Poker Guru Blog

Railbirds definitely had something to entertain them today, as Viktor 'Isildur1' Blom and Daniel 'w00ki3z' Cates sat down for some serious $25/$50 PLO action at PokerStars.

Cates (known as Jungleman12 at other sites) started the session pretty unluckily, and Blom was alredy up around $300K after only 700 hands. Although Daniel did manage to come close to even three times, this didn't change the final results: Isildur1 closed with an astonishing $343K profit. 

Viktor 'Isildur1' Blom

Gameplay was very-very aggressive, which was one of the factors that made one of the largest $25/$50 PLO sessions in history. 3-bets were the most common occurrence preflop, but we could also see the two daredevils shoving all-in several times, before seeing the flop. 

Blom and Cates played a total of 2085 hands, and the battle ended with Isildur1 winning $343,000, which, added to his previous winnings, makes his 2011 profit $454,000.

I am eagerly waiting for a rematch, and I will make sure to have you guys informed the moment this happens. 

Las Vegas casinos are facing quite bad days, it seems many robbers are into chip stealing nowadays, which is quite understandable, since nobody stops them in doing so. Piece of cake. Last time it was the Bellagio in December, and now Rio Casino took the hit by a 40-year old white man wearing a moustache, who took $35,000 worth of chips waving a gun off the tables.

The Rio Casino

As I posted it last year, an armed robber wearing biker gear took $1,5 in chips from the Bellagio's Craps tables in Las Vegas. Police arrested him in February and identified him as Anthony Assad, son of George Assad, Municipal Court Judge of Las Vegas. Casino robberies are becoming more and more popular these days...

8 News Now Las Vegas wrote about the incident yesterday:

 “Police say the suspect walked into the Rio and began taking chips off of a gaming table. When the dealer at the table tried to stop him, he pulled out a gun. The man did not fire the weapon and no one was injured.”

David Williams, the funny and also highly successful PokerStars pro has become a dad a few days ago. According to his Twitter, he and his girlfriend had the baby on February 19. "Nameless Baby Williams was born at 8:01pm weighing 7lbs 11oz and 21inches long!!!!!!!! AMAZING! Yvette and the baby are doing great! - Williams wrote. As he told his followers, he thought way too much about what the baby girl's name should be like, so they only agreed on the name a bit later.

"We have a name for our baby girl...The reason it took so long was because I'm weird. Every time we liked something I would freak out...and change my mind. I felt naming someone is so important because it's with them FOREVER and I would hate to stick my girl with a bad name..So after 9 months of thinking and discussing it all comes down to this. Liliana Acea Williams. Born Feb 19, 2011 at 8:01pm. 7lbs11oz."

Sorel Mizzi

Sorel Mizzi, Canadian poker pro, BLUFF Magazine's Player of the Year is now again allowed to play at Full Tilt Poker, from which he was banned back in 2007, when he was caught multi-accounting on Full Tilt Poker. As you might or might not know, the guy bought his friend's, Chris Vaughan's account 'BluffMagCV', when Vaughan was running deep (near 26th place) in a $1million guaranteed FTP tournament. Mizzi finished first at the tournament, winning the $200,000 first prize. Full Tilt discovered the arrangement quite fast and confiscated the prize, also banning Mizzi and Vaughn from the site for good. Or this is what they thought then. The second place finisher Soren 'Kongsgaard' Kongsgaard was quite happy with this decision, he was awarded the first prize not much later.

Mr SrslySirius has gone insane again. The 2+2 Auto-Tuner genious who already gave us the Poker Conspiracy, I am not a toolbox, the Messageboard Grinder, and now Black and Yellow.

Not long ago Prahlad Friedman joined UB, and became their pro. This caused a huge revolt in poker community as you might know, because Friedman was one of the biggest victims of the UB superuser scandal.

SrslySirius now decided to rework Wiz Khalifa's Black and Yellow just to mock UB, whose main colors are the same, and of course the "white, vegan, rapping poker professional" Friedman. Enjoy!

It seems that after Jared Huggins, the homeless poker player who lost everything, made money by giving out free hugs and then, with the support of many poker pros like Daniel Negreanu and the whole 2+2 community, auditioning for The Big Game, has now finally made it: he will be playing on PokerStars' TV show. On 2+2, PokerStars representative 'PokerStars Steve' psoted the names of the 7 Loose Cannons who will be on The Big Game, shot in February.

On Sunday, February 13, 2011 the 10th European Poker Awards ceremony was held in Paris, hosted by the Aviation Club de France. Jake Cody is awarded Player of the Year and Internet Player of the Year is Andreas ’skjervoy’ Torbergsen.

Players were awarded in eight categories at the greatest European ceremony of this type and nomination was dominated by the British: they delegated 15 applicants in all for the various titles. Eventually, they did actually do good, winning, amongst others, the Player of the Year title, going to Jake Cody, champion of EPT Deauville and WPT London in 2010. Not only that, but he was also chosen Rookie of the Year. Cody is joined by fellow countrypersons EPT San Remo champion Liv Boeree (Europe’s Leading Lady) and WSOPE Main Event winner James Bord (Outstanding Tournament Performance).

2008 WSOP Main Event winner Peter Eastgate has been quite a hot topic last year. The Dane officially retired from poker in 2010 summer, when he cancelled his participation at the 2010 WSOP, and instead went to the South African Soccer World Cup. Not sure if was worth it financially, but it might have been much more fun for him. Now he decided it's time to return to poker, and make some more money.

Peter Eastgate

"When I started playing poker for a living, it was never my goal to spend the rest of my life as a professional poker player. My goal was to become financially independent. I achieved that by winning the WSOP Main Event in 2008. The period following has taken me on a worldwide tour, where I have seen some amazing places and met many new people; it has been a great experience. In the 20 months following my WSOP win, I feel that I have lost my motivation for playing high level poker along the way and I have decided that now is the time to find out what I want to do with the rest of my life. What this will be, I do not yet know. I have decided to take a break from live tournament poker, and try to focus on Peter Eastgate, the person." - stated Eastgate last summer.

Foxwoods Resort Casino organized a pretty interesting tournament recently with the active participation of 2010 WSOP November Niners, who agreed to play some good old poker against some random amateurs. You figure the Niners nailed them, right? Not really.

Ben Hopkins

The invitational tournament at the Foxwoods Resort Casino wasn't interesting because of the weak $15,000 prize pool, but instead of the fact that last year's November Niners did play the event. Against 18 randomly selected amateur players and some VIPs (including Bernard Lee, for Foxwoods casino, ESPN commentator Lon McEachern and poker book publisher Kasey Thompson) the 9 guys had to play no limit hold'em.

You probably have heard about British beauty Liv Boeree winning last week’s PokerStars Sunday Warm-up, the room’s $750,000 guaranteed tournament. At the 9-handed final table, in a field that started with 4,710 contestants, she eventually defeated James ’mig.com’ Mackey heads-up, winning $147,780. PokerStars.tv made a highlight show of the match which you can watch below.

According to an official announcement made by GSN yesterday, Gabe Kaplan has left the popular poker show High Stakes Poker (HSP). His place will be taken by Norm MacDonald, also known from Saturday Night Live.

Full Tilt Poker pros will not take part in the 7th season of HSP either, because the sponsor of the show became their biggest rival PokerStars. This decision means, that players like Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius and Tom 'durrrr' Dwan will be absent from the series.

Gabe Kaplan, well-known for his funny style and very professional commentating, has also left the show. This was announced by GSN yesterday, on the 7th February, but reasons were not mentioned in the notice. Kaplan will be replaced by Norm MacDonald from Saturday Night Live.

Norm MacDonald at the Laugh Factory

Justin 'BoostedJ' Smith's posted an awesome story on his Twitter recently stating that Ashton 'theASHMAN103' Griffin, one of the best young players in the World won a crazy prop bet he made with his friend Haseeb Qureshi. He had to run 70 miles in 24 hours. He did.

Ashton Griffin

The terms (to which he agreed highly intoxicated at a party as far as rumors go) of the bet were quite simple: if Griffin could run 70 miles (which is a little less than 3 marathons' length) on a treadmill in 24 hours, he would win $300,000, however, if he couldn't make it, he would have to pay $900,000. Walking did not count towards the 70 miles. This seems crazy at first, but not for the college level wrestler Griffin, who jumped into the contest right the next day, despite having very little sleep the night before, and being massively hung over. He managed to finish the challenge with only 45 minutes left, which is an huge performance on its own, considering that regular marathon runners usually run 1 marathon per day, while Griffin managed to run almost 3 of them.

As it was suspected, the Bellagio robber couldn't avoid the police for long, late Wednesday 2 undercover officers of the Las Vegas Police arrested Anthony Michael Carleo (also known as Anthony Assad) after he tried to sell them high-value chips stolen during the Bellagio robbery in December. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Carleo is the son of George Assad, Municipal Court Judge of Las Vegas.

Anthony Assad

I wrote about the robbery that took place in the Las Vegas Bellagio Resort and Casino on December 14 last year, so some of you must be familiar with the case already. The armed robber took high denomination chips from the craps tables waving his gun and fleeing with his motorcycle to the west on Flamingo Road.

Because of the large denomination ($25,000) of the chips, police suggested the robber will have a hard time cashing them without getting too much attention. This, of course happened, as we now know. He was booked at the Clark County Detention Center on Thursday on the charges of burglary, robbery and drug trafficking. The son of George Assad is currently in custody without bail.

Jack Ury, the oldest man ever to play in the WSOP, passed away on 1st February, 2011 at the age of 97. His slowroll in the 2009 WSOP Main Event remains one of the most memorable moments of televised poker history.

Jack Ury

Jack Julian Ury was born on 22nd March, 1913 in Terre Haute, Indiana. For the better part of his life, he had worked for the United States Postal Service, retiring in 1978. He was also a US Navy veteran of WWII. He married his wife Elizabeth on 12th January, 1942. 4 daughters, 11 grandchildren, 14 great grandchildren, 3 step great grandchildren and 3 great great grandchildren survive him.

A British hacker going by the name Ashley Mitchell confessed in court that he had stolen 400 billion in Zynga chips, worth $12 million. Judge Philip Wassall told Herald Express Mitchell could face jail time for his offense.

Ashley Mitchell

The man from Paignton, England transferred 400 billion virtual play chips to his account and decided to sell them on the black market at a rate of £430 per billion. Selling all the play money would earn him £184,000 profit at a rate like that. He even managed to make £53,000 until he was arrested. However, it would worth $12 million if Zynga sold it through Facebook.