silly - Poker Player Newspaper

Transcription

9
Celebrity Crossword PAGE
tribute to
Paul Wasicka
12
30
14
17
20
PAGE
Entertainment
Best Bets
Doyle Brunson’s
new column—
Power Poker!
42
PAGE
22
POKER PLAYER
Vol. 10 Number 14 January 8, 2007 A Gambling Times Publication www.pokerplayernewspaper.com Copyright ©2006 Bi-Weekly $3.95 USA/$4.95 CANADA
Roofer Rosetti Covers 2 Million
MORE
at AC WSOP
for
Circuit Event
Hachem
By Max Shapiro
When the championship event of the Harrah’s
WSOP Circuit tour at
Harrah’s Atlantic City got
down to the final day, Alex
Gomez owned 1,051,000 of
the 2,370,000 chips in play
and looked like a shoo-in.
But after a 75-hand headsup match that saw a number
of chip-lead changes, Rick
Rossetti, a 37-year-old
roofing contractor, finally
put his opponent away.
Ironicaly, Rossetti took the
lead for the first time when
he tried a bluff, got called,
and made an accidental
inside straight on the river.
Victory in this $4,900 +
$250 event brought Rossetti
$368,096, a championship
gold and diamond ring,
plus a $10,000 seat in the
2007 WSOP main event
and $1,000 expenses. He’s
from Linwood, New Jersey
and has played poker for 20
years. He’s had cashes in
tournaments at the Taj and
Foxwoods, and also likes
high-limit stud and mixed
games.
The day before, with
about 22 players left,
Gomez went on a sevenminute break, thinking it
was for 37 minutes. He
had a big and small blind
and two rounds of antes
blinded off, returning with
only 12,000 chips left.
Undaunted, he proceeded to
go on a rush, and accumulated his huge lead.
Day three action began
(Continued on page 14)
When a previously
unknown player wins the
WSOP as Joe Hachem
did in 2004, there is often
the question of, was this
just a lucky fluke, or, is
that player really a champion. No question about
that today for Hachem as
he won the WPT “Doyle
Brunson North American
Poker Championship”
event at the Bellagio in Las
Vegas, proving his mettle
once and for all. Hachem
of Melbourne, Australia
From the courtroom
to the poker room…
Mike Caro
Today’s word is...
prosecuting district attorney
and then moved into private
law practice. Although he
enjoyed many aspects of this
work, he struggled with the
“SILLY”
Turn to page 6 for more
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‘opponent’ and assess their
strategy or position was a
skill he once valued as an
attorney and now applies at
the poker tables.
Mark used to work as a
A Word from the
“Mad Genius,”
For Absolute Poker pro, Mark Seif,
making this move was a fairly smooth transition.
A former attorney, Mark
quickly realized that many
of the skills he had learned
practicing law would help
him with his poker game.
Being able to size up one’s
takes home $2,182,075 for
his victory over 582 other
players who each paid a
$15,000 buy-in to play in
this event. Detailed results
of this and other events
held leading up to the
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JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
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JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
5
POKER NEWS
By John Caldwell
HARRAH’S ACCEPTS
BUYOUT OFFER
After weeks of speculation, multiple
bids and tension on Wall Street, Harrah’s
Entertainment finally announced last week that it had
accepted a buyout bid by two private equity firms, Apollo
Management and Texas Pacific Group, for a total $27.8
billion. This figure include the assumption of $10.7 billion
in debt; making it one of the largest leveraged buyouts in
history.
Harrah’s has been considering this decision for some
time, and took their time in deciding which of the multiple
bids available to accept. The buyout reportedly will leave
management intact, so no major changes are expected.
The transition to being a private company, as well as several regulatory hurdles will take time, and some expect
the entire process to take as much as a year.
The Harrah’s-owned World Series of Poker is expected
to be unaffected, and will begin its run at the Rio in Las
Vegas on June 1st.
THE GRINDER, AND THE BILLIONAIRE
Billionaire Warren Buffett tried his hand at poker recently
in a charity tournament in his hometown of Omaha,
Nebraska. Also on hand for the tournament were pro players David Williams, Evelyn Ng, and Michael ‘The Grinder’
Mizrachi. Buffett, an avid Bridge player, only lasted about
45 minutes, and was quoted as saying “I thought the low
hand won”, which may explain his demise. The proceeds
from the tournament went to the Nebraska arm of the
Make-A Wish Foundation.
‘POKER’ THE MOST SEARCHED TERM
ON THE INTERNET
Lycos just released its list of the top 50 Internet search
terms for 2006, and the word ‘Poker’ topped the list.
Poker beat out stalwart search engine celebrities like
Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton to nab the top spot. The
big mover for the year was the term ‘My Space’, the white
hot social networking site saw a 568% rise in searches
on its name to finish in the # 2 spot. The top ten most
searched terms were 1) Poker 2) MySpace 3) RuneScape
4) Pamela Anderson 5) Paris Hilton 6) Pokemon 7) WWE 8)
Golf 9) Spyware and 10) Britney Spears.
OKLAHOMA MAN WINS BUY IN TO 15
WPT EVENTS
Augie Foxx of Idabel, Oklahoma outlasted 195 other
competitors at the recently held WPT Boot Camp in the
Bahamas. The Boot Camp featured a one day poker seminar with people like WPT host Mike Sexton, Gavin Smith,
Antonio Esfandiari, and many more. The conclusion of
the Boot Camp was a tournament where the winner won
buy ins to 15 World Poker Tour events over the next three
seasons, and money for travel. Foxx won the tournament,
and is now a ‘touring pro’ – and the talk of tiny Idabel, OK
(population 7,000).
JAMIE GOLD’S FATHER PASSES
2006 WSOP Champ Jamie Gold’s father passed away
recently. Jamie had just landed in Las Vegas to play in the
$15,000 Bellagio 5 Diamond Poker Classic when he got the
call, and got right back on a plane home. Gold’s father,
a doctor, suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS). WSOP
viewers may remember tender moments during the ESPN
telecast where Gold would talk to his father on the telephone, at a point when the disease had already taken many
of his faculties away. Our condolences go out to the Gold
family. Readers can find out more about ALS at alsa.org.
John Caldwell is the Editor-In-Chief of PokerNews.com,
a leading poker information portal. Prior to PokerNews,
John spent 15 years in music artist management, working
with artists like Stone Temple Pilots, and Hootie and the
Blowfish. Originally from Redondo Beach, CA, John lives
in Los Angeles, and spends about 4 months a year in Las
Vegas.. Reach him by e-mail at [email protected].
6
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
Caro’s Word: “Silly”
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Y
ou’ve heard me talk
about today’s topic
before, in various
contexts. I’m passionate about it. It has
to do with the common
notion that checking and
then calling is weak.
Many experts will tell you
that professional poker
players should keep their
aggressive image intact
by doing one of three
things: (1) betting; (2)
checking and then raising
if bet into; or (3) checking and then folding if bet
into. Checking and then
folding is seen as a weak
play – one that should be
reserved for amateurs.
I disagree. Central to
my teaching is the presumption that checking
and calling is perfectly
proper. This ancient lecture, one of my favorites,
helps make the point…
The silly fear of
checking and calling
Among the ranks of
wannabe professional
poker players and even
among nearly world class
players there is a notion
that became popular 15 or
so years ago. It’s a strange
and silly notion that’s still
going strong today.
It’s the notion that you
should bet if you have a
good reason, but if you
don’t have a good reason,
TUSCANY
Suites & Casino
you should check. And
that part’s fine – and obvious. But then the notion
continues -- If you check,
this notion goes, you
should then be prepared
to either raise or fold if
someone bets into you.
Let me repeat that, so
you understand what this
popular piece of advice
really says. Remember,
it’s a common notion
that even many sophisticated players believe. The
notion is that when you
check, you should seldom
call if bet into. The notion
is that after you check you
should either fold or raise.
Checking and calling, they
tell us, is a weak option.
Macho
A weak option? Oh, I
get it, checking and calling is not macho enough,
right? Get real, guys.
Here’s the truth. If you’re
one of those regular players in middle limit games
who seldom checks and
calls, you’re costing yourself thousands of dollars
every year.
The truth is that checking and calling is the
most natural thing in the
world. Let’s reason this
out together. When you
hold a medium hand that’s
not quite strong enough
to bet with, what should
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CONSULTANT
Contributing
Columnists
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George Epstein
“Oklahoma Johnny” Hale
Ashley Adams
Diane McHaffie
James McKenna
I. Nelson Rose
John Vorhaus
Poker Player will be published Bi-Weekly by
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Volume 10 Number 14.
Copyright © January 2007 by Gambling
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Distribution to newsstands, card clubs, poker rooms and
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Canada, the Caribbean, Central America and Europe.
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
7
Playing the Odds in
Tournaments
KRIEGER’s CORNER
By Lou Krieger©
I received a lot of favorable feedback about
my recent column, Playing the Odds. This piece
expands on it by discussing the impact of odds in tournaments. Next
issue we’ll look at implied odds.
Tournament players have additional factors to consider when
deciding whether to fold or continue drawing. Even when the pot will
offset the odds against making a hand, the risk of elimination sometimes overshadows any potential rewards.
Because of this, folding is often advisable even when the relationship between pot odds and the odds against making your hand are
favorable.
If you are faced with a bet that puts you all-in if you call, your
entire tournament life is at stake if you lose, while winning an all-in
confrontation seldom comes with any guarantees. You might not even
make it to the money. Tournament decisions must often be made with
an eye to your relative position against the entire field. That’s never
an issue in a cash game, when all that’s at stake is winning or losing
the money wagered on a given hand.
Tournament players also have to consider the relationship between
their chip count and the cost to play one complete orbit of poker.
Early in a tournament every player usually has a very large
amount of chips relative to the blinds. In a tournament where players
begin with $1,500 in chips and face blinds of $10-20, it costs only $30
to play one full orbit of poker, and each player has 50 times that in
chips. Because each player has lots of chips compared to the blinds,
the early stages of tournaments can be played much like cash games.
Draws to straights and flushes can be played now although they
will become unplayable later on in the event, when the blinds have
escalated and a player may only have four, five, or ten times the cost
of a round of poker.
Playing a drawing hand in those circumstances is probably going
to involve going all-in and risking your entire tournament life. It’s
usually a lot better to play a made hand than a draw when tournament survival is at stake.
Nevertheless, there are situations where you have to risk your
entire tournament life on marginal hands. If you have a relatively
small stack of chips, you can’t afford to sit and wait for a big pocket
pair. They don’t come around often enough. That means going all-in
with as little as a lone ace, especially when no one else has voluntarily entered the pot yet, and you still have enough chips to make
someone think twice about calling your all-in bet.
In these situations, calculating outs is not terribly important. What
matters most is deciding whether you believe your all-in bet stands
a good chance of winning the pot right there, coupled with your
chances of winning if you pair your ace.
Pot odds do become important in tournaments when you have a
hand with a draw attached to it. You might flop a pair with a draw,
giving you two ways to win. When that happens, you can’t ignore
those additional outs that your draw offers. You might pick up a draw
while holding two cards bigger than the board. If you pair one of your
overcards, you can win without ever having to make your draw.
If you take one thing away from this column, it’s this: Recognize
that the relationship between the size of the pot and the odds
against making your hand isn’t always as significant in tournament
poker as it is in a cash game.
In a cash game, each hand is a world unto itself, played in a vacuum of sorts. In tournament poker, each hand must be analyzed and
assessed in terms of chip counts, relative stack size compared to the
cost of playing another orbit of hands, where you stand in relationship to your opponent’s chip count, and whether playing and winning
will move you up the pay ladder.
You’ve got to take a different look at things when making a play or
fold decision in a tournament, and that look is much broader than it
is in a cash game.
Visit Lou Krieger online and check out all his
books at www.loukrieger.com. You can read his
blog at http://loukrieger.blogspot.com and write
directly to him at [email protected].
8
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
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JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
9
Internet Prohibition=
Poker Changes
NORTH BY NORTHWEST
‘Tis the
Season
By Byron Liggett
Prohibition II, the recent legislation aimed at
stopping Americans from exercising their right
to gamble on the Internet in the privacy (?) of their homes, is
starting to have significant consequences for Poker.
As Internet gambling and poker tournament sites shut down
or radically re-invent themselves, one immediate impact hits
the poker publishing and promotion industry. Over the past two
or three years about two dozen publications have suddenly
appeared, hoping to jump aboard the Poker Express and ride it
to success. For most it’s a short ride.
With the sudden end to poker dot.com advertising many of
the new publications that were banking on Internet revenue will
fold. What’s more, because some major poker publications got
far more involved with Internet companies than just advertising, some think even the most glamorous, well established card
magazines may be in trouble not only financially, but legally.
Those who profess to know are betting that in the near future
there will be only “two or three” national poker publications
still in existence. POKER PLAYER will be at the top. Here’s why:
While POKER PLAYER has advertised and been a strong supporter of Internet poker, it has always directed its content,
marketing and distribution to the masses of players in “brick
‘n mortar” poker rooms all across America. Available in almost
400 poker rooms coast-to-coast, PP is in 7 or 8 time more poker
rooms than ANY other card magazine.
Because of its thorough distribution, POKER PLAYER has its
pulse on the poker playing public. While other “movie star”
poker magazines are filled with photos of Doyle Brunson, Greg
Raymer or Phil Hellmuth, you’re likely to see more local players
in the pages of PP.
Very often, too, POKER PLAYER is the only such publication to
have someone covering tournaments and events outside of Las
Vegas or Atlantic City. If you’re looking for news or tournament
info from states like Wisconsin, South Dakota, Oklahoma, or
Oregon, you’ll find it here.
With its ear to the table around the country, POKER PLAYER
has begun to notice other changes in the poker landscape. Many
poker rooms are reporting significant increases in new players,
especially for tournaments. They also add, “We’re seeing an
increased demand for No-Limit action.”
Tavern leagues are growing more popular as frustrated
players in rural or remote areas organize to exercise their
Poker Rights in the absence of Internet play. In Idaho, the
WinAFreeSeat.com League has several thousand members and
16 taverns participants. Likewise, in Texas, Scott Dinsmore says
his poker league is suddenly attracting a lot of new players.
The Heartland Poker Tour was created for poker players in
local casinos and neighborhood card rooms around the country. Like the Minors, the HPT was designed and developed to
give players everywhere a chance to make the Big Time. Here,
too, player numbers have steadily increased in the wake of
Prohibition II.
HPT Producer Todd Anderson reports that in just its second
year participation has exceeded everyone’s expectations. HPT
events were seen in more than 50 million households in 2006!
The schedule has now been expanded to 14 venues around the
country and they’ll kick-off the 2007 season at Hooters, in Las
Vegas.
Likewise, the “Joe Average Poker Radio Show”, a highly
popular, very professional national satellite program broadcast
each week has been a tremendous success. Poker DJ Fred
Mourey reports their audience – players in poker rooms everywhere – continues to climb. Check their web site at: www.joeaveragepoker.com.
Poker is here to stay. Bet on it.
Byron Liggett, originally from the Northwest, lives in Reno
and has been a gaming & poker writer, columnist and consultant for 25 years. email: [email protected]
10
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
A Joe & Hobby fiction by
David J. Valley
was a grey December
day at Marina del
Rey. I’d planned to go to
the Farmer’s Market, but
since it looked like rain I
decided against it and gave
Hobby a call.
“Hey, Joe, come on over.
You can help test my new
espresso machine.”
Hobby met me on the
deck of Lazybuns with a
cup in his hand, “See what
you think of this.”
I sipped it. “It’s okay,
Hobby. I’m just not a big
espresso fan,” I said. To me
it tasted like coffee spiked
with motor oil.
“Well screw you, Joe
Crest. I’ll drink it myself.
You can help yourself from
the bar,” he said as we
walked into the salon.
“I think I’ll have a
Mary.”
“Why don’t you make
one for me too while
you’re at it,” he said as he
dumped the espresso down
the drain. So much for that
experiment, I doubt if he’ll
ever make another cup.
“Any plans today, Joe?”
“If it clears up I’m going
to the Farmer’s Market.
How about playing gin
rummy in the meantime?”
“Sure. Five bucks a
point?”
“Okay.”
Two hours later I was
down over $500. It was rare
for Hobby to beat me so
badly at gin.
It
“Joe, I’m really hot
today.”
“Yeah, yeah. Rub it in.
Let’s wind it up. The sun’s
out. I’ve got to get going.”
“Okay. Here’s a proposition. Play one hand. If
you win, you don’t owe
me anything. If I win, you
don’t owe me, but you
have to wear a costume
to the Christmas Poker
Tournament.”
“What kind of costume?”
“I get to pick it out. I’m
wearing the Santa Claus
outfit I got last year.”
“I’m not going as Mrs.
Claus!”
“No, you won’t have to.”
So it was a couple weeks
later that I was walking
into the casino in a furry
brown suit with a pair of
antlers on my head and a
blinking red light on my
nose. Hobby, in his Santa
Claus suit was beaming,
ear-to-ear. I was less joyful,
to say the least. At the table
I allowed everyone to make
their not-so-funny comments until one guy said,
“Does Santa ride you?”
“How would you like
to ride my knuckles?” I
replied with unbridled hostility.
The guy shut up and the
dealer said, “Enough talk.
Let’s play poker.” It was
a $500 buy-in Texas Hold
‘Em tournament.
It helped that others
were in costumes. Soon I
was totally into the game.
After a few hands I was
dealt the spade ace and
king and bet a quarter of
my chips. A good looking
Mrs. Santa quickly called
and smiled at me. Why is it
when a pretty woman calls
my bet and smiles that I
get a sinking feeling?
The flop was a rainbow of small cards, which
didn’t especially favor
much of a straight either. I
checked. The lady, my only
opponent, made a modest bet. I called. The turn
was the king of hearts. I
slow-played with a check
and again my opponent
made a small bet, which
I called. The river was
another king. What to do
now? I didn’t want to try
a check-raise thinking she
might check too without
me getting in another bet.
I put in half my remaining
chips and she went all-in.
I was afraid she might be
holding the other king and
a small card that paired on
the board, but I was potcommitted and called. I
sighed with relief when she
showed a king and queen.
The smile left her face.
“Sorry about that,” I
offered to be polite.
She shook her head and
managed a small smile. As
she left the table she said,
“See you later, Joe.”
I wondered if she had
picked up on my name
from Hobby, but gave it no
more thought as I concentrated on the poker.
After a while Hobby
went bust. I was doing
well, thinking I might possibly win, but it was not
to be. A third place finish,
however, gave me a few
grand. I was happy.
“Congratulations, Joe.
Well done,” Hobby said.
“Thanks, buddy. Can
I take off my antlers and
funny nose now?”
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Hachem Wins Doyle Brunson North American Championship
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NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
CHAMPIONSHIP—
DOYLE BRUNSON
NORTH AMERICAN
CLASSIC
BUY-IN $15,000 + $400
PLAYERS 583
PRIZE
POOL
$8,482,650
1. Joe Hachem . . . . .$2,182,075
Melbourne, Australia
PLUS... $25,500 entry in
World Poker Tour Finals on
April 21, 2007
2. Jimmy Hanna . . .$1,099,430
West Palm Beach, FL, USA
3. Daniel Negreanu . . $592,000
12/13/06
SENIORS—
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
6. Andreas
Athanasopoulous . . $12,010
2. Joseph Tehan . . . . $250,290
Hollywood, FL, USA
7. David Rosenbloom . . $8,580
3. Steve Sung AKA
“MuGGyLiCiOuS” $125,145
Torrance, CA, USA
Monrovia, CA, USA
8. Randall Skaggs . . . . . $6,860
4. Shannon Shorr . . . . $71,520
9. Paul Begun . . . . . . . . $5,490
5. Justin Bonomo . . . . $53,635
includes... $25,500 entry in
April 21, 2007
2. Pat Madden . . . . . . $185,310
Los Angeles, CA
BUY-IN $2,500 + $120
PLAYERS 152
PRIZE
POOL
Las Vegas, NV, USA
$368,600
Salt Lake City, UT, USA
1. Chris Bjorin . . . . . $152,445
Las Vegas, NV, USA
Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
Sherman Oaks, CA, USA
6. Zachary Cherry . . . $41,715
London, United Kingdom
April 21, 2007
2. Myrl Unzelman . . . . $75,480
EVENT #10
BUY-IN $2,500 + $120
PLAYERS 251
PRIZE
POOL
3. Michael Halford
AKA “Kidfrmtenn” $37,740
$1,217,350
1. Erik Cajelais . . . . . $405,230
4. O’Neil Longson . . . . $20,595
Masc, QC, Canada
5. Cyrus Sami . . . . . . . $15,440
April 21, 2007
Las Vegas, NV, USA
Cooperstown, NY, USA
Las Vegas, NV, USA
PLAYERS 312
PRIZE
POOL
$907,920
1. Daniel Quach . . . . $300,025
Lexington, KY, USA
New York, NY, USA
3. Jason Lester . . . . . . $92,655
7. Erik Seidel . . . . . . . . $29,795
4. Raj Sawant . . . . . . . $52,925
8. John Derick Barch
AKA “Tex” . . . . . . . $23,835
5. Erica Schoenberg
AKA “Blackjack
Babe” . . . . . . . . . . . . $39,710
Las Vegas, NV, USA
12/10/06
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
Sioux Falls, SD, USA
Memphis, TN, USA
(Cont’d from page 1)
McKinney, TX, USA
9. Mike Thurman . . . . $19,070
St Clair Shores, MI, USA
Miami, FL, USA
Topeka, KS, USA
Las Vegas, NV, USA
6. Jeff Shulman . . . . . . $30,885
Las Vegas, NV, USA
EVENT #9
12/9/06
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $2,500 + $120
7. Jason Berilgen . . . . $22,060
Houston, TX, USA
8. Charles Shoten . . . . $17,650
Las Vegas, NV, USA
9. Robert Nehorayan . $14,120
4. Mads Anderson . . . $380,630
Copenhagen, Denmark
5. David Redlin . . . . . $253,715
Temperance, MI, USA
6. Ed Jordan AKA
“EBJ” . . . . . . . . . . $169,145
Belle Mead, NJ, USA
7. Justin Bonomo . . . $152,230
8. Haralabos
Voulgaris . . . . . . . . $135,315
Montreal, QC, Canada
9. Steve Sung AKA
“MuGGyLiCiOuS” $118,400
Torrance, CA, USA
10. Mack Lee . . . . . . . . $101,485
San Jose, CA, USA
11. Fred Goldberg . . . . $84,570
Hollywood, FL, USA
12. Scott Fischman . . . . $84,570
Las Vegas, NV, USA
Where fortunes have been made.
And more than a few legends, too.
13. Brent Sheirban . . . . $84,570
Seattle, WA, USA
14. Cyndy Violette . . . . $67,655
Atlantic City, NJ, USA
15. Jesse Jones . . . . . . . $84,570
Las Vegas, NV, USA
16. Mike Binger . . . . . . $67,655
Atherton, CA, USA
17. Peter Rho . . . . . . . . $67,655
Long Beach, CA, USA
18. Lee Markholt . . . . . $67,655
Eatonville, WA, USA
19. Matts Rahmn . . . . . $67,655
Stockholm, Sweden
20. Cliff Josephy AKA
“Johnny Bax” . . . . . $67,655
Syosset, NY, USA
SUPER SATELLITE
12/13/06
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $1,500 + $70
PLAYERS 588
PRIZE
POOL
$855,540
1. Nick Gibson . . . . . . $15,600
Windsor, United Kingdom
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6. Raymond Padgett . . $15,600
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8. Jason Freetag . . . . . $15,600
9. David Mitchell Lolis $15,600
Las Vegas, NV, USA
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
11
LESSON 92:
Rewarding your opponent
Lessons from mike caro
university of poker
BY DIANE M C HAFFIE
What strategy do you use to overcome an opponent who is playing loose and raises frequently?
You need to reward him!
Mike says that if you frequently fold when he raises, then you
won’t be participating in pots that are specifically profitable
against this type of opponent. Also, you’re letting that opponent
intimidate you. In order to benefit from this opponent’s loose play,
Mike says that you need to be in the pot as often as possible.
Sitting out doesn’t allow you the privilege of making a profit
from his reckless play. Sitting out means you’ll be watching,
instead of winning.
Weak or average hand. How do you handle this aggressive,
too-frequent bluffer? You can sometimes earn extra money by
raising with a weak hand on the river, instead of folding. Call this
a “rebluff” or an “overbluff.” If the pot is large enough, the risk
is worth it. Against a player who bluffs too often, it’s a mistake to
lay down every hand – especially against a small bet in no-limit
games. Raise the bet and see if he’s bluffing. If he is, then you’ve
won the pot!
If he isn’t bluffing then he’s been compensated and he feels
good. You’ve rewarded that opponent this one time, by letting him
win extra from your raise, while still taking the best of the longrun percentages.
Mike warns against raising repeatedly against a recurrent bluffer, because then it seems obvious that you’re punishing him for
his reckless play, and you don’t want him to change his technique,
as you intend to profit from it. Mike says you should “capitalize on
an opponent’s faults as often as you can without causing him to
modify his behavior. The secret is that you can’t take advantage of
your opponent’s mistake every time. Sometimes you’ve got to let
that opponent succeed. You’ve got to let the mistake pay off for
him.”
Reward him for his mistakes now and then, so that he’ll continue to follow his loose-and-reckless pattern. Your first impulse
may be to raise with a weak hand on the river against such a rash
player, but you shouldn’t always do it. The odds of stealing the pot
may be in your favor right now, but your opponent’s poor decisions need to be rewarded occasionally, so he’ll continue playing
loosely.
The point is: You want opponents to keep playing badly, so
you can continue to capitalize. Oddly, the way to make this happen is to sacrifice some immediate money to make sure that
the long-range profit continues uninterrupted. That means not
taking advantage every single time. Once in a while, reward your
opponent by letting the bad play succeed. This motivates him to
continue the mistake.
Just call. Against an overly aggressive opponent, what should
you do if your hand is strong? The desire to raise on early betting
rounds is overpowering, but Mike says that often you should just
call. He says it’s the “best” way to beat this opponent. He says to
continue calling and then on the river, if you still think that raising
is the right thing to do, then go for it.
When you raise with a strong hand and your too-aggressive
opponent folds, show him your cards so that he sees he did the
proper thing. Once again you’ve rewarded him for making a wise
decision. He’ll feel relieved that he did the right thing that time
and will be more likely to fold lesser cards in the future when you
raise against his weak bets.
Mike states that this type of player will be aggressive until he
meets opposition. Then he may begin backing down. You don’t want
that to happen. If you sometimes reward opponents, instead of
always punishing them for doing the wrong thing, you ensure that
the bad behavior continues – and you can come out the winner.
Diane McHaffie is Director of Operations at Mike Caro
University of Poker, Gaming, and Life Strategy. Her
diverse career spans banking, promotion of major financial seminars and the raising of White-tailed Deer. You
can write her online at [email protected].
12
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
Sam Mudaro, BA, MBA, is a practicing tax
accountant and financial executive originally
from New York with over 35 years of analytical business expertise. He and his wife Eva
are nine-year Las Vegas residents. Sam uses
simulation software to analyze and develop
strategies for Omaha Hi/Lo and other forms of
poker. Reach Sam at: [email protected].
Today I have a mission for
you. Should you accept
the mission you will need
a standard deck of playing
cards and a surface to deal
out ten starting hands. Your
goal is to deal yourself a
hand that will always win
the entire pot. You must
scoop. You must have both
the only and hence nut
low when applicable and
unshared high. Just to make
it interesting your opponents
will never fold. Your hand
must not contain two cards
of the same suite thereby
eliminating your chances of
making a flush. You must of
course hold at least two low
cards as you must qualify
and win the low without
splitting when there are three
low cards on the board. You
will be creating a showdown
situation.
After you deal the ten
starting hands you will
have exactly 12 cards left.
Since none of your cards
will be suited, you will not
be able to make a flush for
high. Therefore if there are
three suited cards left in
the deck you must account
for the possibility that they
may appear on the board. If
any of your opponents are
holding two of those suites
you will have not completed the task, unless you
are holding a high hand
that will beat the flush.
Remember you must win
100% of the time without
splitting regardless what
combination of the remaining 12 cards appears on the
board!
I performed this exercise using two specific
starting hands. They are
As-2a-3d-Af and
As-2a-Kd-Af. I am
sure these are not the only
two starting hands that
may be used to accomplish
the task. I chose these two
hands as they are considered by many to be the two
best possible starting hands
when double suited. I chose
to keep the hands unsuited
to eliminate the flush possibilities as you would
always have the nut flush.
This makes the high win a
little more challenging.
Sam Mudaro is the...
The Best Hand
I know that most of
you will just sit back and
wait to see the results. In
doing so, you will miss a
valuable learning experience. This may seem like a
simple task at first. I assure
you it is quite difficult to
form a low where you are
the only low winner and yet
be the only high winner. You
will gain tremendous insight
into what hands you may
be up against when playing.
In a real cash game your
opponents have the option
of folding. The majority of
the starting hands I formed
would definitely have been
folded by a reasonably
knowledgeable player. In
Omaha, as in any form of
poker, you must learn how
to put your opponent on a
hand. In a high low game it
is more important and more
difficult to do so. You must
first decide whether your
opponent is playing for high
or low or both. Failing to
do so will cause you to lose
money due to quartering or
folding the winning low or
high hand figuring you are
beat.
This exercise will help
teach you how difficult it
truly is for one of your opponents not to have a hand.
A few tips may be in order.
First: be mindful of straights,
flushes, quads and high-card
only winning hands. Second:
after you think you have a
set-up that works, you may
want to test it by setting up
your ten hands in a poker
odds calculator. There are
several available on line.
One interesting note was
that with the both hands
I constructed neither one
won the low 80% or more. I
would have expected the A2-A-3 to win the low more
often. The reason that the
low did not win 100% as did
the high, was that there was
no low.
I decided not to supply
my answers with this article
but will include them with
my next article. If you have
a hand that you believe
works and are unable to
test it please feel free to
email me the hand at “[email protected]”.
Be sure to supply me with
the suite and rank of all ten
hands. I will let you know
if the hand works and return
the percentage back to you.
A reader, Doyle, writes:
“Could you please review
the following hand and offer
your opinion. After seeing
it showed down in a casino
I began to doubt how much
I actually know about the
rankings.
Board Cards: K J 5 7 8
Player A shows: J T 2 3
Player B shows: K T A 4
Dealer awards the “low” to
player A. Player B does not
contest the decision. I was
not in the hand but asked
Player B why he didn’t protest.”
His actual question is: “So
the obvious question is any
time there is a low hand and
one contains the Ace, isn’t
that always the nut low? …”
A low hand is the best 5
cards 8 or less. The dealer
in you example awarded the
pot correctly. Both players
had what may be termed an
8 low. Player A had an 8-75-*3*-2 and player B had an
8-7-5-*4*-A. A low is evaluated from high to low. In this
example both player had an
8 low followed by a 7 and
also tied with the 5. Given
that based on those three
cards they were tied for the
low, we then move to the
fourth card. Player A plays
his 3 which is lower then
the 4 player B must use. It
does not really matter what
the 5^th card is at that point
as long as it is a qualifying
low card, less then the other
cards played. If instead of
having the A-4 player B had
A-3, he/she would have won
the low.
Having an Ace does not
guarantee the better low.
With a board of 8-7-6-K-K,
the player holding a 4-3-JJ has a better low then the
player holding A-5-A-Q as
the 5 is larger then the 4.
So what have we
learned? To determine the
best low hand you begin
with the highest low card
you must play and then work
your way down. Next time I
will present my results.
P
ossibly the most
famous Finnish
poker player of all
is Patrik Antonius. Lately,
he’s been on tour Stateside,
hitting several major events
since the World Series. And
what a World Series it was:
five cashes, including ninth
in the $25,000 HORSE
event. Antonius also finished runner-up in 2005’s
Doyle Brunson event at
Bellagio. This native son
does Finland proud, and it’s
also remarkable considering
Finland has only one casino
with poker.
“We offer cash games
and tournaments,” says
Jukka Rasanen, table
games and poker manager
at Grand Casino Helsinki.
“Games: Texas Hold’em
full-limit, pot-limit and nolimit, Omaha pot-limit, 7
Card Stud full-limit and pot
limit, Sökö pot limit and
Dealers Choice pot limit
(incl. these four games).”
# ON
MAP
1
CASINO
LOCATION
Texas Hold’em No
Limit: buy-in min €50 max
200, blinds €2-2; buy-in
min €100 max 400, blinds
€5-5. Sometimes: buy-in
min €250 max 1000, blinds
€10-10.
Omaha Pot Limit: buyin min €100, blinds €2-2;
buy-in min €200, blinds
€5-5. Sometimes: buy-in
min €500, blinds €10-10;
buy-in min €1000, blinds
€20-20.
“We also offer fixed limit
games and higher buy-ins,
but they are played only
occasionally,” he says.
Grand Casino Helsinki
also offers a good variety of
tournaments. “Buy-in range
for freezeout tournaments
is from €20 + 5 to €300
+ 11, and for rebuy tournaments from €20 + 5. to
€100 + 11,” says Rasanen.
“About once in three
months we have Omaha
pot limit €500 + 20 and
No-Limit Hold’em €1000
OPEN HOURS
# OF
TABLES
GAMES
NL?
Grand
H, L, O,
Casino
Helsinki 7 days 7:15p-4a
5
Y
Sökö
Helsinki
=C1 = $1.31
S/NS – Poker room allows smoking (S), non-smoking (NS) or both (B)
tional tournaments because
operate as Casino Ray in
previous location until April the camaraderie between
2004,” he says. “The poker players was distinct, and
this wasn’t really a win-atroom was opened there in
all-cost tournament in any
December 1994. In April
shape or form. Also, pres2004, Casino Ray was
ent were at least as many
closed and Grand Casino
spectators as players and
Helsinki started to operate
the evening was as much
in the current location.”
a social event as a tourna“At the moment there
ment night. All and all, this
are five tables in the poker
was a uniquely warm heartroom, but hopefully the
ed evening, even though
number will increase
players still
to seven or eight in the
played for money
beginning of year 2007,”
Rasanen says. “For interna- and championtional events we built up 15 ship glory.
“We have been
poker tables to Fennia hall,
offered WPT
which is our historically
as well as EPT
renovated show room.”
Can there be too much of events to be organized here, when
a good thing?
they were in
“Business is almost
too good at the
moment as far
as poker is concerned,” says
By Steve Horton
Rasanen. “It means
the early stages,
that we could run two or
but because we
three more tournament or
are not allowed
cash game tables almost
to make any kind
every night. Because we
of cooperation
have to change the entire
with online operlayout of the gaming tables
ators, we unfortuto be able to add those two
nately had to turn
or three poker tables, it will
them down,” he
take still some more time
says.
before getting there.”
Where does Rasanen
Grand Casino Helsinki
think all this is heading in a
attracts a certain type of
few years?
player these days, thanks
“It’s difficult to say, espeto television, but the variety is still there, according
to Rasanen. “The ‘prototype’ of poker player is,
nowadays, 18 – 30-year-old
males. Of course, some of
the regular players we have
had for ten years do still
come in and delightfully,
we have an increasing num-
cially after things that have
been going on with Internet
poker in the U.S. recently,”
he says. “However, I still
think poker will grow in the
future and with all the publicity it’s getting, it will be
more and more acceptable
to play it. Maybe it will
be considered same kind
of ‘sport’ as chess is quite
soon. You can find some
additional information of
FINLAND
our casino and company
from our web page: http://
www.grandcasinohelsinki.
fi/en/index.php”
HIGH TOURNAMENT S/NS HOTEL
LIMITS
BUY-IN
=C501000
=C20-2500
B
N
Days open, hours of operation, games offered and tables may vary
Sökö? Now there’s a new
one. What is it? “Sökö is
the Scandinavian version
of 5 Card Stud,” Rasanen
says. “There are two special
combinations between one
pair and two pair: a four
card straight and four card
flush, which is the stronger
of these two hands.”
The poker room at Grand
Casino Helsinki is not exclusive to high rollers by any
means. “Normal cash games
are with quite small blinds
and buy-ins,” Rasanen says.
Here’s the list:
+ 50 events. We also organize two international
tournament weeks per
year: Midnight Sun in June
and Helsinki Freezeout in
January. The buy-in range
is from €100 + 20 rebuy
tournament to €2500 + 100
freezeout.”
For those looking to
travel to Finland, the hours
of the poker room are 7:15
p.m. to 4 a.m., according to
Rasanen. The special tournaments and international
events start at 2 or 4 p.m.
“This casino used to
ber of female players.”
“We just organized the
first European Open Deaf
Poker Championships,”
Rasanen says, talking about
special events at Grand
Casino Helsinki. “It was
not a huge success, but we
had 47 players from six
countries and I think next
year it will be a much bigger event. The following
lines are from one press
release:”
The spirit of the tournament was completely different from the usual interna-
The inside of the Grand Casino Helsinki was designed by
American casino architect Paul Steelman.
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
13
Betting on the River
Caro’s Word: “Silly”
SENIORS SCENE
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6
By George “The engineer” EPSTEIN
You called the blind from an early
position with A-Q unsuited. The flop
came down:
Your aces look great.
Top pair and a big kicker! You bet out and are
called by three opponents. The turn is the
seven of diamonds; it doesn’t help you. Now there
are possible draws to a straight and a diamond
flush. Of course you bet again. (Don’t let them
draw cheap!) Now only one opponent calls. The
river is the ten of diamonds. You study the board:
The Flop
The Turn
The River
You have two-pair, aces and tens, with the queen
kicker. But there is a possible straight and a possible flush that your opponent could have, although
those don’t seem too likely. If he has a ten in the
hole, he now has trip tens! You don’t really have a
good read on his hand.
You know he is a fairly tight player; he’s been
calling all the way, so he must have something reasonably good in the hole. Perhaps he has a small
or medium pocket pair. Like many hold’em players,
he might have called the flop with ace-rag -- so the
flop would have given him a pair of aces with a poor
kicker. Could be that he flopped second pair, a pair
of tens, and was concerned about the ace out there
on the board. And well he should. . . Maybe he has
two pair, tens and eights; but he is a tight player
and would not have called the flop with a 10-8. It’s
not likely that he flopped a set of eights; certainly
he would have raised you on the turn if he had that
good a hand. Maybe he made a diamond flush; but
that’s not likely since he called on the flop with only
one diamond on the board. Indeed, it’s more likely
he would have folded on the flop with only one diamond on the board. You ponder the situation. You
ask yourself: Should I bet or check?
By all means, just check. Here’s why: He probably has you figured for a pair of aces based on how
you have been betting out every round since the
flop. Consider the most likely hands he might be
holding. It is possible that the ten on the river gave
him trip tens, making your hand second-best. In
that case, he may raise you if you bet out; then it
will cost you two big bets – and you lose! In short,
it is not likely he would call your bet on the river
unless he has a better hand than yours; and, then,
he probably will raise you.
In summary, if there is just as good a chance that
his hand has yours beaten, you have more to lose
than to gain by betting into to him. At most you
will gain one more big bet if he calls and your aces
hold up; at worst, it will cost you two big bets if he
raises and beats you with his trips.
So, readers, what’s YOUR opinion?
George “The Engineer” Epstein is the author of The
Greatest Book of Poker for Winners! and Hold’em or
Fold’em? – An Algorithm for Making the Key Decision
(T/C Press, PO Box 36006, Los Angeles, CA 90036) He
teaches poker courses and the Poker Lab at the Claude
Pepper Sr. Citizen Center under the auspices of the City
of Los Angeles Dept. of Recreation and Parks. George can
be reached by e-mail: [email protected].
14
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
you do? Should you throw
your hand away out of
turn because you’re frustrated? I don’t think so.
Should you bet anyway,
even though your hand
isn’t quite strong enough?
No. So, you should check,
right? Right!
But then your opponent bets. Now what?
According to the popular
notion, you should rarely
call. If you were going to
check and call, the notion
goes, you should simply
have bet in the first place.
But why? We’ve just
thought about it together
and decided that our
hand wasn’t quite strong
enough to bet. So we did
the sensible thing. We
checked.
And now we’ve been
bet into. All our options
should still be open to
us. We will usually fold
our weakest hands. We
will usually call with our
medium hands. And we
will usually raise with
our strongest hands. Sure,
there are exceptions, but if
we don’t stick to the basic
premise that we mostly
fold our weak hands, call
with our medium hands,
and raise with our most
powerful hands, you’ve
just set poker science back
a hundred years.
Exceptions
You see, poker science
says that you can and
you sometimes should
be deceptive by playing
a hand differently. But
those are the exceptions.
In order for deception to
work, you must do the
standard, unexceptional,
thing most of the time.
You need to check and call
more often than you check
and raise. If you’re checking and raising more often
than you’re checking and
calling – which is exactly
what happens if you follow the popular “Don’t
check and call” advice,
your whole strategy is
upside down and you’ll
cost yourself money.
So, today I’m here to
tell you that there’s nothing weak about checking
and calling. Nobody’s
going to think you’re a
sissy for not raising. Your
wife or husband won’t
lose respect for you. The
sun will come up in the
morning. Checking and
calling is the most natural
thing in the world. When
you have one of those
very common hands that
has medium prospects of
winning, the thing you
should usually do is check
and then call.
You see I’ve done my
own analysis, programmed
my own computers. Sure,
I’m proud and I like to
brag, but so what? I’ve
actually done the research.
The point is there’s
nothing weak about checking and calling. Despite
what others say, that’s
the strategy you should
choose most often when
your hand isn’t strong
enough to bet. And I don’t
just say it as a matter of
opinion. I know it for a
fact.
This is “The Mad
Genius of Poker” Mike
Caro and that’s my secret
today.
Mike Caro is widely
regarded as the world’s
foremost authority on
poker strategy, psychology,
and statistics. A renowned
player and founder of Mike
Caro University of Poker,
Gaming, and Life Strategy,
he is known as “the Mad
Genius of Poker,” because
of his lively delivery
of concepts and latest
research. You can visit him
at www.poker1.com.
AC WSOP Circuit Event
with 6,000-12,000 blinds
and 2,000 antes, 19 minutes
left.
SEATS AND CHIP COUNTS
SEAT 1
SEAT 2
SEAT 3
SEAT 4
SEAT 5
SEAT 6
SEAT 7
SEAT 8
SEAT 9
Tam Ly . . . . . . . . . 197,000
Ken Goldin . . . . . . 101,000
Drew Gliem . . . . . 108,000
Ray Lin . . . . . . . . . 198,000
Michael Bernstein 130,000
Alex Gomez . . . .1,051,000
Feming Chan . . . . 179,000
Rick Rossetti . . . . 181,000
John Racener . . . . 224,000
On hand three, Ken Goldin
went all in for 107,000 with
Ad-Kh. He was near elimination after Tam “Samurai”
Ly, with Qh-10h, turned a
10, but Goldin doubled up
with a river flush, while Ly
lost over half his chips.
On hand eight, blinds
became 8,000-16,000 with
2,000 antes, now playing
90-minute rounds. One hand
later, Rossetti opened for
40,000 with As-9h. Ly raised
for 98,000 more in the big
blind holding Ad-7s, losing
when the board came J-3-3-
6-A. Ly, 30, is from Vietnam
and now lives in Lansdale,
Pennsylvania, He is a senior
engineer with a chemical
engineering degree and started playing in high school,
the past two years seriously.
Ninth paid $23,006.
On the next hand, Drew
“Drewsworld” Gliem
moved in under the gun with
pocket 6s for 70,000. a big
dog when Michael “MJ”
Bernstein came over the top
with pocket kings...even bigger when another player said
he had folded a 6. A board of
10-8-7-3-J changed nothing,
and Gliem finished eighth,
worth $34,509. Gliem, 45, is
executive director of “HalfMeasures, Inc.,” a non-profit
recovery home. He is from
Farmingdale, New Jersey,
and has played poker 25
years, hold’em for five,
learning at WPT Boot Camp.
He holds a bachelor’s degree
in mechanical engineering
and had his best poker cashout beating a field of 1,125
at PokerStars. He’s an outdoorsman enjoying surfing,
fishing and golf.
Ray Lin left on hand 13.
Rossetti opened for 50,000
and Lin pushed in from the
button for 190,000 more.
He turned up Ac-Jc and was
up against Rossetti’s Ah-Ks.
The board came 10-7-5-6-2,
and Lin picked up $46,012
for seventh. Originally from
Taiwan, Lin, 59, now lives in
New York City.
With six players left,
Gomez still was in front with
1,099,000, with Rossetti
now in second place with
575,000.
Bernstein finished sixth
for $57,515. After Feming
Chan raised 50,000, both
Bernstein and Gomez
moved in. Gomez was a
slight favorite with pocket
9s, which held up against
A Poker Player Murder Mystery by Robert Arabella
THREE STRIKES
And it’s One! Two! Three
strikes! You’re out at the
old ball game!
—Take Me Out To The
Ball Game
[This article is based on
Robert Arabella’s Decline
And Fall Of The Poker
Empire, published in 2026
by Poker Player.]
“The Three Strikes Law”
was enacted to punish
violent career criminals,
“the worst of the worst,”
with long prison sentences.
“The Three Strikes Law,”
intended to apply to only
“the worst of the worst”
fell afoul of “The Law Of
Unintended Consequences”
and was soon being applied
to anyone convicted three
times of any crime. In
1995, a “three-time loser”
was given a life sentence
for stealing chocolate chip
cookies. Twenty-nine years
later, in 2024, when this
story begins, he is still in
prison.
Many famous people
have also been wrongfully
imprisoned: Alfred Dreyfus
on Devil’s Island. Mahatma
Gandhi in Bombay’s Kahn
Palace. Raoul Wallenberg
in Moscow’s Lubyanka
Prison. Nelson Mandela
on South Africa’s Robben
Island, and Martin Luther
King, Jr. in the Birmingham
Jail. One more person can
now be added to the list
of the wrongfully imprisoned: Winston Smith, The
Prisoner Of Poker, now
held on Muckler Island.
This is the story of how
playing three hands of
Internet poker became the
three strikes that imprisoned Winston Smith for
life. It begins with a man
saying to his wife —
“Look at these test
papers. I wouldn’t let
my 6th graders use their
implanted calculators on
this simple addition and
subtraction test and every
single one of them has
failed. With those chips
turned on, they can all figure Pi to 1,000,000 places.
With them turned off, they
can’t figure out how to cut
a pie in equal pieces.”
The man so concerned
with these test papers is
Winston Smith, a middleaged middle school math
teacher from Middleburg,
Tennessee. His wife
Peggy looks away from
her Redberry’s display of
People Magazine Daily,
“Suri Cruise Pregnant
Again!” and asks, “What
kind of pie?” Before he can
answer, his wife switches
her attention to the floorto-ceiling Eye-Pod screen
to watch The National
Inquirer’s Nightly News.
They lead with the story,
“Michael Jackson’s Corpse
Is Missing.” Smith leaves
the room.
He goes off to his
“library,” a closet-sized
room lined floor to ceiling with books. Collecting
books is Smith’s hobby.
In a time when the printed
word has been made obsolete by the digital image,
only the very poor (who
burn them to keep warm)
and eccentric collectors like
Smith have any interest in
books. Smith buys them,
sight unseen, by the boxful.
On his desk now is a beat
up old cardboard box he
has picked up at a neighborhood garage sale. “What
the f…?” he says, looking
inside and finding that one
of the books he has bought
has been torn to pieces.
Smith picks up a loose page
and reads, I thought playing
poker was tough. That was
before I started to create
a poker course. This is my
first poker book and probably my last one. I wish I
had one like it when I started playing. “What? No! It
can’t be,” he tells himself.
Slowly he puts the pages
of the book back together
as if it were a jigsaw
puzzle. When all the pages
of the book are placed in
order Smith is terrified by
what he’s found. It is a
copy of Doyle Brunson’s
Super/System. One of the
Forbidden Poker Books.
[This is a work of poker fiction set ten thousand hands
in the future. Any resemblance to persons living or
dead is coincidental.]
(To be continued in the next
issue of Poker Player)
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JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
15
An old English nursery rhyme:
Little Jack Horner sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie:
He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum,
And said, “What a good boy am I!”
“Little Jack Horner…”
STRAIGHT SKINNY
By RICHARD G. BURKE
My local poker room has a large Keno board among
the big flat panel televisions. At my low-limit no-limit table on a
sunny, cold day during Yuletide, a player who was out of the hand
watched the Keno board intently while holding a Keno ticket. Curious,
I started a conversation with, “You must really love Keno.”
“Oh, yes,” he replied, “I love it, and I always 1 2
1 11
2 12 play the corners.” He explained that he always
19 20
played the four numbers in each corner of the board: 1, 2, 11, 12; 9, 10,
19, 20; 61, 62, 71, 72; and 69, 70, 79, 80. He just loved to watch those
61 62 corners light up when his numbers were among 69 70
79 80
71 72 the 20 ping-pong balls selected.
He played all the four-spots, and all the six possible eight-spots
simultaneously, in a “way” ticket, he told me, at 25¢ per way. He
bought 100 games at the counter, so he wouldn’t have to deal with
a Keno runner while he played Hold’Em, or miss a game. He played
every day, he told me.
“Well, good luck,” I said, as I made it $20 to go. After the Flop
disappointed, I mucked my suited connectors, and thought to myself,
“You’re gonna’ need it.”
Ten ways at 25¢ per way equals $2.50. 100 tickets at $2.50 is
$250. The Keno board shows a new game about 15 times an hour, so
his 100 games would last about seven hours, and he played every
day. He paid $250 every day to play Keno while he played poker!
The table shows the payouts for a 25¢,
Catch 25¢ Pays
2
$0.25 four-spot ticket at my local casino, a 25¢
3
$0.75 four-spot ticket pays 25¢ if you catch two,
4
$30.00 75¢ for three, and $30 for all four.
For a 25¢, eight-spot ticket, the payouts
Catch 25¢ Pays
are
as shown.
5
$2.25
To
figure the expectation, we need
6
$22.50
7
$370.00 to calculate the probabilities for each
8
$4500.00 event. The probability is C(20,5)*C(60,3)/
C(80,8) for catching five numbers of an eight-spot ticket; it’s
C(20,6)*C(60,2)/C(80,8) for six numbers; etc. I did the math on my
home computer using a popular spreadsheet application.
Jack should expect
Catch Payout Prbblty Expcttn
each
four-spot to pay
2
$0.025 0.2126 $0.0532
back
17.75¢
from its
3
$0.075 0.0432 $0.0324
4
$30.00 0.0031 $0.0919 cost of 25¢. The house’s
Sum rrr $0.1775 hold on four-spots is
7.25/25, or 29%.
Similar calculaCatch Payout
Prbblty
Expcttn
5
$2.25 0.018303 $0.0412 tions produce the
6
$22.50 .002367 $0.0533 table at left. Jack
7
$370 0.000160 $0.0594 should expect 17.34¢
8
$4500 0.000004 $0.0196 back for every 25¢
Sum rrr $0.1734
eight-spot ticket.
The house’s hold on eight-spot tickets is 7.64/25, almost 31%.
Every game, Jack plays four four-spots and six eight-spots. In
total his minus expectation is (4*7.25¢ + 6*7.64¢), 74.84¢ per game.
He plays 100 games a day, so he should expect to lose $74.84 every
day on the average, about $11.23 per hour at 15 games per hour.
That’s a significant leak.
“…Sat in a corner,
Eating a Christmas pie,
He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum,
And said, ‘What a good boy am I!’”
He might get lucky and pull out a plum. I doubt it, but I wish him well.
Mr. Burke is the author of Flop: The Art of Winning at
Low-Limit Hold ’Em, on sale at amazon, gamblersbook,
& kokopellipress.com. E-mail your Hold ’Em questions to
[email protected]
16
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
Roofer Rosetti Covers at AC WSOP Circuit Event
Bernstein’s K-J when neither helped. Bernstein is
a 27-year-old pro from
Chicago whose hobbies
include fishing and spelunking. He’s been written up
in Bluff magazine, which
called him a “rising star” and
PokerPages.com, describing
him as a “satellite whiz kid.”
Goldin is a 41-year-old
sports agent and marketer
from Vorhees, New Jersey.
He moved in from the small
blind with Kh-9s and found
himself against Chan’s Ah9h, finishing fifth when the
board didn’t help. Goldin, a
poker player for two years,
took home $69,018 richer for
fifth. Goldin has numerous
online tournament wins, the
largest $33,000. He got his
poker knowledge primarily
online and insists he a “competition junkie, not a poker
junkie.”
With blinds of 10,00020,000 and 3,000 antes
at level 17, here were the
counts: Gomez, 1,321,000;
Chan, 322,000; Rossetti,
181,000; John Racener,
224,000.
As play proceeded,
Racener relieved Gomez
of 173,000 chips when his
Ac-10c stood up against
Gomez’s Kc-Jc after the
board came A-10-9-8-J.
Then, with 55 minutes
left at this level, Gomez
pushed in with As-10c and
got an all-in call of 85,000
from Chan. The best hands
had usually held up in allin situations at this final
table, and they did again
here. Gomez, with As-10c,
dominated Chan’s Ad-3h. A
board of Q-10-4-9-Q missed
both players, and Chan was
missing from the table, picking up $80,521 for fourth.
Chan is a 26-year-old poker
player from West Windsor,
New Jersey who had previously been a day trader. He’s
been playing poker for eight
years, learning his trade on
the Internet. His biggest prior
cash-out was $30,512 for
428th in this year’s WSOP
main event.
The count now was:
Gomez, 1,325,000; Rossetti,
689,000; Racener, 363,000.
With more than $670,000
at stake, play tightened with
very little happening until the
level ended and players went
on dinner break nearly an
hour later. Returning from
dinner, hosted by Harrah’s
at their Italian restaurant, the
count hadn’t changed much:
1,137,000 for Gomez,;
753,000 for Rossetti,
489,000 for Racenter. Blinds
went to $15,000-30,000 with
4,000 antes.
On the first hand, everything turned around. The flop
showed 9s-7s-7h. Holding
Qs-7s, Racener bet 155,000
on his flush draw. Holding
only 8c-5c, Rossetti moved
in. A Kh turned, and then a
6c on the river gave Rossetti
a straight. Racenter was
out in third place, getting
$103,527, while Rossetti
suddenly had the lead,
1,251,000 to 1,118,000.
Racenter, a pro at age 21,
describes himself as “young,
single, with a bright future,”
is from Tampa, Florida. He
learned poker at an early age
from his father. His biggest
payday was over $1 million
for winning a PokerStars
event.
For the next 15 hands,
Rossetti turned super-aggressive, raising and getting
Gomez to fold nearly every
hand. Finally, Gomez took
a stand, raising all in after
Rossetti bet 200,000 into a
flop of A4-3-3. “I thought I
had a straight,” Rosetti said
sheepishly as he folded.
Chips moved back and
forth, with Gomez briefly
regaining the lead, until the
level ended, with Rossetti
back in charge, 1,685,000 to
685,000.
Blinds moved up to
20,000-40,000 with 5,000
antes. Soon after, Gomez
won a big pot when he made
queens full with Q-8, and the
field had leveled.
Finally, Rossetti took command again in a huge pot
that was raised $100,000 preflop. Another $100,000 was
bet on the flop of 4-2-3. The
turn was checked, and when
a queen came on the river,
Gomez bet 155,000, then
folded when Rossetti raised
another 445,000. He now
led, 1,500,000 to 870,000.
On the final hand, the flop
came K-9-3. Rossetti bet
150,000 and Gomez moved
in for 585,000 more. Gomez
had pocket 10s, Rossetti K-7,
and his paired king stood up
to win the pot and the championship.
Gomez, 33, is from
Brooklyn, New York, and
took down $202,453 for
second. He is a management
consultant with an MBA in
finance and has been playing
poker for four years. He says
he got to where he is in the
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JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
17
Surviving Slumps, PART 1
POwer POKER PSYCHOLOGY
By JAMES A. M C KENNA, P H D.
We’ve all had our share of a bad run of cards. That’s just
part of the game. However, when you have an extended
period of losing and having second best hands, you are in a slump—we have
all been there too! Such stress can become distress or it can be a way to
develop other playing skills. When stress becomes distress, all of us will get
into predictable distress patterns. The difference is contained in our basic
personality orientation. Some people will expect others to play perfectly
and become super critical of players who beat them. Others will become
more and more withdrawn and just wait for things to change. Still, there are
those who will get even more aggressive and start attacking and playing
even looser to the point of ruin. These are some of the responses that are
specific to different personalities. In Beyond Tells, I described six personality types and how their styles differ. In this series, I will discuss how such
personality type predictably will handle distress when they are in a slump.
A lot of the more successful players, when asked how they handle a
slump, will give you several techniques they have developed. Each of these
is designed to not turn the stress of bad runs into slumps that could take
them deeper into despair. Some recommend playing at a lower limit game
for a while. This could include changing to a poker game that you seldom
play. I have found some success in switching to a game of Omaha when the
cards in Hold’em are lousy for too long. Other players will suggest tightening up. This I believe is good for ordinarily loose players; yet, for already
conservative players it could be a mistake (as we will explain later). The
most frequent suggestion is to take a break—maybe even staying away
from all forms of gambling for a while. My favorite is to go play some
blackjack for a while. If I come back and the slump is still on, I might just
go home for that day. Of course, in all of this, it’s imperative that you do
some serious inventory of what you might be contributing to your slumps.
Examining your predictable distress patterns is crucial. First, though, you
will need to determine what your base personality orientation is.
On page 144, in Beyond Tells, I compared Playing styles with personalities and developed this chart:
PERSONALITIES & PLAYER STYLES
LEFT BRAIN DOMINANT RIGHT BRAIN DOMINANT
ted
ie n
in g
t
-Ac
Non
Or
Responsive
ted
ien
k
Thin
Reserved
Or
Con
vic
tio
n
d
nte
rie
sO
The first step is to fit
you
into one of the four
Rea
cti
Aggressive
quadrants.
Then you can
d
on
nte
rie
O
decide
what
orientation
s
“Party
Acti
on Hardy”
you have during your play.
s
Each one of these six
“The
“High
styles
will handle distress
Boss”
Roller”
differently. In first degree
“System
“Hunch
distress each will be driven
Player”
Player”
to either 1. Be strong, 2. Be
Or
s
n
ie n
more perfect or, 3. Expect
io
ted
m ot
E
others to be perfect, 4. Try
“Loner”
Or
ien
harder or, 5. Become super
ted
Receptive
pleasant. In second degree
TIGHT PLAY
LOOSE PLAY
distress, some will start
making more mistakes,
while others will attempt to over-control things. Still others will predictably
just wait and deny that they are even in a slump. Other players will start
fights or get others to fight with each other. Then, there are those who
become even more manipulative and attempt to control their slump by trying to control other players. All of these are predictable distress patterns
noticed when players are in varying degrees of slumps. Each of the different personalities will handle distress in everyday life the same ways.
In the next articles on slumps, I will go through the distress patterns
of each playing style. If you know your style, you can predict how you will
handle slumps. Knowing this will help you to manage the slumps that are
there for each of us. Such stress doesn’t have to become distress. Each
slump can be a doorway to developing other playing skills. We’ll talk about
that too.
ion
Jim McKenna, better known in poker rooms as “Jimmy Mac,” has been
practicing psychotherapy for over thirty-five years. This knowledge of
human behavior combined with his many years of gaming experience
gives him a unique perspective on the psychology of the gamer. His
books, the acclaimed “Beyond Tells: Power Poker Psychology,” and
now “Beyond Bluffs: Master the Mysteries of Poker,” are published
by Kensington Press. Jim welcomes e-mail comments and suggestions
at [email protected]
18
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
A friend of mine had his
hopes dashed and heart
crushed when he made
a terrible call in a recent
major tournament in
Atlantic City. The Flop
had brought him middle
tough decision in front of
us. This is way too late
to begin this vital process.
You see, we can never
accurately judge a tell on a
single moment alone. We
need to evaluate the total
Poker Counseling:
Oops, Too Late!
POKER COUNSELOR
By John Carlisle, MA, NCC
pair, so he bet out at it.
His opponent took a fair
amount of time before
announcing an all-in reraise. My buddy was
initially shocked by his
opposition’s move, as the
all-in put both of their
tournament lives at risk.
It was an over bet of the
pot, and a very aggressive
play considering the bubble
was nearing very soon.
My friend was obviously
befuddled. He apologized
to his fellow players as
he asked for extra time to
weigh the critical decision.
The raiser was at first very
still, but then grew impatient as my buddy sapped
more time away. “C’mon,
c’mon, let’s go,” the opponent muttered aloud with
a deep sigh of impatience.
My friend interpreted this
sly comment as a tell of
weakness (strong means
weak), and he chose to
make the call. My hapless friend was devastated
to find that he was almost
drawing dead, as the man
across the table wore a
wide grin as he displayed
his top set.
Upon breaking down
the play with my friend,
I uncovered a huge error
in his thought processing. I asked him all about
the opponent in question.
How had he been acting
in the hours before his
all-in push? Had he made
any bluffs in the past few
rounds? Was he a pro or
amateur? Was his goal
likely to be to win the
whole tourney or to simply coast to the money?
My buddy shrugged his
shoulders with each of
these inquiries. He had
not really been watching
and gathering information
on this particular character. My friend’s mistake is
a very common one. We
tend to look for tells when
we are in a pinch with a
player when making any
decision. This process
begins before we take the
first deal.
I call it gathering a total
baseline. We should be
observing and probing our
opponents at all times.
Mentally log any information that you can gather. A
father of three who qualified for the tournament
online is likely to be very
happy to play it safe and
sneak into the money spots.
A grizzled Las Vegas pro
player probably has his
sights set on the final table
and will be making more
bold moves as the bubble
comes nearer. A guy who
chit-chats with his tablemates all day but suddenly
quiets up as he peeks at his
hole cards is likely to hold
a monster. Maybe you
could notice a young player
has sat in a similar pose
all day long, but he shifted
way back in his seat when
faced with a pot sized raise.
Reading tells begins with
the baseline. I compare
it to doing your research/
homework. You should
never be in the tough spot
where you are making
decision based on a brief
momentary tell. A tell is
nothing more than another
small piece of information
that we can use to compare
against our baseline information on that particular
opponent. Your mind
must be totally engaged in
the psychology of poker
as much as the cards.
Observe everyone at the
table intently. Watch them
when they least suspect that
eyes are upon them, such
as when they have already
folded their hand. Watch
their demeanor, their mannerisms, their focus, and
their betting patterns. Ask
them questions in “friendly” conversation about their
family, their home town,
their occupation, etc. All
the while you are gathering
the vital pieces of the total
puzzle that you’ll need to
rely upon when the pressure is on!
In addition to being an avid
poker enthusiast, John is
a certified Counselor in
the state of Pennsylvania.
He has a Master of Arts
degree in Counseling from
West Virginia University,
and a Bachelor’s degree in
Psychology with a minor in
Sociology from Lock Haven
University. You can ask the
“Poker Counselor”
your question at
[email protected].
Roofer Rosetti Covers at AC WSOP Circuit Event
game by “practice, practice,
practice.”
HARRAH’S ATLANTIC CITY
WSOP CIRCUIT
EVENT
EVENT #9
12/19/06
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
CHAMPIONSHIP
FINAL DAY
BUY-IN $4,900 + $250
PLAYERS 237
PRIZE
POOL
$1,161,300
1. Richard Rossetti . . $368,096
Linwood, NJ, USA
2. Alex Gomez . . . . . . $202,453
Brooklyn, NY, USA
3. John Racener . . . . $103,527
Tampa, FL, USA
4. Feming Chan . . . . . $80,521
Cranbury, NJ, USA
5. Ken Goldin . . . . . . . $69,018
Voorhees, NJ, USA
6. Michael Bernstein . $57,515
8. Manelic Minaya
AKA “Manny” . . . . . $6,750
Tampa, FL, USA
9. Frank Pellegrini . . . . $4,500
WSOP CIRCUIT
EVENT
EVENT #6
12/14/06
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Andrew Kloc . . . . . . $12,420
Judith Frame . . . . . $10,358
John Gilcher . . . . . . . $8,280
Tae Baik . . . . . . . . . . $6,210
Theodore Ely . . . . . . $4,140
WSOP CIRCUIT
EVENT
EVENT #5
BUY-IN $1,000 + $80
12/13/06
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $500 + $60
PLAYERS 207
6.
7.
8.
9.
Mike Beasley . . . . . . . $7,900
Richard Rodrigo . . . . $6,320
Gary Crow . . . . . . . . $4,740
Matt Edwards . . . . . . $3,160
6. John Ruggiero AKA
“The Gravy Train” . $6,950
12/12/06
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
PLAYERS 169
Michael Borovetz
$158,000
Wencheng Huang
Upper Darby, PA, USA
Wayne, PA, USA
8. Ronald Rhoads . . . . . $4,170
Douglassville, PA, USA
9. Richard Blanchard . . $2,780
Plattsburgh, NY, USA
1. Wencheng Huang . . $44,480
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Olney, MD, USA
Galloway, NJ, USA
7. JJ Hurley . . . . . . . . . . $5,560
$209,520
4. Matthew Brady . . . . $14,490
Staten Island, NY, USA
BUY-IN $500 + $60
PRIZE POOL
3. Gary Schoengold . . $18,630
Detroit, MI, USA
EVENT #4
$207,008
Huntingdon Valley, PA, USA
Monsey, NY, USA
4. Jeremy Wagner . . . . . $9,730
5. Steve Rodriguez . . . . $8,340
PRIZE POOL
2. Jeffrey Gottesman . $36,432
Raleigh, NC, USA
3. Harry Frankel . . . . $12,510
PLAYERS 316
Mike Somma
2. Steve Safran . . . . . . $24,464
WSOP CIRCUIT
EVENT
PRIZE POOL
1. Michael Borovetz . . $66,240
Hillsborough, NJ, USA
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Mike Somma . . . . . . $48,980
David Natliashvili . . $25,280
John Whitemarsh . . $12,640
Chad Moore . . . . . . $11,060
James English . . . . . . $9,480
POWERFUL ADVERTISING REACH—USE IT!
poker player
Cherry Hill, NJ, USA
7. Ray Lin . . . . . . . . . . $46,012
New York, NY, USA
8. Drew Gliem . . . . . . . $34,509
Farmingdale, NJ, USA
9. Tam Ly . . . . . . . . . . $23,006
Landsale, PA, USA
WSOP CIRCUIT
EVENT
EVENT #8
=;JOEKH>7D:IED 7D?9;F7?H$
12/16/06
LADIES
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $200 + $30
;nf[h_[dY[j^[_dj_cWj[i[jj_d]e\ekhd[m"[_]^j#jWXb["icea[#\h[[heec$
MWjY^j^[X_]]Wc["X_]\_]^jehX_]hWY[edWdoe\ekhi_n*(ÈfbWicWiYh[[dJLi$
PLAYERS 200
FbWo_dekh,&De#B_c_jJ[nWi>ebZÉ;cjekhdWc[dji^[bZj^h[[j_c[iZW_bo0*W$c$"''W$c$WdZ-f$c$
Ehjhooekhia_bbi_ded[e\ekhdkc[hekii_d]b[#jWXb["I_j=ejekhdWc[dji$
PRIZE POOL
$40,000
Christine Rebardo
1. Christine Rebardo . $12,800
Norristown, PA, USA
FbWoWdZgkWb_\o\ehekhcWdoif[Y_Wbfhecej_edi_dYbkZ_d]"\h[[#hebbjekhdWc[dji"
bkYaoZhWm_d]i"`WYafej]_l[WmWoi"WdZXedkiYecfb_c[djWh_[i$
2. Chrissie Eyster . . . . . $7,040
Lexington Park, MO, USA
3. Ruth Munk . . . . . . . . $3,600
9Wbbj^[J?Fea[hHeecWj-&(./*#-(/'\ehZ[jW_biedYkhh[djfhecej_edi$
MA, USA
4. Roslyn Quarto . . . . . $2,800
Edison, NJ, USA
5. Connie Krause . . . . . $2,400
Reading, PA, USA
6. Judy Prichason . . . . . $2,000
Edison, NJ, USA
7. Rafaella Caruso . . . . $1,600
Lyndhurst, NJ, USA
8. Sallie Stohler . . . . . . . $1,200
Washington, DC, USA
9. Kathryn Atkinson . . . . .$800
Morrisville, PA, USA
WSOP CIRCUIT
EVENT
EVENT #7
12/15/06
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $1,000 + $80
PLAYERS 225
PRIZE POOL
$225,000
Mohamed Elkerdawy
1. Mohamed
Elkerdawy . . . . . . . . $72,000
Brigantine, NJ, USA
2. Mike Beasley . . . . . . $39,600
Hollywood, FL, USA
3. Richard Davidson
AKA “The Slicer” . $20,250
Whippany, NJ, USA
4. Mikhail Gurevich . . $15,750
Manalapan, NJ, USA
5. Joe Siegel . . . . . . . . . $13,350
North Charleroi, PA, USA
6. Bernard Lee . . . . . . $11,250
Wayland, MA, USA
7. William McMahon . . $9,000
jh[Wikh[_ibWdZ$Yec
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
19
Common Limit Hold’Em Leaks—
The Trouble Hands
NEVER PLAY Poker with
a man CALLed “DOC”
Here it is almost Christmas
– or maybe it has already
passed, depending on the
newspaper calendar – and
Santa Clause and the reindeer are already in the deliver mode. Not to be out-done
Last time I presented the trouble hands. These holdings
can be very profitable hands but played out of position
they turn into a major leak and can cost you a lot of money
in a session, and worse, over the long run. I recently had
to relearn to avoid playing these hands out of position. Of
course the games I had been playing in lately were not the
typical middle limit tight aggressive games I usually play but
were loose aggressive. Guess what? These hands do even
worse in this setting. The problem of playing these hands
were actually magnified. If I did flop to my hand it was
either dominated, out drawn, or way behind a better hand.
Going up against A_K or Aces with a hand like K_Q is not
a very profitable situation. Sure the weaker loose aggressive players were calling my raises preflop (or even raising
with worse holdings) as per usual. It was the players behind
those loose players who cleaned up most of the time. Add in
a calling station or two and the swings can be quite volatile.
You also have to realize that there is no law that says
that the weaker players don’t ever get dealt a premium
hand, make their draw, catch a lucky two pair, or even trips.
When going up against two or more of these players it is
not uncommon for the best hand to get out drawn. You also
have to realize that these players have the same probability
of catching big hands too. If they are playing their usual
very aggressive game there is no way to read them for real
strength either. They could be on a total bluff or be staring
at the nuts. Putting yourself into difficult situations out of
position becomes a guessing game. In addition, being in frequent tough situations can wear you out mentally as well.
Position is a huge factor and removes a lot of the guesswork. In addition, having position often adds an extra bet to
your winning hands and can save a bet or two those times
you don’t.
Suited, these hands definitely play better but once again
position is very important by saving bets as well as in making additional bets to add to your stack. If you are going to
play the trouble hands then they do well in short handed
situations where you are the aggressor and first in from
middle position or better. In these situations you are less
likely to run into the dominated situation and most players
who do have big hands usually let you know that you could
be in trouble.
Generally most of the trouble hands are playable in the
short handed situations from the blind positions with the
understanding that you might not win quite as much as you
would when you are in position. Knowing your opponents’
tendencies is still paramount to your success. Hands like
K_Q or even K_J suited can be a reraising hand from the
blinds unless the late position player is a rock in which case
you could still have a second best hand or one that is dominated. There are also going to be times when your opponent
in late position could have a real holding too. Don’t always
assume that every late position raise is a steal. Use common sense and play accordingly.
Finally, when there are a lot of players limping in you can
win a very big pot when you are in late position. A hand that
is both connected and suited has great potential. They can
become costly when you do flop a good draw but fail to connect by the river. Still, the added money in the pot from the
limpers makes your overlay well worth the overall cost. Next
time I will finish up on the trouble hands and move on to
another common leak in limit hold em. Playing the small pairs!
Dealer Vibes
By Donald W. Woods, Jr.
The Rose
Bowl
parade
boat fixers
are finalizing the finishing
touches on the New Year’s
Day floats. In addition, The
Grinch - who attempts to
steal Christmas every year
- is warming up his routine.
All this going on and still no
one’s been able to un-cover
the one mystery that has befuddled the most ardent, prepared, sleuth there ever was.
That is, up ‘til now! There
is a place far, far, far, from
the maddening crowd, way
past civilization, many miles
away from the North Pole,
where Santa Clause resides.
I believe I have discovered
the truest truth amongst
mankind, as we know it. Yes,
I have discovered that place
where the most privileged
people hobnob. This fraternity is so sacred even the mere
mention of it requires me to
type softly, for fear of being
discovered. Without furtherado, I have discovered where
“THEY” live and their training regimen!
Who is “THEY?” These
Dr Aigner is a board certified Urologist. He has multiple final table finishes in major tournaments including a WPO bracelet in 2001. You can contact him at
http://www.PokerStrategyForum.com
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
use Zest!”
Example: THEY say, “...
you can’t win it, if you ain’t
in it!”
In regards to teens, THEY
had this to say:
“You can’t get pregnant
WHAT ARE THEY UP TO?
By Scott Aigner, M.D.
20
are the people that know
a little bit of something
about everything that ever
existed – if you believe the
history books and such.
Nevertheless, don’t take my
word for it just look around
you. Here are just a few
things to familiarize yourself
with what I am referring to:
THEY say, “a watched pot
never boils”. THEY say,
“It’s going to rain tonight”.
THEY say, “You never miss
your water until your well
runs dry”. THEY say, “This,
and THEY say that, as a
matter of fact THEY say
something about everything
under the sun. There is no
age discrimination. Race,
creed, or religion doesn’t
even matter, THEY will still
comment on it.
Example: 4-year old
kid comes home from preschool. “Mama, THEY say,
that I have to bring a gift for
our Christmas party”.
Example 2: THEY say
that, “overweight people...”
Example 3: THEY say
that, “listening to loud music
will cause you to go deaf”.
Example 4: THEY say
that, “big feet on a man
means...”
But don’t get this all
twisted, THEY say many
significant things as well.
Example: THEY say, that,
“9 out 10 people surveyed,
on the first time.” That’s for
all you (babies mama’s) out
there who believed it.
Well, like I was saying
before, THEY have to have
all this extensive training
- both physical and emotional aptitude - in order to
carry out this arduous task of
informing the non-informed
on every subject matter
known to man 24 hours-aday 7 days a week! Yeah, I
know who THEY are and
where THEY reside? Well,
here it goes I am finally
going to reveal the culprits
and how THEY operate,
who’s in charge, and their
whereabouts. Ah, ah, I’ve
just been informed, THEY
said, “to turn off the computer if I know what’s good
for me...
Donald W. Woods, Jr.
is a 9 year professional
dealer. Some of his diversified interests include,
track and field coach at the
high school level yielding
a championship in 2002.
He is currently penning an
original script, outside the
poker arena, for his maiden
voyage to movie-land. For
more information, contact
him at mrexcite20032000@
yahoo.com
Poker Posers and
Puzzles, PART 2
THE EIKS’ VIEW
Mark Seif
nature of having to sometimes defend people he knew
were actually guilty. Mark
now plays poker full time.
Today, he’s taking control of the tables – in live
tournaments and online at
AbsolutePoker.com.
Known as one of poker’s
greatest bluffers, Mark
believes that a correct read
of the circumstances is
essential to getting away
with a bluff. He feels that
you have to get into the
mindset of your opponent in
order to prevail against him
or her and exploit his or her
weaknesses.
BY Mike Eikenberry
!
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bmm!qmbzfst!bsf!fmjhjcmf!gps
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B!qmbzfs!xjui!b!Spzbm!Gmvti!
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%311!
OMAHA HIGH POSER
On the turn your ONLY opponent and you each have half the pot,
although you are 100 % sure that you had the whole pot on the flop.
At this point, you have equal chances of getting 1/2 the pot or nothing. Your chance of winning the whole pot are exactly 1/2 that of losing the entire pot.
What are the two hands, the flop and the turn?
PUZZLER III
1.
The game is hold’em with you and three opponents staying
in from the beginning of the hand to the end.
2.
Upon seeing the river card and before seeing any of your
opponents’ hole cards, you are absolutely positive that you had the
best hand on the flop and turn. You are also sure that now you have a
hand worse than all three of your opponents.
What is your hand? What are the flop, turn and river?
+Kbdlqpu!svmft!bqqmz
And his bluffing philosophy has helped him take control of final tables in a variety of tournaments. To date,
Mark has won two World
Series of Poker bracelets and
scored first place finishes at
Sport of Kings, World Poker
Open and Fiesta al Lago. He
also had a first place win in
Stud at the Borgata Open.
Mark has finished second at
PUZZLER I
1. The game is six handed NO LIMIT HOLD’EM.
Everyone calls pre-flop.
2. You flop the best hand and go all in. One opponent calls. He has
2 outs (both giving him the nuts).
3. On the turn you still have the best hand. Your opponent now has
3 outs.
4. The river card gives your opponent the winning hand. But you
are absolutely certain that one of your other opponents would have
won the hand if he had stayed till the end.What are the remaining
opponent’s and your hands that meet the above description? Give the
flop, turn and river.
PUZZLER IV
What is the worst (lowest) lock hand in hold’em?
SOLUTIONS
!
728/8888!
hwstuzmf/dpn
PUZZLER I
1. Your opponent’s hand is a suited 2/5, or 3/5, or 4/5. Your hand is a pair matching the highest card on the flop.
2. The flop gives your opponent an open ended STRAIGHT FLUSH draw and the
lower card on board is paired giving you a FULL HOUSE.
3. The turn makes trips on the board and the river makes quads on the board.
4. The winning hand is quads (with a 5) verses quads (with a 4 or 3).
5. At the end, there are only seven cards that are under a six and available for
the four players’ hands who folded. Therefore, you know at least one card in one
player’s hand is above a five and he would have been a winner had he stayed until
the end.
6. Example: Your hand is 44 and your opponent’s hand is 2/5 of diamonds. The
flop is the 3 and the 4 of diamonds and another 3. The turn is a 3 and the river is a 3.
OMAHA HIGH POSER
The flop is 10/J/Q. The turn is a K making the board double suited. Your hand is
KKKA (your ace is not in one of the suits on the board). Your opponent is double
suited in the same suits as the board. He has an A and QUEEN, JACK, OR TEN. HIS
FINAL CARD IS FROM 2-9 OR ANOTHER ACE.
PUZZLER III
Your hand is 3/3, the flop is 223, the turn is a 2, and the river is a 2 making the
final board 22322.
On the flop and turn your hand is threes full of deuces. After the river card is
dealt, it is clear your full house was the best hand on the turn and flop since the only
possible hands that could beat you required the river and/or the turn card deuce to
be in the winning hole cards. On the end the winning hand is the quads on the board
plus the highest kicker. You have the lowest possible kicker and there is only one
other 3 and no 2s left for the other players’ hands. Therefore, all three have a higher
kicker and better hand than you.
PUZZLER IV
QQQ87.
Mike Eikenberry got his undergraduate and law degrees
from the University of Virginia, where he played varsity
tennis and basketball. Founder of one of the leading
national tennis camps, Mike is an avid amateur who has
played both tournaments and live games for over 25
years. He can be reached at [email protected]
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
21
It’s FOOLISH to
Flash Money
POWER POKER
By DOYLE BRUNSON
Young poker players do foolish things. I
wasn’t one to frequently flash money, but
it seemed to be a costly habit that a lot of up-and-coming
players had. Perhaps it was their way of announcing that
they were somebody — before they actually were anybody.
I remember traveling the Texas poker circuit very
briefly with a kid named Red. We were both in our midtwenties. He was too flamboyant for my tastes, and I had
already decided to dissolve our traveling partnership. We
pulled into a small café a few hours out of Amarillo. It
was Red’s turn to pay the check, and he tried to impress
a matronly waitress by flashing all of our bankroll of $100
bills — roughly $5,000.
The woman seemed stunned, and then recovered by
saying, “You must be from Amarillo. I hear there’s a lot of
money there.” She walked away.
Hijacked. “Why did you do that?”I asked Red, annoyed.
You’re going to get us hijacked. “Hijack” was the word we
used back then to mean robbed.
Red said that we were in a small, friendly town and
hijackings just didn’t happen there. “Besides, it probably
gave her a thrill,” he speculated. But I noticed a couple of
mean-looking kids nearby, about our age. They didn’t seem
to be paying attention, but I had the suspicion that they
had seen Red flash the money.
We drove toward the $500 buy-in game we’d been invited to that night, hoping to extend our shaky, but growing,
bankroll. It started to rain. Really rain. Torrents. My windshield wipers were failing, almost useless. I had to slow to
a crawl.
Then a car roared from behind us, coming side to side.
It was a newer car than mine, and I’m sure the wipers
worked, so outrunning it in the rain wasn’t a practical
option. Besides, there suddenly was a gun pointing at us
through their rolled-down passenger-side window. It didn’t
take me long to decide what to do. Sometimes you can’t
afford to face down a bet. You need to fold your hand.
And, so, I pulled over.
Dying was possible. It was a painless hijacking by
Texas poker standards back then. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon to face machine guns and to be beaten. And dying
was always possible. But this time it was just a matter of
Red handing over the money and them driving off into the
rain. No one was harmed. There wasn’t even a scuffle.
Well, they’d gotten the $5,000, but had missed an extra
$550 we kept separately in the car for emergencies. We
both agreed that we’d separate then and there. One would
get $500 as a buy-in for that night’s game and the other
would get the remaining $50 to take a bus home.
Who got what was decided by a single hand of showdown poker. I won. And I managed to quickly build that
$500 into a more substantial bankroll.
As for Red, I left him at the nearest bus depot. I’m sure
he was humbled by counting out the money for his ticket
and hoarding a little of what was left over for food. I’m
guessing he was less conspicuous about that purchase. I
guess the lesson is: You can’t flash a bankroll you don’t
have.
Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson stands unchallenged as the
most celebrated poker player who ever lived. In 2005,
at age 72, he won an unprecedented 10th championship
gold bracelet at the World Series of Poker. He is among
the few living members of the Poker Hall of Fame, and
his books are the bibles for poker professionals. Through
www.poker1.com and www.doylesroom.com, Brunson has
teamed with Mike Caro, today’s premiere poker educator,
to offer a free learning experience to players worldwide.
This column is founded on those collaborative teachings.
22
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
In November 1979, the people of Czechoslovakia overthrew the Communist government in a bloodless coup,
bill through Congress.
The first presidential
caucuses in 2008 will be in
Leach’s home state of Iowa.
The Green Felt
Revolution
POKer AND
THE LAW
By I. NELSON ROSE
the “Velvet Revolution.” In
November 2006, the voters of the United States
overthrew the Republican
control of Congress. In part
this was due to a “Green Felt
Revolution:” Poker players won the election for the
Democrats. More accurately,
the Republicans lost, through
their heavy-handed prohibition of Internet gambling.
This is not mere hyperbole
on my part. Prior to entering
law school, I ran political
campaigns for a living. I was
a published author on psephology, the study of elections.
Of course, we all know the
main issues of the 2006 midterms were the disastrous
civil war in Iraq, President
Bush’s incompetence, and
the widespread corruption
and hypocrisy of the conservative Republican majority in
Congress.
But even with all that,
many races were very close.
When there is less than one
percent difference between
winning and losing, anything
that influences even a few
hundred votes counts.
Take the defeat of Rep.
Jim Leach (R.-Iowa).
According to Dow Jones:
“Leach narrowly lost his
reelection bid Nov. 7 to
David Loebsack, a 51%-49%
upset considered by many
to be election day’s biggest
shock.” Leach had served
in Congress for 30 years.
His re-election a 16th time
from a safe Republican seat
was considered more than a
sure thing – he was a power
to be reckoned with, for
example, as the Chair of the
House International Relations
Committee.
But Leach had a thing
about Internet gambling.
The rumors in Washington,
DC, are that Leach told thenMajority-Leader Sen. Bill
Frist (R.-TN) that he would
not support Frist’s bid for
president unless Frist got an
online gaming prohibition
Leach invited Frist to “testify” at a “hearing” on Internet
gambling in July 2006 in
Iowa, a “hearing” that consisted solely of anti-gambling
activists.
Frist rammed a prohibition
through Congress, by attaching the Unlawful Internet
Gambling Enforcement Act
to the port security bill. But
for many people, this was
one interference too many in
their private lives. The ones
most upset were not necessarily liberals, but rather libertarians.
The conservative movement in the U.S. is splintering. Although issues like gay
marriage may stir up some
of the elderly and religious
far right, there are millions of
people who really don’t care
what people do in the privacy
of their own homes. In fact,
they simply want government
to cut taxes, provide essential
services and otherwise to stay
out of everyone’s lives.
Voters were also turned-off
by the Republican’s arrogance of power. Frist would
not even allow Democrats to
read the final wording of his
pet anti-gambling bill.
Through publications like
PokerPlayer, Leach became
well-known as one of the
chief opponents of Internet
gaming. Players are becoming organized. Poker Players
Alliance (PPA) has more
than 75,000 members, all
of whom received multiple
emails aimed at defeating the
“anti’s” in Congress.
After the election, the
PPA polled 1,033 voters in
Leach’s District. Among
those who knew about the
new law, 10% said it made
them more likely to vote
for Leach; but 15% said it
influenced them to support
his opponent. There were
107,097 votes cast. Leach
lost by 5,711 votes, 2%.
Which means that if only
2,856 voters had switched,
Leach would have been
reelected.
It would take a detailed
study to know the exact
impact. Elections are also
decided by how many people
are motivated enough to
register, to get to the polling booth and to mark either
candidate’s name.
But I am willing to bet
that Leach would still be
in Congress, if he had not
helped foist Prohibition 2.0
on the American people.
Professor I Nelson Rose is recognized as one of the world’s
leading experts on gambling
law. His latest books, Gaming
Law: Cases and Materials
and Internet Gaming Law, are
available through his website,
www.gamblingandthelaw.com.
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Pn.........Panginque
Mx ..Mexican Poker
DC .Dealer’s Choice
MONDAY
•GOLD BAR DENOTES ADVERTISER
TIME
|
HH ...... Headhunter
B ............ Bounties
Sp .............. Spread
Al .........Alternates
Z........... Freezeout
Cz ................ Crazy
E..........Elimination
TUESDAY
GAMES BUY-IN| TIME
Q ............... Qualify
Sh ...........Shootout
+ ..Re-Buys and/or
Add-Ons allowed
F ............... Freeroll
Lad ..... Ladies Only
Men ........Men Only
DAILY TOURNAMENTS
NOW! Get Tournament Listings at our website:
www.pokerplayernewspaper.com
Note: All tournaments are subject to change. Check with the Cardroom for any updates. Cardrooms—
please send your schedules to Managing Editor A.R. Dyck, [email protected]
| WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
|
FRIDAY
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
| SATURDAY |
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
SUNDAY
GAMES BUY-IN
Aladdin
Arizona Charlie’s
Caesars Palace
Cannery Casino
Circus Circus
Col.Belle-Laughlin
Flamingo Laughlin
LAS VEGAS & NEVADA SOUTH
Golden Nugget
Harrah’s Las Vegas
Mandalay Bay
Nevada Palace
Oasis-Mesquite
Paris
Plaza Casino
Rio Suite Casino
River Palms
Speedway
Stardust
NEVADA NORTH
Treasure Island
Venetian
Virgin River Casino
Wynn Las Vegas
Atlantis Casino
Boomtown
Cactus Petes-Jackpot
Carson Valley Inn
Circus Circus
Eldorado
Harrah’s Reno
Harvey’s Tahoe
Peppermill
Rainbow Cas. W Wendover
Reno Hilton
Sands Regency, Reno
DA I LY TO U R N A M E N T L I ST I N G S CO N T I N U E O N PAG E 29
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Anything POKER!
pokerplayernewspaper.com
Get us on the web!
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
27
The Post-Modern
American Dream, PART 2
ONLINE POKER
POKER
ON
Paul “Dr. Pauly” McGuire
Instead of working dead end jobs, today many college kids have found
unique ways to generate money on the side. One of those alternative
means of support is online poker. Raised in the video game age, most of
the members of Generation Y easily adapt to the fluidity of online poker.
Even though there’s money on the line, it’s still a game to them and
that’s part of the reason why they have been able to separate the financial aspects from their decision making processes. Generation Y is also
heavily influenced by television so it’s no surprise that episodes of the
World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour were a contributing factor to poker’s popularity, particularly in the 18-35 year old demographic.
In 2004, Greg Raymer became the second consecutive player to win
the World Series of Poker main event by qualifying online at PokerStars.
Raymer stood out from the rest of the pack of players by his unique
holographic sunglasses that he’d slide on whenever he was in a hand.
He was also one of the more intelligent players in the field and didn’t
just come out of nowhere. For several years, Raymer was a regular
player at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut and a frequent player at the
tables on PokerStars. The gregarious and fan-friendly Raymer became
the perfect ambassador for poker as millions of poker players envisioned that what happened to Raymer could also be possible for them.
While poker’s popularity was boiling over in America, the rest of
the world started to catch the poker bug. John Duthie launched the
European Poker Tour and was astonished at the large numbers of participants all over Europe. For the first time, it was evident that poker was
just not an American fad because players from all over the world were
just as fascinated and enraptured. The EPT teamed up with PokerStars
giving players from all over the world the chance to win their seats
online. Thanks to the internet, poker is truly an international game.
When Australian Joe Hachem came out of nowhere to win the 2005
WSOP, he was thrust into the spotlight. His victory was indicative of
the international flavor that the WSOP had attracted. The field of players in the 2005 WSOP represented six continents and several hundred
countries. The media room at the WSOP resembled the United Nations
with journalists and photographers from different countries. They spoke
in their native tongues, although some words were the same such as
“flop” and “all in.”
In the press conference that kicked off the 2006 WSOP main event,
Joe Hachem explained what his victory meant to poker in his native
country of Australia.
“When I left Melbourne, there was just one card room. Now there’s
eight.”
The Moneymaker effect eventually reached Australia, with Joe
Hachem as the conduit. Over the past year, Hachem gladly accepted the
role of poker’s international ambassador, while other members of Team
PokerStars are also helping spread the word about poker overseas.
Humberto Brenes from Costa Rica has become the face of poker in Latin
America, while Katja Thater has been promoting poker in Europe, specifically Germany.
The Post-Modern American Dream has been exported around the
world as poker experienced a boom on the international scale. Poker
is just not for Americans sitting around in kitchens chomping down
on stale cigars and sipping cheap whiskey. The third season of the
European Poker Tour grew faster than expected thanks to an influx of
players who qualified by playing online satellites at PokerStars. The
recent popularity and success of the World Cup of Poker proved that
poker will continue to grow. Team Poland won the 2006 WCP dethroning
two-time champions Team Costa Rica. And eyes are set on the newest
market... Asia.
Since 2003, Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer and Joe Hachem have
been the focal point of the poker world. The three world champions
have been an integral part of igniting the poker boom. Only a few years
ago the American Dream had been flickering on the verge of extinction, now thanks to members of Team PokerStars such as Moneymaker,
Raymer, and Hachem... the dream is a raging inferno.
Paul “Dr. Pauly” McGuire is a writer, poker player, and avid
traveler from New York City. He’s the author of the Tao of
Poker blog which can be found at taopoker.blogspot.com.
Feel free to contact him at [email protected].
28
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
TV
High Stakes Poker. Mondays 8 &
9 PM & Thursdays 10 PM EST. GSN
Professional Poker Tour.
Saturdays 8 PM & 11 PM EST. Travel.
MansionPoker.net Poker
Dome Challenge. (Check local listings for channels). Wednesdays 3 PM &
Sundays 10:30 PM EST. FSN.
Ultimate Poker Challenge.
(Check local listings for times/channels).
Poker Royale: Battle of the
Sexes. Wednesdays, Thursdays &
Saturdays 2 AM EST. GSN.
World Poker Tour. Wednesdays 9
PM & Saturdays 12 PM EST. Travel
Poker Superstars Invitational.
(Check local listings for times/channels). Fox Sports.
Trying never to cross that
line which so many poker
players abhor I have sworn
to never be accused of
telling a bad beat story.
U.S.P.C. (Check local listings for
times/channels). ESPNC.
World Series of Poker. (Check
local listing for times). ESPNC/ESPN2.
now I know there is a Poker
God because the button bets
the pot. That cleared out the
rest of the field and it is a
pot size bet to me This bet
PART 89, There is
IMPROVING
PERFORMANCE
a Poker God
By Tom “TIME” Leonard
How about a good beat
story with a message to
take away? Here goes…..
I entered a No-Limit cash
game in late position and
posted. I was dealt my
cards and was observing the
other players as the action
approached me. There were
three limpers in front of
me as I glanced down and
peeked at a very ugly 5-2
offsuit. I checked and the
button limped, the small
blind completed and the
big blind rapped the table.
OK…..I’m thinking this is
a pretty passive game as six
limpers watch a flop. The
seventh player, yours truly,
was watching the other
players not the board and
really got a kick out of their
reaction to the flop which
was three deuces. Yeah
baby……Huey, Dewey
and Louie….three beautiful
ducks. Oh yeah and don’t
forget I had Uncle $crooge,
the “Quad Duck”, in my
hand…..woo hoo!
I now had five players in
front of me and one behind.
The first five players
checked as I did and yes,
there is a Poker God, the
button fired out a bet of half
the pot. Amazingly, three
of the five original players
who checked now called
as did I. I was now hoping for a juicy card like an
Ace or King to come off on
the turn so some fireworks
could ensue but a Jack fell.
There were three checks to
me and I checked again and
easier for you. Also, it is
like having another blind at
the table and if the pot isn’t
raised that player could be
holding just about anything.
makes the
button pot
committed and I have him
well covered. I hesitate, and
hesitate and then put him
all in. He instantly calls
and when he sees that I’m
holding quad deuces goes
completely nuts. He begins
a diatribe on how I could
have called with a holding
like 5-2 offsuit. My frustrated opponent held an Ace/
Jack offsuit and had filled
up on the turn. I never, or
more accurately hardly ever,
respond to these diatribes as
I believe they are delivered
by the clueless and the clueless should be left in that
blissful state of mind.
I want to make this
recounting of a glorious
hand more than a warm and
fuzzy good beat story so
let’s take something away
in the form of a goal. That
goal is to remain observant,
pay attention and keep your
head in the game for Pete’s
sake. Always be aware
when someone is entering
the game and is required to
post. It many times results
in dead money which can
help make a close decision
As this very agitated player
continued steaming several
other players came to my
defense and pointed out that
I had posted and got to see
a free flop. Well, knowledge is power and I took
note of who was paying
attention and who wasn’t.
Of course, my vanquished
opponent was so far on tilt
at this point that his next
two buy-ins were quickly
spread around the table. A
bonus and obvious second
goal is if you’re unlucky
enough to be on the losing
end of a similar situation
don’t let your emotions get
out of control. Good beats
and bad beats are both part
of the game. See you next
“TIME”.
No stranger to the green
felt, Tom “Time” Leonard
has played poker for more
than 30 years and has
been a serious student of
the game and writer on
the subject since 1994. He
has regularly played the
cardrooms of Atlantic City,
Las Vegas and California.
His experience as a sales
and marketing professional
have helped him hone
his skills at “selling” a
hand and “buying” a pot.
Tom can be contacted at:
[email protected].
Coming
Soon!
Meeting All Your Travel Needs...
PokerPlayerNewspaperTravel.com
-or-
PPNTravel.com
Time. Some events &. ........ Additional
Limit Hold’em
start after the hour
gametimes. Call. N ..........No Limit
A, P ....... AM, PM
..... Hold’em L ................ Limit
Wk .............Week
.No Limit Hold’em
..........Stud
MONDAY
DIEGO & CALIFORNIACALIFORNIA—NORTH CALIFORNIA—SAN
LOS ANGELES
INLAND EMPIRE
TIME
B ......... Bounties
T ............... Turbo
.7-Card Stud
..... Omaha Pi........Pineapple Pn......Panginque DCDealer’s Choice Sp ........... Spread
.5-Card Stud H/LHigh/Low Split Po........Pot Limit Mx .Mexican Poker HH ...Headhunter Al ......Alternates
DAILY TOURNAMENTS (CONT’D FROM PAGE 27)
|
TUESDAY
GAMES BUY-IN| TIME
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
|
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
FRIDAY
Z........ Freezeout Sh ........Shootout
Cz ............. Crazy + Re-buys and/or
E...... Elimination Add-ons allowed
Q ............Qualify F ............Freeroll
| SATURDAY |
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
SUNDAY
GAMES BUY-IN
Commerce Club
Crystal Casino
Hustler Casino
Normandie Casino
Casino Morongo
Casino Pauma
Harrah’s Rincon
Lake Elsinore
Lucky Lady
Oceans Eleven
Sycuan
Viejas
Village Club
Artichoke Joe’s
Cache Creek
California Grand
Casino San Pablo
Club One Casino, Fresno
Colusa Casino
Del Rio Casino, Isleton
Feather Falls Cas., Oroville
Garden City
Gold Country Cas.-Oroville
DA I LY TO U R N A M E N T L I ST I N G S CO N T I N U E O N PAG E 3 1
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
29
Bad Beat Bob
FRESH YOUNG FACE OF Poker
By Jennifer Matiran
Poor, poor Bob, to whom all bad things happen.
His wife hates him; his children think he’s an idiot
and his co-workers walk all over him like he’s part of the carpet.
He spills hot coffee on his shirt every morning burning his white
delicate skin and staining his already wrinkled shirt. Bob just kept
telling his bad beat stories over and over again until it became the
very fabric of his being. He seemed not to be a child of God anymore but of the beat. The bad beat. Triple “B” some called him.
Don’t be like Bad Beat Bob this New Year, basically he doesn’t
know what he’s doing and when one doesn’t have enough knowledge they become a magnet to “bad beats.” Learn the game well
and if you play well and lose, that’s just a part of gambling. Read
everything you can get your hands on about poker, be a student of
it and learn it classically first, then, you can get fancy about your
play because you will know why you’re doing it. Research also
helps you find out what “they” know...
Dr. Fink walked in the first day of film class and said I know the
movies that are popular at the moment are unconventional and
break all the rules. A movie like Pulp Fiction (which is a great film)
breaks almost all the rules of dramatic structure…He continued
expressing that the beginning works of Picasso were perfect life
like, so mastered one felt like reaching into the painting to grab a
piece of fruit from the bowl for example. Picasso’s pieces were so
real that they looked like photographs. Pablo had mastered his art
form, “classically.” It was later in Picasso’s life when he decided
to put a nose on the forehead and an eye on the cheek…He did
those things with purpose not just to be odd. He did them when he
was a pro and knew ALL the rules and reasons. And until you learn
the way it’s done classically, until you learn the rules you should
not break them.
Rules like showing your cards (especially when you’ve bluffed
your opponent), rules like chit-chatting too much at the table,
rules like listening (this is to all the new players who listen to
music instead of listening for table tells) rules like not calculating
the pot odds and memorizing percentages, rules like strategic use
of position, rules like being able to muck your Ace/Ten after the
pot has been raised twice. There are so many rules that one needs
to know before you can be a “bad ass” while playing cards and if
you try to be a “bad ass” before you learn those rules you are just
going to look like a dumb ass, pardon the language.
Happy New Year Everybody!!!... Turn it all around this year,
God has and always will give you a second chance, call your parents you do not speak to (no one will ever call you a fool for doing
that no matter what the outcome,) start exercising, slowly, walk
around the block, I know a marathon runner who began by running
to the first street light on his block, baby steps that’s key, donate
money you will get it back tenfold, trust me that’s how it works,
donate your time, go visit that elderly family friend that nobody
ever goes to see, you’ll make her day, SMILE, you have a beautiful smile, LAUGH it’s contagious, it’s strengthens your immune
system, finally put to rest that relationship you know is bad for
you, don’t romanticize what you thought you had. And last but not
least take time to be silent…
Deepak Chopra said something like this, that between each
thought there is a silence before the next thought and it is in that
silence that you can attract anything you desire by tapping into
the infinite energy of the universe….Be still, slow down and take
time for your spirit…See you next year…God bless you…It’s never
too late, stay strong and may love penetrate all that you are…
“Let the rain come down and wash away my tears
Let it fill my soul and drown my fears
Let it shatter the walls for a new sun
A new day has...come.”
Changing the world one sentence at a time, Jennifer
Matiran believes the pen is, and always will be, mightier
than the sword. She hopes to emerge into the tournament
circuit of Poker. Contact her with questions, comments
or interesting material at [email protected]. Ms.
Matiran has just completed her latest screenplay, her
other passion (besides Poker!).
30
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
X
X
X
X
Poker Player
Each issue’s crossword puzzle
honors a poker celebrity
and will be about that
person’s life. Today’s puzzle
honors poker pro Paul Wasicka. Crossword by Myles Mellor.
Word
ACROSS
1. Big big hand (2 words)
8. “Poker Brat” initials
10. 16th President
11. Location of the WSOP
main event in 2006
29. Game gear, abbr.
9. Romantic card
30. Former lover
14. Debtor’s note
31. See 21 across
15. Receding
36. While
17. Not available, abbr.
38. Became clear
19. Very wide shoe fitting
40. ___ Lindgren
23. Got a card
42. See 35 down
12. That is
24. Centimeter, abbr.
44. Rush
13. Be eliminated from the
game (2 words)
46. Ecuador, for short
25. Paul ____ croc (star in
Crocodile Dundee)
14. Having made some cash
(3 words- goes with 27
across)
47. __ Rule, rapper
28. Word of agreement
48. How ___ are you? (how
much money in the game)
32. Requests
16. Numero __
49. Computer
18. Booze-free
50. ___ Liebert
33. Younger players may
get asked for this
34. Starbucks is one
DOWN
20. Anger
35. The nickname for 21
across (goes with 42 across)
21. 2nd place winner of the
WSOP 2006 Texas hold’em
main event (goes with 31
across)
1. Be down and then come
back and get in front again
(3 words)
2. Chinese basketball giant
37. ____ bet or pot
22. Put money in the pot
3. ___ Dhabi
39. What?
23. Carry out
4. Go easy on (3 words)
41. Top betting limit
24. Al Capone’s city, for
short
5. Roman pot
43. Give the money to
6. Remains at
45. Printer maker
26. A ___ in his side (a real
problem)
7. Santa’s cry (2 words)
47. 2005 WSOP Texas
hold’em Main Event winner
(initials)
8. The “Tiger Woods” of
poker initials
27. See 14 across
1
2
3
4
5
10
6
36. Billboard contents
7
8
11
13
12
14
16
20
9
15
17
18
19
21
22
23
24
26
25
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
37
40
34
35
38
41
44
48
36
39
42
45
49
43
46
47
50
The correct solution to the puzzle will be found only at:
www.pokerplayernewspaper.com. It will be posted on the cover date.
Limit Hold’em
A, P ....... AM, PM
..... Hold’em L ................ Limit
Wk .............Week
.No Limit Hold’em
..........Stud
MONDAY
SOUTHWEST
CALIFORNIA—NORTH
TIME
|
TUESDAY
GAMES BUY-IN| TIME
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
|
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
FRIDAY
| SATURDAY |
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
SUNDAY
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
GAMES BUY-IN
Gold Rush
Golden West-Bakersfield
Kelly’s Cardroom
Limelight Cardroom-Sac’to
Lucky Chances
Lucky Derby Casino
Oaks Card Club-Emeryville
Sonoma Joe’s
Tachi Palace Casino
Blue Water Casino
Bucky’s Casino
AZ
Casino Del Sol
Cliff Castle
Fort McDowell
Gila River/Wild Horse Pass
AZ
SOUTHWEST
T ............... Turbo
.7-Card Stud
CO
Gila River-Vee Quiva
Harrah’s Ak Chin
Hon-Dah Casino
Paradise Casino
Gilpin Hotel & Casino
Midnight Rose-Cripple Crk
Ute Mountain
KS
Harrah’s Prarie Band
NM
Cities of Gold
Isleta Casino & Resort
Route 66 Casino
OK
Thunderbird Casino, Norman
DA I LY TO U R N A M E N T L I ST I N G S CO N T I N U E O N PAG E 3 3
1st Quarterly Tournament for the
2nd Annual Million Dollar Blackjack Tournament
will be January 21 st and 22 nd
So come in and qualify now!!
Congratulations
Jessica Wood
1st Annual
Million Dollar
Blackjack Champion
$400,000.00
Finish
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
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16
17
18
19
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23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
Poker Room offers Limit and No Limit Hold’em,
Limit and Pot Limit H/L 8 or Better and Omaha
Date
Dec 30
Dec 31
Jan 6
Jan 7
Jan 13
Jan 14
Prize
Jan 20
400,000.00
Jan
21
200,000.00
100,000.00 Jan 28
Name
Jessica Wood
Kenneth Warren
Bruce Emerson
J.D.
75,000.00
Earl Merritt
50,000.00
Donald Allison
25,000.00
Armor Brown
15,000.00
William Hudson
Heung Hwang
Michelle Brown
Wanda Fandel
Mei Zhang
R.H.
Bobby King
David Gregg
L.T.
Sonny Le
Jon New
K.M.
Patricia Gaddis
Pamela King
John Mann
Christopher McAdoo
J.A.
Dianne Reece
Michael Zimmerman
Tai Lee
A.D.
Stan Poythress
Richard Anderson
Valarie Evans
John Halsell III
CD Wells
Jack Wood
Tommy Mullins
Tony Phasakda
Mark Holford
Vincent Nededog
Carl Reece
Robert Owens
Lynn Landrum
C.N.
Poker Room Tournament Schedule
Day
Time
Event
RB/AO
Saturday 3 PM Ladies Tournament
R/B
Sunday 2 PM Sunday Tournament
N/A
Saturday 2 PM Battle of Sexes Women N/A
Sunday
2 PM Sunday Tournament
N/A
Saturday 2 PM Battle of Sexes Men
N/A
Sunday
2 PM
Sunday Tournament
N/A
Saturday 2 PM
Battle of Sexes Final
N/A
Sunday
2 PM
Sunday Tournament
N/A
Sunday
2 PM
Sunday Tournament
N/A
Day
Time
Mondays
6 PM
Tuesdays
6 PM
Wednesdays 6 PM
Thursdays 6 PM
Fridays
2 PM
Saturdays
2 PM
Daily Poker Room Tournaments
Event
RB/AO
No Limit Hold’em
RB/AO
Ladies Tournament
RB/AO
No Limit Hold’em
RB/AO
$500 Added NLH
1 RB/AO
No Limit Hold’em
RB/AO
No Limit Hold’em
1 RB/AO
Entry Fee
$15+$10
$100+$20
$100+$25
$100+$20
$100+$25
$200+$25
$300+$30
$100+$20
Entry Fee
$15+$10
$15+$10
$15+$10
$50+$15
$15+$10
$50+$10
For more information on this or any other of our table games
promotions contact us at our toll free number 1-866-280-3261
Blackjack ext. 2132 or Poker Room ext. 2135
Located in Devol, Ok
Exit 1 or 5
Visit us at www.comancheredrivercasino.com
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
31
MOTOWN: Gambling Mecca
Of The Midwest
MIDWEST MILIEU
By bonnie demos
Detroit, located in southeastern Michigan,
conjures up powerful images of the automotive industry and the unique music of Motown.
However, there is so much more to this 303year-old city, for instance, glitzy Las Vegasstyle casinos! The Detroit-Windsor area is host
to four action packed casinos, each offering
it’s own special style and amenities, and of
course, exceptional poker rooms. The motto
here is “Play Big & Win Big in Detroit”.
Casino Windsor offers customers a complete Las Vegas-style resort experience in
the Detroit-Windsor area. Amenities include
a four-diamond hotel, fine dining options and
an incredible buffet. The property is currently
undergoing a $400 million expansion and renovation project which is scheduled for completion in early 2008. Casino Windsor is unique
to the area as they exclusively offer sports
book betting in the recently opened Legends
sports lounge, and the availability of on-site
lodging at their four-diamond hotel. The casino
is located at 377 Riverside Drive East, Windsor,
Ontario, just a short drive from Detroit through
the Windsor tunnel. You may contact them at
1800-991-7777 or log on to their website at
www.casinowindsor.com. The Poker Place
poker room is located on the 2nd floor, consisting of 15 tables offering Texas Hold’Em, Omaha,
and Seven Card Stud, limits start at $3-$6 and
up. No Limit Texax Hold’Em Tournaments are
offered Mon-Fri starting at 10am buy-ins range
from $50-$1,000. Players may also compete in
the lucrative monthly No-Limit Teas Hold’Em
Tournaments, occurring the last Friday of every
month at high noon, buy-in is $500.
Join the excitement at the coolest poker
room in Detroit at the Motor City Casino,
located at 2901 Grand River Avenue in Detroit.
Four floors of gaming totaling 69,000 square
feet offer players plenty of excitement and
action. Non-smoking players appreciate the
special smoke-free third floor. High rollers
move on up to the highest floor (4th) where
they enjoy numerous amenities including
a concierge, VIP reception office, and the
Signature Club. Enjoy free live entertainment while playing on the second floor at the
Overdrive Lounge. Texas Hold’Em. Omaha,
and Seven Card Stud are offered in a variety
of spreads in the smoke-free room, tableside
cocktail service is available.
Patrons also appreciate the convenience of
3,000 attached free self-parking spaces; valet
parking services are also available. The casino
is open 24/7, call toll free 1(877) 777-0711 or log
on to their website at www.motorcitycasino.
com for additional information.
32
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
A trip to Detroit would
not be complete without
a visit to historic Greektown in the center
of the city. Located amidst award winning
authentic Greek restaurants and charming old world Greek shops you will find the
Greektown Casino at 555 E. Lafayette. The
casino is set within 75,000 square feet of
gaming space. Enjoy Detroit’s largest poker
room, featuring 19 action packed tables.
Greektown offers a multitude of tournament
venues, check out their website for dates and
times. High stakes players are rewarded with
the exclusive Pantheon Club Membership,
which includes perks like free valet park-
ing, entrance to the members-only Pantheon
Lounge located in the high stakes area,
and dining comps to the 4 star Alley Grille
Steakhouse (Detroit’s finest restaurant) conveniently located right inside the casino. Find
out why their motto is “Let The Party Begin
At Greektown Casino!” you may contact the
casino toll free at 1(888) 771-4386 or log on
to their website at www.greektowncasino.
com.
Luxuriously decadent art deco Hollywood
ambience is portrayed at the MGM Grand
Casino Detroit located at 1300 John C. Lodge,
famous for great food, exceptional service,
exciting promotions and thrilling events.
Although a poker room is not available here
yet, there is a large variety of table games
including blackjack, three card, pai gow, and
Caribbean Stud, and their awards program is
worth mention if you frequently play in Las
Vegas. MGM/Mirage Players Club (free) members enjoy benefits and comps inclusive of all
of the MGM properties in Las Vegas, including
Bellagio, Beau Rivage, MGM Grand, Mandalay
Bay, Mirage, Treasure Island, Luxor, Monte
Carlo, and New York New York, comps and discounts may also be applied to 100 restaurants,
10 shows, 9 spas & salons, 3 golf courses and
luxurious accommodations. Although there
are no overnight accommodations on site,
the casino offers several packages with local
hotels/motels; a Grand Getaway Hotel Meal
Package is available staring at $69.00. The
MGM Grand Casino Detroit is “Where the city
shines!”
Contact the casino toll free @ 1(877) 8882121 or log on to their website @ Detroit.mgmgrand.com for additional information.
Bonnie Demos from the midwest, Gambler,
poker player and award winning chef, has
enjoyed working in the gaming industry for the
past several years. Write her at
[email protected]
‘Tis the
Season
(Continued from page 10)
“Sure, you’ve been
humiliated enough. Hey,
do you know that lady you
beat? She’s headed this
way.”
“I’ve never seen her
before.”
“Hi, Joe. It’s been a
long time, hasn’t it?”
“Forgive me. I must
be getting old to forget a
pretty face like yours.”
“My name’s Donna.
Remember Bill Hayes’
wedding in Santa
Barbara?”
“Yeah, vaguely.” Bill
and I had been friends at
Fresno State. “Did I meet
you there?”
“We more than met.”
She looked at Hobby and
said, “Could you excuse
us for a minute, please?”
O boy! I had a vague
recollection of bedding
one of the bridesmaids.
“Joe, we were intimate
and I got pregnant.”
Oh shit! Could this be
happening?
“Did you have a…”
“Yes, I did. She’s a
beautiful young lady, just
finishing high school.
Relax, Joe I was married
at the time.”
Is that better, or worse?
I stammered a bit and
asked, “Are you sure it
was me?”
“Pretty sure. My husband had a low sperm
count. We tried for two
years and I couldn’t conceive. When it happened
my husband believed it
was a miracle. I never told
him otherwise.”
“So why mention it
now?”
“He died last year.
When I saw you tonight,
I thought you’d like to
know.”
“Wow. I don’t know
what to say.”
“It’s up to you, Joe. I’m
not looking for anything,
but I am curious. How
about you?”
I agreed to DNA testing.
It was New Year’s Eve
when Donna called.
Is this the day I become
a father?
“Happy New Year,
Donna.” I could barely
speak.
“Joe, you are not my
daughter’s father.”
I didn’t know whether
to laugh or cry. With a
mix of regret and good
cheer I said: “Happy New
Year!”
Write to author David Valley
at: [email protected]
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Game
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Limit Hold’em
A, P ....... AM, PM
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Wk .............Week
.No Limit Hold’em
..........Stud
MONDAY
NORTHEAST
NORTHWEST
PACIFIC NORTHWEST
TIME
OR
WA
MT
ND
NE
SD
T ............... Turbo
.7-Card Stud
|
TUESDAY
GAMES BUY-IN| TIME
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
|
FRIDAY
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
| SATURDAY |
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
SUNDAY
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
GAMES BUY-IN
Chinook Winds Casino
Wildhorse Casino Resort
Blue Mountain Casino
Chips Bremerton
Chips La Center
Chips Lakewood
Chips Tukwila
Drift-On-Inn
Final Table Cas., Everett
Goldie’s
Little Creek Casino
Muckleshoot Casino
Northern Quest
Point Defiance Cafe & Cas., Tacoma
Suquamash Clearwater
Wild Grizzly
Black Jack’s Casino
4 Bears Casino
Dakota Magic
Rosebud Casino
Dakota Sioux
Gold Dust Cas., Deadwood
Rosebud Casino
Silverado Casino Deadwood
Foxwoods
CT
NH Seabrook Greyhound Park
NJ
Caesar’s Atlantic City
Harrah’s Atlantic City
Tropicana
Akwesasne Mohawk
Majesty Casino Boar
NY
Turning Stone
DA I LY TO U R N A M E N T L I ST I N G S CO N T I N U E O N PAG E 35
ENDLESS SUMMER 12/19/06
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $20 + $15
PLAYERS 96
REBUYS 337
ADD-ONS 135
PRIZE POOL
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $20 + $15
PLAYERS 108
REBUYS 412
ADD-ONS 152
PRIZE
POOL
$12,650
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Samuel Park. . . . . . . . $5,060
Makya McBee . . . . . . $,2910
Edgardo Castro . . . . . $1,520
Allen Mittelman. . . . . . .$885
Martin Ighani . . . . . . . .$695
Stephane Fitoussi. . . . . .$570
David Kohantee . . . . . . .$440
Danny Podell . . . . . . . . .$315
Douglas Kim . . . . . . . . .$255
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $60 + $15
Marshall Plouffe
Jay Moriarty
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $60 + $15
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $20 + $15
PLAYERS 95
REBUYS 325
ADD-ONS 140
PRIZE
POOL
PRIZE POOL
$7,750
Jennifer Oneil
1.
2.
3.
4.
Jennifer Oneil . . . . . . $3,100
Daniel Seligman . . . . . $1,785
Antwan Thorton . . . . . .$930
Nathan Nowack . . . . . . .$540
Jay Moriarty . . . . . . . $3,055
Sep Ebrahimi . . . . . . . $1,755
William Lugar . . . . . . . .$915
Ray Murphy. . . . . . . . . .$535
Lou Saliba . . . . . . . . . . .$420
PLAYERS 79
REBUYS 57
$10,640
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
James Squires . . . . . . $4,260
Warren Plouffe . . . . . $2,445
Chris Rivas. . . . . . . . . $1,275
Marc Maxey . . . . . . . . . .$745
Sep Ebrahimi . . . . . . . . .$585
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
PRIZE POOL
$6,725
Ryan Buckholtz
Ryan Buckholtz . . . . . $2,690
Jeff Murray . . . . . . . . $1,550
Larry Stahler . . . . . . . . .$805
Chuck Sklar . . . . . . . . . .$470
Kim Solis . . . . . . . . . . . .$370
Marshall Plouffe . . . . $4,320
Warren Plouffe . . . . . $2,480
Philip Siegel . . . . . . . . $1,295
Ryan Buckholtz . . . . . . .$755
1.
2.
3.
4.
2. Mike Byrne . . . . . . . $24,924
WSOP CIRCUIT
EVENT
3. Thomas Masha . . . . $11,403
EVENT #3
PRIZE POOL
$7,635
PLAYERS 66
REBUYS 52
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
PLAYERS 73
REBUYS 61
BUY-IN $60 + $15
12/11/06
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $500 + $60
Fairfax, VA, USA
7. Brian Caplice . . . . . . $6,516
Toms River, NJ, USA
$148,500
Union, NJ, USA
Sung Joo
1. Sung Joo AKA
“Sam” . . . . . . . . . . . $47,520
Toms River, NJ, USA
2. William Fallia . . . . . $26,136
Cromack, NY, USA
3. Thomas O’Connor . $13,365
Rockaway Beach, NY, USA
4. Allan T. Demaree . . $10,395
8. Matthew Stout AKA
“All In At 420” . . . . . $4,887
9. Michael Kendrick . . . $3,258
WSOP CIRCUIT
EVENT
EVENT #1
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Dean Schultz . . . . . . . $8,910
Steve Bouzikas . . . . . $7,425
Anthony L Hill . . . . . $5,940
William Stradley . . . $2,970
Rogelio Figer . . . . . . . $1,782
12/9/06
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $200 + $30
Scarsdale, NY, USA
PLAYERS 824
PRIZE POOL
$247,201
Michael R Litten
1. Michael R Litten . . $64,272
WSOP CIRCUIT
EVENT
2. Anthony Morton . . . $34,114
$7,980
PLAYERS 543
Lulu
Michael Avissar
PRIZE POOL
Michael Avissar . . . . . $3,190
Jason Altshuler . . . . . $1,835
Tro Gharibian . . . . . . . .$955
Larry Rieder . . . . . . . . .$560
Southport, NC, USA
5. Jeffrey Dolezal . . . . . $9,774
PRIZE POOL
$11,380
1.
2.
3.
4.
Landenburg, PA, USA
4. Carder Blake . . . . . $11,403
6. Phillip Romano . . . . . $8,145
PLAYERS 78
REBUYS 62
Lulu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $4,565
Harry McSharry . . . . $2,625
Michael Weaver . . . . . $1,375
Bridget Holmquist . . . . .$800
Cape May, NJ, USA
PLAYERS 297
BUY-IN $20 + $15
PLAYERS 108
REBUYS 339
ADD-ONS 152
PRIZE POOL
PRIZE POOL
BUY-IN $60 + $15
$10,790
1.
2.
3.
4.
AC WSOP Circuit
EVENT #2
12/10/06
Havertown, PA, USA
Danville, VA, USA
NO LIMIT HOLD’EM
3. Arie Abitol . . . . . . . . $19,776
BUY-IN $300 + $40
4. Konstantino Pashos $17,304
Ons Village, NY, USA
Flushing, NY, USA
$162,900
Mike O’Neill
1. Mike O’Neill . . . . . . $47,241
New York, NY, USA
5. Larry Kanavas . . . . $14,832
Deer Park, NY, USA
6. Terry Anderson . . . $12,360
Lawrence Harbour, NJ, USA
7. Manuel Carvalho . . . $9,888
Baltimore, MD, USA
8. Paul Lambrakis . . . . $7,416
9. Mark Heid . . . . . . . . . $4,944
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
33
Exceptions, PART 2
STUD SENSE
By ASHLEY ADAMS
In part I of this series of exceptions to general poker rules, I listed six general rules of
poker that are usually followed. I’m focusing on profitable
exceptions to these rules. In the last column I wrote about
the exception to the rule of always playing within your
bankroll. Today we’ll address drinking while playing poker.
Rule 2. Don’t drink alcohol while you play
This is generally a wise guideline. Alcohol interferes
with the brain’s ability to function. Top-level poker
requires considerable brainpower, so why put yourself at
a disadvantage? Similarly, alcohol works as a depressant
– tending to make many tired, distracted, inattentive, and
sleepy. This surely diminishes your ability to stay and take
advantage of a good game – yet another reason to eschew
this intoxicant while playing poker.
Still, there are at least two good reasons to indulge, at
least from time to time, even while playing poker – presuming that you can control your drinking once you begin.
First of all, if the game is good, and others are drinking, you may not want to draw attention to yourself as an
abstemious teetotaler. If everyone is drinking, laughing it
up, and having a good time, it may look weird or at least
somewhat suspect for you to ask for only a cup of coffee or water. You’re probably already going to stand out
some as a serious player. Not drinking is an unnecessary
red flag that you are there to make a profit, not to have
a good time. And that may be all the excuse that is necessary to rescind your invitation the next time there’s a
game.
I’m not suggesting that you drink like a fish. But if
everyone’s handing out the brewskies and the host asks,
“What’ll you have” there’s no harm in asking for a beer
too. You don’t have to drink more than one – or even the
entire beer. Few if any of the drinking players will notice
how much you drink of your beer. But they may notice if
you don’t have one.
There’s another reason – and this is admittedly a bit
Machiavellian. If it’s your home game, you want others
to drink. Your apparent eagerness or at least willingness
to imbibe may be the signal that it’s “that kind of game”
and therefore safe for your guests to indulge as well.
Encourage this inclination with your behavior.
Consider this scene. There’s a game at your house with
people whom you’ve met in other games but never had
to your house. They’ve seen you in the local poker room
perhaps, where serious play is the rule. They don’t know
what to expect. Is this a “friendly game” like they’re used
to with their buddies – where players talk, watch TV, drink,
eat and don’t take the poker too serious. Or is this a serious affair like in the casino – where everyone tries to play
their best game all the time, orders bottled water, and
focuses nearly all of their attention on the game? They’re
waiting to see how you act to determine how they’ll act.
Give them an excuse to drink by having drink yourself
early on. Of course you need to have an eye on your own
sobriety – because you really are trying to take their
money. But have a beer at the start. But it’s OK to drink
early on just so long as you’re at your best as the poker
game progresses into the wee hours, when others tend
to be more tired, looser, and easier to take advantage of
– especially if they’ve been drinking.
Ashley Adams is the author of Winning 7-Card Stud,
(Kensington Press 2003). He has been playing 7-Card
Stud for 40 years—and profitably in casinos for the past
10 years. He has played in casinos all over the world,
including England, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Hungary,
Canada and the United States, but plays most frequently
at at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard Connecticut.
Professionally, he is a union organizer and an agent for
broadcasters. He can be reached at: [email protected]
34
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
Leadville
Wild West Frontier
Mining Town
By Byron Liggett
Leadville, Colorado, at
10,430 ft., is the highest
incorporated city in the
world. Its heavenly altitude
did not, however, prevent
the town from becoming
one of the most notorious,
lawless, gambling hellholes in frontier history.
A mining camp was
started in 1859 when gold
was discovered by prospector Abe Lee in nearby
California Gulch; named
so because Lee is said to
have declared, “By God,
I have California in this
pan!”
Within a year, 5,000
fortune hunters, almost
all men, many from
California, came clutching
gold pans, sluice-boxes and
dreams of yellow riches. It
was hard work at high altitude, made more difficult
by the heavy black sand
that frustrated gold seekers
and caused men to curse.
The placer (surface)
gold deposits were gone
in less than ten years and
almost everyone disappeared with it. The boom
had gone bust.
Then, in 1875, a metallurgist discovered that the
much despised heavy black
sand was carbonate of
lead and had an extremely
high silver content. What
formerly was considered a
nuisance now became one
of the greatest silver strikes
in the annals of mining.
The silver boom far
exceeded the earlier gold
strike. What had formerly
been a mining camp largely comprised of tents grew
to 18,000 inhabitants in
less than a year. Tents soon
gave way to wood buildings.
The town of Leadville
was founded in 1878. It
consisted of 120 saloons,
118 gambling dens, and
almost no law. One local
historian would later write,
“Laws were made as
needed in the early days of
rugged Leadville.”
Leadville’s proudest
structure was the Opera
House, built in 1879 by
“Silver King” H. A. W.
Tabor. On its opening
night, the premier was
upstaged by a double hanging. Two claim jumpers
were taken from the jail by
vigilantes and hung from
the jailhouse roof. Their
bodies were left hanging
for sometime to discourage
other thieves.
Main street was lined
with gambling halls and
bordellos. It was called
“Tiger Alley”, in reference
to the Faro expression,
“Bucking the Tiger”. The
“Texas House” operated a
dozen Faro tables around
the clock. Tom Kemp’s
Dance and Gambling Hall
featured vaudeville entertainment. The Leadville
Mining Club was known
for “high stakes only”
games.
Every famous and infamous gambler and gunslinger of the American
West followed the miners
to Leadville. Luke Short, a
whisky dealer and gambler
showed up in 1879. A gambling dispute caused Short
to shoot a man in the face.
He was never charged.
After losing $3,000 in
a Faro game, notorious
gambler ‘n gunslinger Ben
Thompson concluded he
was being cheated (and
likely was). The drunken
gambler pulled out his
six-shooter and put several
rounds in the Faro box,
shot out the lights and
turned over the table as
customers ran for the exits.
Poker Alice, among
the few women gamblers
on the frontier, began her
career in Leadville. Alice
Ivers was born in England
in 1851 and immigrated to
America with her parents
when she was three. She
was educated at a fashionable women’s school in
the South and brought up a
respected lady of society.
At the age of 20, Alice
married a Colorado mining
engineer. Leadville was the
center of action when she
and her husband moved
there. With little recreation or entertainment for
women, Alice occasionally
played poker.
When her husband was
killed in a mine accident,
there were few “acceptable” jobs for women in
Leadville. Consequently,
she turned to Poker for
survival. Poker Alice practiced her trade for 60 years,
becoming the most famous
women gambler of the
American West.
With the gunfight at
the O.K. Corral and many
other lethal confrontations
to his credit, Doc Holliday
was already a legend when
he arrived in 1883. He
got a job dealing Faro at
the Monarch Saloon on
Harrison Avenue.
Doc had borrowed five
dollars from bartender
Billy Allen and wasn’t
quick in paying it back.
Wanting his money, Allen,
armed with a gun, burst
into the Hyman Saloon
where Doc was playing
poker. Instantly Holliday
fired two shots, one bullet hitting Allen in his gun
arm, ending the confrontation.
When a peace officer
came looking for Holliday,
Doc shot and killed the
lawman. He claimed selfdefense and the charges
were dropped. It was
Doc’s last killing. He left
Leadville for Glenwood
Springs CO, where he died
of TB in 1893.
The king of Leadville
con men was Jefferson
Randolph “Soapy” Smith.
Soap was a much desired
product among filthy miners. Smith would sell his
bars of soap on the street
corner and in the gambling dens. A few bars had
$20 bills inside to create
interest.
The money bars were
always purchased by his
partners. Others, hoping to be as lucky, paid
a premium price for
what was never anything
more than a bar of soap.
Soapy developed a widespread reputation as he
eventually practiced his
swindle throughout all the
Colorado mining towns.
Limit Hold’em
A, P ....... AM, PM
..... Hold’em L ................ Limit
Wk .............Week
.No Limit Hold’em
..........Stud
MONDAY
MIDWEST
TIME
IA
Catfish Bend
Isle of Capri
Winn-A-Vegas
IL
Hollywood Casino-Aurora
IN
MI
|
TUESDAY
GAMES BUY-IN| TIME
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
|
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
FRIDAY
| SATURDAY |
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
GAMES BUY-IN|TIME
SUNDAY
GAMES BUY-IN
Belterra (Florence)
Caesars Indiana
Majestic Star
Chip-In’s Island
Lac Vieux Desert Cas., Watersmeet
MN Fortune Bay Casino
WI
LA
MO
MS
FLORIDA
MISSISSIPPI RIVER
T ............... Turbo
.7-Card Stud
Northern Light Casino
Shooting Star Casino
Menominee Casino, Keshena
Oneida Casino, Green Bay
Potawatomi Northern Lights, Carter
St Croix Casino, Turtle Lake
Grand Coushatta
Horseshoe CasinoShreveport
Harrah’s St Louis
Isle of Capri
Copa Casino
Gold Strike Casino (Tunica)
Grand Casino(Tunica)
Horseshoe Casino (Tunica)
Pearl River Resort
Dania Jai-Alai
Derby Lane
Hard Rock
Mardi Gras Gaming Ctr, Hollywd
Palm Beach Kennel Club
Palm Beach Princess
Pompano Park Casino
St Tropez Cruise
CANADA Casino Regina
IT’s YOURFAULT!
BY LEE “COOL HAND” GARCIA
the same story
every time. The
guy telling he had pocket
rockets or a set, and some
crazy player called him
down, outdrew him on the
river and delivered a “bad
beat”. I hear the same
story several times a week
and I’m sure many of you
do also.
The characters are the
same in every scenario.
The winner is the villain
and the loser is the abused
victim. I don’t agree with
that analysis in most cases,
and I think most players
will improve their game if
they take a realistic look
at it. Here’s a recent case.
Mary is playing in a
1/2 no limit and has $180
in chips. There is one $2
caller ahead of her, and
she raises it to $7 with
pocket kings. Two people
behind her call, the big
IT’S
blind calls, and the $2
limper calls.. There is $35
pre-flop.
The flop comes Qc, Kd,
9h and it’s checked to her.
Everybody calls her $10
bet. There is now $85 in
the pot. The turn brings
the 8h and Mary bets $15.
Two players call and the
pot is now $130. The river
is the Jh and the first player bets $50. Mary calls the
bet and the player behind
her raises all in to $110.
The bettor calls, and
Mary also, as she mumbles “I’ve gotta see it!”
The raiser shows the nut
flush with Ah/4h, and the
other player had Qc/10c
for a K high straight. Mary
angrily berates the players
for calling her down, and
she walks away to look
for a sympathetic ear. That
hand cost her $142 and
crippled her evening! The
next day, I tried to explain
what SHE did wrong, but
she couldn’t stop blaming
her loss on bad play by the
other two players.
She was being “cute”
by betting only $7 on her
kings pre-flop. In a 1/2
game, the players see a
lot of flops for small bets.
They all called the $10 for
the same reason; they’re
hoping the turn hits them.
When she bet $15 on the
turn, it was still cheap
enough for the two players
to take a shot at a nice pot.
The straight guy needed
a gut shot, but he had
second pair with a decent
kicker and might hit two
pair or a set on the river.
Because of her weak bets,
he incorrectly put her on a
weak hand. The flush draw
had only a sole ace on the
flop, but the turn gave him
the nut flush draw for a
decent price.
Since she was going to
commit many chips to this
hand anyway, it would
have been much smarter
to protect that hand early
in the hand. A pre-flop
raise of $40 would have
reduced the field tremendously, and a good sized
bet at the flop would have
probably given her the pot
right there. There’s probably a 70/30 chance that
the flush draw would have
folded to an all-in bet on
the turn because he would
have to call $148 to protect
his $32 ........and all he has
is a draw! Heads up.
In situations such as
this, soft playing top hands
with loose or undisciplined
players is the worst thing
you can do. Pocket pairs
play much better heads up
than against many callers, so it is always best to
try to reduce the field as
quickly as possible. If you
don’t, such as in the above
hand, they may catch a
piece of the flop and feel
more committed to the
hand. The only thing you
can do is to make continued play cost-prohibitive
by blasting away as soon
as possible. Look at it this
way. What’s the point of
playing no-limit if you are
going to bet your hand like
a 4/8 limit game? You’re
just DARING them to call
you down!
The most powerful tool
offered you by the game
of no-limit hold’em is
the ability to choose the
amount of your bet. That
is what separates it from
the limit version, so what’s
the point of betting small
increments with a beatable
hand? Naturally, if you
have pocket jacks and the
flop comes AKQ, you’re
just about done in that
hand right? But if no over
cards flop, then you have
to make sure that nobody
chases the hand with one
over card.
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
35
TV Poker Nation
European Rankings
Round Up
uro poker
POKER IN EUROPE
By JONATHAN RAAB
The European rankings race for
2006 has come to an end. In 2005
it had gone to the wire with Frenchman Pascal
Perrault and Englishman Mickey Wernick battling
to finish highest during the last few events of the
year. This time round there was a much bigger
gap between eventual winner Ash Hussain and
the chasing pack.
The Accrington lad rocketed into contention in
March after finishing 2nd to Jeff Williams in the
Pokerstars.com EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo.
He then proceeded to rack up a string of final
table appearances, sending him to the top of the
leaderboard, where he has stayed for most of the
year. There was a brief spell in the September
when Marc Goodwin overhauled him as provisional number one, but a victory in Liverpool sent
Hussain back to the top.
Ash made 12 ranking finals this year on his way
to picking up the Ð10,000 first prize, but runner
up Jan Sjavik from Norway made only three. Two
of these were 3rd places in the EPT London and
the Masters Classic main event in Amsterdam,
events that due to their large size were worth
more ranking points than most of other tournaments in Europe. However, Sjavik clearly had
no aspirations to top the leaderboard, as he did
not even attempt to make an assault in the final
months of the year on the busy UK circuit.
Marc Goodwin finished in 3rd place, with the
ever-consistent Ian Woodley in 4th. Last year’s
winner Mickey Wernick ended up 5th, which was
good enough for his sponsor Blue Square Poker
to renew his deal for 2007. Just outside the top
ten, in 14th place, was JP Kelly. The prodigious
20-year old has been winning tournaments all
over the UK for the last 18 months and is widely
tipped to become one of the biggest names in
European poker. He is Wernick’s stable mate at
Blue Square and is one to watch out for at next
summer’s WSOP, when he will be old enough to
play there for the first time. He is to the UK what
Jeff Madsen is to the USA – young, bright, talented, successful and far too rich for someone
who is barely out of high school. You have been
warned.
British players tend to dominate the rankings,
largely because most of the ranking events take
place in the UK. Consequently, British players
take it more seriously than their European counterparts. Last year Frenchman Pascal Perrault
was in competition for the top spot and spent a
lot of time in the UK chasing the title. However,
he narrowly missed out and has not been present
much in the UK during 2006. The newly launched
Grosvenor UK Poker Tour with eleven big new
events makes it even more likely that Brits will
once again fill the top spots in the rankings in
2007. Some say that the rankings are not meaningful, but history suggests that the winner and
other players in the top ten will pick up lucrative
sponsorship deals in the months to come. Money
talks in this game.
Jonathan Raab is a poker consultant and tournament reporter. He works for online poker site Blue
Square as their representative at live poker events in
the UK and Europe and is the Tour Manager for the
GUKPT. Email: [email protected]
36
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
by Stephen Bartley
We’re in the midst of a
period of relative quiet on
the European Poker front,
as larger series like the
European Poker Tour wait
until January before they
pick things up again in
Copenhagen. Perfect timing then for the makers of
some of the most popular
and widely distributed televised tournaments to get
their shows filmed and in
the can.
At least that’s what
Matchroom Poker thinks.
This week saw the start of
their European Open III,
a 12 heat shoot-out style
event, with the winners
meeting in two six-seat
semi-finals before the top
three from each play the
final itself. Not the straight
forward process of elimination you find on the WPT
or EPT, but a format ideal
for TV.
Matchroom Poker is the
largest of such distributors.
In addition to the European
Open, which is shown in
over 20 countries, they produce shows such as the UK
Open, Poker Million, the
World Open and the Poker
Legends Cup, which are
all distributed around the
world.
Working alongside sponsors PartyPoker, filming
began in Maidstone, a small
town to the south east of
London. The heats would
be filmed over eight days,
each voiced by the familiar
tones of Jessie May. The
twist? Rather than the four
months it would normally
take to organise and film
one of these things; as players, venues, and TV production are negotiated and
timed to coincide with the
broadcasters preferred dates
for airing; they were instead
working on a four week
schedule. It’s non-stop work
to get the job done.
Why four weeks? The
reason was the cancellation
of the popular ‘PartyPoker
Monster’. Scheduled to
take place this month, it
was scrubbed following the
well publicized changes to
the online gaming laws in
the United States, where
over 60 per cent of Party’s
customers reside. A change
of plan was necessary. So,
some expert organising at
high speed was called for
to film a replacement event
and have it ready to air in a
little over four weeks.
“My biggest problem is
making sure players turn
up. That’s first and foremost” Said Beiju Patel,
Operations Manager at
Matchroom Poker. “We
have to sort all their contracts out, payments, things
like that.
“When the PartyPoker
Monster was cancelled we
had to get another show
done. We did the UK Open
at the end of September so
in the first week of October
I sat down and looked at
dates, because obviously
there are a lot of tournaments going on at the same
time. We chose these eight
days, despite the clash with
the WPT, but you’ll never
find a quiet period without
a big event.”
There are also celebrities to invite, filling out a
preliminary heat for a seat
amongst the professionals.
It falls largely to the sponsors but finding an original
line-up from a mixture of
backgrounds is always the
aim; sporting personalities,
actors, models and television personalities each giving poker a shot.
“We used to get Richard
Greco (British actor), Steve
Davis (former Snooker
World Champion) and John
Regis (Olympic Sprinter),
but we wanted to mix
it up a little” said Patel.
“Obviously a lot of professional players have celebrity friends, so they’re always
asking if they can play.
“There was a stage where
you saw the same faces
all the time, which got a
bit boring. So, if someone
recommends someone like
Anthony Hutton (Winner of
‘Big Brother’ UK in 2005),
who won his heat this
week, if we have space then
we give him a chance.”
TV production is slow.
The illusion of swift
smooth running and delivery is pulled of by a team of
people carrying radios who
have a talent for seeing how
the game will look through
a TV screen. The end product will shine, but in the
filming stages staff buff
technical difficulties and
hope for the best. It makes
late starts and regular
pauses in production common place. Far cry from the
seam-less show that people
will watch from home.
There are also logistical
issues to contend with. A
break in a big field tournament will see players mingling on the rail; competitors in the European Open
were carefully marshalled;
kept away from friends and
relatives a few feet away
in the Green Room who
could see hole cards on the
live feed, albeit with a 15
second delay. That kind of
insider knowledge could
be invaluable to helping a
friend’s chances and organisers take seriously the
threat of any unfair advantage.
Whereas final tables
of the World or European
Poker Tour involve moving cameras, floor managers with clipboards and a
frenetic pace against the
clock, the studio set up
is a more subdued affair.
Less tension, more second
chances, as the production
people work to get the right
kind of look. All part of the
magic of TV.
Once filming ends the
shows will be edited and
shown on Channel Five in
the UK as early as January.
A heat shown each week,
viewers at home will see
none of the delays, second
takes and all will flow
naturally as if it were being
played live. It’s the illusion
that television is able to
create, and a sign of a job
well done.
3. Bob Jarmin . . . . . . . . $3,040
2. Champie Douglas . . . $8,613
Las Vegas, NV USA
Austin, NV USA
4. Ron Bassin . . . . . . . . . $2,210
3. Lyle Woodbury . . . . . $4,737
Houston, TX USA
5. Jeff Giles. . . . . . . . . . . $1,935
Tampa, FL USA
6. Ray Guin . . . . . . . . . . $1,660
4. Ned Cruey . . . . . . . . . $3,445
Las Vegas, NV USA
Pahrump, NV USA
5. Gio Rocca . . . . . . . . . . $3,014
7. Eric Blalock . . . . . . . . $1,380
Toronto CANADA
San Antonio, TX USA
6. John Binder . . . . . . . . $2,584
8. Terry Fleischer. . . . . . $1,105
9. Stephen Claiden. . . . . . .$830
Dallas, TX USA
7. Greg Encinas . . . . . . . $2,153
Carlsbad, CA USA
BINIONS LAS VEGAS
BINIONS LAS VEGAS
ULTIMATE POKER CHALLENGE
EVENT 27
12/17/06
NO LIMIT TEXAS
HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $300 + $40
EVENT 24
12/9/06
NO LIMIT TEXAS
HOLD’EM
PRIZE POOL
PLAYERS 97
$43,068
PRIZE POOL
$27,645
James Akenhead
Scott Carpenter
1. James Akenhead . . . $14,647
1. Scott Carpenter . . . . . $9,340
8. Eric Mizrachi . . . . . . . $1,722
9. Kenna James . . . . . . . $1,292
10. Larry Wright . . . . . . . . .$861
BUY-IN $600 + $60
PLAYERS 74
London England UK
IT’s YOURFAULT!
Phoenix, AZ USA
ADVERTISE IN
POKER
PLAYER
IT WORKS!
Continued from page 35
The other related leak in
play is exactly what Mary
did at the river. What was
her comment? “ I’ve gotta
see it.” Why do people
insist on calling with a
pair or set when the odds
strongly favor a made
hand? In her case there
was a straight and a flush
potential, and she had to
put in most of her chips to
overcall!
I’m sure some players
will disagree with me, but
I find that it’s very rare
that an all-in bet on the
river is a bluff. All-ins on
the flop or turn usually
tell you that the bettor is
not holding the unbeatable
nut, but not so with the
river. The number of times
my call with a set will win
in this situation is so low
that it’s not worth risking
my chips in the long run.
So next time you get
beat by soft playing a
good hand, just remember
that if you get outdrawn
and lose the pot—it’s
YOUR fault!
Write author Lee Garcia at
[email protected]
Fairfax Station, VA USA
2. Skip Wilson . . . . . . . . $5,530
Westchester, OH USA
3. Lawrence Till . . . . . . . $3,040
St. Augastine, FL USA
4. Rick Lucas . . . . . . . . . $2,210
Boston, MA USA
5. Bob Bright . . . . . . . . . $1,935
Las Vegas, NV USA
6. Ted Yannotti . . . . . . . . $1,660
Pittsburgh, PA USA
7. Brad Benson. . . . . . . . $1,380
Las Vegas, NV USA
8. Gary Thorneycroft . . $1,105
9. Tom Takara . . . . . . . . . .$830
BINIONS LAS VEGAS
EVENT 26
12/16/06
NO LIMIT TEXAS
HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $600 + $60
PLAYERS 77
PRIZE POOL
$44,814
Brandon Lilly
1. Brandon Lilly. . . . . . $14,540
Charleston, WV USA
2. Michael Foley. . . . . . . $8,960
Wilmington, NC USA
3. Terry Sanders . . . . . . $4,930
Lewiston, ID USA
4. Garth Weeks . . . . . . . $3,585
Vancouver, Canada
5. Daniel Gilpin . . . . . . . $3,137
Beaumont, CA USA
6. Dewey Weum . . . . . . . $2,689
Monona, WI USA
7. Andrea Li . . . . . . . . . . $2,240
Las Vegas, NV USA
8. Joey Whitham . . . . . . $1,793
9. Robert Gaoing . . . . . . $1,344
BINIONS LAS VEGAS
EVENT 25
12/10/06
NO LIMIT TEXAS
HOLD’EM
BUY-IN $300 + $40
PLAYERS 95
PRIZE POOL
$27,645
Michael Edwards
1. Michael Edwards. . . . $9,400
Boise, ID USA
2. Eric Holum. . . . . . . . . $5,530
Las Vegas, NV USA
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
37
Perks and Picks
Card Room Roundup
The Bargain Bin
Fiesta Rancho
Casino-Hotel
By H. Scot Krause
The Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas is
introducing its new three-tiered Club Riviera
slot club this month. Located in its new centralized location next to the casino’s Race and Sports Book, Club Riviera
is claiming to offer new members “more advantages than
the competition, as well as the best deal anywhere: the new
three-tiered rewards for play and loyalty.”
With shorter lines and more privacy for players, the personalized service is getting good grades. For the first time in
Riviera history, there are more slot club service representatives in one convenient location to handle your every need. An
easy access tournament registration area includes a tournament score posting board. And since the TV monitors are on
until midnight, you won’t miss a single sports’ play.
Perks and benefits await players in the club’s new threetiered program. Upon joining you will receive the blue “Select”
membership card. After you have earned 5000 points, you
become a “Gold” Club member and after 15,000 points, you’ve
made “Platinum” status. Each tier carries its own discounts at
Riviera restaurants, participating retail shops, the health spa
and shows. You also receive Player’s Room Rates with room
accommodation upgrades, based on availability. Invitations to
tournaments and events accompany special card level offers.
The Club Riviera staff will be pleased to tell you where
you stand in terms of the new tiers/levels as each new level
provides players with increased benefits. For instance, Gold
Members get 2x’s cash back and Platinum Members get 3x’s
cash back. The memberships are valid one year from the dates
of qualification.
For further details about the Riviera’s new Club Riviera,
visit www.rivierahotle.com or call 702-794-9633.
In other Las Vegas news, the TI (Treasure Island) Poker
Room pays a bonus to the top three highest hands made
everyday. The highest hand of the day receives a random
mystery prize ranging from Mystere show tickets to dinner at
one of TI’s restaurants to hundreds of dollars in Free Play (slot
play money.) At the end of each month the top ten players
with the most logged hours of play in the TI Poker Room, each
receive a bonus reward for their play too. Visit the TI website
at www.treasureisland.com for more information.
The Palms Poker Room is running a promotion called
“Diamonds are Forever.” Hit a diamond flush Tuesday through
Saturday to qualify for a chance to win a share of $500 each
night of the promotion. They also feature “Bad Beat” jackpots
and High Hand jackpots.
Daily High Hand jackpots are also paid at the Tuscany
Suites & Casino Poker Room with payoffs ranging from
$50 to $600. They also feature daily No Limit Texas Hold’Em
Tournaments at 10:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. seven days a week.
The buy-in is $22.
Downtown, Binion’s Gambling Hall is hosting the nationally
televised Ultimate Poker Challenge every Friday, Saturday and
Sunday. For more information visit: www.ultimatepokerchallenge.com or call 1-800-937-6537.
During January, play slots or video poker on Tuesdays
at the Fiesta Rancho to earn ARCO gasoline cards. Players
can earn one $10 gas card for every 1000 Amigo Club points
earned ($1000-$2000 coin-in depending on the machine being
played.) Players can earn up to 5 cards every Tuesday.
Happy New Year to all! May this be your best poker and
gambling year ever!
That’s it for this week!
The Fiesta Casino-Hotel
located on North Rancho
Drive in North Las Vegas
represents the Maloof’s first
venture into the casino business. Opened in 1994 with
a $10 million investment,
the property was one of the
first casinos built to appeal
to the developing Northwest
corridor of the Vegas Valley.
The Fiesta quickly earned a
reputation as the best place
on the planet to play video
poker and was labeled the
“Royal Flush Capital of the
World.” Under Maloof’s
customer-are-first style
of management the Fiesta
became very popular; in
fact, it was number one on
the most profit-per-squarefoot casinos list for the State
of Nevada. In 1999 “USA
Today” listed the Fiesta
Casino-Hotel as one of the
ten greatest gambling destinations in the world.
The instant success of
the property attracted other
casino neighbors to the
North Rancho Drive loca-
H. Scot Krause is a freelance writer, gaming industry
analyst and researcher, originally from Cleveland, Ohio.
While raising his four year-old son, Zachary, Scot reports,
researches, and writes about casino games, events, attractions and promotions. He is a twelve-year resident of Las
Vegas. Questions or comments are welcomed. Card room
managers are also invited to send your specials
and promotions to: [email protected]
38
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
2400 North Rancho Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89130
Toll Free: 1.888.899.7770 Local: 702.631.7000
rancho.fiestacasino.com
tion and the Fiesta was soon comes from a smaller casino
where personalized service
joined by now-sister property, Texas Station. In 2001 is a way of life.
When its time to dine
locals casino giant, Station
consider Garduno’s. There
Casinos, purchased the
is Mexican food and there
property from the Maloof’s
is New Mexican food and
for $158 million and added
the New Mexico variety
it to their growing family
is considered to be the
of family owned casinos.
Station Casinos retained the benchmark for the tortilla,
salsa, and margarita concomplete “customer satisnoisseurs. Earthy red and
faction philosophy of business” instilled in employees green chili’s from the fabled
by Maloof thus guaranteeing Hatch chili producing region
of southern New Mexico
your visits to property will
provide the base flavors for
be enjoyable and you will
handmade Southwest specontinue to return.
cialties. Garduno’s Mexican
The hotel is compact
restaurant at the Fiesta is
by Las Vegas standards of
mega everything. With 100 an authentic New Mexican
food restaurant, as a result
guest rooms the hotel is
of the Maloof’s 114 year-old
often considered one of the
New Mexico family roots.
best accommodation barGarduno’s has been voted
gains in the city. Located
Best Mexican Restaurant in
only minutes by car or taxi
Las Vegas for eleven years
from the Las Vegas Strip
in a row.
the Northwest casino might
Fiesta’s Blue Agave
be exactly what you are
Steakhouse serves steaks,
looking for when visiting
chops and seafood in a
Las Vegas. Customers can
fine dining experience that
expect to be treated with
continues with dessert seleca special friendliness that
tions and a fine wine. Early
bird menu available from
4-to-6 pm daily. Looking
for something more casual?
Then try the Baja Beach
Café with the buffet style
all-you-can-eat breakfast
and salad bar. The Fiesta’s
Festival Buffet is a Station
Casinos’ buffet and Station
Casino buffets are noted for
being the best and always
consistent quality every
visit. Maybe fast food is
what you’re craving so
head to the food court with
national brand fast food outlets…McDonald’s, Subway,
Panda Express. When its
time to snack, grab a burger
or spend an evening enjoying a gourmet meal they are
all available at the Fiesta
Rancho.
A full service casino with
more than 1,600 video poker
and modern slots wait for
you at the Fiesta. Whatever
you prefer you’ll be playing
in the “Royal Flush Capital
of the World.” Blackjack
leads the table games in
the pit, a full service sports
and race book that includes
a really handy drive thru
window so you can wager
your selections on the fly.
Prefer sitting in a large room
coloring letters? Then head
for Bingo. Rather play the
numbers from a comfortable lounge its Keno and the
Fiesta Keno lounge offers
Station Casinos’ Jumbo
Keno.
The Fiesta Rancho poker
room, managed by Jim
Ward, offers 5 tables in a
casual, comfortable setting
in the main casino. Easy
valet or self parking provides a quick trip from car
to poker table. The room
regularly spreads Limit
Hold’em with $2-$4 or $3$6 blinds plus a half kill.
No-limit Hold’em is offered
with $1-$2 blinds and a
$100 minimum, No maximum buy-in.
Tournaments are offered
at Noon and Midnight
every day with both events
having a $25 buy-in for
$1,500 in tournament
chips. The Noon tournament is a No-rebuy event;
while the Midnight contest
offers one optional $10
rebuy for another $1,000
in tournament checks. The
monthly $5,000 Go All In
Poker Tournament begins
on Sunday, December 17th,
at 1:00 pm, $50 buy-in
with a 100% buy-in return
to players. The Station
Casino owned Fiesta Poker
Room offers all the Station
Casinos’ poker promotions.
The biggest bad beat jackpot anywhere, the Jumbo
Poker Jackpot that goes for
hundreds of thousands of
dollars, and now the latest
promotion, $10,000 Great
Hands giveaway. Match
posted Great Hands and
win up to $10,000. Contact
Pechanga Poker
JANUARY TOURNAMENT SERIES
THURSDAY, JAN 4TH
6:30PM
$5,000 Guarantee No-Limit Hold’em
$40 + $10 Buy-in
FRIDAY, JAN 5TH
6:30PM
$75 + $15 Buy-in
SATURDAY, JAN 6TH
4:00PM
$85 + $15 Buy-in
SUNDAY, JAN 7TH
4:00PM
$75 + $15 Buy-in
THURSDAY, JAN 11TH
6:30PM
Ladies Only No-Limit Hold’em
$85 + $15 Buy-in
1st Place: $1,000 Buy-in seat
2007 World Series Ladies Only Event
THURSDAY, JAN 25TH
6:30PM
$40 + $10 Buy-in
FRIDAY, JAN 26TH
6:30PM
$75 + $15 Buy-in
SATURDAY, JAN 27TH
4:00PM
2007 Big Showdown Series Tournament
$200 + $25 Buy-in
1st Place: $10,000 Buy-in seat to the
2007 World Series, Guaranteed
SUNDAY, JAN 28TH
4:00PM
$75 + $15 Buy-in
DAILY TOURNAMENTS
DAILY DOUBLE JACKPOTS • Mon. thru Fri. 2-5PM • 1:30-5AM • 6-9AM
MONDAY
10AM
6:30PM
9PM to Midnight
TUESDAY
10AM
6:30PM
9PM to Midnight
WEDNESDAY
10AM
6:30PM
1PM to 11PM
9PM to Midnight
THURSDAY
10AM
9PM to Midnight
5PM
10AM
FRIDAY
6PM to 8PM
No-Limit Hold’em Tournament
$2,000 Guarantee
$20 + $5 Buy-in
$3,000 Guarantee
$25 + $5 Buy-in
Stud Double, Omaha Double and Hold’em Double Jackpot
$4,000 Guarantee
$35 + $5 Buy-in
No-Limit Hold’em Tournament- Tues Night Special
$2,000 Guarantee
$0 + $5 Buy-in
Stud Double, Omaha Double and Hold’em Double Jackpot
Limited Hold’em Tournament
$20 + $5 Buy-in
$20 + $5 Buy-in
High Hand every hour
$200 for all Hold’em and $50 for Omaha
Double Jackpot
$2,000 Guarantee
$20 + $5 Buy-in
Triple Hold’em Jackpot Thursdays
Stud and Omaha Doubled
Sit N Go’s Thursdays
$2,000 Guarantee
$2,000 Guarantee
$2,000 Guarantee
$20 + $5 Buy-in
$40,000 Hold’em Jackpot Fridays-All Hold’em Games
Stud and Omaha Doubled
SATURDAY
10AM
$20 + $5 Buy-in
Free entry for TOC Players
$4,000 Guarantee
SUNDAY
10AM
No-Limit Hold’em Tournament*
$20 + $5 Buy-in
*10 hours live play weekly = free entry
$40 + $10 Buy-in
Double Jackpot Sundays
$2,000 Guarantee
4PM
1PM to 3PM & 6PM to 1AM
$5,000 Guarantee
All Weekday AM/PM Tournaments have an Entry Fee. No tournament re-buys unless specified otherwise. All Jackpot
promotions reset and doubled until end of promotion time. Tournament Series replaces Daily Tournaments on dates
shown. Hotel Poker Rate is subject to availability Monday thru Thursday and no discounts on Friday, Saturday, or
Sunday. Please see a Poker Room Floorperson for promotion details. Management reserves the right to cancel or
modify promotions without notice. Must be 21 or older to enter Casino. SMOKE FREE POKER ROOM
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
39
“Indian” No Limit Book reviews
sults with
Phil Hellmuth Presents powerful weapon and now
BacK in the saddle Again
Joe Navarro, in cooperation top poker
Read ‘Em and Reap
By OKLAHOMA JOHNNY HALE
Carol, it is good to get home again
here in Las Vegas and rest up for a
few days until we are off again to the
Aviation club on the Champs Elysee in
Paris, France.
This will mark the fifth year that we have
crossed over the pond to host “The European
Seniors”! This year, we have invited one of our
Oklahoma daughters, Sheri, to come with us and
our Vegas daughter, “Oklahoma Sarah” Hale for a
Paris shopping trip.
I just won a little money up at the Wildhorse
Fall Poker Round Up in Pendleton, Oregon when I
finished in the money a couple of times-. Yes, the
Wildhorse Fall Poker Round Up was a little different
kind of tournament. They set new records in all of
their events, and I got a lot lucky and finished fourth
in the $500 no limit hold’em championship event.
There were 641 cowboys and cowgirls who
entered this event. No, I could not win it, but I
stayed with the Waddies from Noon until about
4:00 AM when my pony bucked me out of the saddle in fourth position.
So I won a little something and I am going to
spring for a Paris shopping trip for all my girls. Now
Carol, this comes with a caution—Because I must
tell the folks what you already know—that the girls
are high maintenance. So the caution is just this:
you may have to help me out and come up with
some of the money you won when you also finished
second in the ladies poker championship event at
the Reno Peppermill.
Yes, on our recent poker tour we stopped by a
lot of little and big poker rooms—just to visit old
friends and make new ones—and as my daddy used
to say—just to pay expenses.
You played and won second in this ladies-only
poker tournament when we stopped by Reno to
visit with out friend and new poker Guru, MIKE
GAINEY, at the Peppermill in the biggest little city
in the world—Reno, Nevada.
Yes, the Wildhorse is named “WILD” for a reason.
Here is just one of the reasons: I saw a bunch of
whippersnappers playing INDIAN POKER—now I have
played Indian poker before, but never for NO LIMIT.
Yes, that’s right—INDIAN NO LIMIT HOLDEM POKER.
I have played it for $5 or $10, but these young
Whippersnappers—who must have several money
trees—or picked their parents very well—were playing the game No Limit.
Here is how they played—Blinds of $2 & $5, two
cards to each player—then each player would not
look at his cards and place the two cards as if they
were Indian feathers on their heads (hence the
name “Indian Poker”).
All the players could see all of the other players
cards except their own two cards! The game was
wild—I guess that is why the poker room is called
Wildhorse.
All the Whippersnappers were living it up.
Thousands of dollars were in each pot and the
sounds of the winners were so loud that you would
think that their favorite team had just scored the
deciding touchdown at the Super Bowl.
Until next time, remember to Stay Lucky!
You may contact OK-J at his e-mail Oklajohnny@
aol.com, or play poker LIVE, ONLINE with Johnny,
Carol and Sarah at www.OK-J.com. Johnny’s book,
“The Gentleman Gambler,” is in its third printing.
Contact Johnny for your copy.
40
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
by Joe Navarro and
Marvin Karlins
Harper Collins, 2006
ISBN: 0061198595
213 pp paperbound, $18.95
with Phil Hellmuth, teaches
players how to decode
poker tells in Read ‘Em and
Reap.
Former FBI Agent
Uncovers Mystery
Of Tells
Serious poker players who
do battle face-to-face across
the green felt have harbored a precious secret for a
long time – something that
ensured they would have a
big edge over their competition. They didn’t necessarily
have a word for it but what
they now refer to as tells, the
rest of the world would eventually call body language.
From time to time, different players provided
information about this
powerful piece of ammunition in their arsenal. Caro’s
Book of Poker Tells; The
Ultimate Guide to Poker
Tells and Beyond Tells did a
more-than-plausible job of
introducing readers to this
Leadville
(Continued from page 34)
Ultimately, he was killed
in a gunfight in Skagway
AK in 1898.
By 1893, the “2-mile
high city” had more than
What makes this book
unique is that Navarro is a
retired FBI agent has been
studying and using his
ability to read “non-verbal
behaviors” to detect deception and solve cases involving criminals and terrorists
for more than two decades
with the FBI. Even more
interesting is the fact he con-
60,000 residents. That
year, the U.S. Government
moved to the gold standard
which eventually brought
Leadville’s silver boom to
a bust.
By the turn of the century, Leadville’s glory
players
worldwide
letting them know what tells
they project. (But if you’re
looking to see what those
tells are, forget it. He does
not reveal those specific tells
to opponents).
Fifteen chapters, illustrations and a nice index to topics, along with a reasonable
price make this one of the
bargains of the year. Those
chapters include learning
to conceal, not reveal; high
and low confidence tells,
tells of the hands, tells of the
mouth and movement tells
such as touching the neck the
back of the neck, exhaling,
face stroking and pacifying
moves.
It doesn’t matter what
level you play, if this book
teaches you one or two things
to watch for or avoid doing
yourself in a game, it has
paid for itself immediately.
It will pay for itself so it’s
a must-have book!
—Howard Schwartz
days were gone. The area’s
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Metaphysical Poker & Life
Charlie Shoten
How I Eliminate
Forever My
Stressful
Feelings—
You Can Too!!!
All of our major and minor
industries provide a product or service. Relieving
stress is the biggest of all.
The medical profession, the
pharmaceutical and drug
industry, the entertainment
industries, the tobacco and
alcohol industries, are major
ones I can think of off my
head. I, Charlie Shoten
claim that I have developed
a simple strategy that has
not only reduced my stressful feelings temporarily,
but have eliminated them
from my life forever. In my
writings (book & articles) I
never, believe it or not, have
been challenged by anyone
(believe it or not) that has
disagreed with me or challenged my conclusions. If I,
a sufferer of chronic depression and high anxiety levels
all my life could reduce and
eventually eliminate these
stressful feelings from my
life forever, anyone making
the effort and commitment
who follows my simple
suggestions should also be
able to.
The Ten Commitments
help me notice and let go
of my (PMITB) poisonous
memories, ideas, thoughts
and beliefs. (PMITB) cause
stress. In my last article in
PPN I shared why I believe
there is nothing more important I can do for myself and
every other person in my
life than diminish my stressful feelings. I developed and
started to use this strategy
four years ago. It is an antidote to all of the external
brainwashing, neglect and
abuse I have ever been subjected to. For example, years
ago I perceived that one of
my best friends stole my
business from me at a time
when I was very vulnerable.
I was holding onto and feeling so much hate and resentment toward him that it was
literally killing me. I could
not get away from it. I paid
From My Mind To Yours
the price with serious mental
and physical disease.
These stressful feelings
festered in me for over 20
years. I could find little
relief. They literally were
ruining my life. When I
started to use the meanings
in my ten commitments to
help me notice and let go
of my (PMITB), that were
causing my stress, I experienced relief. After a few
years those feelings hardly
bother me anymore. Being
free of hate and resentment
is a blessing I can’t describe.
Hate and resentment are a
form of torture. I now realize that I unconsciously
sent signals to this person
and they caused him to be
very angry with me. I used
him. Because of severe
neglect in my early life I
needed to bring the hate and
resentment already festering in me from childhood
to light. Once I identified
the (PMITB) related to this
stress and I let go of them, I
felt no more hate and resentment anymore. Few can
ever escape from their hates
and resentments.
In my last article I shared
how I have organized ten
commitments whose meanings act to help me notice
and let go of poisonous
memories, ideas, thoughts
and beliefs (PMITB). They
are the most constructive
human forces ever identified. We all know them and
are endowed with them.
The ten commitments, having been brainwashed into
my mind, act as an antidote
to all of the brainwashing,
neglect and abuse I have
ever been subjected to or
that I created in response to
neglect or abuse. In my previous article in PPN I shared
how I use commitments 1-4.
My fifth commitment, “ I
believe and trust in myself”,
forces me to be 100%
responsible for everything
that occurs in my life and to
recognize how powerful I
am. All ten of my commitments are God given powers
that we all already possess. I
focus them on the (PMITB),
that I identify. This has
become my number one priority in life. I rely on these
forces (ten commitments),
within myself. I have always
possessed them but never
appreciated or had any idea
how I could use them to
help me feel better. These
forces are constructive, healing, and are birth endowed
in all of us. After repeating
my fifth commitment thousands of times I never feel
that I am lacking anything
anymore. It acts as an antidote to any neglect or abuse
that causes me to believe
any thought about myself
that doesn’t serve me, or one
that actually denigrates me. I
take 100% responsibility.
The sixth commitment,
“ I am calm, confident
and clear, wait for my best
choice to appear after considering all my choices and
the consequences of each”
is particularly helpful during
the long hours of a poker
tournament. It is worth any
amount of time that you
take to memorize it and
self-brainwash it’s meaning
into your mind. It will make
you more patient, more
thoughtful, and keep you
from destructive compulsive
reactions. It will help you
act decisively. No more need
for drugs, smoking, drinking
alcohol and all compulsive
behaviors. Noticing and letting go of our (PMITB), are
the only antidote you need.
This diminishes stressful
feelings cumulatively and
permanently. (PMITB) kill
you.
The seventh commitment, “ I am not attached
to outcome”, is a reminder
to focus on the work to
be done, embrace every
outcome and keep an open
mind. The universe is continually presenting us with
a smorgasbord of presents
for every effort we make.
If we look for specific
results, we will miss many
beneficial outcomes such
as the learning experience.
In poker this is essential.
The eighth commitment, “ I
humbly FORGIVE anyone
who knowingly or unknowingly, through word thought
or deed, has neglected or
abused me, as I humbly
ask for FORGIVENESS
from anyone that I have
knowingly or unknowingly,
through word thought or
deed neglected or abused”.
Forgiveness is recognized
worldwide in every constructive teaching as one
of the most healing forces
known to mankind.
The ninth commitment
is “ I notice the next, next,
next and next (PMITB) that
appears and repeat commitments one through nine”.
The tenth commitment, “ I
maintain my attitude of gratitude” is the glue to keep all
Ten Commitments working
together as a dominant force
in my life. What chance
does a thought terrorist or
any terrorist have against
our powerful commitments?
All terrorist efforts will only
end in our destroying them
so they can enjoy their next
life with their beautiful virgins. Let’s help them out.
With the holidays here
now, although you shouldn’t
need any event to motivate
you, make the commitment,
as I have, to implement the
meanings of the ten commitments into your mind.
Terrorist forces within us
prevent us from having a
radiant contagious smile, a
joyous mindset and a happy
stress free life. We pass
d
(PMITB) onto our children
and they screw up their lives
as well.
For signed copies of
“No-Limit Life”, or just to
say hello, call or e-mail.
Volume discounts available
for the holidays. * I forgot
the 4th commitment, the
most important one. I will
add it in my next article.
Reach Charlie—
For Speaking
Engagements &
Live Play Internet
Tournament Coaching
702 270-4877
[email protected]
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JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
41
Entertainment
Listings
Entertainment RePORT
By LEN BUTCHER
I don’t know about you, but in the
three weeks before Christmas,
I don’t think I heard any song
played more than Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad”.
Which I happen to love, and I love the guy who sings
it, so I’m pleased to tell all of you who feel the
Jose Feliciano same way that Feliciano will be performing at the
Chumash Casino in California January 5th.
I always thought he was Mexican, but it turns out, this singer/guitarist hails from Puerto Rico. Before you ask, he was born blind, but
as we all know, it didn’t seem to hinder him much when it came to
music.
He grew up, from the age of 5, in New York City’s Spanish Harlem.
Surrounded by music, he wanted to learn the guitar, so he would lock
himself in his room for up to 14 hours a day to listen to 1950s rock
albums as well as classic guitarists like Andrés Segovia and jazz players like Wes Montgomery. He was 10 at the time. Wish the hell I had
that kind of commitment. He quit school at 17, played clubs for a few
years, then in 1966, he was performing in Argentina where some reps
from RCA Victor saw him and asked him record an album in Spanish.
The result was two smash hits with the singles “Poquita Fe” and
“Ustéd”.
He followed up with two more successful albums and became a
household name in Latin America. But he wanted that same recognition in the U.S., so moved to LA where he composed the above-mentioned “Feliz Navidad” as well as “Light My Fire” and “High Heel
Sneakers”. These three songs led to fame and fortune for the blind
performer.
Don’t know if you know this, but Feliciano wrote and performed
the theme song to the 1970s TVcomedy series Chico and the Man, and
played a guest role on that series as Chico’s (Freddie Prinze) cousin.
Over the years, he has performed around the world, and received
a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. This past year, he recorded his
first instrumental album, Six String Lady, dedicated to Andres Segovia.
This album is available only for download from his personal website.
And he just released his new Spanish album, Jose Feliciano y amigos,
in which he joined in duets with other Latin American stars. I really
recommend seeing his show. It’s been about 10 years since I last saw
him, but I’ve found guys like him just get better with time. Wish I
could say the same about myself.
If you’re an Art Garfunkel fan, or were a fan of
Simon & Garfunkel, you’ll be able to catch up with
the talented singer/songwriter in the next month
as he appears at the Chumash Casino in Southern
California January 5th and at the Las Vegas Hilton
January 12th.
Art Garfunkel
Hard to believe that Garfunkel has been performing for 50 years, having started in 1956 with his partner Paul Simon,
who he met in the sixth grade growing up in Queens, NY.
In 1964, singing as Simon & Garfunkel, they released their first
album titled Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Following the release, which
didn’t really get anybody’s attention. The pair then split, but the following year, their producer lifted the song, “Sound of Silence” and
released it as a single. The rest, as they say, is history.
But after releasing Bridge Over Troubled Waters in 1970, the two
again went their separate ways. Let’s face it, their relationship was
not exactly stable. They made great music together, but once that
was done, they didn’t seem to see eye to eye on a lot of things.
Then in 1981, he and Simon reunited once again for their famous
concert in Central Park. Everything seemed fine and they went on a
world tour, but again, those same old problems resurfaced and they
again parted.
In 2003, he and Simon reunited one more time and buried their disagreements once and for all, going on a very successful world tour.
Make no mistake, though, Garfunkel is a very talented performer
on his own, which you’ll find out if you can catch his show at either
casinos in January.
Len Butcher, a 25-year resident of Las Vegas, is an
online columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal
and a former Managing Editor of the Las Vegas Sun
and of Gaming Today. Reach him at [email protected]
42
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
Poker Player Advertisers are shown in RED along with their ad’s page number
To list your event, contact Len Butcher, Entertainment Editor at [email protected]
ARIZONA
Beatlemania Live
Casino Arizona (15)
CALIFORNIA
Chumash Casino Resort (40) Jose Feliciano
Ballroom Dance Party
Cambodian Dance Party
Crystal Casino & Hotel
Karaoke
El As De Oros Night Club
B.B. King
Harrah’s Rincon
Hollywood Park Casino (7) Finish Line Lounge
Pechanga Resort & Casino (39) Bonnie Raitt
CONNECTICUT
Bryan Adams
Foxwoods Resort Casino
FLORIDA
The Beach Boys
Crystal Palace Casino
Brad Garrett
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel
NEW JERSEY
Tony Pace
Hilton Hotel & Casino
Phil Vassar
Taj Majal Hotel & Casino
NEW YORK
Greg Allman
Seneca Niagara Casino
NEVADA-LAS VEGAS
Magician Steve Wyrick
Aladdin Hotel & Casino
Donn Arden’s Jubilee!
Bally’s Resort & Casino
“The Price is Right” Live Stage Show
Boulder Station Hotel & Casino (8) Johnny Gill
Elton John
Caesar’s Palace
Johnny Fortuno
Cannery Hotel & Casino
Larry G. Jones
Fitzgerald’s Hotel & Casino
Gold Coast (22)
Harrah’s Hotel & Casino
Imperial Palace Hotel & Casino
Joker’s Wild (10)
Las Vegas Hilton
Luxor Resort & Casino
Mandalay Bay Resort &
Casino
MGM Grand Hotel & Casino
The Mirage Hotel & Casino (11)
Monte Carlo Resort & Casino
(17)
Palace Station Hotel &
Casino (8)
Palms Casino & Resort (43)
Red Rock Hotel & Casino
Riviera Hotel & Casino (21)
Sahara Hotel & Casino (18)
Sam’s Town Hotel & Casino (41)
Santa Fe Station (8)
Stratosphere Hotel &
Casino
Sunset Station (8)
Texas Station (8)
Treasure Island
Venetian Hotel & Casino
LAKE TAHOE
Harrah’s/Harvey’s Lake Tahoe
RENO
Peppermill Hotel & Casino
OKLAHOMA
Cherokee Casino
Comanche Red River Casino (31)
OREGON
Wildhorse Resort & Casino
Dec 27-31, 7 p.m.
Jan 5, 8 p.m.
Thursdays 8 p.m. to Midnight, Sundays 2-6 p.m.
Fridays 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Thursday through Monday
Presents Banda Nortina Sats 8 p.m.-3 a.m.
Jan 4-5, 8 p.m.
Live Jazz, Tues. 8 p.m.
Dec 29-31, 8 p.m.
Jan 12, 9 p.m.
Jan 13, 8 p.m.
Dec 29, 7 & 10 p.m.
Jan 14-19, 8 p.m.
Jan 20, 8 p.m.
Jan 7, 8 p.m.
Ongoing, Wednesday through Monday, 7 & 10 p.m.
Sat-Thu, 8 p.m.
Tues, Thurs & Sat, 2:30 p.m. & Fri, 8 p.m.
Jan 13, 8 p.m.
Jan 30-31, 9 p.m.
Jan 5-6, 8 p.m.
Thurs thru Mon, 9 p.m.
Tue thru Sun (dark Mon), 7:30 p.m.,
Forever Plaid
Sun 3 p.m. & 7 p.m.
Rita Rudner
Ongoing (dark sundays), 8 p.m.
Legends In Concert
Mondays through Saturdays, 7 & 10 p.m.
Troubador Lounge-Live Entertainment Fri & Sat, 9 p.m.
Art Garfunkel
Jan 12, 8 p.m.
Menopause, the Musical
8 p.m. nightly Sat thru Thu
Carrot Top
Sun thru Fri, 8 p.m. & Sat, 7 & 9 p.m.
7 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays, Sundays; 8 p.m.
Mamma Mia
Fridays; 7 & 10:30 p.m. Saturdays, Mondays.
Justin Timberlake
Jan 19, 8 p.m.
KA.
Fri thru Tue, 7:30& 10:30 p.m.
Impressionist Danny Gans
8 p.m. (Monday thru Friday)
Jay Leno
Jan 5-6, 10:30 p.m
The Beatles LOVE
Thursdays thru Mondays, 7:30 & 10:30 p.m.
Tuesdays thru Saturdays, 7pm; Tuesdays &
Magician Lance Burton
Saturdays. 7 & 10 p.m.
Earl Turner
Thu thru Sun, 8 p.m.
Gabe Kaplan’s Laugh Trax
Tuesdays thru Saturdays, 7 p.m.
Playboy Comedy Club
Saturdays, 8 & 10:30 p.m.
Zowie Bowie
Nightly, 8 p.m.
Crazy Girls
Wed thru Mon, 9:30 p.m.
La Cage
Wed thru Mon, 7:30 p.m.
Splash
Tue thru Sun, 9:30 p.m
Neil Diamond Tribute
Sun thru Thu, 7 p.m.
The Scintas
Tue-Sat, 7 p.m.
The Amazing Jonathan
Fri-Wed, 10 p.m.
The Platters, Coasters and
8 p.m. nightly
Drifters
Wrecking Crew
Dec 27, 8:30 p.m.
Kenny Rankin
Jan 27, 8 p.m.
Bite
Ongoing, 10:30 p.m.
American Superstars
Ongoing, 6:30 & 8:30 p.m.
Viva Las Vegas
Ongoing, 2 & 4 p.m.
The Whip-Its
Saturdays, 10:30 p.m.
Love Shack
Fri & Sat, 9 p.m.
Mystere
Ongoing, Wednesdays thru Saturdays 7:30 p.m.
Phantom of the Opera
Nightly, 7 & 10 p.m.
Blue Man Group
Nightly, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m.
Gordie Brown
Ongoing, 7:30 p.m. (dark Wed & Thu)
Joan Jett & The Blackhearts Jan 6, 7:30 p.m.
Guns N’ Roses
Jan 13, 8 p.m
Big Bad Bubba
T-Bone Road
Jan 10, 9 p.m.
Dec 29-30, 8 p.m.
Debra Arlyn
Dec 31, 9 p.m.
Mark Seif—From
the Courtroom to
the Poker Room
the California State Poker
Championship and the Four
Queens Classic and finished
strong in Omaha High, Pot
Limit Holdem and Seven
Card Stud.
Today, you don’t have to
head to a big tournament or
invest thousands of dollars to
play with one of poker’s best
pros. All it takes is a visit
online to AbsolutePoker.
com. There, Mark regularly
plays in a variety of online
tournaments, inviting poker
players from around the
world to call his bluffs.
But it’s not all fun and
games. Mark is often heard
telling aspiring poker players
to practice on-line because
of the speed and variety of
the game.
“One of the main benefits
to new players of playing
online is the wide variety
of players it immediately
exposes you to,” says Mark.
Players are immediately
forced to adjust to many
different styles of play, preparing them for live-table
action. He also notes that
the volume of play online
is extremely beneficial for
taking your game to the
next level. “When you play
online, you’re dealt - on
average - four times as many
hands as you’re dealt in live
games. The speed can definitely help you improve your
game.”
Mark’s integrity and his
intelligence are well known
in the industry. He has a
“no holds barred” attitude
towards poker and uses
whatever he can for strategic advantage at the tables
whether he’s playing in
tournaments or with friends
– live or online.
You can find Mark Seif
online at AbsolutePoker.com.
He’ll be waiting for you at
the tables. But be careful.
He’ll be calling your bluffs.
Minimum of $100,000 in prizes including
an entry into the 2007 World Series of Poker®
To qualify, you must play 50 hours* each month in the Bally’s or Paris Poker Rooms starting
December 1, 2006 and ending March 1, 2007 or a combined total of 200 hours for that period.
The No-Limit Hold ’Em Freeroll Tournament will take place on Saturday, March 3, 2007.
VIP parking available to qualified players.
See a Poker Room Supervisor for details.
www.ballyslasvegas.com
www.parislasvegas.com
*You must play limit or no-limit live poker to qualify. Tournaments and lessons not included. A Total Rewards® card is required to record hours.
You must present your Total Rewards card to the Poker Room Supervisor before you start playing and you must have your card checked out
when finished in order to accumulate hours. Any player who does not check out will forfeit all hours for that day. Must be 21 or older to gamble.
Know When To Stop Before You Start.® Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-522-4700. ©2006, Harrah’s License Company, LLC.
B6-0147
A
Former attorney, Mark Seif, collects a new retainer.
THERE’S MORE... ONLINE!
www.
pokerplayernewspaper.
COM
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
43
ICTAFCOA
2006-2007 WORLDWIDE
POKER TOURNAMENTS
KILLER Poker
By John Vorhaus
NOW! Get Tournament Listings at our website: www.pokerplayernewspaper.com
In certain circles I am known as the
King of the Acronym (or KOTA). As the King, it’s
my job to come up with new ways to describe poker
situations and the underlying poker mindset. In the
name of doing that job, may I now introduce you
to ICTAFCOA: Increasing Commitment to a Failing
Course of Action. ICTAFCOA is an immensely powerful concept in poker because it explains so well how
we go so wrong.
Say you’re heads up against a calling station, a
real LFOTCP (Last Float on the Clueless Parade). You
have tried to bluff him off his hand for five straight
hands now, and he’s called you down every time. At
some point you become convinced that he can’t possibly call again. So you bet. And he calls. And he wins.
That, dear friends, is ICTAFCOA.
Or how about this? You’re in a game that’s way too
tough for you and you’ve already been pushed around
on a bunch of hands. Instead of trading down to an
easier game, you stubbornly stick to your game plan
(such as it is) of call and pray, call and pray, call and
pray. In this instance, ICTAFCOA can only lead to chip
oblivion, unless you come to your senses in time.
Alcoholics have an increasing commitment to a failing course of action. Flopheads do, too.
People who stubbornly stay in toxic relationships
with abusive partners have ICTAFCOA. People who
call with pocket kings in the face of an ace on the flop
and multi-way raises do, too.
Compulsive gamblers who gamble on in the spent
hope of getting well or getting even are caught in the
worst throes of this affliction. Enough said.
No, not enough said! Because you’re not a compulsive gambler. You’re a conscious, conscientious poker
player who knows what you’re doing and who tries
to do your best. But there are holes in your game
(just like everyone’s), and if you’re not forever trying
to plug those holes, then ICTAFCOA has you by the
throat.
You don’t have to be stuck in this, you know.
All it takes is a commitment to change, a
willingness to see things as they are, not
as you desperately wish for them to be.
You can stop trying to bluff the unbluffable.
You can stop trying to bully the bully-proof.
You can stop letting your errors bleed your
bankroll.
You can recognize your natural commitment to failing courses of action and change course now.
More than anything, you can open your eyes to the
real reality of the way you play. Draw up a list of the
fruitless habits you have that hurt your game. Now
set about to strike items from the list. Do you find
yourself folding when you should call because you’re
not sure if the odds justify a call? Then study the
stupid odds so that next time you’ll know. Do you
call when you should raise because congenital timidity stunts your game? Then study your timidity, and
discover its roots in your fear of losing lots of money.
Recognize that quashing the fear of losing lots of
money is the straight and well-lit path to winning lots
of money instead.
Go to work! Tear yourself free from increasing
commitments to failing courses of action. Don’t let
ICTAFCOA stand between the poker player you are
and the player you want to be.
[John Vorhaus is the author of Poker Night and
the Killer Poker book series, and news
ambassador for UltimateBet.com.]
44
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
>Denotes Advertiser; Poker Association Events also denoted: t=World Poker Tour,
s=World Series of Poker and e=European Poker Tour.
To list your 3-day events contact: A.R. Dyck, Managing Editor, at: [email protected]
DATE
EVENT
LOCATION
>Jan 4-11
PokerStars.com Caribbean Adventure tParadise Island, Bahamas (AdPg 56)
Jan 4-25
Gold Strike World Poker Open
tHorseshoe Casino Hotel / Gold Strike Casino Resort, Tunica, MS
Jan 5-14
Poker Derby
Hollywood Park Casino (AdPg 7), L.A., CA
>Jan 6-19
Crown Australian Poker Ch’ship (“Aussie Millions”) Crown Casino, Melbourne, Australia
Jan 8-17
WSOP Circuit Event
sGrand Casino Resort Tunica, Tunica, MS
>Jan 17-22
St.Croix Poker Classic
St.Croix Casino, Turtle Lake, WI
Jan 17-20
Scandinavian Open
eCasino Copenhagen (Radisson SAS Scandinavian Hotel), Denmark
Jan 21-25
World Poker Open
tGold Strike Casino, Tunica, MS
Jan 22-Feb 3
Poker Classic
IP Hotel & Casino, Biloxi, MS
Jan 24-28
Alberta Poker Championship
Casino Edmonton, Edmonton, AB, Canada
>Jan 25-29 Heartland Poker Tour Event Hooters, Las Vegas, NV
Jan 25-Mar 6
LA Poker Classic
tCommerce Casino, Commerce, CA
Jan 26-30
Borgata Poker Classic
tThe Borgata, Atlantic City, NJ
Jan 29-Feb 7
WSOP Circuit Event
sHorseshoe Council Bluffs, Council Bluffs, IA
>Feb 1-13
OK State Championship
Cherokee Casino Resort, Tulsa, OK
Feb 7-17
WSOP Circuit Event
sHarrah’s Atlantic City, Atlantic City, NJ
Feb 7-19
Midwest Regional Poker Ch’ship Caesars Indiana, Elizabeth, IN
Feb 8-10
Texas Hold’Em Triple
Casino Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
Feb 11-21
WSOP Circuit Event
sHarrah’s Rincon, San Diego, CA
Feb 21-Mar 11
The Wynn Classic
The Wynn, Las Vegas, NV
eDeauville Casino, Deauville, France
Feb 21-24
French Open
Feb 22-24
WPT Invitational
Feb 28-Mar 4
Heartland Poker Tour Event
Lucky Nugget Card Club, Deadwood, SD
>Mar 1-27
Winnin’ o’ the Green
The Bicycle Casino (AdPg 3), Bell Gardens, CA
Mar 2-5
March Madness
Turning Stone Resort Casino, Verona, NY
Mar 3-5
Celebrity Invitational
Mar 3-6
National Heads-Up Poker Ch’ship Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV
sCaesars Atlantic City, Atlantic City, NJ
Mar 5-14
WSOP Circuit Event
Mar 7-11
Grand Final
eMonte Carlo Bay Resort, Monte Carlo
Mar 7-18
Spring Poker Festival
Concord Card Casino, Vienna, Austria
>March 9-18 Ultimate Poker Challenge
Binion’s Gambling Hall, Las Vegas, NV (AdPg 26)
>Mar 12-16
Bay 101 Shooting Star
tBay 101 (AdPg 32), San Jose, CA
Mar 14-18
Heartland Poker Tour Event
Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel, Tama, IA
Mar 21-31
WSOP Circuit Event
sCaesars Atlantic City, Atlantic City, NJ
Mar 25-28
World Poker Challenge
tGrand Sierra Casino Resort, Reno, NV
Mar 26-Apr 4
WSOP Circuit Event
Caesars Indiana, Elizabeth, IN
Mar 28-Apr 1
EPT Grand Final
eMonte Carlo Bay Resort, Monte Carlo
>Mar 29-Apr 9 Sport of Kings
Apr 1-4
Foxwoods Poker Classic
tFoxwoods Resort Casino, Mashantucket, CT
Apr 7-27
5-Star World Poker Classic
tBellagio, Las Vegas, NV
>Apr 10-30
Stars & Stripes
Bicycle Casino (AdPg 3), Bell Gardens, CA
Apr 18-28
Spring Poker Round-Up
Wildhorse Resort & Casino, Pendleton, OR
Apr 21-27
WPT Championship
tBellagio Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, NV
Apr 23-May 2
WSOP Circuit Event
sCaesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV
>May 3-13
Scotty Nguyen Poker Challenge III Cherokee Casino Resort, Tulsa, OK
>May 4-17
Mirage Poker Showdown
Mirage Hotel & Casino (AdPg 11), Las Vegas, NV
May 4-20
Heavenly Hold’em
Commerce Casino, Commerce, CA
>May 8-20
NPA Tour
May 11-21
Spring Pot of Gold
Grand Sierra Hotel & Casino, Reno, NV
May 12-21
Turning Stone Classic
Turning Stone Resort Casino, Verona, NY
May 14-23
WSOP Circuit Event
sHarrah’s New Orleans, New Orleans, LA
>May 22-Jun 4 America’s Poker Classic
The Bicycle Casino (AdPg 3), Bell Gardens, CA
May 25-Jun 4
Spring Fling
Sycuan Resort & Casino, El Cajon, CA
May 26-Jun 8
Mandalay Bay Poker Ch’ship
Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, Las Vegas, NV
Fiesta Rancho Casino-Hotel
(cont’d from page39)
Card Room Roundup
the poker room
for complete details
or with any questions at:
702.631.7000.
Comps are offered at
the standard rate of $1 per
hour of play. Poker Players
accounts are managed
through the Genesis Player
System and track your
frequent player benefits.
Everything is keyed to your
Station Casinos’ player card,
The Boarding Pass, so be
sure to sign up before you
play.
Finally, I have saved the
one defining feature of the
Fiesta Rancho poker room
till last. It is one of the
extremely rare smokingstill-allowed poker rooms.
If you enjoy playing poker
and lighting up without having to leave your seat then
the Fiesta is definitely your
place. Take a short drive
then take a look at the place
that launched an empire and
while you’re here stop by
the poker room for some
great action, hot tournaments and the smoking lamp
is always lit.
—Joseph Smith, Sr.
POKER.....
the way
it was meant
to be
played....
welcome to the game
MANSION offers some of the most exciting competitions to challenge you and
take your game to the next level. Participate in daily qualification tournaments for
major televised events and take advantage of frequent added value tournaments.
Visit us for complete details and join the thousands of poker players who have
found a home at MANSION.
100% deposit bonus up to $1000
enter “ppusa” referr al code when registering
mansion.com
© Copyright 2006. MANSION is an internationally registered trademark. All rights reserved.
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
45
5)&0/-:5)*/(#&55&35)"/10,&3/*()5
8*5)5)&(6:4*410,&3/*()58*5)
5)&4&(6:4
*See Web site for details. Enjoy the free games, and before playing in the real-money games, please check
with your local jurisdiction regarding the legality of Internet poker. ©2006 Full Tilt Poker. All rights reserved.
46
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
50-&"3/$)"5"/%1-":8*5)5)&1304(08)&3&5)&:-*7&
4*(/61#0/646150
JA N UA RY 8 , 2 0 0 7
47
A MILLION BUCK
GRABS EVERY SS UP FOR
UNDAY
(THAT'S THIS PA
GE x 333.33, JUST
SO Y
OU KNOW)
SUNDAY MILLI
ON
THE WORLD'S L
ARGEST WEEKL
Y POKER TOUR
NAMENT

silly - Poker Player Newspaper

Transcription

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