advanced poker play

Introduction

Any truly competitive poker player must surely want to play in poker tournaments. Whether they consider themselves still to be somewhat of a rookie or an advanced poker player, there’s always a casino or online poker tournament starting up somewhere or other, which will suit both their level of experience and pocket. Accordingly the prize money on offer in tournaments can also vary widely and whilst paying an entry fee of a few dollars and only the final table being in the payout seats might not be over upsetting, pay an entry fee in the thousands of dollars and you might well expect to have a better chance of at least recouping some of your money.

Casino tournaments and the affect of entry fees on the play

For a casino poker tournament the higher the entry fee the tighter everyone will play. After all you’ve just paid a stack of money just to sit down at the poker table, so you don’t want to be walking away early and absolutely no one wants to be the first to leave. Even becoming the short-stack has been known to send some players into melt-down, unable to make any sensible decisions. With so many sessions to follow expect raises and re-raises to be treated with extreme respect. Of course, knowing that if you are confident of your own poker abilities or are naturally and automatically a loose player – then you really could clean-up with so many tight players around the table.

Online tournaments and the affect of entry fees on the play

For some, rather unfathomable, reason online poker tournaments do not attract the same level of tight play – even if the entry fee is a large one. Quite possibly a reason for this is that there are simply so many online poker tournaments and, being online, somewhere in the world  there’ll always be another one to play in tomorrow. Whereas for a casino tournament you’d have purposely made your way to it, be it at your local casino, one in Las Vegas or abroad etc. The net result of this is that online poker tournaments see quite aggressive play, even in the early stages – perhaps time to tighten up a bit yourself?

Introduction

You know all those jokes about Canadians, like this one; If you ask a Canadian how many Canadians does it take to fix a light bulb, the answer you get is  “What’s a light bulb?” – Well I now officially take them all back and apologies for them whoever may have spouted them first. Why? Well quite simply the Canadians have shown themselves to be far more enlightened, intelligent and forward thinking than anyone in the USA with the news that there is now a state sponsored online casino in Canada.

BC rules

OK, before getting on to the really interesting bit perhaps I need to reign back a bit on all that effusiveness about how wonderful Canadians are now. Yes it is true that the Canadian Province of British Columbia – yes that’s correct the bit above Seattle – last week rolled out its had its very own casino games gambling website, but sadly it is also true that they had to then shut it down almost immediately due to a privacy issue. However, the fact is that the shut down was due to a genuine glitch with the way that the online casino handles customer’s accounts – and not as some cover by the anti-gambling conservatives.

Legalized online poker for Canadians

When the website is back up and running anyone resident in British Columbia and aged 19 years upwards will be able to gamble online – entirely with the states support and blessing. At present, in these early days, the games available are only slots, baccarat and craps but later in the year online poker will also be available – you lucky, lucky Canadian online poker players! A sports betting function is also due to be added later in the year. Like the moves afoot in California and one or two other states here in the USA, it’s the taxes that BC can collect that has proved to be the winning argument for adopting a – “if you can’t beat them then at least get taxes from it”, attitude. Over the course of just one year BC expects to tax around $100 million a year, which they expect to then rise by a further 11% every year too.

Introduction

Event 25 of the WSOP in Las Vegas brought 212 of the big poker game players to the tables for the $10,000 buy-in Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better World Championship. Out of an original field of 212 the final pair came down to Brit James ‘Flushy’ Dempsey and Sam Farha of America, Yueqi Zhu being the unlucky one to go out in third place with a check for $225,325. Indeed the final 10 poker players in the competition had seven players from the USA, 2 from Briton (the other being Steve Wong who finished 9^th and one Russian in the form of Sergy Altgregin who was placed 4^th overall.

Are BP players slick?

Not an allusion to any current oil spill problems in the Gulf of Mexico but – are the British poker players slick or not? With the Brits having done well so far in this 41^st playing of the WSOP; having had 7 top three finishes in the 25 events to date – not to mention having already won three WSOP bracelets, including one for James Dempsey in event 9, a No-Limit Pot hold ‘em.

So, could Dempsey prove himself top be amongst the elite group of players that are capable of winning more than one bracelet in any one WSOP series?

Zhu out following controversial comment form the crowd

The heads up final showdown began around 3:10 local Las Vegas time, controversially just moments after a spectator had to be ejected. Apparently some light hearted banter between he rival British and American fans turned rather ugly when a supporter of Farha shouted out “You can’t mess with the Lebanese unless you’re Chinese” followed by “ I don’t see any Chinese at the table!” and then an even more derogatory remark – to which, understandably, Zhu took offence. The spectator was removed from the poker table arena but, minutes later in the next hand – Zhu went out after his concentration was impaired losing all-in pre-flop against Dempsey.

Dempsey slips up rather than becoming slick

For nearly four hours after Zhu went out, play continued with the advantage mainly going Farha’s way, only for Dempsey to claw it all back on the big hands. Around 6:45 Dempsey took a breakfast sandwich and seemingly too lost his concentration as it was all over in the next two hands. First Farha won with Aces full tabling Ad, Ac, Ks and Kd for a rivered full house. In the final hand  both players had three tens at the river but, would you believe it, Dempsey holding Jh and 8d went down to Farha’s Jc with the 9h – who picked up the winners $448k check and a bracelet

Introduction

You know I’ve never really been much of a one for acronyms but – 2010 WSOP PPC is the only way to put the 2010 World Series of Poker Players Championship as a blog headline. Begun on Friday 28^th May, this $50,000 buy-in championship got to its final day on Tuesday June 1^st. As you’d expect of a players championship all the top professionals from all over the globe were there, not to mention a few ‘chancers’ who could raise the buy-in.

The final table

So, who was at the final table? Whilst they’re all well known poker player names there’s no room this year for the likes of Daniel Negreanu or Phil Ivey, nor even last year’s overall WSOP champion Joe Cada. In the lead at the beginning of the final poker table was Robert Mizrachi, seated at number 8, with 3,125,000 chips; whilst second placed David Baker was on seat number 1 with just a few chips less at 3,095,000. Four other American poker players were also in the frame; John Juanda (2,620,000) Daniel Alaei (1,705,000), David Oppenheim (last placed and seated 7 on 460,000 chips) and Robert’s younger brother Michael on a respectable 2,175,000 chips. The final pair was Mikael Thuritz from Sweden (2,300,000) and Vladimir Schmelev from Russia (1,925,000). Nick Schulman was the unlucky one having the heartbreak of going out of the tournament 9^th overall, but he did manage to take away a nice check for $152,739.

The winner is …

Shortly before 1am PST the final poker table was reduced to the last pair when David Oppenheim, the short-stack going into the final day, holding a pair of eights had lost out to Michael Mizrachi’s pair of Queens. This left Vladimir Schmelev and the younger Mizarchi brother to slog it out for what is undoubtedly one of the most prized of the WSOP bracelets. With the chip counts having remained pretty even for a couple of hours suddenly in the half hour after 3am Michael strode ahead, taking a 10 million chip lead out of the 17+ million on the table. Sure enough, just before 4am it was all over after Vladimir tried a few all-in moves – he called holding Qd and 8h. The flop gave 9h, 6h and 4c; but despite a 4d coming on the river the 5h that fell before it on the turn was the killer blow – as Mizrachi was already holding Qs and 5c. So, along with a WSOP winners bracelet Michael Mizarchi picks up a winners check for $1,559,046.

Introduction

The well known sports betting and poker website Bodog has already made a commitment on its website this year to enter a strong women’s contingent to the 2010 WSOP – a commitment backed-up this week with the announcement that up and coming women’s poker pro Amanda Musumeci is to join Team Bodog for the tournament.

Amanda who?

You could be forgiven for asking – Amanda who? However, the fact is that despite only just being 26 years of age and having only been playing poker for three years – she’s already notched up some impressive finishes and wins. Her most notably win so far was under her online poker tag as ‘manderbutt’ – taking third place in Full Tilt Poker’s $150k tournament. OK, perhaps not quite the big time yet, but she is surely one of the most promising younger women poker players around and is certainly ready to start challenging the likes of Kathy Liebert or Annie Duke. Amanda readily acknowledges the support she’s had from fellow pro poker players like Matt Stout and Dan Kelly in developing her game so quickly. Surely an inspiration to any poker player that if you’ve got the drive to play online poker seriously, there’s no reason at all why you too can’t compete for the big prizes.

Bodog going for girl power?

Needless to say Bodog are well aware that she still needs support, so it’s little surprise that Team Bodog already has onboard Evelyn Ng to mentor Amanda Musumeci through the tournament. With Evelyn’s support Amanda will be looking to concentrate on $2-5k and Main Events, both online and in the casinos. Away from the poker table both Amanda and Evelyn enjoy shooting pool – so they’ll be quite comfortable relaxing together after a long poker session at the Las Vegas tables. Amanda is quite focused as to why she’s opted to join Team Bodog, when other poker teams were courting her to join them. With Bodog still in the process of re-building itself she feels she’ll be able to get more attention and encouragement to develop as she won’t be competing with other big-name women poker players within a team, apart from Evelyn of course.

Introduction

Hands up if you love your iPhone. Now hands up if you’ve got any iPhone Poker Apps on it? Quite frankly if you are an iPhone user and profess yourself to be a poker fan, then it really does beggar belief that you won’t already have some poker apps loaded on to it. Unfortunately we will never know if the hapless, and possibly soon to be unemployed, Gary Powell had installed any poker apps on that iPhone 4G/HD prototype he recently lost – as Apple quickly hit a remote ‘kill’ button to delete everything in it.

Common poker apps

One of the most common poker apps for an iPhone, or indeed any smart phone, must surely be a poker odds calculator. Whilst it would of course be incredibly bad manners, not to mention probably getting you thrown out, to use one at a casino poker table; having a poker odds calculator on your phone is ideal when playing poker online, either at home or on the move. Along with your poker odds calculator you will, of course, need some poker games to play and, unsurprisingly, Texas Hold ‘em is the number one poker playing app to be downloaded. Leading the way in this download is the World Poker Tour themed one, which allows you play to at a variety of skill levels and supports multi-player networking with both messaging and chat. If the idea of playing a bit of fantasy poker appeals to you then try the WSOP iPhone app. Here you can play from a poker novice level up to being a poker legend, collecting WSOP bracelets as you go.

Poker tips and information on your iPhone

One to two poker celebrities have had iPhone apps developed in their names, to give you access to poker lessons and information. Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth being just two of the big poker names with their own apps. These apps typically offer poker tutorials and poker strategy tips to improve your poker play. As for keeping you informed of all the latest poker news, well all you need to do is keep tuned in to advancedpokerplay.com.

Introduction

In an attempt to re-ignite the medias appetite for poker, beyond the world of poker blogs and poker websites, a new competition and format is to be launched in mid May – World Team Poker. Looking like the nearest thing yet to a world cup for poker, WTP will feature 8 international teams of five players each battling it out in a one day tournament at the Golden Nugget, Las Vegas on May 19^th.

The Teams

WTP began the process of creating the participating teams by enlisting the services of the eight poker team captains, who were then able to recruit the other poker team members themselves, the only condition being that they are all professional poker players. The team captains are: Phil Hellmuth (USA), Men Nguyen (Vietnam), Eli Elezra (Israel), Ben Roberts (England), Juliano Maesano (Brazil) and George Kapalas (Greece). The two other teams involved in this inaugural international poker competition are China and Australia, both of which are unable to name a single captain opting instead for co-captains; Johnny Chan/David Chui for China and Jeff Lisandro/Tony Guoga for Australia! Now if that isn’t sending out a message of poker indecisiveness before a hand is even dealt – I don’t know what is?

The WTP playing format

The buy-in per team for the event is set at $50,000, which let’s face it for these guys is nothing to get excited about. The poker games will be limit and no limit Texas Hold ‘em and pot limit Omaha, on a five table shoot-out. Although there are potentially 40 players available at any one time, don’t expect to see eight payers at each of the poker tables.  To introduce something new to this poker game the captains can substitute poker players as they wish and can even coach their poker players on what to do. So you’ll actually get the chance to see how well the captain’s know their teams by how well they manage the players and the poker games they play in. Anyone can register to watch the poker fun online via the live webcast and, for US residents, possibly even win a trip to Las Vegas to watch it live

Introduction

Whilst playing online poker is great fun, most of the time most online poker players will stick to Texas Hold ‘em, so if you should fancy a change to Seven Card Stud poker, just what exactly should you do for good Seven Card Stud strategies?

Seven card stud play

Probably the biggest difference between Hold em and Seven Card Stud poker game is that you get three cards dealt to you, two face down and one face up. The player with the best card face up bets first and after each betting round another card is dealt. These extra cards are dealt face up as fourth street, fifth, sixth and seventh; but there is a twist on seventh street in that card being dealt face down. So, there’s no flop placing community three cards face up that anyone can use. The first three cards, and especially the two that your opponents can’t see, are the most important cards in your poker hand as the winner is whoever makes the best five card hand (highest or a high-low split) from the seven they’ve been personally dealt; meaning that secrecy at the beginning is vital to your hand not being pre-guessed easily by an opponent.

Strategies for playing Seven Card Stud

A weak hand from the first three cards usually stays weak; whereas a strong hidden pair with a strong card showing at the start will invariably end well too. If nothing’s happening after fourth street – prepare to fold. You need at least a high pair, four card flush or three card straight to stand any sort of a chance. Fifth street definitely needs a four card straight or flush, or at least a pair of Queens. If you make it to sixth street you’ll probably be in good enough shape to stay in all the way to seventh street. But, obviously if an opponent has a really strong hand showing then it’s time to fold. Also, if the odds of filling your hand are below what’s in the pot – then again it’s time to fold.

Introduction

Poker fans will be relieved to hear that all’s well on the World Poker Tour at present with the latest tournament, the WPT Classic, taking place at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles. 72 players started out and on day 5 we’re down to 6, battling it out for the $1.8 million 1^st prize – not bad for so early in the year?

Who’ll be in the final?

Going in to day 5 Carlos Mortensen held the big stack of nearly 1.7 million chips, having tripled it late on in the session with some big hitting poker plays.  Most of the 22 staring the day were males but it was good to see Mari Lou Morelli mid-stacked with 456,000 chips and old favourite Annie Duke hanging in at 21^st with 241,000 chips; whilst the short stack was John Cautela on just 219,000. But for me the poker player to watch at the start of play was Tri Huynh with just short of a million chips. In the end Annie Duke just failed to make it to the final two tables going out in 19^th place with $45,773 in prize money.  In the small blind she had to go all-in with her by then 80,000 chips holding Ah and 8c, the river showed a J, 7, 2 and two 3s giving Tim Begley the hand having a pair of 4s in the hole. Tim was then denied a place on the last poker table of the day, when his pair of Queens were topped by a pair of aces and tens from Tri. Three more players left before the end of the days play, leaving a final day’s table of 6.

At the final table

So, who might emerge champion at the end of that final table? Well despite being in the lead at the end of day 4 not Carlos, who went out in 9^th place with prize money of just over $100,000. Short stack is Michael Kamran on 680,000, but the leading poker player is way out in front with 4,995,000 chips – Andras Koroknai, who’s 1.5 million chips up on second place Raymond Dolan. However, don’t give up yet on WPT newcomer Tri, who is in third place albeit with about half the poker chips that Andras has.

Introduction

February 14^th could just pose a problem for some of you St Valentine’s Day lovers out there this year, the question is quite simple really – who do you love more your partner or your poker? OK, so why might you have to decide between your poker and your partner this year, after all St Valentine’s Day falls on a Sunday this year, what could possibly keep you away form your partner?

High Stakes Returns

Well the dilemma you might be facing is that GSN starts the new season of High Stakes Poker on Sunday 14^th February. With a line up already set to include big name poker players like Patrik Antonius, Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu – competing in games with eye-watering $200,000 buy-ins, you might just struggle as to where your love truly is. No problem you might think, what time does it start and ill work around that. Well, unfortunately no matter whether you were thinking of whisking her, or indeed him, of out for a romantic lunch or dinner -you’ll have to miss some of the action. Starting at 12pm (ET) there’ll be an eight hour “I love poker” marathon with the main event, “High stakes poker”, beginning at 8pm (ET). Either ways you’ll look pretty well stressed to go out for a meal, get some love-making in and watch all the great poker action.

Problem – what problem?

No worries if you can’t be with a loved one this Valentine’s day as instead you can use presenters Gabe Kaplan and the lovely Kara Scott, a European poker player and TV presenter as eye-candy. Based at the fabulous Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Kara will be providing the feedback from the High Stakes poker table, taking us through all the big plays and table goings-on. There’ll also be regular spots with players talking about their strategies and approach to playing poker in these sort of high pressure games. Another potential problem solver is that the programs are currently scheduled for repeats at 11pm Sundays and  2am Monday mornings – so I guess if you haven’t got work in the morning you’ve an opportunity to catch up with the action, when the smooching action’s over.