WSOP 2010 Main Event – ESPN Coverage Ep 1 & 2

ESPN’s coverage of the 2010 WSOP Main Event started to air on 10th August and continues to screen two episodes every Tuesday until 9th November, when the Finale will be broadcast. Eps 1 and 2 cover Main Event Days 1A and 1B, while 3 and 4 in my next post will be on Days 1C and 1D.

The very first event days present poker stars like Mike ‘The Mouth’ Matusow, Chris Moneymaker, Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi, Maria Ho and Tiffany Michelle.

Episode 1:

High Stakes Updates – Good Times for Antonius

Patrik Antonius’ performance, so to say, has not been even during the first half of 2010, with huge wins and losses that even tossed his 2010 profit under zero. Recently, however, the former underwear model seems to have found himself again, and is on a winning streak.

Patrik Antonius
Patrik Antonius

This last Staurday, for example, he managed to win $332,000 from Phil Galfond and Ziigmund in only 600 hands.
This means that Patrik has made $819,269 this year on Full Tilt, despite the fact that he is about $2 million behind in the ’durrrr challenge’.

Speaking of durrrr, things are not going so smooth for the Full Tilt Pro, who managed to lose a nice $758,000 last week, spending most of his recent $1 million winnings.

durrrr
Tom 'durrrr' Dwan

Durrrr’s 2010 balance is still incredible, though, with his winnings from this year almost reaching $4 million (exactly the amount that he lost last year ).
Dwan will soon have the chance to make up for his recent losses by doing his best in his upcoming challenge against jungleman12, set to start sometime soon.

Interview with Dusty Schmidt

Four timer PokerStars Supernova Elite Dusty ‘Leatherass’ Schmidt has recently been made PS Online Pro member, an honour even for him, as he admits. PokerNews.com asked him how to become an SNE.

Dusty Schmidt
Dusty ‘Leatherass’ Schmidt

Schmidt first tried to earn the VPPs necessary to make Supernova Elite in 2007, a time competition wasn’t as tough as today, he says. Although he admits he was “only skilled enough to 8-table” back then, it seems it was just enough and now it is even easier for him as he is able to play at 15-20 tables at the same time. He doesn’t even have to do it full time. Nice.

Durrrr Challenge 2 to Kick Off in Days

The 50,000 hands game between Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan and Daniel ‘jungleman12’ Cates is now settled, the participants agreed to get the challenge underway in a couple of days. The news spread based on an FTP chat first appearing in the related 2+2 thread:

Durrrr vs junglemandurrrr: did u send ivey $$ yet?
jungleman12: not yet
jungleman12: ill send now
jungleman12: how soon is soon?
durrrr: read ur phone...
jungleman12: ah i see
durrrr: few days at most
durrrr: did u send yet?
jungleman12: yeah
jungleman12: sent
durrrr: then i can start talking &&%%
durrrr: since we're booked
jungleman12: ?
durrrr: and say that its cute u think u'll ever have an edge =)
jungleman12: lol
jungleman12: you never seemed like the type
durrrr: never wanna scare off the fish =)
durrrr: but if they escrow....
durrrr: haha ok
durrrr: lmk if u wanna play if not we'll start in a few days
durrrr: gl n stuff
jungleman12: u2

Hold’em Manager Introduces Major Update

If you use Hold’em Manager for your analytics, you must be used to updates every now and then. Only that the 1.11.04 is something different with a number of core functionalities improved and new ones introduced.

Hold'em Manager

Besides a 50% faster start-up process, a long-awaited auto-update function is now made available: you are able to have the updates downloaded and installed, if there are any new, before HM starts. They also introduced a tournament HUD filter by BB allowing the player to see stats of their opponents based on how many BBs they have. In addition, fans of FTP’s Rush Poker games now have access to an improved HUD. Finally, two more applications were stuffed into the package: Leak Buster Limit and TableNinjaFT.

I’m pretty sure users of the program will be more than pleased, for these improvements were largely based on public requests. Let the game begin!

Gus Hansen Is Down $7,750,000 on FTP

From 1st January 2007 to 14th August 2010 Gus ’Great Dane’ Hansen experienced rise and fall in his Full Tilt Poker bankroll several times, but to date he is in a $7,753,624 minus overall. As far as individual accounts are concerned, he is currently ’leading’ with his losses, although Cirque du Soleil owner Guy Laliberté possesses the accounts placed 2nd to 5th on the list, accumulating an astonishing total of $23,845,229 in loss.

Gus Hansen
Gus Hansen

EPT Tallinn: Kevin Stani Wins

Norwegian online pro Kevin ’KevBoyStar’ Stani won the Main Event of EPT Season 7’s first stop in Tallinn.

EPT Tallinn FT
The EPT7: Tallinn Main Event Final Table

The chipleader of the final table was French PokerStars pro Arnaud Mattern with 3,720,000, followed by Sunday 500 winner Stani with 2,586,000 and Konstantin Bilyauer with 2,498,000. The game started on level 25 (ante: 4,000, blinds: 20,000/40,000). The finalists were as follows:

Disappointed After a Bad Day? Can This Be Overcome?

I don’t know about all you guys, but I think when I say this concerns the general public’s opinion it doesn’t seem to be a far-fetched statement: a poker player’s mood is determined by the present-past experiences, happenings and bad beats.  When you are winning and having a good run, it seems you are the Ace and have an aura that owns this planet called Earth. However, on the flip of the coin, if you’re showing a bad day and a losing streak because of bad luck or bad decisions, this can make you feel like avoiding everyone and everything and hating the world. Even the ones living around you can grab note to this change. To put it in a nutshell, you’re feeling a bit down.

Bad Day

I had some time to reflect on this issue the other day and I started wondering if this could be overcome and controlled. Will this just pass with time; will it only take some months, or maybe even years? Could it happen that I will be able to concentrate on long-term results only and forget to focus just on the day-by-day outcomes? Will I be able to think in ’Sklansky-dollars’ and not pay attention to all misfortunes of buy-ins lost? Do I have the ability and self-control to make myself stand up after the fifteenth losing session and call it a day as if nothing happened? I think all of these are good questions and the truth being I have no idea on the answers, the only thing I know for sure is that I will never be able to completely close the door on past results, but I can still control the outcome of future ones.

Outs and Odds in Poker

The importance of knowing your odds in poker is unquestionable. We often find ourselves placed in a situation where our hand is not yet complete, but there is a good chance that it will improve its standing to be the nuts on the turn or the river. But what are the exact chances of this actually happening to you as a punter? A typical example for a situation like this would have to be when a player is waiting for the flush or the straight. Let’s just say we are dealt DiamondA Diamond6 suited and the flop contains Diamond2 Diamond7 HeartJ. At this moment of time we only have an Ace high, but unforeseen is the real value of our hand: we are holding the nut flush draw, but is it worth the money and the wait?

It is inevitable for a serious player to be able to truly answer this question. If we are in the blind concerning our chances, we will not know with certainty whether it is worth calling the opponent’s bet. Did our opponent bet 10 in a pot of 30? Is it really worth becoming a sheep and following him? How can we really answer this question if we are unclear on our chances?

The answer is simple:
In poker terms, the cards that will complement our hand to make it of greater value are called ’outs’. Now considering outs, how many do we have in the case mentioned above?

In total, we can see the deck contains 13 diamond-suit cards, with two of these residing in our hands and two on the board, this leaves us with 13-(2+2)=9 diamonds. In this case it means that we have 9 outs and any of these will make our hand a nut flush. So, what are the odds of one of these cards turning up on the turn or the river?

The table below provides a clear overview of the connection between the number of outs and your odds:

Outs and Odds in Poker

It Is Never too Early to Start Playing Poker

This statement has once again been proved by a very-very young girl, aged 7, to be precise.

Alexa Fisher was born in Cibolo, Texas, a tiny town close to San Antonio, where she lives and plays poker with her parents and younger sister.
Alexa has already been featured on TV shows, including a San Antonio morning TV program, called Great Day SA, was profiled in the Las Vegas Tradeshow Lifestyle newspaper and online magazines like CardPlayer.com.

Alexa Fisher
Alexa at this year's WSOP

She has also participated in a live tournament in Texas, which was a $30 buy-in charity event for Homes for Pets. She instantly became a celebrity at the tournament by outlasting more than half of the player base, including her own father.

Alexa is an exceptional student at Sippel Elementary School, where all the teachers know that she is playing poker at home.
At the age of 3, Alexa started showing interest towards poker and maths, when her father started to teach her to count by showing her cards. “Her math skills went through the roof”, her father says.

Deep-Stacked Cash Games

Deep-stacked poker games are getting more and more popular these days, and it seems that most advanced players favor these, opposed to short-stacked tourneys or cash games.

A lot of people think that the size of our starting stack does not really influence the way we should be playing our hands, but this is not true at all. Deep-stacked games are much more complicated and tough than short-stacked ones.

Deep stacks

In the case of cash games, the difference is even more evident. If we only have 10 BBs and get a pair of Aces, we push without hesitation. If we have 300 BBs, however, we must think at least twice before doing what we would normally do.

Deep-stacked games are more complicated and more dangerous, this is precisely why sharks favor them so much.
A game can basically be called deep-stacked, if players sit in with more than a 100 BBs, but deep-stacked games with people having four or five hundred BBs are not uncommon either.

Interview with Daniel ‘Jungleman12’ Cates

Jungleman12 is one of the biggest names in the online poker world these days. He keeps hitting the headlines with huge amounts of money won in high stakes cash games, rumors of him accepting the ‘Durrrr Challenge’ and pictures of him partying with his buddies.

Daniel has recently also been making videos for CardRunners, while still going to college in Maryland.


Jungleman12 is in the middle with the hat on

Poker Curious has done an interview with Jungleman12, in which he is being asked about the launch of his poker career, his future ambitions and poker how-to.

From the interview it becomes clear that Daniel is truly a very honest and ambitious guy, with the kind of wisdom that is very rare among his contemproraries.
He talks about bankroll management, key moments of his career, personal characteristics that are a necessity to become a pro, his blog on CardRunners and a lot of other interesting topics.

The Story of the Best Poker Player in the World?

On the 11th August, a strange video appeared on the Internet, featuring Daniel Negreanu, Arnaud Mattern and Tiffany Michelle. They all are talking about a mysterious  person, a ‘poker god’, who is better than anyone in the world (including Phil Ivey) and whose identity remains concealed in this first video.

When the video appeared, it started a guessing frenzy, with people from all around the world 'yelling' names like Isildur1, Viktor Blom, and even 'the Ghost of Stu Ungar'.

Well, now that we have passed the 15th August, we know that this special person, the Poker God is no other than Chris Olaafson.

Bet on Your College Grades!

A new branch of online betting seems to be evolving as a New York-based company called Ultrinsic has recently introduced their unique method to inspire students to get good grades at university: bet on the mark you will get in a particular class or your GPA.

Ultrinsic
Another way of inspiring the acquisition of better marks

On how it all began, founder Jeremy Gelbart writes on the website: “While hanging out together one Sunday afternoon, I mentioned to my friend Steven Wolf that I had an exam the following day and that if I were to study I was sure to get an A. (At the time, I was a student at University of Pennsylvania.) But I was enjoying my Sunday afternoon, and I told Steven that I had no intention of studying. That's when, in order to provide me with motivation, we made the following agreement: If I got an A on the exam, he would give me $100, and if I didn't get an A, I would give him $20. Steven and I quickly realized that lots of other students might like this kind of motivation.  To that end, we began developing what is now Ultrinsic Motivator Inc.”

Can You Win With a Smile?

Erik J. Schlicht, a postdoctoral Harvard University student, has recently conducted a scientific research showing that poker face, as we know it, doesn’t really work.

poker face
A poker face?

In his research paper entitled 'Human wagering behavior depends on opponents' faces’, Schlicht presents his findings about novice players playing HE after being tested of their knowledge of poker. Based on their hands and a picture of the opponent facing them, they had to decide whether to call (winning or losing 5,000) or fold (losing 100 chips). The results of the experiment showed that neutral or threatening expressions did not affect decision-making, while friendly smiles discouraged the test subjects and their decisions were of reduced optimality.

Schlicht concluded that

"mistakes against trustworthy opponents resulted from increased loss aversion, suggesting that participants believed trustworthy opponents were betting with hands of greater value than neutral and untrustworthy opponents."

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