Poker Guru Blog

Andes, being one of the leading beer brands in Argentina, has now come up with an idea never seen before. They have invented a special booth, called the Teletransporter.

The Teletransporter will make Argentinian men’s lives much easier from now on. They will not have to argue with their girlfriends or family about going to the bar again.

This is how it works:

Let’s say you’re at a bar, having drinks with your friends and your phone suddenly starts ringing. It is your girlfriend and ONCE AGAIN you forgot you were supposed to have dinner with her parents. The solution is as easy as it can get: just step into the Teletransporter situated in the corner of the bar, choose a suitable environment (the hospital, for example) and answer the phone. All you have to do is make up a relative with a serious illness that you are visiting and the Teletransporter will handle the rest. How comfortable is that?

PokerStars has announced last week, that the Argentinian football player Juan Sebastián ‘Brujita’ Verón has also joined the line-up of PokerStars Ambassadors.

Verón plays at the South American team Estudiantes de La Plata, and is currently attending the World Cup in South Africa, as part of the Argentinian national team.

“It is truly a pleasure for us to have Verón as an Ambassador for PokerStars.net. His sporting and competitive spirit embodies the values of our brand and we feel very proud that this great soccer player decided to represent the number one poker site in the world” said Sarne Lightman, managing director of PokerStars Latin America (LAPT).

The Team PokerStars Ambassadors line-up already includes: Boris Becker, Sebastien Chabal, Mats Sundin, Sami Selio, Fatima Moreira de Melo, Gael Monfils, Gianluigi Buffon and the newly recruited Juan Sebastián Verón.

PokerStars has recently officially announced that they will sponsor the Spanish Basketball Federation and the Spanish national team for the time of the upcoming FIBA World Championship, held in Turkey this August. The sponsorship agreement has a time frame of 12 months. According to the contract, PokerStars will accompany the Spanish team throughout its national tour and the World Championship.

This deal provides the opportunity for PokerStars players to win special tickets through online tournaments to basketball games throughout the year, also including the championship.

"Our client PokerStars is very proud to become sponsor of the Federación Española de Baloncesto. Being a global brand, this is a significant opportunity to join a leading sport. PokerStars sponsors numerous teams and sportsmen of international standing and being able to co-operate with the World and European champion is an exciting project by which to convey values like excellence, competition and fair play," said Juanjo Marquez, CEO of the agency representing PokerStars in Spain.

On the 24th June, PokerStars ceased to offer its services to French customers. This is another effect of the newly intorduced French regulations on online gambling. 

Earlier this month, gaming licenses have been granted by the French Authority of Regulation of Online Games (ARJEL) to sites like Everest Poker, BetClic and Bwin. In the meantime PokerStars, Microgaming, 888 and Party Gaming were denied licenses, despite the fact that these companies are among the largest ones in the poker industry.

At this moment French players are unable to play poker on PokerStars main site and they can read the following message upon logging in: “All money in PokerStars accounts is 100% safe and is available for withdrawal. You can choose to cash out now if you prefer.” 

Tiffany Michelle, sponsored by UB, has turned 26 last week and decided it was time to celebrate. She and her buddies headed to the Crystals in Las Vegas, to eat, drink, pose for pictures, dance and have a good time on a Friday night.

Michelle was accompanied by other Team UB pros Liv Boeree, Adam Levy, Smantha Ryan, and 2006 WSOP Player of The Year Jeff Madsen, among others. They first had a nice lobster dinner at Eva Longoria’s restaurant to give the night a start. After that, the party kicked off at the Eve nightclub, also at Crystals.
Michelle’s birthday presents included a very fancy cake, made of pink and black fondant, chocolate and edible gold chains.

Michelle probably had a very good time, or at least this is what her Tweets from that night indicate: “Off the hook at @Eve_NightclubLV. Best bday ever, not to mention the SICKEST cake.”

As you might know, Nanonoko has his own blog on the Pokernews coaching website, and this time, he used the free space there to tell his followers about his journey to Las Vegas and the accommodation he enjoys there.

In his latest blog entry, Nanonoko starts with recalling the details of his flight, which he almost missed because he wanted to save some money by parking his car in the ’economy’ section, which is a greater distance from the terminal as the ’premium’ parking lot. Realizing how little time he had, though, he finally put down his vote for the premium one.

"Well being the savvy saver that I am, I chose to go to the economy parking but as I was driving there...I realized how far it was and that if I parked here...there's no way I would have a chance to get to my flight. So I had to u-turn and circle around the whole airport and go to the premium parking lot."

After the airport incident (he arrived at 4:45 but luckily his plane got delayed to 4:55), he had some rest at his hotel room, the site of which he is grateful enough to share with the public in the video below.

Nanonoko will now be entering his first WSOP Side Event, with the hope of winning himself a bracelet.

Google, a company with a very strict advertising policy, has now decided to allow certain gambling ads to be presented on their sites, including YouTube from now on. Youtube, owned by Google, will allow ’licensed entities located in England, Scotland, Wales, Italy, France or Spain’ to display online gambling advertisements on Youtube. This content, however, will only be viewable by users who can verify they are over 18.

The advertising campaigns on Youtube will appear on the homepage of the site, video pages and the advertisers’ own channels. Google has gradually been lifting the restrictions on gambling advertisements, starting in 2008, when they lifted their AdWords ban on Internet gambling advertising in the UK only.

The first company to run a gambling ad on Youtube will be Ladbrokes, presenting their click-to-play advertising campaign booked by TBG Digital.

Phil Ivey, one of the biggest icons in the world of poker, has managed to retrieve his eighth WSOP bracelet by winning Event #37 ($3,000 H.O.R.S.E) after beating Bill Chen in the heads-up. Event #37 was followed by a huge crowd of spectators, as the final table happened to be one of the toughest seen at the WSOP this year. Ivey had to battle Chad Brown, David Baker, Bill Chen, Albert Hahn, Kenneth Aldridge, John Juanda and Jeff Lisandro in order to grab this very valuable 8th bracelet. 

With this first place, Phil has won $329,840, plus God knows how much more, with all the side bets going on. According to PokerListings, for example, Ivey and Howard Lederer have an ongoing 5 million dollar bet that Ivey would not win two WSOP bracelets until the end of 2011. Well, Howard can start trembling, as Phil has plenty of time to win another bracelet, and is quite confident about the subject. This is what Phil commented after his victory: “I think I can win 30 gold bracelets.  I think I can reach that if I keep playing and stay healthy.”

Even Phil Hellmuth seems to have respect for Ivey and his tremendous poker skills. Hellmuth reacted to Ivey's win on Twitter, saying: "Amazing win Phil Ivey: bracelet no 8, congrats! Ivey now best all around player in world!"

With this statement, he condradicts his earlier tweets and comments made before the start of the WSOP, all saying that he, Phil Hellmuth, is still the best poker player in the world, and could probably beat anyone.

With eight WSOP bracelets, Phil Ivey is currently at the fifth place (together with Erik Seidel) on the all-time WSOP bracelet list, behind Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson and Johnny Moss.

Nicholas Beraud, the chief executive of Mangas Gaming (the company that owns BetClic and EverestPoker) made a statement regarding the recently introduced regulations licensing sports betting into the market. According to him, Mangas has now broken all previous records in France since the introduction of the new regulations.

Below you can find his speech on the newly regulated French market, as heard at the CEO Panel at EGR Live:
“On the one side, you pay a huge amount more tax in France, but on the other hand, it’s created a new market, a new business,” he said. “What we see of the French market so far is a boom in terms of new customers that until now didn’t want to play because it was thought that it was illegal to play on the internet.”

Beraud continued: “Now it is legal, we have beaten all our records in the last few days. Of course you include the World Cup effect, but despite that, in terms of conversion and activities, we have seen a huge move in terms of new customers that are joining BetClic to bet on the World Cup.”

He also predicts that the countries to follow suit “after France will probably be in Denmark, then Germany, then Spain. It will create a stable business, and we will have the opportunity to get more customers in these regulated markets.”

H2 Gambling Capital, a gambling data business also shares Bereaud's predictions, stating that regulation can actually increase market size by two, or even three times. These new regulations on the gambling sector also mean that all companies need to acquire a licence in order to provide their services.

Tom 'durrr' Dwan is quite busy at the WSOP trying as hard as he can to retrieve a bracelet, but to make sure he stays in a good mood throughout the whole series, he manages to put some time aside for partying. This video that I have recently found on PokerStatic.com gives you insight into one of his crazy nights at Las Vegas, drinking shots and posing for the camera.

The PokerStars North American Poker Tour (NAPT) has made an official announcement regarding its next venue this November, which will be the Bicycle Casino, situated in Los Angeles, CA.

The Bicycle Casino is a place with a long history and strong local traditions which makes it a truly suitable venue. This is what Daniel Negreanu thinks about the NAPT at The Bike: “I have played at The Bike before. A strong presence of local players is really important for the success of this tournament. That will entice players from everywhere as they know there will be loads of money on the line. I am eagerly looking forward to this event.”

The Main Event of the NAPT will have a buy-in of $5,000.

I have already informed you about the WSOP Main Event ticket frenzy at PokerStars, which was a $370 buy-in mega satellite, organized last Sunday.

After seven hours of play, 281 players still had chips and the line-up included quite a few famous players, such as Team PokerStars Pros Jude "j.thaddeus" Ainsworth, Chris "Money800" Moneymaker, Veronica "Princesa" Dabul, Randy "nanonoko" Lew, Dusty "Leatherass9" Schmidt, Martin AAbenjaminAA" Hruby, Marcello Del Grosso, Grayson "spacegravy" Physioc, Ruben "rubenrtv" Visser, Martin "Goral" Horecki, Thierry "BOWPOWER" van den Berg, Raymond Wu, Julian Thew, Martha "marene" Herrera, Steven Paul, Grzegorz "Da Warsaw" Mikielewicz, Richard Toth, Tom McEvoy, Jorge Arias and Gualter Salles, but none of them managed to satellite their way to the Main Event.

280th place was the first one to provide some money back, $160, to be precise. 279th to 253th managed to get their buy-in back for eight hours of play, while 252nd to 1st were left praising God and starting packing for Vegas.

Congratulations to all the winners!

The WSOP Event #34 – ($1,000 Seniors’ No-Limit Hold’em) has broken all previous records concerning the number of participants. An astonishing 3,148 players took part in this tournament. This might prove all the players that prophesize the end of live poker wrong.

It is funny that Russ Hamilton was found in the form of a $5 memorandum chip from Palace Station 'The Seniors' Poker Player Hall of Fame, eventually won in a splash pot by Jack Ward:

Russ Hamilton allegedly played quite an important role in the UB cheating scandal. Russ Hamilton pulled the strings to develop a super-user 'tool' that cheated friends, associates, and UltimateBet customers out of millions of dollars.

Eponymus’s hilarious photoshop comic strip continues with the third part, in which the online poker community continues to diminish. In other words, it is not only Jimmy ’Gobboboy’ Fricke who plays with the fish. Enjoy!

Getting on tilt is one of the many interesting phenomena in poker that happen because of the human nature, and can have a dramatic effect on our gameplay.  I presume that you guys have also experienced how much a mistake or unlucky twist can influence the way we play the hands following it. But what is the reason behind all this?

I need to note here, that the handling of a ’tilt’ is mostly a capability issue, and the perfection of this is just as important as being able to calculate pot odds or to select the starting hands to play. The so-called bad beats need to be looked upon as something occuring necessarily from time to time. But it is not as easy as that...