcased and released a new product for his company Apple this January. The iPad, the bigger brother to the iPod, could not only have a positive effect on Apple’s sales, but maybe also on online poker.

Is Steve Jobs ready to give up Apple and begin a poker career?

Basically, the iPad is a bigger and better performing iPod and considering this it makes it a prime launch tool for online poker. The screen has a dimension of 9.7 inches and supports the resolution of 1024x768, about the same as a reasonable price netbook. But where the iPad comes out stronger is with its sleek and ultra-thin design, as well as touch capabilities.

The GT-R produced by Nissan was first released in Japan on December 6, 2007 and it wasn’t until March of 2009 that it arrived on the shore lines of the rest of the world. The Nissans GT-R also known as the Godzilla is truly an engineering master piece designed from the ground up. Either it be, form it sleek aero dynamic design, to its intelligent computer system with launch control, everything about this car reeks of Supercar status.

Editors of the American Bleacher Report put together on a yearly basis the top 30 hottest female poker stars for the year. The new list has just been published a couple of days ago and, as usual, holds a few surprises. Editors of the Bleacher Report mainly judged the contendents by their looks and didn’t disqualify entrance into the list even if the only connection to poker the ladies hold is that they know which card is which. Some of the big names in the game also made is to the top 30, and a few pros even managed to secure a place in the top 10.

30th position was taken by the wife of the American WPT winner Michael Mizrachi. Lily ’Mrs Grinder’ Elviro’s best result came in 2005, when she took 27th place in the WPT World Poker Challenge. Her total live career winnings equate to $67,018 with seven money finishes.

Lily Elviro

Just in recent times the popular online poker training site CardRunners has had it designers give it a makeover. Launched in 13th of July 2005 the site now is home for over 88,000 members and is considered one of the most known and popular poker coaching sites. Since 2005 the site has undergone numerous cosmetic and internal changes to help improve its usability and appeal. It has definitely come a long way for its first basic released design and with its recent changes, it shows us that CardRunners will like to keep growing forward by keeping up with the demands of its ever increasing customer base.

CardRunners look like this when is was launched (July 13, 2005)

After successfully launching BlueFirePoker, Phil ’OMGClayAiken’ Galfond is now looking to start another site, named Poker Static. This new site will be the main rival to compete against the popular PokerRoad.

Galfond and Bill Murphy started BlueFirePoker in 2009, which is a portal that offers tutoring services. Thanks to the wonderful crew members the site became a huge success in a short period of time.

This one success story wasn’t enough for OMGClayAiken, now he seeks to endeavour into the poker media by launching the new site Poker Static this Monday.

What does the term ’floating’ exactly mean? Floating, or ’float play’ is usually the weapon of choice for the more experienced poker player. The players who are aware when to raise preflop with AA (always ) and know what situation calls for the use of the c-bet are classified in this group and will make the most of float play.

With the Moneybookers MasterCard, you can can access your Moneybookers account funds anywhere at any time, either it be from an ATM or a direct purchase. Anyone who is over 18 and resides within the EU and has a verified Moneybookers account can request this unique MasterCard. The card can be used at more than 1 million ATMs around the world and more than 28.5 million shops and restaurants. The daily limit is €250 for money withdrawals and €1000 for purchases.

Full Tilt Poker has officially become the sponsor for the new F1 team Virgin Racing with their new logo being displayed on Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi’s cars.

The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) announced on the 19th June 2009 that Nick Wirth and his team have been given the green light to join Formula 1 in 2010. Full Tilt Poker has had strong relationships with the British team from the start, but it has only been in recent times that they secured an official sponsorship deal.

In the finale of High Stakes Poker Season 6, there were a lot of interesting hands with an abundance of action in the Golden Nugget. We saw durrrr and ElkY clash head-to-head and Lex Veldhuis win a $185,900 pot with a pair of twos.

In this last episode of HSP, Tom "durrrr" Dwan, Daniel Negreanu, David Benyamine, Phil "OMGClayAiken" Galfond, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Doyle Brunson and Lex Veldhuis were the ones that brought us the action this time around.

Check out Victor Blom’s flat in Sweden. A TwoPlusTwo member published here the following pics he got of Viktor Blom came from Facebook. He claims that Victor Blom, who is said to be Isildur1 lives in this apartment with some other guys.

There is not too much furniture in it at the moment, but it is really big and bright. I think they have just moved in. Anyway, I dont think it would be a hassle to get some furniture quickly considering he is in Sweden, where IKEA was founded. A good thing about having not too much furniture at the moment is that at least it is easy to clean up after a party.

COED Magazine recently made a compilation of the top 50 women on the web, measured by the number of results returned by Google. Many will be surprised, but not astonished, that Lady Gaga grabbed the number one spot, beating likes of Beyoncé, Madonna, Oprah, Britney Spears and even Hillary Clinton.

Success came to Lady Gaga with the popular single Poker Face, which dominated the music charts around the globe for weeks at end. Other main factors that could have led to her claiming this title is that she is a highly talented singer, and also has a lot of controversy surrounding her, either it be from the outrageous outfits she presents herself in, to the question of her sex gender.

PokerTableRatings has just recently made the public aware of a security gap in the Cereus Poker Network software. They have also advised players not to use the software until a solution to the problem is found. PokerTableRatings has found a critical error in the Cereus software which compromises your security. This error occurs in popular and heavily trafficked Cereus poker rooms such as Absolute Poker and UB. This security gap makes it possible for the average hacker  to access our user accounts and view the opponents’ hole cards in real time. With over tens of thousands of users per day, the Cereus truly needs to adress this problem as soon as possible.

...or not

The main core of the problem stands from Cereus neglecting the use of the foolproof SSL encryption technique and instead deciding to stick with their individually developed software. Cereus has developed their own security software by using XOR instead of SSL, which provides a much weaker shield of protection. In truth, this is not even encryption, only encoding, which can be easily decoded with the help of a Windows or Linux computer and a simple calculator. The easiest point of attack to break into the Cereus Poker Network's rooms is to identify the victim’s internet connection. If you are using a public wirless connection, a hacked wireless system or even connect via direct cable,  you will be easy prey for hackers.

PTR has also provided a demonstration video in which they use cheap hardware and their own wireless network to break into the Cereus Poker Network database to show you how easily it can be done. They were able to log into other players’ poker accounts and see their hole cards in real time.