Yevgeniy Timoshenko follows up his amazing WPT success which earned him over $2 million to winning the WCOOP main event for just over $1.7 million. He won the Full Tilt $1k event ONE HOUR LATER for another $75,000. He has also won the Sunday Million in the past aswell.
Anyone else think poker is a game of luck?
Unbelievable player. Just amazing.
In yet another bad day for online poker the website Pitbull Poker are accused of cheating players out of money. Allegations of both stack shaving, with players saying between $0.25 and $25 per pot are vanishing from their stacks, and super user cheating are being fired at Pitbull and they are not doing a good job of diverting the claims.
The Kahnawake Gaming Commission have released the results of their investigation into the online poker cheating. Click read more for the summary of the findings.
The WCOOP starts in two days with $40,000,000 guaranteed. I believe that they could probably have made this is $50,000,000 guarantee and it is unlikely any of the events will have an overlay this year. I expect next years guarantee to be in excess of $50,000,000.
Unlike Full Tilt this series is limited to once a year so winning a WCOOP bracelet is something to value highly (as is a FT series win, but the frequency of their events does devalue things a little).
Keep a close eye on pokerstars.tv which will be doing commentary shows on most of the events come final table time. This should be a really exciting series.
Your essential links are as follows:
Pokerstars
Pokerstars TV
WCOOP.com
After a 795 hand session yesterday when Martonas took a break from high stakes play Antonius has reduced Durrrr’s lead to $334,000. They have played around 43% of the overall challenge having played a total of 21,442 hands of the alloted 50,000.
Our friends at Pokerstars have announced the 2009 WCOOP Series schedule.
The new trend poker games of 2-7 Triple Draw and Badugi are making an appearance. Satellites are now in progress for those of you who want a cheaper entry fee. For the railbirds among you, this will be a great chance to rail most poker professionals who usually put in amazing volume during these series.
Click read more for the full schedule.
If you are a Full Tilt player, then you will be interested in their latest announcement of the next FTOPS series.
Read on for details and schedule.
Seven-card stud is a classic version of poker still enjoying popularity, played with a table of 2 to 8 players.
Every player remaining in the hand is dealt two face-down cards, four cards exposed, and a seventh card down. If played 8-handed and players remain in the hand such that there are insufficient cards remaining to deal each player a seventh card, then a single seventh card is dealt face up as a shared community card. As in Texas Hold’em, cards are known as “streets”. The first card dealt exposed is “third street”, the final card is “seventh street”, and so on.
The betting is usually fixed-limit, meaning players may only bet a set amount. The fixed limit includes both a small bet and a big bet; for example, in $2/$4 a small bet of $2 and a big bet of $4. The hand starts with each player putting an ante into the pot that is some percentage of the small bet – assume 20% or $0.40 in the above example. The first round of betting occurs after third street. The lowest card exposed is required to make a forced opening bet known as the “bring in”. In the example above, the bring in would be $0.80. That player has the option to complete the small bet, betting a full $2 rather than 80 cents. Play continues around the table with each player having the option of folding, calling the bet, or raising. After the first small bet is reached, players raise in increments of the small bet. Betting is capped at four bets per round. On fifth and subsequent streets, the big bet becomes the betting increment.
On fourth street and beyond, betting is opened by the player showing the strongest exposed cards; he may either check or bet. “Strongest” means the best cards in terms of pairs and high cards. If two players reach sixth street and one has a pair of twos exposed while the other shows the 6, 7, 8, 9 all suited, the deuces would open even though the other hand is a better drawing hand. If the final bet is called on seventh street or the round is checked down, then the cards are revealed to determine the best 5-card hand.
Strategy contrasts from Texas Hold’em, where the only cards exposed during betting are community cards. In stud, if a player’s board shows a pair of aces, he cannot disguise that hand strength by slow playing. If his board shows 4 cards to a straight or flush, he will ultimately have three hole cards, any one of which could possibly complete his hand. Any 7-card hand could conceivably hold a full house or even quads, though no pairs are visible.
It is vital to see what cards have been revealed on every player’s board. Folded hands are discarded into the muck, so you need to remember what cards are dead. As players receive their cards, consider which are likely to improve the displayed hand when deciding your bet.
Novice players tend to call too many bets, “chasing” in hands where they are behind. An adage to remember is that it is better to fold a bad hand early rather than late.
This is a blog, so here I am reporting on what I’m doing from a poker standpoint briefly, probably some I should do more of looking at the previous posts!
The reasons I have been stalling on really getting going on playing the cash games is for a couple of reasons. I really feel like I have to learn more about cash games before I start playing them. This kind of plays on my mind and effects my belief in my own abilities. I have looked into coaching and never really sat down and did it. Also the site is now more established and looking to kick on now, you know I’ll post good articles, video and interesting news will be discussed.
I think purely for the ease of getting money in and out of the site I will choose Stars, but that kind of sucks because I will not get any bonus or rakeback as it’s an active account that I’ve had for a while.
Stay updated, this will be starting this week and I will let you know about my progress as I get down to some serious playing and learning.
I sent a message to poker pro Eric Rizen Lynch who kindly posted an answer on his blog. Here it is:
Q: Rizen, I have a bankroll of around $300. What site would you play on and how would you utilise a similar roll to build it in the current poker environment?
A: This is a really tough one for me to answer as it’s been so long since I’ve tried to build a bankroll. Back in the day (I sound old now) I used to use deposit and reload bonuses to build my roll quickly. But then it was easier to move money around with neteller from site to site and take advantage of the bonuses. Today it’s not that easy, so I would think you’d probably have to stick with one site. Some of it would depend on what my goals are. If you’re looking to pick a site and build up a bankroll to eventually play in big games you probably want to pick a bigger site that will have a lot more game selection as you move up in limits. By bigger site I mean some of the obvious candidates like Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker. If you were looking to simply be able to build that $300 into a larger amount (by larger I mean probably double or triple it in a reasonable amount of time) going with a smaller room with good rakeback and deposit bonuses would probably be more ideal.
As far as how I would utilize it, it really depends on the individual’s strengths and weaknesses. If someone were truly a great all around poker player equally skilled at cash, MTTs, and SnGs, then in my experience with students at the micro levels SnGs often ofter the easiest way to build your bankroll while once you get properly bankrolled to play $.25/$.50 and higher cash games seem to be a better way to go. So provided the player was equally good at both (better to stick to your strengths) I’d have them grind SnGs until they get to about $1250 (usually want 25 buy ins for a NL cash game) then switch over to cash.
Thanks to Eric for answering our questions and good luck at the world series where he is playing in numerous events. Visit his blog by clicking here
Most higher stakes poker players over the age of 21 (and no doubt some under 21) are heading to Las Vegas this coming week for the start of the 2009 World Series of Poker. They just cannot bear not to be there. There is almost the feeling that in order to be a poker player you just have to try and go to Vegas and sample the atmosphere. Many players who specialise online will step away from their multi-widescreen monitors for a once a year trip to play live poker searching for bracelets, fame, sponsorship and cash profits.
We all love poker podcasts. I personally do anyway, I really can’t get enough of them.
Obviously I should go out more.
Here at itsawinner.co.uk we are going to offer anyone out there the opportunity to be part of the site by being interviewed by me in a 40 minute to 1 hour show. Contact us using the form if you wish to be involved.
We will be announcing our first of a series of shows very soon. We already have our first professional lined up for a tell-all look at his poker career, how he started and how he lives day-to-day as a poker professional.
Stay tuned for more information…
