Poker Guru's blog

Daniel ’jungleman12’ Cates, a specialist of online NLHE heads-ups, has recently released a training video through CardRunners. He is playing six $25/$50 NLHE HU games and is providing us with analysis of his play. Check out this short edition of the video made available on YouTube.

Jungleman12 is reportedly to take the ‘durrrr challenge’ after being asked by Dwan after a NLHE high stakes heads-up game. Though hesitating a bit then, recently he announced on 2+2 that he was probably to play the 50,000 hands with durrrr. This means the first two on the 2010 high stakes profit list would duel which indeed sounds exciting.

The World Poker Tour Event #23, the ‘Legends of Poker’ NLHE Championship takes place between 20-25 August in The Bicycle Casino LA, CA.

With hundreds of players expected, including several of the biggest names of the poker world, the event Day1 has two parts, 1A and 1B. Even with a buy-in twice as high as this time, 279 players participated last year, so the 2010 $5000 championship is likely to attract even more entrants.

In 2009, Prahlad Friedman won the prestigious event that had a prizepool of $2,650,000, from which over $1 million went to Friedman. He defeated Kevin Schaffel, 2009 WSOP November Niner, in the heads-up phase after playing 127 hands at the final table in total.

Check out the WPT Legends of Poker 2010 schedule here.

ESPN has already released the schedule for the 2010 WSOP broadcast, which begins today, 27 July, with the Players Championship. Two more of the biggest events are to follow later.

116 players participated in the $50,000 PC for the $5,568,000 prizepool, with Michael Mizrachi eventually winning the event and a handsome $1,559,046. Next up is the Tournament Champions (airing on 3 August), followed by the Main Event a week later. On every Tuesday you will get your dose of the top poker event of the world up until 9 November, when the Main Event Final Table is broadcast.

See the full schedule:

Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc., owner of the biggest casino network in Las Vegas and also the WSOP brand, has recently been relegated by Moody’s Investors Service.

Harrah’s is in private ownership, purchased two years ago by Apollo Management and TPG Capital for $27 billion. Now it is deep in debt but, according to Moody’s, “management seems more interested in jump-starting growth initiatives than in reducing debt.” They rather keep investing into new assets in hope of offsetting their deficit.

November Nine chip leader Jonathan Duhamel is pretty confident that he is going to win the finale, according to what he told CardPlayer.com.

“I’m going to win, 100 percent. I’m the best. I’m going to play the best poker game I’ve ever played and win that thing,” he said. Indeed, the odds are in his favour, but can he cope with that pressure? He certainly believes so: “I like that pressure. I live on pressure.”

Jonathan Duhamel in EPT Prague

With satellite events available from as early as 2 August, The PokerStars Macau Millions takes place at Casino Grand Lisboa between 4-8 August. Its ‘main event’, the Macau Millions HKD $1,000,000 Guarantee is set to break a number of Asian records.

The HKD $2,200 event with a HKD $1,000,000 prize pool is “expected to be the biggest poker field ever in Asia,” according to PokerStars News. It has five Day1s with 7% of the players each day qualifying for the Day2 final and a guaranteed cash prize. In case you were eliminated during Day1, you were allowed to enter another, if there are any left.

Boxing legend Evander Holyfield, former heavyweight pro world champion, is taking part in the London Poker Festival, more specifically, in the ’Poker in the Park’ event on 2-3 September.

Evander Holyfield

One of the leading news in the poker world is the debate on HR 2267. As noted before, Congress also heard poker pro and WSOP bracelet winner Annie Duke on the matter, representing Poker Players Alliance.

Annie Duke

Duke stated before the House Financial Services Committee: "At its most basic level, the issue before this committee is personal freedom, the right of individual Americans to do what they want in the privacy of their homes without the intrusion of the government."

Considering the results of the hearings on the matter, a subcommittee will propose changes to the bill on 27 July, before it is referred to the House of Representatives. The bill must pass before the end of 2010 or it needs to be reintroduced. “This mark up demonstrates that Congress is serious about moving Chairman Frank’s bill forward and establishing a strict regulatory framework for Internet gambling activity,” Michael Waxman from Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative remarked.

PokerStars announced the PS Lamborghini Freeroll where anyone can win their own Lamborghini Gallardo, not to mention the total prize pool of over $1,000,000.

PokerStars organises 24 freeroll qualifiers and $1,10 and $11 cash satellites daily with $100,000 pool weekly finals to qualify for. The Gallardo and $250,000 cash waits for the winners of the Grand Finale in October.

PokerStars welcomes newcomers and hardliner sharks as well in the tournament. The freeroll and cash qualifiers are just starting this Sunday; check the schedule below.

Paul the Octopus, resident of the Sea Life Aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, predicted the outcome of eight matches in a row during the FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa. Now, he is given honorary citizenship of Carballino, Spain, as well as the title “Best Friend of the City” and a Spanish national jersey.

Paul, the Prophet Octopus, receiving honours

In a radio interview for TapouT, Ultimate Fighting Championship speaker Bruce Buffer said Phil Ivey had more than $100 million and Tom ’durrrr’ Dwan had over $50 million net. As he is a close friend to several poker pros, I believe we can safely rely on his intel. Here is the 2+2 discussion on the topic, if you want to join in.

Bruce Buffer

Buffer, in addition to his career as a renowned speaker, is a big fan of poker and even has two WSOP and another two WPT ITM finishes, worth $147,023 in total. Since Ivey won $17,673,260 online and $13,545,959 in live tournaments in the past three years only, excluding any possible contracts, cash game winnings and investments, the figures can easily be valid. Durrrr, in the same period, earned $4,626,417 in FTP cash games and $1,583,502 live.

Eponymus’ Photoshop comic strip ‘The Godfather of Online Poker’ continues with Part IV, in which Patrik Corleone plans to take out Sebozzo. It’s nothing personal, of course, just poker…

Here is a video from PokerTube showing one of the occasional cases when a PokerStars table crashes. In this particular case, all players except one are frozen out.

Definitely awkward, and there is really not much to be done, except what ’shaftamasta’, from PokerTube commented: “Copy the tournament number and send a message to support. Tell them you were frozen out of the tourney and they will look into the hand histories of the tourney that you are complaining about. The only thing they can do is refund your buy in, but if it happens in a later stage of a match where dollar figures are involved, then they have to look at your position at the time of disconnection.”

If you happen to have come across a similar situation, I suggest you take shaftamasta’s advice; simple as it is, this might well be the best course of action. To see all the comments in full length, visit the discussion forum of the video here.

An ingenious promotional video of the ESPN broadcast of the WSOP 2010. You can learn that Hellmuth can still dodge bullets and that it might be a bad idea to suck out on Sasquatch.  

Barney Frank’s resolution on legalising online poker, HR2267, is now being discussed in the US Congress. The first debate was on 21 July, decision is expected in late August.

The resolution aims to eliminate the status of poker as banned online gambling and establish it a legalised, taxed game. A controversial matter on its own, the debate was further heated by the remarks of the republican Spencer Bachus.

Spencer Bachus