Poker Guru Blog

Poker is not really considered a sport nowadays, but rather a "dangerous" and "harmful" gambling game. This seems to change now, as this year's WSOP Main Event winner Jonathan Duhamel has been nominated for the 2010 Canadian Athlete of the Year. In the first round he competes with Olympic champion ice dance couple Tesse Virtue/Scott Moir for the top 8.

The cash game crazyness that was big news last month seems to continue. I as wrote a few weeks ago, Ivey, Dwan, Juanda and Chau Giang went to Macau to play with some Chinese businessmen at very high stakes. They turned a huge profit, and Durrrr stated he might move to Macau soon. Well, if not yet moving there, the young pro and his colleague, Di 'Urindanger' Dang were spotted in Macau at the StarWorld Casino, playing againts regulars at high stakes cash game tables.

 After having to go back to the US because of some other business they had, Durrrr and Urindanger decided to go back for some more action, and of course, cash. 2+2 forum members are in Macau, a user named asianpokerfacts is watching over the game, and posted on 2+2 that Dwan and Dang are at the StarWorld and are winning.

The number one primadonna of Real Madrid soccer team, Cristiano Ronaldo appears to be playing poker on Full Tilt Poker against Daniel 'jungleman12' Cates and Patrik Antonius. Cates posted "playing on full tilt vs Cristiano Ronaldo" on his Twitter account last sunday. Ronaldo (playing under 'CR7sete' nick) and the young online pro were playing $1/2 PLO heads-up last Saturday. The final results are not known unfortunately, but as it could be predicted, jungleman12 won, as he tweeted: "I'm winning lol, fortunately not playing football :)"

A little later the Golden Ball winner Portuguese played against Patrik Antonius, fellow underwear model as well, at a $25/50 NLHE table last Sunday. Here's the chat history:

CR7sete: Training soon...
pleshots (Observer): Why is antonious sitting here?
Giantcuttlefish (Observer): just logged in, what happened? looks like Patrik moved down in levels
CR7sete: Didnt move down in levels...we are friends...
Patrik Antonius: wp champ
CR7sete: Thanks...
Patrik Antonius: footbol and poker good
Patrik Antonius: tennis is so so...
Patrik Antonius: ciao
CR7sete: I go the car now...
CR7sete: Good game...play tomorow
CR7sete: o text my mobile....
Patrik Antonius: ok
Patrik Antonius: ciao
CR7sete: adeus

Kicker is a definition used in poker to denote a card in a hand “that does not itself take part in determining the rank of the hand, but that may be used to break ties between hands of the same rank.” Since in Texas Hold’em it is common to match only one of your hole cards with one or more from the board, the other usually takes the role of the kicker.

In each hand, the strongest five cards are taken into consideration when determining the winner. In case, for example, you had AT and your opponent had A9 on a board of A-Q-7-5-3, you were the favourite as the best combination would be A-A-Q-T-9 in which you held A and T while your opponent had “only” A and 9. If, however, the board was, say, A-K-Q-J-6, both of you had A-A-K-Q-J as the best combination, meaning the pot would be split.

Here is a training video from PaddyPowerPoker.com Poker School to show you how kickers can benefit you and how they can be deceptive. 

Tony G is destroyed. He couldn't make it, the WSOP bracelet won't be the collar of his beloved dog Zasko. Or at least not now. He stated in his PartyPoker blog he did not buy Peter Eastgate's 2008 WSOP bracelet. He was participating in the bid, but "there were anti doggie bling dark forces out there".

He doesn't know however, who could have bought it, only that Chilipoker's Alex Dreyfus did also bid for the bracelet. He suggest some poker room like PokerStars or Full Tilt might have bought it, as it was rumored.

Although, not all hope is lost for the Lithuanian Dracula-descendant and his trusty German Shepherd Zasko: Vanessa Rousso, poker babe put her Lamborghini Gallardo up for sale on eBay. Tony says he's willing to buy the car, but only if Miss Rousso is included in the package, and will drive Zasko wherever he may go. He's not really crazy about the bright yellow colour though.

Sebastian Homann beat a field of 222 in the World Poker Tour Marrakech Main Event, earning €244,000 as first prize.

The players registered for the €5,000 Main Event of WPT Marrakech include renowned names like Nicolas Levi, Antoine Saout, Surinder Sunar, Dominik Nitsche, Thomas Bichon, Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier and Davidi Kitai. Still, the relatively unknown German Sebastian Homann managed to win the tourney.

The final table setup was as follows:

Patrik Antonius doesn't know that Aces are always high in 2-7 Triple Draw. It cost him $19,000 to learn that yesterday at Full Tilt Poker's tables, when he got himself into a pretty embarassing situation: losing a pot to David Oppenheim in 2-7 Triple Draw, he couldn't understand why he lost. It turns out, the man is not fully aware of the game's exact rules.

You must all be familiar with John 'JimmyLegs' Wray, who's an animator genius. He has done many awesome videos so far, but now he seems to have started his own show in cooperation with Jay 'KRANTZ' Rosenkrantz, The Micros.

It's about 3 micro stakes players, who "after months of frustration, finally have a shot to break into the big leagues." Check it out, it's fun. If you like it, you can subscribe to the show's YouTube channel.

In a memorable hand played on the show High Stakes Poker (S06E05), Jason Mercier tried to bluff Phil Ivey and failed. This hand is analysed in an interview by Mercier himself.

Although already under production, not much has yet surfaced about GSN’s High Stakes Poker Season 7. Nevertheless, Season 6 still offers a number of topics to think about; Craig Tapscott, for example, interviewed WSOP and EPT (2x) champion Jason Mercier on his memorable hand with Phil Ivey in Ep5, when he lost a pot of $425,200 to him.

Watch the hand:

Read the interview by CardPlayer.com here.

Team PokerStars Pro Dusty Schmidt has announced to be releasing a new book, titled ‘Don’t Listen To Phil Hellmuth: Correcting The 50 Worst Pieces of Poker Advice You’ve Ever Heard'.

Dusty ‘Leatherass’ Schmidt is known for his huge online winnings and unconventional views on poker. Having played more than 9 million hands online, Dusty has won almost $4 million during his five-year career. He has 66 consecutive winning months behind him, without ever having had to experience a losing one.
He is co-authoring this book with fellow pro Paul Christopher Hoppe, and promises to provide completely original poker education, correcting some of the biggest mistakes made in the history of poker tutoring.

The CEREUS Network has introduced an important security measure, that makes no one else except for us has the right to access our account.

The CEREUS Network, containing poker rooms like UB, has made a brand new Security Token available for its players. The Security Token is a hardware tool, which helps our account remain intact by generating one-time unique codes. This is how it works: the Token generates a code every pre-defined short period of time, which needs to be entered when logging in to the poker room, along with our password.

This means that stealing the password is not satisfactory for hackers if they try to break into our account. As long as we have the Token in our hands, our bankroll is safe.

Swedish Kent Lundmark took down the PokerStars European Poker Tour Barcelona main event.

EPT7 Barcelona Final Table

The chipleader was Giuseppe Pantaleo at the 8-handed final table of the EPT Barcelona €5,300 Main Event but the favourite was WSOP champion Konstantin Puchkov.

Dear all, if you are interested in EPT Barcelona's final table, it's happening at this very moment. The live stream is available at PokerStars, check it out, there are only 6 players left.

Yesterday, twoplustwo forum members were busy discussing mysterious events that have happened at the Barcelona stop of the EPT. Four poker players were said to have been robbed and attacked in a nightclub in Barcelona.

Carter Phillips

Remember the auction of Peter Eastgate, who put his 2008 WSOP Main Event bracelet on eBay, and not needing the money specifically, offered the profits for charity? Well, the auction has ended, the highest bid was $147,500. This identity of the buyer is yet unknown.

The starting price was $16,000, which soon reached and passed $100,000. The auction ended today. During the 10 days, a total of 42 bidders placed 116 bids, out of which an unknown person offered the highest price: $147,500. It's still not sure whether it was Tony G, who was very positive about him buying the bracelet for his German Shepherd Zasko, or somebody else.