Poker Guru Blog

On 9 January, one of iPoker’s most reliable skins, Everest Poker hosts an exclusive Rakerace.com tournament. There are 10 Samsung Galaxy tablets up for grabs guaranteed in the $1 tourney!

The turnout in the tournament is expected to be low, around 80 to 150 participants, which gives you an excellent chance to win one of the ten tablet devices!

The single requirement to participate in the event is to register at Everest Poker via Rakerace.com. If you have not done so yet, you can register right away here.

The 10 Samsung Galaxy Tab 3s are worth a total of $2,000, an extreme added value!

In the sixth and last part of our retrospective take on the year 2013, we recall the highlights of the poker world from November and December.

November

23-year-old Ryan Riess became the first ever World Series of Poker Main Event champion born in the ‘90s. He defeated the rest of the November Nine for $8,361,570 in prize money.

In the fifth part of our retrospective take on the year 2013, we recall the highlights of the poker world from September and October.

September

The European Poker Tour Barcelona stop provided the majority of topics in the poker media and for the community in September. The most notorious issue was the hacking of the laptops of leading poker professionals. First, PLO pro Jens ‘Jeans89’ Kyllönen reported the trojans and then PokerStars Head of Poker Communications Lee Jones confirmed the news.

In the fourth part of our retrospective take on the year 2013, we recall the highlights of the poker world from July and August.

July

In July, the mystery surrounding one of the best online high stakes players, ‘Odd_Oddsen’, was solved. Norwegian poker pro Ola Amundsgard revealed his true identity and that he was behind both the ‘Odd_Oddsen’ and the ‘no_Ola’ screen names.

In the third part of our retrospective take on the year 2013, we recall the highlights of the poker world from May and June.

May

The European Poker Tour Monte Carlo Grand Final Main Event was concluded by the victory of Steve O’Dwyer for the €1,224,000 first prize.

In the second part of our retrospective take on the year 2013, we recall the highlights of the poker world from March and April.

March

On 10 March, the heads-up clash between the Full Tilt Poker Professionals and Team PokerStars Pro took place. The PokerStars pros won the event 3 to 0 with an individual heads-up games total result of 8 to 1.

In the first part of our retrospective take on the year 2013, we recall the highlights of the poker world from January and February.

January

On 13 January, the PCA $10,300 Main Event Final Table took place with eight participants. Jerry Wong had a slight lead ahead of Joel Micka but eventually, Dimitar Danchev came back from the 6th position of the chip counts and took down the championship for $1,859,000.

The High Roller event of the PCA was concluded by the victory of Vanessa Selbst. The $1,424,420 first prize raised the pro’s lifetime live tournament winnings to 7,004,036, which gave her the lead over Kathy Liebert ($5,855,655) as well as the title of the most successful female poker player ever.

In less than 20 minutes, the French National Assembly rejected the ARJEL-supported proposal of the opposition to join a common regulated market with Italy and Spain.

French online gambling regulatory body ARJEL recognized the inability of the 2010 regulations to meet the expectations as far as online poker is concerned a long time ago. After the segregation of the market, player numbers started dropping instantly, resulting in an ever diminishing income for rooms and, consequently, the state. French players are only allowed to play in .fr poker rooms and the lower liquidity resulted in a further drop.

A Challenge feature got introduced to the Game Theory Optimal coaching utility software PokerSnowie and so far, players do not seem to be able to beat the bot.

Snowie Games started out as a backgammon coaching software writer company but started expanding into the poker market earlier this year. They launched PokerSnowie and their first product under the brand was PokerCoach, a utility programme to teach NLHE cash game optimal theory (GTO) to subscribing FR, SH and HU players.

PLO specialist Julian Track says the field is strong and game is slow at live events, so it is unlikely he will enter many more in the future. He did take down the EPT Prague Main Event, though, for €725,700.

On 18 December, the eight-handed finale EPT Prague €5,300 Main Event took place. In the lead was German Julian Track, just ahead of British pros Max Silver and Stephen Chidwick. With SuperNova Elite Wan ‘Kaju85’ Lau and PPT Cannes champion Ole Schemion also in play, the finale was set to be an exciting show.

The Weinstein brothers return to Miramax and they have the concept of Rounders 2 in their pocket.

Rounders writers David Levien and Brian Koppelman had already written the story of the sequel to the ultimate poker movie but copyright owner Miramax has not seen the financial potential in the movie until now, especially considering what a failure Runner Runner turned out to be. It seemed fans would never see their favourite gamblers again, when along came the Wenstein brothers.

Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan’s contract with Full Tilt Poker has recently expired and the room decided not to keep sponsoring the player.

When Full Tilt Poker re-launched last year, the pro team was revived under the name of The Professionals; the room signed sponsorship contracts with Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom, Gus Hansen and Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan. However, the latter is no longer a sponsored pro of Full Tilt Poker.

Dwan’s profile has been deactivated at the room’s website and officials have confirmed publicly that the high stakes pro is no longer a member of the FTP Professionals.

Day 4 of the European Poker Tour (EPT) Prague €5,300 Main Event kicked off today with 60 remaining participants. Let us recap what happened at the weekend.

EPT Sanremo 2012 winner Ludovic Lacay

The €5,300 Main Event of the Prague stop of the EPT Season 10 kicked off late last week and by the end of the registration on Day 2, a total of 1,007 players entered to accumulate a prize pool of €4,883,950, a record in the history of the series in the Czech capital. The Day saw 548 remaining players after Day 1A and 1B, led by November Nine member Amir Lehavot with 239,300 in chips, where the average stack size was 54,635.

Rafa Nadal showed off an outstanding debut at the live poker tables, as he took home the trophy for winning the EPT Prague charity event.

On 12 December, the charity event of the EPT Prague schedule took place. The tournament featured Rafa Nadal as its highlight; the 13 times Grand Slam champion debuted now at the live poker tables, as he has only been playing online since joining the PokerStars team in July 2012.

The charity event offered a prize pool of €100,000, a share of which going to all six entrants of the tournament. Nadal was accompanied by two times football world champion Ronaldo, former AC Milan star Andriy Shevchenko, three times Olympic medallist skier Alberto Tomba, Olympic medallist field hockey player Fatima Moreira de Melo and poker pro Daniel Negreanu. The first prize was €50,000 and players got to decide which charity to support with their winnings.

If you play poker, it is unlikely you need to be introduced to the concept of bonuses. Not all players are, however, aware that in most rooms, their account balances can also be used to gamble a bit every once in a while. Of course, the casino offerings of your favourite rooms can also be used to build some extra money from the bonuses, so let us take a look at the different types available.

Rooms have been using all kinds of bonuses to lure in new players and keep the existing ones playing from the very beginning. Poker bonuses are most likely familiar to you; they can be found in the offering of all sites and affiliates. The first and most frequent type is the first deposit bonus: this is usually described by the percentage and size of the match; that is, in what rate and up to what amount does the room match your deposit. This can be considered free money but it is always comes with requirements; in order to be credited the amount you are eligible for, you have to fulfil conditions. In most cases, you have to earn loyalty points of some sort by playing enough raked hands to redeem instalments of the bonus.