Poker Articles

In much of 2010, Viktor ’Isildur1’ Blom performed poorly to say the least at the online tables, unable to repeat his breakthrough results of 2009. I wouldn’t go as far as to state 2011 might be his comeback year, but he has been doing very convincingly in the past couple of days. He currently has over $600,000 in profit, won from the likes of Phil Galfond, Ashton Griffin and Mike Gordon.

Viktor 'Isildur1' Blom

As you probably know, Blom won the third SuperStar Showdown against Daniel ‘jungleman12’ Cates, last year’s biggest online high stakes winner. The 2500 hands heads-up game left Isildur1 with a profit of $51,196. Ever since, he is unstoppable: in just a matter of days, he earned over $600,000.

Although not as successful as Annie Duke or Liv Boeree yet, Taiwan-born 27-year-old Maria Ho is a renowned female poker player, boasting eight WSOP and two WPT in the money finishes. In 2007, she finished 38th in the WSOP Main Event, winning $237,865, which is her greatest achievement so far.

Maria Ho

Despite her youth, she is considered an experienced poker player and as such, it is little wonder she has a firm opinion about the scandal of this year’s WSOP Ladies Event: six male players, including Shaun Deeb and David ‘Blue Knight1’ Sesso, have entered the game, disregarding the organisers’ explicit request. They stated that poker is not something in which there is room for “segregation” as it suggests that women cannot possibly match men in terms of skill or knowledge, etc.

Many poker players use Moneybookers (MB) to transfer money to and from poker rooms, in addition to a variety of other financial transactions. Some are, however, afraid of creating a MB account, out of fear from hacker attacks, which I can understand. With the Security Token (ST), however, these attempts can be neutralized.

The token is a small gadget to enhance the security of your MB account. In essence, it “generates unique, one-time passwords to increase the security upon login to your Moneybookers account.” In every 32 seconds, it produces a new entry code which is to be given after the usual process when logging in. To see the code, you need to push the small button on the token, so that it is displayed for 10 seconds.

Texas Dolly keeps discussing interesting topics: after dealing on his blog with the nominees for the Poker Hall of Fame, now he asked the following (somewhat controversial) questions to his followers on Twitter: “Which poker player would you like to have sex with?” “Poker player u would like to kill?” “Which poker player would you most like to hang out with?”

Texas Dolly's followers voted the female players they would like to have sex with: Shannon Elizabeth, Vanessa Rousso and Jennifer Tilly

After a longer break, Doyle Brunson is back posting on his blog. His latest entry deals with the nominees of the upcoming Poker Hall of Fame ballot. Taking place on 7th November, the induction of two new members into the Hall is going to be one of the 2010 WSOP Finale shows.

Brunson gives us his insightful opinion on the nominees, one by one, and makes it clear he would prefer Erik Seidel to be one of the inductees, the other being either Barry Greenstein or Phil Ivey. He addresses all of the ten as his friends and doesn’t fear to be honest about them. Daniel Negreanu, for instance, he considers too young to be inducted yet, similarly to Jennifer Harman-Traniello, while he states Chris Ferguson, although strong in three of the five criteria, doesn’t meet the other two at all.

Tom 'durrrr' Dwan was playing high-stakes PL Omaha recently at Full Tilt tables, and while he was winning a lot of money, he had interesting chats as well from which I present you the 2 best.

He played against Jared 'harrington25' Bleznick, pro poker player from NY, and after playing this hand, he got upset at durrrr saying there was something "weird" about his call on the river, as he might have cheated in some way. Durrrr of course makes fun of Bleznick who says he's going to show the hand to his friends to see what they say.

An extraordinary hand was dealt at Full Tilt Poker's $40/$80 NLHE 6-max table, where 'Sauce1234' and 'AAROOKIE' played one of the most interesting parties ever. Even Phil Galfond, experienced pro commented on his twitter this was "One of the coolest HHs I've seen in a while".

Ben 'Sauce1234' Sulsky started out with $33,739 while AAROOKIE had $42,479. Two players folded, then KidPoker705 raised to $178 from the button. This is where it started to become interesting:

Sauce1234 (sb) raises to $680
AAROOKIE (bb) raises to $1,840
KidPoker705 folds
Sauce1234 raises to $5,127
AAROOKIE raises to $9,055
Sauce1234 calls

Have you ever though about what happens to the poker pros that stop playing?

Well, some of them obviously go on living average lives, or go broke and live worse-than-average ones. Others continue grinding under secret nicknames, or just find other activities to do. Former Full Tilt Poker sponsored player Thomas Wahlroos decided to try himself out in investing after closing the poker chapter in his life.

According to a Norwegian newspaper Dagens Näringsliv, Wahlroos has made a massive $15 million through his and his father’s investing company. And that is only the last year. Wahlroos has a degree in financing, but before his investing adventures, he was a professional poker player who made more than a million dollars in live tournaments, finishing 3rd at the EPT Paris in 2006, and 7th at the WPT Championship in 2007.

Wahlroos ended his poker life in 2008, when he decided to go into investing. He still plays poker as a hobby, and sometimes he can be found on Full Tilt under the nick ’susisisu’.

The video below was made when Thomas eliminated Phil Hellmuth, who immediately started his usual ranting, of course. 

59-year-old Ron Wall is a very popular person in the Las Vegas poker rooms: the well-known poker player basically got stuck in the ‘50s, and cruises between casinos dressed up as a gangster from that time. The whole thing, of course, is just a joke mixed with a bit less common sense, as the guy called ‘Duke’ never hurts anyone.

Somebody, however, thought the guy’s time on Earth had expired and tried to finish with him. Thirty-year-old Edmond Price and girlfriend Victoria Elizabeth Edelman cheated Duke into a hotel room with the promise of selling him gold, and Wall happily went with them, as, according to him, he had several successful deals with them in the past. This time, though, the business did not go down smooth. Both Edmond and Elizabeth instantly started hitting Duke when he entered the room. They wanted to take hold of the $137,000 that was in Duke’s bag.

But the old man did not obey easily. He knew that if he had abandoned fighting, he would have been killed and hidden somewhere in the desert. But the couple was stronger, grabbed the money and left the room. Duke was left there bound by ropes in the room, but somehow he managed to free himself and call the police.

They soon caught the two robbers, who – as it later turned out – were already sought after by the police for some time.

The storm that was caused by Daniel Negrenau’s recent statement about Annie Duke doesn’t seem to calm. The Canadian poker pro expressed his views in a less elegant fashion in an interview. However, the scandal has not came out of thin air, they have been hating each other for nearly a decade now.

Daniel Negreanu insulted Annie Duke in his interview given to PokerPlayer magazine, while he was evaluating the results of the WSOP Ladies event. His rant is still the object of debates and discussions, even though their dislike of each other is well known in the poker scene.

Their disagreement can be traced back to the early 90’s, but it has become apparent 7 years ago, when Negreanu posted a list of the reasons why he dislikes Duke. It contains 7 short stories, here’s one as an example:

“Annie habitually leans over to look at the cards of the person sitting beside her in a game, whether they like it or not. Well one day one of the players was fed up with her sweating her neighbor's hole cards and he spoke up about it. She obliged saying, "Ok, I won't look anymore." Not an hour later, a triple draw hand comes up, and she is caught red handed looking at her neighbor's hole cards again.  This time the player objected furiously, "I told you to stop looking at your neighbor's cards!" To which she replies, "I SWEAR ON MY CHILDREN I WASN'T". This was an absolute lie. She saw EXACTLY what card her neighbor got and ANNOUNCED the hand before it was turned over, also saying something to the effect of, "Oh you would have made it anyway."

When it finally comes to HR 2267 being signed into law, leading online rooms Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars will not be granted licences in the regulated US market, says Bwin co-CEO Norbert Teufelberger. If they are, then it was Bwin’s greatest mistake ever to withdraw after the UIGEA in 2006, he admits.

Bwin co-CEO Norbert Teufelberger

Since the two companies continued to provide services for US citizens after 2006, many consider them to be currently operating illegally and thus they will be “frozen out, should the market regulate.” Teufelberger shares this view and also states that they are the only ones stronger than Bwin, due to the “hundreds of millions of dollars” they have from their illegal operations.

Considering one of the amendments to the bill enables the refusal of licensing rooms that are known to have violated US law beforehand, he might well be right. About the possible outcomes, he is uncertain, though: “I cannot imagine that a company which in the view of the Department of Justice and several state licensing authorities in the US, that acts illegally, will be able or qualify to get a licence. In my view this will be absolutely impossible. What does that mean in the end? I don’t know. They may be prosecuted, they may not be prosecuted.”

I have written before on the collusion scandal at PokerStars: China-based players worked together at the online rooms’ Double or Nothing Sit & Go tables with buy-ins from $52 to $108. PokerNewsDaily.com dug up the story but they don’t seem to be able to uncover much more details.

The scandal started with poster ‘Jane0123’ complaining on 2+2 about their account frozen and eventually closed earlier this year. PokerStars informed them that “In reviewing hands it is clear that you routinely made team plays to create situations where you were supposed to benefit. You and your friends routinely played four and five players deep, and squeezed the blinds between two or more cooperating players. After reviewing several hands, for several players, it became obvious that this was part of some kind of agreed-upon strategy.” PS suspects that about 46 other Hangzhou-based players are involved. Formerly about $500,000, the pool for the compensation of the victim players now exceed $2 million, but they still remain unsatisfied and matters are even worse as the investigation is taking all too long.

From 1st January 2007 to 14th August 2010 Gus ’Great Dane’ Hansen experienced rise and fall in his Full Tilt Poker bankroll several times, but to date he is in a $7,753,624 minus overall. As far as individual accounts are concerned, he is currently ’leading’ with his losses, although Cirque du Soleil owner Guy Laliberté possesses the accounts placed 2nd to 5th on the list, accumulating an astonishing total of $23,845,229 in loss.

Gus Hansen

Erik J. Schlicht, a postdoctoral Harvard University student, has recently conducted a scientific research showing that poker face, as we know it, doesn’t really work.

A poker face?

In his research paper entitled 'Human wagering behavior depends on opponents' faces’, Schlicht presents his findings about novice players playing HE after being tested of their knowledge of poker. Based on their hands and a picture of the opponent facing them, they had to decide whether to call (winning or losing 5,000) or fold (losing 100 chips). The results of the experiment showed that neutral or threatening expressions did not affect decision-making, while friendly smiles discouraged the test subjects and their decisions were of reduced optimality.

Schlicht concluded that

"mistakes against trustworthy opponents resulted from increased loss aversion, suggesting that participants believed trustworthy opponents were betting with hands of greater value than neutral and untrustworthy opponents."

Technical inventions are long proved inevitable in order to develop and progress in every field of life and poker is not an exception. To make tournament broadcasts even more exciting, the hole card cams were introduced in the late 1990’s, and now here is the latest revolution: All 360 Media’s 11-lenses camera system.