Poker Guru Blog

After a few heavy nights in San Diego, poker pros Antonio Esfandiari and Brian ‘tsarrast’ Rast decided in the spear of the moment to make a bet: they will not drink a single drop of alcohol until the end of the WSOP 2010. They later amended the conditions after their hangovers had passed to include six break days throughout the time, where they can binge as much as they want.

The WSOP golden bracelet owner Esfandiari and the online pro Rast are both well-known in the poker society for their party boy reputation and are both said to enjoy the company of nice girls, booze and poker. As the WSOP moves in closer, preparation for the three months dry spell began.

"On one of the days we chartered a yacht in San Diego and took a bunch of girls out to sea. We had a DJ, endless booze, it was AMAZING. I got so wrecked that I made a 3 month no drinking bet with Brian Rast starting this Monday - you know how when you get all messed up and you think to yourself what am I doing with my life?! Well...I got there and decided if I took a 3 month break from partying I could accomplish a lot more. 3 months - 30k (we both have same bet so chances are there will be no winner) and we do get 6 passes throughout - which I think is pretty reasonable. Wish me luck!" - this is what Antonio Esfandiari said about the issue in a recent blog post.

$0.50/$1  No Limit Holdem

UTG  (Hero) $100
CO  $100
BTN  $325
SB  $126
BB  $100

Pre-Flop: ($1.50, 5 players) Hero is UTG with

Hero raises to $3, 1 fold, BTN raises to $10.50, 2 folds, Hero calls $7.50

Flop: ($22.50, 2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $16, Hero calls $16

Turn: ($54.50, 2 players)

Hero checks, BTN checks

River: ($54.50, 2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $297.15, Hero?

This is a hand was played by one of my proteges. I will be commenting on the play of the hand.

North American Arms and Smith & Wesson both offering mini poker sets accompanied with revolvers are not just another ordinary item to add to your poker collection, but also can save you when things get tight on the poker table.

North American Arms who is the producer of the 22LR NAA mini revolver (check the video below) and Smith & Wesson who is well known for its model 36 revolver both show case their mini poker sets in well crafted wooden cases which also contain the mini revolvers

Unlike Las Vegas, the city of sin and lust, where anything can happen, Dubai has clamped down on tourists to abide by their strict Muslim rules. Just in recent times, these laws have come under the spotlight with hundreds of tourists striking trouble (and even jail sentences in several cases) because of their so-called improper behaviour.

The Atlantis Casino Resort in Dubai, one of the best attraction for tourists

Recently published by the British Foreign Office was an article relating to the ’Dos and Don’ts’ when traveling to Dubai, to not only make the public aware, but also bring the ever uprising problems to a halt.

Bodog Poker has been in damage control after having lost several poker pros over the years, with only three remaining by 2010: Evelyn Ng, Justin Bonomo and David Williams. Bonomo announced his retirement from Bodog Poker this January. Williams followed suit after winning the $25,500 buy-in WPT Championship. It was only Ng who remained loyal to Bodog.

In the past few weeks, Bodog Poker has been scouting new recruits with an unusual technique: making the most of the social networks by opening up nominations for the new slot to fans on Facebook and Twitter. This is how they came across Amanda Musumeci, a young and talented online tournament pro.

While the Swedish high stakes player Isildur1 had won and then lost huge amounts of money on Full Tilt Poker, a new player, XBLINK started a career on UB by building a bankroll of $800,000 out of as little as $11 in just one month. Is he a new wonder outclassing everyone or is he simply lucky? XBLINK had previously made more than 20 deposits of $500 in different poker rooms, but went bankrupt in all cases.

XBLINK registered to UB’s $11 tournament with his last dollars in November 2009, and his winnings started a fairytale-like series of success. He took the $750 he had won at this tournament to PLO and NLHE cash game tables and the next day he already had $4,000. In the next few days this sum grew to $20k - $60k, and he was already playing $25/$50, $50/$100, $100/$200 and $200/$400. XBLINK’s bankroll was $833,193 on the 11th December.

According to PokerTableRatings XBLINK’s current UB balance is $990,010 with 157,764 hands played. His winrate is 3.67BB/100.

He also joined the conversation on the 2+2 forums. Check out what he commented on the issue under the name 89blist.

The brand new Cake Poker client will soon be available for everyone, players of the Cake network will probably be able to try it out in June. A short introductional video, however, is already available for my readers in this blog post.

"We are excited to launch the private beta for our new Cake Poker client and to get some further feedback on our efforts. We are delighted at the how the client is currently operating and looking forward to being able to offer an improved online poker experience to all our players." – says Lee Jones, Head Director of the Cake Network.

Super System, written by Doyle Brunson, the grandfather of poker, would have to be as important to poker as the first television broadcast was for TV. Super System is nothing else than a milestone and, in short,  it is the Bible of Poker.

Super System was published in 1979 by Cardoza Publishing. At this time, Doyle Brunson already held the title of two-times WSOP Main Event winner (1976 and 1977). The original title of the book was ’How I Made Over $1,000,000 Playing Poker’. Of course, a lot of years have passed since 1979 and the book still had relevance to today’s gameplay, but after heavy thoughts, they decided it was best to rewrite it and give it a fresh new title ’Super System 2’, publishing it in October 2004.

I was checking one of my favourite blogs wickedchopspoker.com the other day and I run across this really hilarious video. I found it so funny that I really wanted to share it with my readers.

You have to check this old man busting out his moves at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last year.

Also worth a view if you haven’t already is my previous article and video about the oldest poker player.

For years now we have always heard and thought that electrical cars will never be able to produce as much power as a fossil fueled powered car, but this is all set to change. John Wayland the developer of the White Zombie, an electrical powered 1972 Datsun 1200 2-door sedan is busting this myth and doing it in style, challenging the v8 petrol heads on the drag strip.

The White Zombie a full electrical powered 1972 Datsun is the world record holder for the fast street legal electric vehicle and runs the 1/4 mile at an impressive 11.4 seconds @ 114 mph, which is just as fast as a 2006 v8 Chevrolet Corvette. The Datsun optimized for 1/4 mile runs, rather than range is also a proud member of the "100 mph Club".

Has it really gotten impossible to win money by playing heads up? Crazychips has started a topic at the TwoPlusTwo forums with the title ‘No Money Heads Up, Everyone is Solid’. He is mainly complaining about having played small stakes NLHE for the past four years, with barely any profit. He claims that the heads up field and player base is pretty solid, with almost no fish at all.

As always, a few members of the TwoPlusTwo community chose to react to this post in a quite creative way. I have selected some of the funniest ones. Enjoy!

This first one is a short music clip made by IheardJoeblows:

Daniel Negreanu has competed for the biggest pot in the 12th episode of Hish Stakes Poker, season 6. Although he managed to win the biggest pot, Daniel didn’t have Lady Luck on his side when facing Doyle Brunson.

Full Tilt Poker has reinforced its pro team by signing the Norwegian WSOPE champion, Annette Obrestad. Annette started playing online poker when she was 15, using the nickname Annette_15. She claims that she had never needed to deposit money to any online poker room and won her starting bankroll by playing freerolls. Her talent came to the surface very quickly: by the age of 18, her winnings reached $500,000 on PokerStars, $200,000 on UltimateBet and $136,000 on Full Tilt Poker. P5s already considered her one of the world’s best tournament players at the time. The real breakthrough for Annette came with the 2007 World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE), where she managed to win the Main Event, for which she received a dream sum of £1,000,000.

It didn’t really come as a surprise that Annette got signed with a giant online poker room, taking into consideration that she has recently turned 21, which means that for the first time in her life, Annette will be eligible to play at the WSOP (as the age limit at this tournament is 21 years).

Poker has undoubtedly grown in popularity in the past half decade, and Harrah’s, owner of the WSOP series, announced to hold two non-bracelet events this fall in South Africa. WSOP organizers have decided to expand their championship series to South Africa, organizing a WSOP Circuit Event with gold rings on offer instead of bracelets. The event will run from 24-31st October and will be held in the Emerald Resort & Casino, just a few miles from Johannesburg:

According to a survey publishded by PokerTableRatings (PTR), the smallest amount of winning players can be found at NLHE 6 max tables, so it had been said this is where we can find the most fish. The PTR website later changed its opinion once challenged.

PokerTableRatings sent out some interesting statistics to its registered members on 15th April.  The PTR site is well-known for having a huge hand history database and created a survey to determine which type of tables the winning players are usually located at. The survey took place between the 4th and 10th April and included NL50, NL100 and NL200 players’ statistics who had played more than 1000 hands in 2010. Here were the results:

PTR stated in its monthly newsletter, that 6 max is not only the most popular, but also the easiest of all types, because this is where the most fish can be found.
The survey came with great controversy and created an uproar among poker players. Users started to question if the smaller winning rate really means that it is easier to win. It also came as a surprise that the winning rate of players is averaged above 40% in all of the three cases.