It's become a rather clichéd statement to say that a new generation of players are invading the top of poker's food chain. However, there is nothing clichéd about Scott Clements. The 26-year-old former mortgage broker from Mt. Vernon, Washington, continues to make his ...
Blogging With the Best: Doyle Brunson and Gus Hansen Join Card Player Blogger Roster Daily Blogs Available at CardPlayer.com By Bob Pajich Gus Hansen and Doyle Brunson have spent countless hours beating each other up in the "big game," but ...continued
For some players, it is not a question of if, it's a question of when. Phil Ivey is one of the most respected players in the game of poker. He had appeared at a record seven World Poker Tour final tables, which was more than any other player in ...continued
You are remembered for the rules you break. – Gen. Douglas MacArthur Unlike Truman, Roosevelt, Harding, and the other White House residents who played poker to relax with advisors and friends, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon seldom if ever ...continued
We're nearly a quarter of the way through the year and the Card Player 2008 Player of the Year leader board is taking shape. Familiar names such as Men Nguyen, Gavin Griffin, David Pham, Michael Binger, Erik Seidel, and Lee Watkinson all have ...continued
Gabe Thaler chose to specialize in no-limit hold'em cash games long before the game became wildly popular. He first learned to play in Northern California, but soon moved to Los Angeles and then Las Vegas. Thaler's reputation preceded him; ...continued
Recently, I watched a rerun of Poker After Dark from 2007, featuring Barry Greenstein, Eli Elezra, Jennifer Harman, Phil Ivey, Allen Cunningham, and David Benyamine. Usually, the players buy in for $20,000, with a first-place prize of $120,000; but in ...continued
When I concluded my last column, I was broke, stuck, and steaming from the main event in Tunica, Mississippi. I couldn't get a flight out that day, so I was going to get a ticket for the following day; however, no first-class seats were available. ...continued
We all had just sat down to start a $30-$60 limit hold'em game. The lineup looked terribly tough, with many top local players taking a seat. It was a must-move game. I couldn't change tables quickly, but with three other games going, I knew ...continued
As I kick off the "On the Draw" column, I suppose I should introduce myself and tell you what this column is about. Some of you might know me from my work as an investment analyst writing about investing in general and gaming industry stocks ...continued
If you want to show a long-term profit in tournaments, it's extremely important to find the ones that offer the best value. Obviously, your dream situation is to have the house adding money to the prize pool. If you can find a tournament with this ...continued
The squeeze play has a bit of a daring and clever feel to it. It's a bluff (or semibluff) perpetrated against not one, but several opponents. Someone bets, one or more players call, and you raise. When it works, you feel like a champ, and you rake ...continued
In tournament poker, the impact that random chance has on your game is often directly proportional to the amount of chips you have in front of you. If you have a large stack relative to the blinds and antes, you are less likely to be eliminated by a ...continued
In my last column, I began to discuss the criteria for the free-card raise. I started by looking at the first of the following six factors that you should consider: • How many outs do you have? • How large is the pot? • What is your ...continued
In my last column, I discussed the deficiencies of relying on a short-stack strategy for beating no-limit hold'em. I can understand why a neophyte might adopt such a strategy for a few sessions to learn the game before putting larger sums at risk, ...continued
I'm at the European Poker Tour (EPT) event in Copenhagen, Denmark, as I write this. If you've never been to a poker tournament in Europe, you owe it to yourself to check out an EPT event. It's like every other poker tournament you've ...continued
I've made it a tradition that once a year, I devote a column to discussing some questions from a quiz that I give all of my prospective poker students. For those of you who missed my first two columns on the subject, my quiz is not entirely about ...continued
Over the years, there has been a lot of debate over which form of hold'em is the best test of players. This column introduces a new form of hold'em that I call mixed hold'em. Mixed hold'em is simple at its core, but would completely ...continued
Recently I played in the Poker Celebrity Bowl in Maricopa, Arizona, and found it an interesting challenge, for reasons I'll discuss below. Before we get to that, here's a quick shout-out to the hosts and sponsors of the tournament: ...continued
This column will start an episodic series on recommended reading for the poker player. Why episodic? The columns in this series will be spread over a period of time, to give you time to purchase and then read books that you think are appropriate. ...continued
As Tom McEvoy so diplomatically pointed out in one of his recent columns, my tournament play is not likely to get me into the Poker Hall of Fame anytime soon. In graphic detail he described how I "destroyed" my chips while playing in an ...continued