Sammy "No Deal" Farha has gone from managing a gift shop in Houston to handling six-figure swings in the "big game," and snagging a pair of World Series bracelets. His idea of relaxation? Betting thousands in the Bellagio blackjack pit. It's a Saturday afternoon at ...
Michael Mizrachi is the Card Player 2006 Player of the Year He Finishes the Year With Nearly 6,000 Points and $2.3 Million in Winnings By Bob Pajich The year 2006 will go down in poker history as the biggest year yet, and when Michael Mizrachi's ...continued
We pick up our annual recap (Part I is available at CardPlayer.com) with the eyes of the poker world focused on Harrah's Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. There, in the expansive Amazon ballroom, players seeking instant fame and ...continued
Editor's Note: To mark recent negotiations with Iran, McManus has prepared a pair of columns about bluffing at poker and nuclear bargaining tables. After that he'll return to the historical timeline with "Dr. Jerry Cardplayer and the ...continued
Late December is always an exciting time for poker. With Card Player's Player of the Year (POY) race in the final heat and Bellagio hosting a huge World Poker Tour event, the industry is full of big news. This year was no exception. First, Michael ...continued
In the $1,500 buy-in pot-limit hold'em tournament at the 2006 World Series of Poker (WSOP), more than 1,100 players began play looking for a coveted gold bracelet and more than $340,000 for first place. Two days later, nine players sat down at the ...continued
Despite getting very little sleep (we played 15 hours on day one and 13 hours on day two), I felt pretty fresh and was ready to make my move toward the top of the leader board on day three. I'd spent the entire tournament below the average in ...continued
As a poker semi-celebrity, the most frequent questions I am asked (besides, did your dad teach you how to play poker? or, is Phil Hellmuth as big a crybaby in real life as he is on TV?) are about the Big Game. So, when the Shulmans approached me and ...continued
UIGEA U.S. citizens witnessed outrageous conduct by our legislators at the end of 2006 when Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. The Act was steamrolled through Congress as a last-minute attachment to the port authority bill ...continued
If you never bet the worst hand on the river, you're not value-betting enough. Yeah, I know - when you get called by a better hand, you feel like you have egg on your face. But did you make the incorrect play? Maybe not! As long as all plausible ...continued
First, I'd like to say that I am happy to be writing for Card Player. I have received some great feedback on my columns in Card Player College and it is much appreciated, as I am always happy to help. Topics have included short-stack play, ...continued
The preceding columns in this series discussed several issues to consider when deciding whether to switch. If you performed the analyses these columns recognized, and you believe that you can succeed in no-limit hold'em (NLH), take the next step: ...continued
A lot of you may not know the name and face that accompany this column. I'm better known in the online poker world as Rizen, online professional poker player. I'm a dedicated professional and student of the game. In May, I won the PokerStars ...continued
We now have looked at all of the cases in which you checked the flop and had to decide what to do on the turn. We now turn to those cases in which you bet the flop. If you won the hand with your flop bet, there is no turn betting to decide, so we will ...continued
I'd first like to say that it is an honor to be a new member of the Card Player family. Obviously, Card Player is the name that comes to everyone's mind whenever the topic of poker media comes up, and I couldn't be more excited to ...continued
I recently took another of my trips to far away places. I went to Jacksonville, Florida, on my first stop for a three-day visit. Howard Korman, the head honcho of St. John's Greyhound Park invited me to host the Chips for Charity Tournament, which ...continued
When my good friend Hiroshi Shimamura invited Jan Fisher and me to the Philippines to host the inaugural event of the Pan Asia Poker Tournament, we accepted quite happily; after all, getting to see new areas of the world and play poker at the same ...continued
You must remember very exactly what occurs at the poker table. You often need to review the early action before making a decision later in a hand. You must learn specific patterns and behaviors that each of your opponents follows, so that you can make ...continued
In 2006, as in every poker year before it, a lot of money was won, lost, and raked. A lot of new faces emerged to gain poker stardom; hello, Jeff Madsen, Alex Jacob, Joe Pelton, Shannon Shorr, and anyone else I left out! Some, shall we say, ...continued
During the 2006 World Series of Poker, I played in several events, one of which was the $2,000 no-limit hold'em shootout. Shootout tournaments have a different structure than regular tournaments, in that each table plays down to one player, and ...continued
Over the years, I've received a lot of e-mail from readers inquiring about rules and procedures. In most of my responses, I refer to wording found in standard rulebooks, and I elaborate on a rule's background and the premise(s) on which it is ...continued
In constructing poker rules, one of our goals is to prevent a player from taking a free shot at the pot. By this I mean retaining the option of calling attention to an irregularity until he sees whether ignoring the irregularity will help or hurt him. ...continued
I see lots of new terms at online poker sites and hear them on televised events. I'll be adding the following to the next edition of The Official Dictionary of Poker. Bubble: As a noun, the position just out of the money in a tournament; often ...continued
Hi. Come on in. Sit down and take the chill out of your bones with a bowl of my grandma's recipe for chicken soup. It's been simmering for several hours in my crockpot. Here's a question you can roll around in the dark corner of your poker ...continued