Poker Guru Blog

World Poker Tour announced the dates of two new, televised events for WPT Season IX. PartyPoker presents the stops in Venice and Vienna, taking place 3rd through 8th February and 25th through 29th March 2011, respectively. Also, the first WPT National Series event is confirmed to take place in Paris.

The PartyPoker WPT Venice Main Event (buy-in: €3,000+€300) starts on 3rd February 2011 at the Casino de Venezia and lasts until 8th February. Globally broadcast, a €10,000 High Rollers event is added, played from 7th to 9th February at the same venue.

Jonathan Duhamel, the first Canadian WSOP Main Event champion ever wasn't as big in the media as he usually is, since has won the title, as he didn't give that many interviews. Now he talked to reporters Laura Lane and Andrew Feldman in ESPN's Inside Deal. He talks about how he felt when he won the WSOP, what his plans are with the near $9 million prize, and much more. Enjoy!

This week I'm presenting you with a video from the Poker Roundtable series of Full Tilt Poker. The 5 minute video features Full Tilt's owner Howard Lederer, and fellow poker pros Jennifer Harman, Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson and Layne Flack, who talk about when and how to quit a poker game. If you have issues with losing if you're tired or on tilt, pay attention to the pros, they might give you some good advice.

Beth Shak is a Full Tilt pro. That's right, she can play poker, and apparently she's very good at it. If you haven't yet heard about her, now is the time to catch up. She's 41, and is among the most beautiful poker player ladies out there. She recently let the reporters of Luxist.com into her newly redecorated Pennsylvania home.

Beth Shak, if you didn't know who that was

Miss Shak, after her divorce with Daniel Shak, also a poker player, wanted to decorate her home in a new style that she got to love during her time spent in Miami at the Delano hotel. She asked the help of her designer, Carrie Leskowitz to do so. Shak says "I wanted to take the clean look, add a splash of color and make it eclectic by mixing in antiques". Her huge Pennsylvania home has a lot of room for her clothes and shoes, for what she is just as famous as her poker skills.

Moneybookers, one of the best online payment systems gets an overhaul soon, or so they say. The service will be rebranded as Skrill, and will get some new features and payment facilities in the near future, which are not yet public unfortunately.

CEOs of Skrill, Martin Ott and Nikolai Riesenkampff

The name 'Skrill'  originates from slang, and roughly means dollars, or money in general.  Of course it means much more for the company as they state it on their website: "For us it means a safe and innovative way for consumers to pay for their online goods. Skrill means flexibility. Skrill means choice. Skrill means reliability and peace of mind. Skrill makes you online safe". The company states the new name is necessary to better represent what they are and what they are to become, as well as differentiate them in the crowded marketplace. They also want to facilitate the use of the word as a verb, just like Google (to google something) managed to do. In a year, we might skrill our money to the poker rooms for example. As for me, I don't really understand how can "Skrill" describe what the company does better than "Moneybookers" did, or how "Skrill" is supposed to convey a "peace of mind", but they are the professionals.

As I already reported, Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and other poker pros like Phil Ivey and John Juanda were playing against Chinese businessmen at Macau cash game tables. The game ended last night, and the pros headed back home, supposedly with lots of cash on them.

Tom 'durrrr' Dwan

 Dwan started high stakes ($4000/8000) on November 18th at the StarWorld Casino in Macau. The game went bad for Dwan at first, his Chinese oppenent being a constant loser, managed to win the first heads-up againt Dwan, who handed him over $2,5 million.

PokerStars’ EPT7 Barcelona main event starts today. Held until 27th November, the buy-in for the event is €5,300.

Casino de Barcelona (annexe at The Arts Hotel)

Besides London and Copenhagen (and also Monte Carlo, in case the Grand Finale is held there), Barcelona is the only venue that hosted an event in every EPT Season. In 2004, the buy-in was €1,000 and Swedish Alexander Stevic took down the main event, winning €80,000. In Season 6, the 478 players had to pay €8,000 each, amassing a prize pool of €3,382,000; the winner was American Carter Phillips, earning €850.000.

After some poker fun, here's some more. In his latest CardPlayer blog post, Phil Hellmuth, besides many interesting stuff, talks about his meeting with Bill Clinton this August. As it turns out, Phil was invited to Bill Clinton's Charity event in Lexington, Kentucky:

"We would spend part of the day at the Lexington Hearing Center with Bill Clinton (and) then head off to Clinton's charity event..."
"My wife and I were honored to sit right next to Bill (at) the Gala dinner!"

The always nice UB sponsored pro also showed a beer can with his face on it to the ex-president after his speech. Nice touch, Phil! Here's a picture of the great event:

A short excerpt from the series Two and a Half Men, starring Charlie Sheen, in which Jake helps Charlie earn some money. A little fun on this gloomy Monday.  

PokerTableRatings.com launched a new page that compares various poker coaches from different training sites. You can compare and filter them according to several statistics: their BB/100, earnings, number of hands played and the training site they are coaches at.

The page also includes short sample videos that showcase their performance so you can decide whose style and skills you like the most.

After a series of collusion scandals traced to China-based players, PokerStars introduced restrictions on the number of Chinese players allowed at the same time at their DoN SNG and, more recently, cash game tables.

PokerStars first discovered the ring of China-based players in spring 2010, when players mainly from Hangzhou were caught cheating at the DoN SNG tables. The room closed 38 accounts and compensated the affected players, paying around $2.1 million in all. In August, Stars decided to prevent players from “certain countries” from playing at the same DoN tables together.

"I have decided that I am going to buy Peter Eastgate’s WSOP Main Event winner’s bracelet." - as Tony G writes on his blog. The Aussie/Lithuanian PartyPoker pro wants to make a collar out of it for his German Shepherd, Zasko.

Tony G and Zasko

Tony loves to create confusion with his trash talks and sometimes his actions. Many were outraged that Peter Eastgate sells his WSOP bracelet, the most precious prize a poker player can win. Now those people are very happy what Tony G is about to do: buy the bracelet and use it as a collar for his dog. He already does have some plans for it:

"I have a few ideas about how to modify the bracelet into a dog collar. I may well call upon Robert Williamson III’s wife Cate (not from the House of Windsor) who is a top jewellery designer to help me and am exploring other options. Zasko has a neck like Mike Tyson so it is going to take some work." - he writes.

I already wrote about how Ali Tekintamgac and Perica Bukara and their associates cheated at the PPT Cannes, and how they might have done it, but there are some interesting developments in the case already. As I have reported, WTP winner Ali Tekintamgac has been disqualified from PPT Cannes Main Event because of cheating.Now there are more details available: it turned out recently that there are more cheaters, dealers and a floorman at Full Tilt Poker events involved in the conspiracy,

Individuals involved in the scandal:

Deniz Yavuz

The Turkish Deniz Yavuz used to be the owner of the Nuremberg Card Club that lies on the border of the Czech Repuclic and Germany. He also owns pokertravels.de, checkraiser.de, and the pokerevents.de website, and also is a director of Pokerevents GmbH, which organized many Full Tilt Poker events such as the 2009 Million Euro Challenge and the 2010 Merit Cyprus Classic. Yavuz started playing poker at live cash game tables and began participating in live tournaments since 2008, though his main interest were organizing tournaments.

Ali Tekintamgac, disqualified from the finale of PPT Cannes, may have used a code system well known to cheaters, in cooperation with Perica Bukara and Pokerb00m.eu bloggers.

Tekintamgac, a blogger and Bukara

On how WPT winner Ali Tekintamgac was disqualified from the final table of the PPT Cannes main event, you can read in more details in my earlier post. Even then it was already assumed that the involved bloggers were of the Pokerb00m.eu site that has been down ever since. They are likely to have helped him and his friend, Merit Cyprus Classic $25,000 High Roller winner Perica Bukara, on several occasions before.

CardRunners instructor John ’JimmyLegs’ Wray produced another ingenious video for the equally ingenious poem by Jake ‘defenestrate’ Sapozhnikov, entitled The Ballad of Jackie Mayfair, honouring the 2010 WSOP Main Event. The video was published on the CardRunners YouTube channel to promote their site as well as TrulyFreePokerTraining.com. 

JimmyLegs is also behind the highly acclaimed animations The R4v3n, Felt Wars and Felt Wars pt. 2.