Travis Rice Vacations (and Wins) at Aruba Poker Classic
By Lisa Wheeler
UltimateBet recently held its 2007
Aruba Poker Classic (
APC) at the Radisson Hotel Resort on Palm Beach in Aruba. The APC began in 2001 as the first televised online poker room qualifying championship, making it the longest-running event of its kind.
The $5,000 buy-in event attracted 548 players, generating a $2.7 million prize pool. First place paid $797,355 before Absolute.com executive Ed Torrison kicked in the difference to make it an even $800,000.
Jordan Rich, Travis Rice, Jason Gray, Brad Smithson, Nick Blackburn, and James Mordue reached the final table, and true to tradition, it was conducted along the white-sand shore with a spectacular sunset along the ocean's horizon serving as the set's backdrop. But this year, play was delayed due to heavy rain and thunderstorms, and as day turned to night, the bright set lights lured a swarm of hungry mosquitoes. Players slathered themselves in odorous repellent, waved away large and exotic insects, endured escalating temperatures, and struggled against winds that threatened to tear away their holecards. Mordue compared the experience to a potential episode of
Survivor Poker Aruba.
Rich was the first to hit the rail in sixth place, earning $77,075 for his brief appearance, followed by Gray with $106,310, Blackburn with $146,180, and Smithson with $252,490. Runner-up Mordue took home $478,405. Travis "TravestyFund" Rice won the trophy and $800,000.
Julian Thew Wins European Poker Tour Baden Open
Popular Englishman Rushes to First PokerStars.com EPT Victory
By Brendan Murray
Julian Thew, from Nottingham, England, won the PokerStars.com
European Poker Tour Baden Open, collecting €670,800 ($872,000) by beating 281 other players at the event held at Congress
Casino, in the small Austrian town of Baden, just outside Vienna. The win capped the Englishman's recent strong run at
EPT events, which includes fourth-, seventh-, and ninth-place finishes among his seven
EPT cashes.
This was Thew's second major victory in as many months, coming on the tail of winning the Plymouth leg of the
Grosvenor UK Poker Tour in September, where he picked up £59,500.
American Thomas Fuller took home $209,000 for finishing fourth in the event. In a weird twist, Fuller claims that a friend of his dreamt that Fuller would finish in that position three weeks before the tournament.
The top six finishers and their prize money follow: Thew; Denes Kalo, Hungary, $487,500; Vladimir Poleshchuk, Russia, $292,500; Fuller; Thierry Van den Berg, the Netherlands, $172,000; Manfred Hammer, Germany, $172,000.
American Ted Lawson, who's in the running for the 2007
Card Player Player of the Year (POY) award, finished seventh for $108,680. Read more about the POY race in the Inside Straight section.
The event's buy-in was €8,000, which translates into more than $11,000 in U.S. currency. The top 24 players cashed in this event.
This was the third
EPT event of the 11 that will be held this season. The final event will take place in Monte Carlo in April 2008. This is the fourth season for the
EPT.
Tax Law That Targeted Tournament Poker Players Killed
Casinos Responsible for Collecting Forms After Big Wins
By Bob Pajich
American tournament poker players can breathe a sigh of relief, because a proposal by the IRS to cipher off more of their tournament poker winnings will not become a tax law.
A proposed rule that would have forced tournament poker players to give up 25 percent of their tournament winnings of $5,000 or more to the government will not go on the books.
Thanks to discussions between representatives of the American Gaming Association and IRS officials, this plan was killed. Now, players who gross $5,000 or more in a poker tournament will have to fill out a W2-G form immediately after they get paid. They are then responsible for paying taxes up to 30 percent of the winnings. The percentage depends on what tax bracket the player is in.
If this sounds familiar, it should. This is the same procedure that many casinos have used for years, but this is the first time that a universal rule will be applied to all casinos.
"Heretofore, it has sort of been a handshake, and the handshake goes back to the Binion days. In lieu of a handshake, they put their minds to it and the IRS has come up with this procedure," said Wally Chalmers, vice president of the AGA. "Overall, our guys are totally pleased with what they came up with."
According to Chalmers, if a player gives the casino false information, or if the casino fails to collect a W2-G form from its players, it is potentially responsible for paying the taxes.
All of the details of the procedure and the effective dates are still being worked out.
U.S. PokerBowl Brings Team Battles to Poker
Competition Will Air on Fox Sports
By Kristy Arnett
It is currently NFL season, and teams are vying to make it to the
Super Bowl. But this year, for the first time, there was a national team competition for poker players: the
PokerBowl. Teams from 25 cities converged at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas recently, where they competed for big money and a national title in a televised team event that will air on
Fox Sports at a yet-to-be-determined date.
PokerBowl consisted of five conferences from each region of the country, each containing five teams. This one-of-a-kind tournament split up the six-person teams evenly between three tables. Two players from each team were seated at the
opposite sides of each table. The three 10-handed tables played independently until there were 10 players left to combine to one table. Once the final table was set, play resumed, and the team with the last player standing was the winner. All of the teams who won their conference played on Oct. 23 to compete in the same format until the winner was crowned.
The event attracted a slew of big-name poker pros, including, among many others, J.C. Tran, Michael Mizrachi, Doyle Brunson, Gavin Smith, Nam Le, Chris Ferguson, T.J. Cloutier, and Lee Watkinson.
There were a number of stacked teams, including the Cleveland Crows, who boasted several online poker phenoms. The team was owned by Justin "ZeeJustin" Bonomo, who competed alongside teammates J.C. "PrtyPsux" Alvarado, Jared "TheWacoKidd" Hamby, Danny Wong, Steve Sung, and Carl Olson.
As expected, the Las Vegas Rat Pack was another team filled with big names, including Antonio Esfandiari, Jennifer Tilly, Phil Laak, Danny Masterson, Scott Fischman, and Mike Matusow.
For results and live updates from this event, go to CardPlayer.com and be sure to check out the airing of this groundbreaking team tournament on
Fox Sports.
Frank's Online Gambling Bill Gains Another Supporter
Bill That Would License Online Gambling Has 38 Co-sponsors
By Bob Pajich
Barney Frank's bill that calls for the United States to license Internet gambling has picked up another supporter.
Congressman Raul M. Grijalva of Arizona became the 38th member of Congress to co-sponsor H.R. 2046.
The bill, which calls for the United States to allow for licensing of Internet gambling facilities by the director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, was referred to the subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection in April, where it remains.
Frank has indicated that he will soon introduce a bill that would end the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). The UIGEA was passed last year and is the latest legal tool that the United States implemented to stop online gambling. The UIGEA makes it illegal for banks to do business with offshore Internet casinos and poker rooms.
United States PokerChampionship Ends With an Adam Gerber Victory
Tourney Had Lowest Turnout Since 2003
By Bob Pajich
Adam Gerber ended up with all of the chips at the
United States Poker Championship at Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City recently. He took home $606,000 for his victory.
Gerber beat 163 other players to claim the $10,000 buy-in championship event, which had the lowest turnout since 2003, when 99 players played. Last year, 261 players participated. In 2005, 225 players entered, and in 2004, 187 players competed.
For years, the event was filmed and broadcasted by
ESPN, but the network decided to focus only on
World Series of Poker events and dropped the event from its schedule late this summer.
The top six finishers of this year's
USPC were as follows: Gerber; Louis Lee, $318,160; Matthew Glantz, $159,080; Edward Brogdon, $95,448; Victor Ramdin, $71,586; and Jared Okun, $55,678.
Two Poker Rooms Open in West Virginia
State Went From Zero to 57 Tables Just Like That
By Bob Pajich
Live poker is now available in West Virginia, as Wheeling Island Racetrack & Gaming Center in Wheeling and Mountaineer Racetrack and Gaming Resort in Weirton have opened poker rooms.
The games spread in both rooms are Texas hold'em, as well as Omaha and stud whenever demand dictates. Limit and no-limit games starting as low as $2-$4 for limit and $1-$2 for no-limit are spread. The rake is 10 percent up to $5 per pot.
Daily tournaments at both rooms will eventually be spread, and World Series of Poker qualifiers also will take place starting in January.
This summer, residents in the two counties where the casinos are located voted to allow the tracks to add casino games and poker. Immediately after the vote, Wheeling Island started building a 20-table poker room, and Mountaineer, a 37-table room.
Within a few weeks of the vote, West Virginia Northern Community College began holding classes to teach residents how to deal, and according to Mike Koon, vice president of the school's economic and workforce development program, these classes were the first to fill up.
Koon said that everyone from recent retirees to young adults went through the program (classes are no longer available because the poker rooms hired just about everyone who completed them).
The school partnered with Atlantic Cape Community College of New Jersey to quickly offer the courses, which included classes on how to deal craps, roulette, and blackjack, as well as all forms of poker.
It will take at least two more months to spread the rest of the casino games.
Dates for 2008 World Series of Poker Announced
Numerous Days for Preregistration
By Kristy Arnett
After receiving much criticism from the participants of this summer's
World Series of Poker, Harrah's Entertainment seems to be taking steps already to rectify some previous mistakes for the upcoming 2008
WSOP. The 39th-annual
WSOP will take place at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino for the fourth year in a row, and the official dates are May 30 through July 17 - with scheduled opportunities to preregister - once again increasing the length of the
Series.
The tournament room will be open the week of May 26 for two special events, which will also give players a chance to preregister for events. The schedule was constructed this way in order to avoid the nightmarish registration lines of this year.
The schedule for the 2008
Series is similar to that of the 2007
Series - which was held from June 1 to July 17 - but two days longer. This increase has been the trend for the last few years, as each year has extended the schedule by a day or two.
The
WSOP has taken place throughout the month of June and into the middle of July since 2004, with the exception of 2006, when the schedule was June 25 through Aug. 10. The 2003
WSOP was held from April 15 through May 23 and was only 39 days long. In 2008, it will be 49 days long.
The starting and ending dates of the
Series may have changed over the years, especially since the poker boom that started with Chris Moneymaker winning the main event, but the one constant is the increase in the number of days.
More information on the schedule of events has yet to be released.
National Poker League Vegas Open Satellites at The Venetian
Qualifiers for $2,500 Events Running Every Saturday
By Kristy Arnett
The 2007
National Poker League will be arriving in Sin City for the
Vegas Open at the end of November, and The Venetian poker room is armed and ready to accommodate those who would like to participate by running weekly satellites for the $2,500 events.
Every Saturday at 8 p.m., a $115 rebuy supersatellite will take place. Rebuys will be allowed throughout the first four levels, and as many $2,500 seats as possible will be awarded. Players will get the chance to win seats into televised final-table events that will be filmed in HD and broadcast all over the world with poker pro Kirk Morrison and Vegas radio personality Dave Farra providing commentary.
The
Vegas Open is the last stop on this year's
NPL World Circuit Tour, which will culminate with the season-ending
NPL World Championship. Winners from the
UK Open, Asia Open, Australia Open, and the
Vegas Open will return for the $15,000 buy-in event that begins on Dec. 3.
The following is the
Vegas Open and
NPL Championship tournament schedule:
Aside from the
NPL Championship, which begins at 1 p.m., all tournaments will start at 12:30 p.m. and are no-limit hold'em.
Large Buy-in Tourneys With Small Fields
Found in the Big Poker Rooms on the Strip
By Kristy Arnett
Players wishing to compete in the richest events in the world, like those on the
World Poker Tour or the
World Series of Poker, can find great steppingstone tournaments in Las Vegas every week. The Strip is a perfect place to find bigger buy-in tournaments with fairly small fields. These kinds of tournaments can help players gain experience with accomplished competitors, long blinds levels, and a great chance to finish in the money.
To kick off the weekends, those who have jobs can skip out of work early on Fridays to make the noon $540 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament at Wynn Las Vegas. Players start with $5,000 in chips. The blinds begin at $25-$50 and go up every 45 minutes. Averaging about three tables, this tournament is perfect for players who want a high level of competition but don't want to be playing all day.
For players who would rather spend the day at the poker table for a more generous blinds structure and deeper starting stacks, The Venetian is the place to go. Its fairly new poker room has already gained a reputation for running some of the best "deep-stack" tournaments around. Every Saturday at noon, it hosts a $550 buy-in no-limit hold'em event in which players receive $10,000 in starting chips. The blinds start at $25-$50 and increase every 40 minutes. This tournament usually attracts four or five tables of players.
To round out the weekend, players can head to the Mirage, on Sundays, where a $430 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament is held at 5 p.m. inside the poker room. Players get $4,000 in chips and the blinds increase every 30 minutes.
Known for high-stakes poker, Bellagio provides another option every day of the week. The poker room runs a $540 buy-in no-limit hold'em event Sunday-Thursday at 2 p.m. It features a $3,000 starting stack and 40-minute blinds levels. On Friday and Saturday, its famous $1,080 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament takes place. Since a number of big-name poker pros call Bellagio their second home, they often can be found playing in this tournament. It starts at 2 p.m., and there are generally four or five tables. Players get $5,000 in chips, with the blinds starting at $25-$50 and increasing every 40 minutes.
Card Player Player of the Year
Lawson Leapfrogs Clements
Ted Lawson finished in seventh place recently at the
European Poker Tour Baden Classic in Austria, winning €83,600. Given the 282 participants and the more than $10,000 buy-in, Lawson also was awarded 336 points in the 2007 Player of the Year race. This wasn't enough to create major shock waves on the leader board, but it was enough for Lawson to jump past Scott Clements and take hold of eighth place with 3,335 points. This final-table appearance was Lawson's eighth of 2007 and it took him to more than $1 million in winnings this year.
Nam Le Makes Another Consistent Showing
Nam Le took down 168 points for his sixth-place finish at the
WPT Turks and 
Caicos Poker Championship. He now has 2,217 points and moved from 38th to 31st place on the leader board. Nam is always a threat to win the POY title, and a strong push this fall could place him in the top five, where he is used to residing. Nam finished in second place in last year's POY race, 774 points behind Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi. Although he is 3,193 points behind the current leader, David "The Dragon" Pham, he is a threat to win every event he enters. It would take at least two big wins for Nam to get to the top, but he is the caliber of player who could accomplish such a feat.
Case Study: 2004 POY Race by the Numbers
The 2004 Player of the Year race is often referenced as the best year in the award's history. Daniel Negreanu pulled off an
amazing comeback to pass David Pham during the last major event of that year, the
WPT Five-Diamond World Poker Classic. Let's take a closer look at the numbers to see if a comparable come-from-behind victory is possible this year. Negreanu finished with 8,764 points and Pham with 7,068 points that year. Neither of those marks has been matched since 2004. Down the stretch, Negreanu picked up 1,440 points for his win at the
Borgata Poker Open and 1,824 points for his win at the
Five-Diamond World Poker Classic. That gave him 3,264 points in four months and the 2004 title. If we look at the current race, a 3,264-point swing could catapult every player all the way down to David "Devil Fish" Ulliott (35th place) into the lead. There is a lot of poker to be played between now and the end of December, and anything can happen in that time.
Shaundeeb Takes Advantage of a Weak Mindset in the World Championship of Online Poker Main Event
By Craig Tapscott
Want to study real poker hands with the Internet's most successful players? In this series,
Card Player offers hand analysis with online poker's leading talent.
Event: $2,500 PokerStars
World Championship of Online Poker no-limit hold'em main event
Players: 2,998
First Place: $1,378,330
Stacks: shaundeeb - $21,125; Villain - $20,850
Blinds: $50-$100
The Villain limps in from middle position. Shaundeeb checks his option with the 10
7
from the big blind.
Craig Tapscott: What's the feel of your table at this point, so early in the event?
Shaun Deeb: The Villain has been the tightest player at the table. I've been quite active, because with this big a buy-in, people were afraid to go broke and play large pots without the nuts.
Flop: A
9
8
($250 pot)
Shaundeeb checks. The Villain bets $200, and shaundeeb calls.
CT: You're out of position with this draw. What else are you thinking here?
SD: It is usually incorrect to check-call from out of position with draws, but our stacks are deep here. Also, the likelihood of him two-barreling here if he has a weak ace or worse is quite low. So, I call with plans of stealing the pot on the river when he checks behind on the turn.
Turn: J
($650 pot)
CT: You forgot to say that you are psychic and run well.
SD: (laughing) That too.
Shaundeeb bets $500.
CT: Why that amount? Many players have a hard time choosing bet amounts. Can you elaborate here?
SD: Well, I lead here for about three-quarters of the pot since there are a lot of draws out, and I think he wouldn't two-barrel many times in this spot. He may check behind with his flush-draw hands, so I want to charge them and also build a pot versus A-X and stronger hands.
The Villain raises to $1,200.
CT: That's a weird raise, almost a miniraise.
SD: The $1,200 is quite the small raise. I have the second nuts, so I three-bet him. There's no way that he folds aces up, sets, and so on to this bet, and he may even push them, never putting me on a straight.
Shaundeeb raises to $4,600. The Villain calls.
River: J
($9,850 pot)
CT: That's not a great card, obviously. Can you value-bet?
SD: Yeah, it's really an interesting card. The pot is almost $10,000 and we have effectively $15,000 behind. Due to my thinking that people have been playing so weak-tight in this tourney, I decided to check the river. I don't think an unknown has the intelligence or guts to bluff this river after the turn action. I contemplated value-betting around $5,000 and folding to a shove, but I think if he has a negated two pair, he's not calling the river anyway.
Shaundeeb checks. The Villain checks. The Villain shows two pair with the A
8
. Shaundeeb wins the $9,850 pot with a straight.
CT: How should you be thinking in a tournament like this with so many players in from satellites and others who are simply dead money?
SD: You have to recognize how the buy-in is affecting your opponents' mindsets. It will definitely alter their bluffing frequency. Many players will be very scared during the first few levels. I use that to my advantage to build up a nice stack with very few showdowns.
Shaun Deeb, 21, is known as one of the most active players on the Internet, playing hundreds of tournaments each month. He has won more than $500,000 online and recently cashed four times at the 2007 World Series of Poker.
Baron Looking to Become Lord of the Online Poker Realm
By Shawn Patrick Green
No one can say the
Card Player Online Player of the Year (OPOY) race hasn't been strongly contested. Sorel "Imper1um"
Mizzi held what seemed like an insurmountable lead for months until previous leader Matt "ch0ppy" Kay mounted a comeback and retook the top spot more than a month ago.
Now, Isaac "westmenloAA" Baron, another previous OPOY leader who had fallen to as low as fifth place in the standings, has decided to make another run for the gold. Baron managed to outlast 3,569 players to take down the Full Tilt $750,000-guaranteed tournament on Oct. 7, earning himself $132,787 and a whopping 1,200 OPOY points. Those points, in conjunction with 300 points earned from a second-place finish in the PokerStars
Super Tuesday event on Oct. 9, put him all the way back into second place in the standings and just one small win away from the top spot.
With just 424 points separating Kay in first place and Mizzi in third, the last few months of the OPOY race are sure to turn into a digital bloodbath as the world's top online poker pros make a mad dash for the finish.
The Dark (Trojan) Horse of the Race?
Scott "SCTrojans" Freeman may just be the dark horse to clinch the OPOY title, especially given the way he's been running lately. Freeman was just a blip on the OPOY radar earlier this year, but he began crushing online poker and has now cemented himself in the top 10. It's been a month since we announced his arrival on our leader board, and he already has amassed almost 1,500 more points since that time, including three first-place finishes in OPOY-qualified events.
Freeman's steady progress up the OPOY standings should look ominous to the top five contenders, as he now sits in sixth place with 5,030 points.
Full Tilt Online Poker Series VI is Upon Us
It seems like just yesterday that online poker players saw themselves knee-deep in the $2.3 million main event of the
Full Tilt Online Poker Series (
FTOPS)
V, looking to nab the almost $400,000 first-place prize. Full Tilt, however, is already set to hold yet another
FTOPS with yet another multimillion-dollar main event.
The 15 events of the
FTOPS VI are slated to run Nov. 7-18. The site is guaranteeing $9 million in prize pools, including four tournaments with guarantees of $1 million or more. The series also will include yet another big two-day no-limit hold'em event, which will be held on Saturday, Nov. 17, at 3 p.m. ET. The main event has a $2 million guarantee and will be held on Nov. 18 at 6 p.m. ET.
The full schedule for the
FTOPS VI can be found on the Full Tilt website.
Chatbox Cunning
Strategy from top online pros
Greg "DuckU" Hobson
On how to play deep-stack, big-field tournaments:
"One thing that I always tell myself is that I can't outplay everybody in every hand, and, 'I can't win the tournament this early.' I know that I sometimes get impatient or try to make too many moves early on, and I have to tell myself these things in order to calm myself down."
On playing with a big stack:
"When I get a big stack in a tournament, I am going to try to run over my table most of the time - but not if the table is really tough - because people don't want to get involved against the big stack. With that said, good players aren't going to let you do that, and will play back at you with some pretty marginal holdings, and that's when you have to really know your image and how different opponents perceive you."
Tournament Schedule
The PokerStars tournament lineup is one of the most robust of any online poker site, and is getting even more jam-packed every day. Here are some tournaments to look out for:
Those interested in signing up for these tournaments can follow this link to see a complete schedule: http://www.CardPlayer.com/link/ot.
James Mackey
Baby-Faced Killer
By Craig Tapscott
James Mackey is one more Internet phenom inspired by Chris Moneymaker's
World Series of Poker Cinderella story. During his senior year of high school in Missouri, Mackey deposited $50 onto PartyPoker, and lost it. He deposited once again, and lost it. The third time would be the charm. After unsuccessful forays into low-stakes cash games, Mackey decided to give tournaments a shot, never depositing a single dollar again.
Success came fast and furiously. A small win enabled Mackey to set goals, build a bankroll, and begin to grasp money-management concepts. Early on, playing as mig.com, he capitalized on opponents' weaknesses by killing tournaments with pedal-to-the-metal aggression.
Mackey brought his A-game, a dream, and ID to Las Vegas this past summer. He may have turned 21 four months earlier,
but the freckle-faced redhead still looked too young to vote, drink, or plunk down a buy-in into a WSOP event; yet, the courage and determination of youth would prevail. Mackey would go on to win the $5,000 no-limit hold'em event and $730,000, and become the third-youngest player to win a bracelet in WSOP history. Not satisfied with one bracelet in 2007, Mackey would take down the PokerStars
World Championship of Online Poker $1,050 no-limit hold'em event and $580,212 this past September. Next up on the list, a
World Poker Tour title.
Life is good. Mackey's garnered the admiration and respect of his peers and looks forward to being a force on the live circuit in 2008, with passport and bracelets in hand.
Craig Tapscott: What hand do you remember the most at your
WSOP final table?
James Mackey: The hand that started my run was against Nick Schulman, who I believed to be the best player at the table. It was a small blind versus big blind battle. I had A-10. He shoved 15 big blinds when I had raised from the small blind. I called, he showed A-7, and I busted him when my hand held.
CT: On a daily basis, I see people overvalue their A-X in the blinds. What is your thinking here?
JM: Some players, when the small blind raises and they're in the big blind with A-X, will just shove with a huge stack. They are shoving for more than they should in this spot. A-X is a bad hand to shove with most of the time. But it depends on how much you're shoving for. If it's 30 big blinds, it's pretty bad. If it's for 15 big blinds and the button has been aggressive, it can be a good play.
CT: What are some of your keys for shorthanded play?
JM: Even though it's shorthanded, try to play flops in position. Some players defend their big blinds a lot more, but it actually gets them into trouble. The main reason is because you're out of position the rest of the hand. So, play a higher percentage of hands, but try to do it in position.
CT: Everyone talks about aggression being the key, but don't you see players being aggressive without really thinking?
JM: Everyone has a breaking point. You can push people only so many times before they start playing back at you. It's partially feel, and I also try to be aggressive when I'm in position. This way, it's harder for them to play back at me, or call and play a flop against me.
CT: Do you always continuation-bet?
JM: It really depends on the flop texture. If I raise and the flop comes Q-J-10 and I don't have any part of that, I'm probably going to let it go. That flop is going to hit such a large percentage of my opponent's range, and I'll lose money by continuation-betting. But I'll continuation-bet a majority of the time when I raise preflop.
CT: Watching you at the
WSOP, you seem to have a very calm presence at the table.
JM: I've been through the bad beats and the downswings. The most important thing you have to have is complete confidence in your game. At the same time, you can't be cocky and you must constantly be able to re-evaluate your play and talk to other players about hands.
CT: Any suggestions for dealing with a rough downswing?
JM: Play through it. I actually play more tournaments to compensate for the variance. I know over the long run that I will win.
Ask Jack
Want to know how a multimillion-dollar poker tournament is run? Have a question about a specific tournament poker rule or past ruling you've encountered?
Card Player is giving you the chance to pick the mind of one of the game's finest - Bellagio Tournament Director Jack
McClelland. You can send your questions to
[email protected], and McClelland will share his 25-plus years of industry experience with you.
Theo: I was at the final table of a tournament in my local casino, and the blinds were $3,000-$6,000. I had $5,000 in chips left and was all in on my big blind. The player under the gun limped in and the next player, Player X, moved all in for $20,000. The limper folded and the dealer pushed the side pot toward Player X. Player X began to rake in the chips, and the dealer grabbed his cards and mucked them. I pointed out that the main pot was still in play, and that I deserved that pot since Player X's hand was mucked. The floorman came over and said that we could either chop the main pot or wait two hours while he reviewed the videotapes. I agreed to take half of the main pot, which was still more than I started the hand with, but I do believe that I deserved the whole pot, since I was the only player with cards. Was the floorman's ruling correct?
Jack: No. You actually did deserve the pot, because Player X never showed his cards. What good would reviewing the videotape do if he never showed his cards? It would have been worthless. You still had your cards, which are needed to win the pot. Whenever we have an all-in situation in my tournaments, we always turn the hands up. So, we won't have a situation like this, because we can determine who has the best hand, and who is entitled to what. When the limper folded his hand, the other players should have turned up their hands.
Serge: I was in a tournament when the following occurred: There were three players in a hand in which I was not involved. Player A was the bettor and the other two players called him down. On the river, Player A bet again, and the other two players both made the call. Player A showed his hand, which seemed to be good since the other two players looked reluctant to reveal their cards. Then, Player C demanded to see Player B's hand, since they both had called down Player A. I know that a called hand has to show on the river, but does a beaten caller also have to expose his cards?
Jack: If there is action bet and called, anyone at the table can ask any of the players involved to expose his hand.
Card Player Digital
The
Card Player multimedia team continues to bring viewers groundbreaking and exclusive videos on
Card Player TV, the latest being a tour inside the home of the "Ambassador of Poker" Mike Sexton.
Although he spends a lot of time traveling on the
World Poker Tour, Sexton took time out to show
CPTV's own Lizzy Harrison around his Las Vegas home. If you missed it, don't worry! Just check out the video archives at www.CardPlayer.com/TV by clicking on the Lifestyles channel.
Card Player Mobile
Whether you are a beginner or an advanced player, calculating poker odds on the spot can be difficult.
Card Player is always finding ways to help you improve your game, and true to form, you can now find an application with Card Player Mobile that will ensure that you will never have to struggle with calculating odds again.
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One Size Does Not Fit All
By David Apostolico
There is an enormous amount of poker literature on the shelves these days. Couple that with the ability to play online anytime and the availability of computer programs to analyze your play, and the learning curve for poker has been shortened tremendously. Of course, not all learning tools are created equally. There is plenty of good advice out there, and some advice that is not as good. How do you determine what's good or not?
Well, you can look at reviews and ask those you trust for some recommendations, but ultimately, you are the only one who can decide what's good for you. You may get a lot of out a book that others don't like at all. Of course, the reverse could be true, as well. That's because each of us has our own individual strengths and weaknesses, and playing styles. We each also input and process information differently. What's good for the goose may not be good for the gander.
I will caution against one type of advice that I see quite frequently, and it's a personal pet peeve of mine. That is, absolute advice. There are no absolutes in poker, so there should be no absolutes in poker advice. Yet, I see it all the time.
"Never open-limp into a pot."
"Never slow-play aces."
"A-K is such a strong hand that it should never be folded preflop."
"If you're going to call, you should always raise."
These are just a few of the oft written things I come across that are stated in absolute truths. Of course, there is a lot of truth to each of the above, but I wouldn't call any of them absolutes. I recently played a deep-stack tournament in which the very first hand, I received pocket fours under the gun. I limped in. A player in middle position made a standard raise of three times the big blind, and there were three callers before the action got to me. Since no one was left to act behind me, I called and we saw a flop fivehanded. I flopped a set, but there were three spades on board. I bet out and two players called. The turn brought another 4, giving me quads. Another player had a full house and yet another one had the nut flush.
Needless to say, I won a huge pot. Of course, I got very lucky, but I put myself in a position to get very lucky by limping in the first place. The hand could have turned out very differently had I raised. I most likely would have faced a reraise, and then would have been either forced to fold or heads up with a player who wouldn't have paid me off. Based on what they were holding, it is unlikely that either the nut flush or the full house would have seen a flop. The point of this example is that to me, this was an obvious open-limp situation, even though I agree that open-limping is generally not a good idea. That's why I would avoid blanket statements such as never open-limp.
Everything in poker is situational. What you should do is dictated by numerous factors, including your position, your opposition, relative chip stacks, blind levels, and so on. The permutations are endless, although with experience and paying attention, you'll know what to do in most situations. I'd encourage everyone who wants to improve his game to learn as much as possible from outside sources, including reading. I would caution you, however, to read critically, not to take advice in absolute terms, and discern what is (and is not) helpful for your particular game. When it comes to advice, one size does not fit all.
David Apostolico is the author of numerous philosophical poker books that help the reader develop the right mindset to make correct decisions, including Tournament Poker and The Art of War and Machiavellian Poker Strategy.
Its Mantra: 'Plan Your Hands'
By Tim Peters
Professional No-Limit Hold'em: Volume I by Matt Flynn, Sunny Mehta, and Ed Miller (Two Plus Two Publishing; $29.95)
A lot of amateur players seem to believe that no-limit hold'em is a game dominated by feel and aggression instead of mathematical rigor and brutal rationality, but this powerful new book dispels that notion in no uncertain terms. "It's not the one gut-wrenching decision for all the chips that counts most," the authors write. "It's the thousands of small strategic decisions that the pros get right and the amateurs don't."
Don't misunderstand. Feel and aggression are
critical to success in no-limit hold'em. But, the most consistent winners use analytical skill to complement their decision-making, and in no-limit hold'em, the math is a lot more difficult than it is in the limit game. In limit, you're playing for one, two, or three more bets; in no-limit, your entire stack may be on the line in every hand. And that makes the analytical aspects of no-limit hold'em a lot more complicated.
It's no surprise, then, that the book includes a lengthy discussion of stack sizes, which "are critical to most no-limit decisions."
Stack size effectively determines your risk/reward possibilities, and that idea prompts a long and very valuable analysis of "commitment." "'Am I committed?' is the first question you should ask yourself on every street," write Flynn, Mehta, and Miller. If you understand the concepts in this book, you'll know how to answer that crucial question. But here's the real challenge: You have to make the all-in decision
before you play a large pot. You must know if you're at the "commitment threshold" and how you're going to respond if you're facing an all-in bet. Those are the situations that can build - or destroy - your bankroll, and you have to be prepared for them.
The book is primarily about the analytical (that is, mathematical) aspects of no-limit hold'em, but Flynn et al. do a good job of illuminating topics like hand-reading. It's not mystical (unless your name is Kenny Tran), but it's not purely rational or logical, either. In particular, the book points out the folly of putting someone on a
specific hand instead of
range of hands. And that leads directly into the meatiest concept of the book, "the REM Process": "Range, Equity, Maximize."
Range, of course, refers to the spectrum of hands that your opponents could have (we all know players who raise only with A-A or K-K, but most raisers have a much wider range of potential hands). Observation of showdowns will help you assign a range to a specific player, and of course you'll add physical tells and intangibles (is someone on tilt? stuck big-time? flush with chips?) to your analysis.
Equity is the value of your hand compared to the range of hands that your opponent has (Harrington fans will recognize this concept in his "Structured Hand Analysis" in
Harrington on Hold'em, Volume II). Only a savant could perform these calculations at the table, but you'll learn some shortcuts to getting there.
Finally,
maximize "means choosing the action or series of actions that makes you the most money in the long run." What's the optimum size of a value-bet (which, of course, depends on the size of the pot and the size of the stacks behind)? Of a bluff?
If this makes no-limit hold'em sound complex, well, that's the reality. Get used to it or get used to going broke. The mantra of this book is "Plan your hands." But you can't plan effectively if you don't understand REM, if you don't understand the concept of relative stack sizes and the stack-to-pot ratio, if you don't understand when you've reached the commitment threshold. And that's why you need
Professional No-Limit Hold'em - and the tenacity to learn what it has to offer.
I continue to be surprised by the popularity of no-limit hold'em cash games, but, clearly, books like this one are riding that particular wave. What's your favorite no-limit hold'em strategy book? E-mail me at [email protected].
