The NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship is a tournament in which luck can often play a large factor in determining the outcome of a match. Because of this, some people have called the event a series of coin flips for $500,000 among the 64 invited contestants each year. This year, one player ...
More Chips, Better Structure in 2009 WSOP Players in Main Event Will Begin With 30,000 in Chips More chips, better structure. Those four words will be music to the ears of many poker players who have criticized the World Series of Poker in the past ...continued
EPT Germany, NBC Heads-Up Championship Influence Player of the Year Race By Ryan Lucchesi EPT Dortmund Creates a Crowd at Seventh Place The third PokerStars European Poker Tour stop in Germany produced the second woman champion in its history. Sandra ...continued
As a breakout star online, Sorel Mizzi has cashed for more than $1 million. The 23-year-old native of Toronto, Canada, also has been very successful in live events, with $1.2 million in total cashes. He most recently won a $3,000 no-limit hold'em ...continued
We're going to take a peek at a hand played online between Brandon Cantu and Adam "Roothlus" Levy. It took place early in the nightly PokerStars $100 rebuy event, and their stacks were very deep. It's a rather entertaining hand, and ...continued
Tri Nguyen's parents wanted more for their children than the lives they'd known in Vietnam. So, they sold everything they owned and set sail on a small boat with their two young sons. By some miracle, the family landed safely in Hong Kong, ...continued
Nobody likes to be pushed around, especially at the poker table. Facing an aggressive player can be threatening, annoying, and costly. So, naturally, we want to be that player! The beauty of putting people under pressure is that they will adjust in so ...continued
Kathy Liebert has been one of the most consistent tournament players in the history of poker, and she recently topped the $5 million mark in lifetime winnings. She has a World Series of Poker bracelet and three World Poker Tour televised final-table ...continued
In The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi writes in depth about his lifelong exploration of two essential elements of ancient martial and strategic traditions. According to the Thomas Cleary translation, "[t]he first of these basic principles ...continued
Niman Kenkre is a 36-year-old professional cash-game player who turned $25 into millions. After scoring 1580 on his SAT, he graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and went on to obtain a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering ...continued
In late February, I headed to L.A. to play in the $10,000 buy-in WPT (World Poker Tour) event at the LAPC (Los Angeles Poker Classic). This tournament is held at Commerce Casino, and is six days long. Last year, we had one of the best final tables in ...continued
With a first-place prize of almost $1.7 million and a super slow structure, the L.A. Poker Classic main event is my kind of tournament. This year, the tournament was run by a savage named Matt, and he did a great job, although I think his wife, Mary ...continued
It's the type of hand that generates strange looks. People are surprised to see me in these situations, as if they somehow think I don't play a starting hand worse than A-Q. He's a good player, they think, and he plays only good hands and ...continued
Hey, yo! JV here, still toiling away in the sitcom salt mines of Mother Russia, where most of my poker play has been online, and shorthanded. I love shorthanded hold'em, because not only do I get to play a ton of hands and see a ton of flops, ...continued
Many years ago, I designed computers for the military. Among the things we tracked were "countermeasures," which meant things the enemy did to negate what we were doing. Of course, we then employed "counter-countermeasures" to deal ...continued
For great players, the answer is yes. If those bluffs weren't profitable, great players wouldn't make them. They play poker to make money, not to show off. For you, me, and most other people, the answer is no. We don't have the exceptional ...continued
"What's in the pot? How much can I bet?" When playing in a live cardroom, the trickiest and perhaps most intimidating thing to pick up for most players new to pot-limit Omaha is the pot-limit betting structure, as hold'em is most ...continued
I was e-mailed the following hand by a student of mine who understands poker well, but has only a moderate amount of experience with no-limit hold'em. This is a fine instructional hand, because the situation is fairly common and the solution is a ...continued
Have you ever heard someone say that he's raising in order to sweeten the pot? Do you think he's nuts? Or, is there method to his madness? Recently, a reader asked me if his skepticism about pot-sweetening raises was justified, or if he was ...continued
You've used all of your skill to get down to the final three or four players in a tournament or supersatellite (or even home-game tourney), and the subject of making a deal arises. You are open to the suggestion, but how do you figure out what a ...continued
Here's a quick review of the discussion of sampling that started in my last column. There are certain statistical operations that you perform quite frequently in your daily life without really thinking of them in a statistical sense. Sampling ...continued
As someone who writes about decisions so much, it is sometimes surprising to me how misinformed players seem to be on certain rules. Or, I suppose, it could just be a case of players having selective thinking when it comes to a rule that would help ...continued
I've been in the poker industry a long time, and therefore am always happy when someone comes up with a way to "build a better mousetrap." Recently while hosting a tournament series at the Eureka Casino Hotel in Mesquite, Nevada, I came ...continued
In my last column, I discussed day one of the $10,000 buy-in PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. We started the tournament with 20,000 in chips, and I had slightly more than doubled my stack by the end of the second level. It was a great start for me, and ...continued