Poker Guru Blog

Apparently, Daniel Negreanu has not yet gotten over what happened in the EPT Barcelona High Roller event earlier this year. In his latest video blog, he is once again ranting on Rule #29.

You may remember Daniel Negreanu’s outrage over the enforcement of TDA Rule #29 during this year’s EPT Barcelona €10,000 High Roller event, as well as his self-inflicted elimination from the event. The PokerStars Pro went completely mad over the implementation of the Tournament Directors Association’s “first card off the deck” rule, which he found unfair.

On Monday, the third session of the challenge between Douglas ‘WCGRider’ Polk and Ben ‘Sauce’ Sulsky was played down. For the first time, Sulsky walked away with winnings.

In the first two sessions of the high stakes heads-up challenge between Douglas ‘WCGRider’ Polk and Ben ‘Sauce’ Sulsky, the former built a major edge, winning $227,000 in their first and $167,000 in the second game, in a total of 3,810 hands from the 15,000 planned in total. The third session took place on Monday with 2,232 hands at the special $100/$200 NLHE HU challenge tables at Full Tilt Poker.

Heads-up ace Dan ‘MrGR33N13’ Colman has been playing his A-game at the WCOOP as well: he won the NLHE High Roller Heads-Up event for $172,500, besting a field of the very best players around.

Dan ‘MrGR33N13’ Colman

This September, Dan ‘MrGR33N13’ Colman has booked an extraordinary record, profiting a yearly $1,000,000 without rakeback at PokerStars. Previously, no hyper-turbo SNG player achieved that in a single calendar year and Colman only needed eight months for the achievement. On Sunday, the US player further increased his winnings as well as his reputation by taking down WCOOP Event #44 $10,300 NLHE High Roller Heads-Up event.

For the fourth time, the annual British Poker Awards ceremony is organized by Bluff Europe and PokerStars. Voting is now open and readers can vote for the nominees in 13 out of the 17 categories.

Nominees have been announced and voting is now open for the British Poker Awards 2014. For the fourth time, Bluff Europe, in partnership with PokerStars, is giving out awards to British and international personalities of poker, in a total of 17 categories. Readers get to make their voices heard in the following categories: Best Live Tournament Player, Best Online Tournament Player, Best Online Cash Player, Performance of the Year, Best UK Tournament, Poker Personality of the Year, Best International Player, Best Blogger, Best Social Media User, Best Poker League, Best Live Card Room and Best Poker Training Site.

Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom kicked off the month with about $1.5 million in profits, only to face a huge downswing and drop to only $309,000 in annual winnings.

Full Tilt Poker Pro Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom is by far the most active online high stakes player around with 315,573 hands played this year. This is almost three times the hands runner-up ‘davin77’ has played (127,634). Still, due to his incredible variance, Blom cannot be considered a definite winner, as he is just as able to climb to the top of the money list in a couple of sessions as he is to lose the majority of his profits in the same amount of time. Still, such a downswing Blom has just recently run into had long since eluded him.

According to Russian players, open DNS servers still make it available to access the market leading poker site.

As of 20 September, Russian players who have contracts with one of the largest internet providers in the country, Beeline, cannot access the PokerStars.com domain. They are confronted with the message upon trying to enter the site: “Access to the requested resource has been blocked by the decision of public authorities.” The PokerStars.com domain has been officially blacklisted by Beeline.ru. According to the provider, it is required of them to block access to sites that offer banned information or services.

Carlos Hernandez, recently appointed head of the Spanish online gambling regulator body (DGOJ) has announced that his aim was to rejoin the regulated market with the international field.

Next year, Spain aims to return to the .com online poker market. In an interview with the Spanish Poker Red magazine, the recently appointed head of the domestic online gambling regulator body DGOJ, Carlos Hernandez announced that he intendws to rejoin the country with the international online poker market by mid-2014.

Of all the public faces of Full Tilt Poker, Phil Ivey and Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan are performing well short of their pre-Black Friday high stakes levels. Meanwhile, Patrik Antonius continues exactly where he left off.

Full Tilt Poker has basically always been considered a haven for online high stakes poker, with the best cash game players usually collecting dollars in this room. Before the Black Friday, FTP pros used to make up the majority of the elite of high stakes poker and even among them, Phil Ivey, Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan and Patrik Antonius were considered the best.

Douglas ‘WCGRider’ Polk won the second session of the $100,000 heads-up challenge against Ben ‘Sauce’ Sulsky, increasing his profits to a total of almost $400,000.

On 15 September, the 15,000 hands $100/$200 NLHE heads-up challenge between Douglas ‘WCGRider’ Polk and Ben ‘Sauce’ Sulsky kicked off. The duel will last 15,000 hands and the winner gets $100,000 from the loser, in addition to his profits. The first session took place last Sunday and ‘WCGRider’ walked away with $226,716 in profits.

On Wednesday, the two pros sat down to the tables again for a 1,350 hands session to complete around 25% of the challenge in total. ‘WCGRider’ emerged victorious once again, winning $169,942.

World Series of Poker 2012 Main Event champion Greg Merson has announced that if PokerStars remains inactive against seat scripting, he abandons the room’s tables.

Ever since the concept of November Nine has been introduced, that is, a several months break is held between the end of the rest of the WSOP and the Main Event Final Table, the final nine has been subject to countless interviews, profile reviews and news to boost interest in the greatest finale of the year. Participants tend to express their commitment to be worthy ambassadors of poker, popularizing the game and helping it improve.

The dismissed rumours of Google purchasing bwin.party aside, it is worth taking a look at what online gaming owes to search engine and online industry giant Google.

When rumours emerged that Google might be about to purchase the shares of bwin.party, people started speculating as the search engine company had no previous known affiliation with online gambling whatsoever; in fact, they have recently applied very strict policies regarding real money gaming software distributed via their Play store for the mobile devices. While the news turned out to be false, it is indeed worth taking a look at Google’s role in the industry.

Amir Lehavot starts the World Series of Poker (WSOP) 2013 Main Event Final table in runner-up position to the chiplead. He is now selling equity for his November action and the community is split over the offer.

Tournament players selling percentage of their actions happens all the time, so that they can reduce variance and secure themselves a chance to buy in to higher stakes tourneys, which would otherwise be off the table for them for bankroll management purposes. Even leading pros tend to sell percentage for their EPT, WPT and WSOP performances.

While selling percentage, therefore, is of little surprise, it is rare indeed for a WSOP Main Event November Nine player to offer equity for his Final Table action. This year’s runner-up chipleader Amir Lehavot did just that, announcing via the 2+2 forum that he opens up 30% of his WSOP Main Event Final Table action:

After taking legal action against the Crockfords Casino of London, the establishment withholding his £7.8 million in winnings, poker legend Phil Ivey has now admitted that he had indeed been able to exploit a design flaw of the cards in his baccarat game. Still, he denies cheating.

Last year, Ivey enjoyed the hospitality of the prestigious Crockfords Casino in London, playing Punto Banco on the £50,000 stakes. After being allowed to raise the bet per hand limit to £150,000, he played for two consecutive nights and ended up with £7.8 million in winnings from the baccarat game. After getting back his buy-in, Ivey received a receipt for his winnings but got eventually notified of a pending investigation against him, being under suspicion of collusion.

The International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT) Wembley ran with a €589,000 overlay. In October, organizers make sure not to lose so much on the next stop of the series.

As originally designed by Groupe Tapie, the first ever ISPT event at the Wembley Stadium should have been the biggest live tournament ever with 30,000 participants and a $30 million guaranteed prize pool. However, the idea of “guaranteed” prize pool was handled somewhat freely, first dropping it to €20 million and then eliminating it altogether. Eventually, €1,000,000 was offered for the winner of the tournament.

Antonio Esfandiari, Brian Rast, Sorel Mizzi and John Tabatabai visit Burning Man 2013 and post photos.

For the 27th time, the Burning Man festival was held this year in the Black Rock desert in Nevada, USA. The festival is nothing like the usual, multi-day parties, lacking organized concerts, food and liquor retailers and so on. The single purpose of Burning Man is radical self expression and self-sustainment.

The tens of thousands of participants build an entire city from scratch and live there without rules and restrictions, among surreal buildings and art pieces. Of course, there is party as well, only it is whatever participants are organizing.