Blogs

The fifth Ultimate Bet Online Championship (UBOC) will start on Cereus Network's UB and Absolute Poker on the 18th August.

With 20 online tournaments and a total prize pool of at least $4 million up for grabs, UBOC 5 will also have a MiniUBOC counterpart running simultaneously and joining in a $1,050 buy-in Monster Stack Championship Event on the 29th August.

The Championship Event will be hosted by no other than Phil Hellmuth, the Poker Brat himself. The tournament will have at least a million dollar prize pool.

Copenhagen, Denmark, is in itself an outsanding city definitely worth a visit, but a club opening next month, called 7th Heaven, gives us another reason to start packing.

In middle of Denmark’s capital, 7th Heaven is set to open next month, awaiting not only the most wealthy visitors (the entry fee will be only €25).

7th Heaven’s main profile, if all goes well, will mainly be poker and lapdancing. Dane Slim Isaksen, owner of the concept, said the following:

“I have more than 15 years of experience in running clubs and, when I got the idea with 7th Heaven, I thought that it should be a place where people could come and enjoy themselves in the right atmosphere. Something extra to offer Copenhagen and a place where you can feel a bit spoiled, and the low prices are a crucial part of the concept. The club is the first of its kind in Scandinavia.”

At the moment, the club is striving to receive a poker licence, but the games played will not necessarily have cash rewards, rather champagne or..hm…other services.

Spending my time watching videos on YouTube on the weekend, I once again realized how good and soothing it can be if all you have to do is to play poker.

At home.

The video that triggered this thread of thought in my head was this one:

These poor Japanese businessmen (and women) are hustled onto these trains several times every single day during rush hours. If someone or something doesn’t seem to fit in, the metro staff appears and helps pushing them on the already overloaded trains.

Of course, this system works with the Japanese, as they are probably the only people on this planet that are orderly enough to tolerate and control this kind of traffic, but I (because I do have a choice) would prefer working from the warmth of my home, far from the troubles of crowds and mass transportation.

And by playing poker, this is not at all impossible. Moreover, it is pretty evident that poker players don’t have to go to offices every day, which already makes it sound like the job of your dreams.

Especially if you live at a place like this one, for example (of course, this specific place is reserved for my humble self to retire to after a few happy poker years ):

Here, you will not have to worry about being pushed on trains

We still have about one month to enjoy the hot summer weather, and in this post I would like to recommend five of the coolest places to the lovers of exclusive swimming pools.

Any millionaire would look good on the side of the Neptune Pool, the outdoor swimming pool of Hearst Castle. The complex was built by William Randolph Hearst in the 1920s.

The Neptune Pool

In the case of bad weather, visitors can enjoy the equally amazing indoor pool of the castle.

Starting at 8pm EST/5pm PST /01am GMT, days 1A and 1B of the 2010 WSOP Main Event will finally be airing.

Tonight we will see the fifth and sixth episodes of the WSOP broadcasts; ESPN has covered the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship and the Tournament of Champions so far.

ESPN will be airing two episodes every Tuesday, right until 9th November, the broadcast of the Main Event Final Table.

Big names playing day 1A and 1B included Mike ‘The Mouth’ Matusow, Chris Moneymaker, Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi, Maria Ho and Tiffany Michelle.

There also will be some celebrities to be seen, including David Alan Grier, Ray Romano, the NBA star Shawn Marion and gorgeous playmate Sara Underwood.

It is pretty easy to stumble upon a millionaire in New York City, according to a recently published query reasearching the number of American millionaires.

According to Capgemini, there were 667,200 millionaires in NYC in 2009, which means that every 12th New Yorker has at least a million dollars (not including real estates)! With this, New York City has officially become the city with the most millionaires in the US, with the numbers showing an 18.7% increase compared to 2008’s results.

This growth seems to be true all around the States: On average, the number of big city millionaires has risen by 17.5%.
Second place in the top 10 is taken by Los Angeles, with 235,800 millionaires.

Check out this video interview made by PokerTube with Barry Greenstein, in which he talks about his WSOP performance (which didn’t go exactly as he would have wanted) and much more.

It is always a pleasure for me to watch interviews with Barry, as he is, in my opinion, one of the most intelligent poker players of today.

One thing that we can notice upon viewing the video is that good old Barry is truly ageing, with his hair (or at least what’s left of it) and his beard being fully white now, the Robin Hood of Poker is closer to sixty than he has ever been before.  

The Prague stop of the Unibet Open series (advertised by the beautiful host Tatjana – video below) has ended with a young Finnish poker player gaining victory, with the most well-known player Jan Skampa taking 3rd place.

424 players enrolled in the €1,500+€150 Main Event of Unibet Open Prague, making the total prize pool a nice €629,640.

The biggest names registering to the tournament included Sorel Mizzi, Jan Skampa, Pieter de Kover, Peter Dalhuijsen, Dan Glimne, Sergey Rybachenko, Zdenek Habala, Jordan Mitrentzova, the Golden Sands winner Dan Murariu and last year’s winner Fuat Caan.

CardRunners video pro Lee Przytula has made this funny little video, wittily introducing online poker and the benefits of the Internet (Google in particular) in less than two minutes.

Check out this video made by CardPlayer TV, in which Full Tilt Poker high stakes poker professional Brian ‘Stinger’ Hastings shares his insight on value betting and pot control in tournaments.

PokerGuruBlog joined forces with PokerStars to organize an exclusive poker freeroll.

Tournament name: PokerGuruBlog Facebook Freeroll
Date: August 15th, 2010
Time: 21:00 CET
Prize pool: $100
Tournament ID: 295934272

The tournament is password protected. The password will be sent out to PokerGuruBlog's Facebook fans, so do not miss to join my fan page.

The PokerGuruBlog Facebook Freeroll couldn’t be easier to find in the PokerStars lobby. Simply select ‘Tourney’ then the ‘Private’ tab to find it. The tourney is already listed in the client.

Although the All Star Week brought shame on the PokerStars Pros, Randy ‘nanonoko’ Lew managed to defeat his opponent. Below, you can view his match against Brezi26, with his own commentary.

As I have written in a previous post, PokerStars has organized the yearly All Star Week between 26th July and 1st August, during which Team PokerStars Pro members faced the best non-pro online players (Challengers) at PokerStars, and lost 24-11 to the Challengers.

Nanonoko did his job, though, and posted this video for us to enjoy and learn.

PartyGaming has officially announced to have produced a 30% increase in revenue in the first half of 2010 to €181.2 million, compared to last year’s €139.9 million.

PartyGaming’s statement says the growth is due to “acquisitions and strong growth in casino and sports betting”.

After merging with Bwin to become the largest listed online gaming company in the world, PartyGaming had to cover serious marketing expenditures. Also, the company bought the bingo operator Cashcade, and these meant that earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) only rose 14%.

Liv Boeree, one of the most promising young female poker players, has officially left her former sponsor, UB. Liv is now a free agent worth a lot, and she will probably receive countless offers soon.

On the 8th July, some started talking about Liv leaving UB, because she did not wear any branded clothing when playing in the WSOP Main Event. Also, she was missing from the player lists of official UB press releases.
On UB’s main site, all data on Liv Boeree has been deleted, including her photos and blog entries.

In the beginning of July, rumors started spreading that Liv and UB would part ways, but back then, a UB spokesman told the media that they were not parting, just renegotiating.

Following the current and upcoming changes in online gambling regulations in the United States, many sites have been worrying about an amendment, made by Mr. Bachus and Mrs. Bachmann, stating, that any operator offering services to US citizens after the passage of UIGEA will be excluded from online gambling in the future.

As both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars have been consistently operating in the United States, they would have to be denied a licence.

Congressman Barney Frank (the author of the bill), however, said this week that PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and other sites that had not ceased to welcome US players might receive licenses as well.