Poker Guru Blog

The TV company GSN released their first commercial of the 7th season of its popular cash game show, High Stakes Poker. The ad is just a little teaser for those who are interested in the less interesting show due to the poor-ish field of players featuring Phil Laak, Daniel Negreanu, Doyle Brunson, Antonio Esfandiari, 2010 WSOP Main Event winner Jonathan Duhamel and Johnny Chan, but as I already wrote, no FTP pros will be attending, since the sponsor of the show is now PokerStars, so Full Tilt Poker  didn't allow Phil Ivey, Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and Patrik Antonius to play in the show. Shame. We'll see how the season turns out on February 26.

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.

Greg 'Fossilman' Raymer, 2004 WSOP Main Event champion, PokerStars pro is rumored to have left its sponsor due to compensation problems. According to unofficial information, he no longer represents the company.

Greg Raymer

Though it has not yet been announced or even commented by PokerStars, it's quite easy to see that Greg Raymer is about to leave them. His profile has been deleted on the Team PokerStars Pro page on the website, which must mean something. According to 2+2 forum users he also chatted with Pat Pezzin at online tables, noticing Raymer had no red star by his name.

Jared Huggins lost his jobs and home in February, 2010 but was helped out by the poker community. Due to his personality and touching videos they soon came to like him and even a proposal was made to get him into PokerStars’ The Big Game show as Loose Cannon. Recently, however, this has been turned down.

Jared Huggins

Jared ‘RelaxedPrecision’ Huggins was slapped hard by life in February, 2010. Despite having three jobs at a time, he couldn’t pay his rent and so he lost his home, followed by his jobs and his bankroll. By posting videos at the 2+2 forum (see one below), however, he grew increasingly popular with the poker community, which tried to help him. Today, he once again has a job and home.

Gary Wise and Jason Senti, a poker playing having taken 7th place at last year's WSOP Main Event, have made a video interview with the online cash game phenomenon Randy 'nanonoko' Lew (considered by many as a human poker robot).

You can view their discussion below. 
 

Eugene Katchalov won the PCA $100,000 buy-in Super High Roller event, and took home a massive $1,500,000. This has been one of the main issues in the video interview made by Gary Wise with the Ukranian Katchalov, now living in the US. You can view their chat below.

More than a month has passed since The Micros Holiday Special, the last episode of the popular animated show created by John ’JimmyLegs’ Wray and Jay ’Krantz’ Rosenkrantz. The wait, however, is finally over and, frankly, it was totally worth it: the next installment of the series, Episode 2, is as fun as it gets. 

Red Deck Productions will launch a new high stakes show, titled High Stakes Hold'em. According to the news, some of the most talented young online pros will take part in the action, such as jungleman12, luckychewy and djk123. 

The brand new show will probably reach TV sets around the end of March, but no information regarding the channel to be airing the show has aroused yet. The weekly show will consist of 15 parts, 13 of which will be the cash games, and two parts will be presenting the Atlantis All In Poker Series Main Event final table. 

“High Stakes Hold’em will be a completely new experience for the poker viewing public,” said Eric Ulis, founder and CEO of Red Deck Productions. “HSH will be edgy, aggressive, and very unique.” 

Ullis did not mention how exactly this show will be different from any other cash game series, but one thing is sure: the selection of players cannot be criticised in any way. The players surely taking part in the action will be Dan “djk123” Kelly, Amit “Amak316” Makhija, Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger, Melanie “Callisto” Weisner, Matt “mcmatto” Affleck and Full Tilt Poker's last year profit list leader, Daniel “jungleman12” Cates. 

jungleman12

The episodes will last one hour each, and the commentator will be no other than Tom Schneider, 2007 WSOP 'Player of the Year'. 

Magic The Gathering champion (which is a collectible card game), now poker pro Gary Wise made this interview in his amateur ways for PokerStatic.com with the PokerStars pro Daniel Negreanu,  who kindly talks about his 2nd place finish at the PCA $100,000 Super High Roller tournament and his recent overtaking of Phil Ivey's place on the all-time money list as well.

Since Peter Eastgate sold his WSOP bracelet, the one that bought it kept his identity a secret. Until now. It is finally public, who the mysterious man was. We know that it was not Tony G he acknowledged he couldn't win the auction, and not even some major poker room as many predicted, but Scottish businessman, William Haughey.

As I wrote in November, Peter Eastgate put his 2008 WSOP Main Event bracelet up for auction in November. The Danish pro didn't need the money, he offered 100% of the profits to UNICEF. The $16,000 starting price rose quickly, the final bid was $147,500 at the auction's end.

It turned out recently that the new owner of the bracelet is a Scottish businessman, William Haughey. Haughey became a millionaire while leading his own refrigeration company. In the previous 5 years, he donated more than $50 million to various charities, but he also donates money to his favourite soccer club, the Celtic FC.

Haughey gave the check to UNICEF's ambassador, Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of the Manchester United football team and Joanne Andrews, representative of the UNICEF (in the picture above). $147,500 was exchanged to £94,000, and Haughey thought he would donate a round sum instead, so he paid £100,000, which looks much more impressive on the photo.

PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event winner Galen Hall looked for sponsors for his Caribbean action in December, 2010. Russian businessman and poker player Max Katz didn’t take long to make a deal with him – and consequently profited over $1 million.

Max Katz

Galen ’GasparLeMarc’ Hall, it seems, had had a good feeling about the PCA before the tournament even began. Using the screen name ’GoldenBears’, the pro posted the following at the 2+2 forum on 21st December, 2010: “I feel like I am really on the brink of taking the next big step in my live game.” He then offered 55% of his total PCA buy-ins. The package consisted of the $10,300 Main Event, the $2,150 NLHE as well as the $5,250 (8-max), $5,250 (HU) and $5,250 (Bounty Shootout) NLHE events. These totalled at $28,200 in buy-ins and Hall sold them at 1.18; that is, he sold 1% of his future winnings for $332,76.

It was not really a surprise that Viktor Blom stepped out of the darkness as the man behind Isildur1 at the PCA. Many think that the reason for him to hide his identity for so long was to evade Swedish taxes. Now it seems this really was the case: the Swedish tax office wants $149 million in Swedish krona.

Viktor Blom

Leading Swedish business paper, the Dagens Industri reported some time ago that the Swedish tax office is on to collect taxes from poker players playing at non-EU poker rooms. According to Swedish law, money made in the only Swedish-owned room, Svenska Spelen is tax-free, playing at any other room involves tax. This is why Swedish residents playing at non-EU rooms must pay 30% tax after every pot won.

PokerStatic has just published a video interview with Di and Hac Dang, also known as Urindanger and trex313, respectively. While Di plays PLO with Gus Hansen, they evaluate their poker year of 2010.

Di 'Urindanger' Dang

Di ‘Urindanger’ Dang has been playing at Full Tilt Poker since 2008, making $6,906,040 during a massive 514,765 hands. Meanwhile, his brother Hac ‘trex313’ Dang played 274,630 hands in the same period, amassing $6.548.474 in total. Hardly could anyone therefore deny them the title of “pro,” having proven their skills in years of successful high stakes play.

Microsoft has recently announced that a new poker game exclusively for Xbox Live will soon be introduced to occupy the space of 1 vs. 100, a social game shut down earlier. Full House Poker will be downloadable for free.

A screenshot form Full House Poker

FHP has been announced by Microsoft to hit Xbox Live during Spring, 2011. Representing players by their avatars, the game will feature tournaments and heads-up games in the style of popular televised events. Playing against bots (that is, computer-driven opponents) as well as against fellow human players will be possible, but real money games don’t seem to be available.

After Viktor Blom admitted at the PCA that he is in fact ’Isildur1’, the young swedish heads-up specialist, he soon became the center of attention. Once doing anything he could to keep his identity secret, the Viktor was finally able to reveal himself. There are many reasons for this, including the very high Swedish taxes, but this will not be a problem for him anymore, as he moved to London leaving Sweden, and all the gorgeous Swedish models behind.
 

Viktor Blom

Another important factor was pointed out by a blogger at Expressen.se, Sohello ’BankTheMan’ Shah, who made an interview with Blom recently. From this interview, it becomes clear, that Viktor’s parents were not especially happy about their son risking a fortune on the Internet, especially after losing his whole bankroll ($300,000 at the time) back in 2008.