Poker Guru Blog

William Hill has announced that it is withdrawing from a total of 55 countries, including almost all the African markets as well as other regions.

Effective tomorrow, 26 March, William Hill is pulling out of 55 countries, citing regulatory reasons. Affiliates have been notified via e-mail that the countries where the major provider ceases its operations include most African countries, in addition to Middle Eastern, Asian and South American states. Even after 26 March, players from the listed markets will be able to withdraw their money but neither to make deposits nor to play real money games.

While originally planned for winter 2014, it appears Nevada and Delaware players will be able to play against each other as early as this summer.

Back in February, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval and Delaware Governor Jack Markell signed an agreement that made poker history: the Multi State Internet Gaming allows for the pooling of player liquidity for online poker operators licensed in both regulated states. Additionally, other states are allowed to join, which is an excellent opportunity for a newly regulated market to achieve proper liquidity as quickly as possible. For smaller state, the cooperation may prove essential to survive.

Among other players, title holder Antonio Esfandiari, Phily Ivey, Phil Galfond, Jason Mercier and Sam Trickett will all enter the WSOP Big One for One Drop event to compete for the $20 million first prize.

Despite the fact that there is still over three months to go until the kick-off of the WSOP $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop tournament, seats are beginning to get occupied. The cap for the event is 56 and almost half of that, 23 places have already been taken.

In the first hand of a Flipout tournament, all players automatically go all-in and then survivors play on in a standard freezout, already in the money. But how does this help non-recreational players?

Ever since its re-launch in November 2012, Full Tilt Poker has been performing under expectations in the competition against other online poker rooms and networks on the .com market. In addition to PokerStars, 888Poker, iPoker and PartyPoker have all been showing off better results; consequently, FTP has resorted to a range of innovations to reclaim its glory. Most recently, the room plans to improve multi-table tournament traffic with the Flipout events, launching 19 March.

After a calm, almost dull February, the online high stakes cash game tables are starting to see some major action this month. Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom won $1.6 million over the weekend and Gus Hansen has been up $900,000 in the last 24 hours.

Online high stakes cash games have been gaining momentum this month after barely any action in February. Right after the Green Friday, as most US pros got back their bankrolls stuck on their Full Tilt Poker accounts, action resumed with players aiming to profit from the newly regained funds, including online highs takes money list 2010 leader Daniel ‘jungleman12’ Cates. The former NLHE specialist had been working hard on his deuce game and owned the 2-7 Triple Draw tables in his recent session as a result, winning $1,369,799 in the month so far in 10,939 hands.

Multi-table tournament specialist Mike ‘goleafsgoeh’ Leah has reached a remarkable achievement, winning the $580 NLHE and $365 NLHE Turbo events of the WSOPC on the same day.

Between 6 and 17 March, the WSOPC Bicycle Casino stop was running with 12 golden ring events and Mike ‘goleafsgoeh’ Leah emerged as casino champion by winning two of them on the very same day. On 14 March, 121 players registered for Event #9 $580 NLHE and accumulated a prize pool of $60,500. The top 15 finishes were in the money and nine players qualified for the final table, including WCOOP and FTOPS champion Leah, by far the most recognized face in the field. Eventually, he bested his opponents, defeating Lucas Fridriksson heads-up for $16,945.

While it would be way too early to draw conclusions, it appears that Gus Hansen may have a chance of starting to come back from his ridiculous losses after all. In the recent nosebleed 2-7 Triple Draw games, he has emerged a confident winner.

Recently, the hot games on the highest stakes are the $2,000/$4,000 2-7 Triple Draw sessions among the very elite of the online scene. Arguably, most intense has been the action between ‘taktloss47’ and Gus Hansen: the two of them had been playing for 12 hours straight yesterday before booking the largest total winnings of the day.

888Poker has announced the launch of the World Series of Poker 2014 Main Event qualifiers. Players can compete for packages worth $15,000 each.

Players who wish to participate in the WSOP 2014 $10,000 Main Event but cannot or do not want to pay the full fee now have the opportunity to qualify through online satellites. On 13 March, 888Poker launches its qualifier tournaments for the ultimate live tournament of the year.

Even players with the smallest bankrolls get a chance to qualify: Step 1 satellites are available from as little as $0.01. Step 2 qualifiers are available for $0.10 but the chance of winning a seat at the Main Event is likely to be even worth a Step 3 or Step 4 entry for most players at $1 and $5, respectively. The last step, a direct qualifier to the Main Event itself is the Step 7 tournament for a buy-in of $1,050.

After Ladbrokes and Unibet Poker left MPN, the liquidity of the network has dropped significantly. Nevertheless, Microgaming is still operating among the Top 10 of the .com market.

Microgaming started to implement their new concept for their poker network about a year ago, changing its name to MPN and introducing a number of improvements that favour recreational players, including a reformed Bad Beat Jackpot structure with lowered requirements of hitting the jackpot.

In June, all regular heads-up tables got closed and replaced by Heads Up 8-Man Blaze tables as an anti-bumhunting feature; as a result, only fast-fold HU cash games remained available in the network. The Heads Up 8-Man Blaze games are played in pools of eight, so that regulars intending to play against specific recreational players have to join a pool, rendering it impossible for them to avoid each other.

While the majority of players voted in favour of introducing the Shot Clock, others fear it would slow down live tournament play even more.

After conducting a voting among the players of the WPT LAPC festival, WPT has announced that the Shot Clock would be tested at the stops of the series. The concept is as follows:

1. Players would have a 30-second clock to act on their hands. If they didn't act in that time span, their hand would be declared dead and automatically folded.
2. Each player would receive two "Time Buttons" to use each day of a tournament for especially tough decisions. The "Time Button" would have to be introduced before the 30-second clock expired and would give the player an additional 60 seconds to act. Players could use one or both on a particular hand, but after using them, the player would not be able to receive any additional time.

British poker ace Sam Trickett has recently been signed by Everest Poker a Sponsored Pro. Undoubtedly one of the most renowned faces in the industry, Trickett has so far booked a total of $19.8 million in live tournament winnings, qualifying as one the most successful players ever.

Former semi-professional footballer Trickett found poker after an injury he suffered in a cup final as a player of Retford United: after participating in local games around Sheffield, he scored his first big win in 2008. He finished 4th in the WSOP $5,000 No Limit Hold’em event for $245,927 and 1st in the Grosvenor United Kingdom Poker Tour (GUKPT) Luton Main Event for $215,178.

Chris ‘moorman1’ Moorman won $1,015,460 in the live tournament and took over the lead on the online multi-table tournament world list without even playing.

On 1 March, the WPT LAPC $10,000 Main Event kicked off with 534 entrants and a prize pool of $5,126,400 at the Commerce Casino. Quite a number of renowned players made it into cash, including Jonathan Duhamel (61st, $18, 970), Andy Frankenberger (60th, $18,970), Mike Sexton (51st, $22,560), Bryn Kenney (49th, $22,560), Naoya Kihara (47th, $22,560), Joe Tehan (44th, $26,660), Jason Mercier (43th, $26,660), Eugene Katchalov (40th, $26,660), Dan Heimiller (36th, $31,270), Greg Merson (31st, $31,270), Matthew Waxman (26th, $36,400), Jennifer Tilly (22nd, $42,550), Ravi Raghavan (19th, $42,550), and Joe Serock (10th, $100,480). Dan O’Brien bubbled the official Final Table, finishing in 7th place for $137,900.

Unibet has recently gained full independence and launched its standalone client. There are 500 cash game players active at the room on average, which qualifies the operator as the 11th largest as regards the .com market rooms and networks, mere weeks into its launch.

Last December, Unibet announced that they would leave the Microgaming (MPN) network and migrate to their own platform. MPN would be available to players until March 2014, when the shift to the standalone client would be completed.

The main questions have ever since been whether the new Unibet Poker, aiming to favour recreational players above all, would be competitive on the market, able to preserve its player liquidity and would the novelties attract recreational players and perhaps keep regulars interested at the same time. It is still too early to try to give answers; however, barely two weeks into the life of the new client and just after the final break-up with Microgaming, the new Unibet does indeed seem a serious competitor.

The Best Live Tournament Player has barely entered any tournaments and the Best Blogger has not posted a word for nine month. Surprising decisions have been made at the latest British Poker Awards.

On 2 March, the fourth British Poker Awards ceremony was held at the Hippodrome Casino in London to award actors of the poker scene in 18 categories. While the festival has grown to be one of the most prestigious event of its kind in the past years, that recognition may have suffered a bit due to some ambiguous decisions this year. For instance, Best Live Tournament Player Sam Trickett has been amazed that he had won the title.

Former online multi-table tournament world list leader David ‘Doc’ Sands has been hired by a hedge fund company retires from professional poker.

‘Doc’ Sands is one of the most renowned figures of MTT poker today: under his ‘SexSeen’ screen name at PokerStars, he has won a lifetime total of $1,375,478 and another $1,277,100 at Full Tilt Poker as ‘Doc Sands’. At the latter room, he has booked his greatest online results, including the FTOPS, $1k Monday and Sunday Mulligan championship titles. His lifetime online winnings total at $3,044,125.