WSOP tips

With the WSOP upon us yet again, I reckon it’s safe to say some actual advice about coping with the pressures of the Las Vegas nightlife and the various WSOP events is in high order. I know you’re aching to get there and I know you’re probably not planning to spend any time on anything else than poker once there, but you’re still human after all. Rather than to fight against your condition as a mere human, it’s far better to embrace it and to give Mother Nature what’s hers. Don’t forget to put in some exercise during your stay. The desert heat may not leave much room for outdoors activities, but Las Vegas has got to be the place with the highest number of air conditioned gyms and swimming pools per square mile, so make sure you take advantage of that. Many of the longer WSOP events come down to sheer stamina, and by keeping your body ticking the way it’s supposed to, you’ll make sure you stay on top of your game for longer.

The desert heat also means you shouldn’t leave anything in your car at any time either. Stuff will melt, explode and even catch fire, so when you leave your ride parked in front of the venue, make sure you empty it of all such potentially dangerous items (cigarette lighters are by far the most dangerous on the list).

Register early for the events you intend to play in, especially if you have the cash for the buy-in. Trust me, you do not want to be turned back at the door the way many of last year’s potential Big Dance participants were. There’s nothing wrong with getting started on Day 1A of an event instead of Day 1B. Your odds are the same. Of course, if you’re waiting for someone to stake you or you’re hoping to win a last minute satellite into an event, things are different.

Playing in satellites always makes a lot of sense when it comes to events featuring as large a buy-in as most of the WSOP ones.
There are plenty of single table satellites running for pretty much every WSOP side event, and the buy-ins to these satellites (which carry pretty awesome individual odds by the way) can be as low as $65. Most of the time, you’ll be able to get something going for $125 or $175 though. The best time-frame to get something going satellite-wise is during the 24 hours before the event kicks off. Take a $2,000 NL Holdem event for instance (which is sure to draw tons upon tons of registrants). Most of the satellites running for such an event more than 24 hours prior to it, are $225 direct access ones. To get a $125 table going, you’d best wait some more.
Most of these 10–handed satellites pay out one WSOP side event seat only, but the odds are still pretty good, especially if you’re one of them “better than reasonable” live poker players.

Make sure the temptations Sin City throws your way (and there’ll be more of these than you could possibly expect) don’t get to your bankroll before you hit the poker tables. The Roulette, the Blackjack and the Craps tables are more than adept at sucking you dry of money before you ever realize you’re in trouble. Focus on your objectives and don’t lose sight of them. The same goes if you happen to win or to cash in an event. Vegas is Vegas and as soon as you have the big dough stuffed into your pockets, you become an instant target for a wide range of interests, from legit casino operators to 2-dime pick pockets.

WSOP qualifiers – Steps tournaments

I know that the WSOP is upon us but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stick to online qualifiers to secure a seat. After all, the Series is long and the Main Event is still quite a bit off, giving you more than enough time to become one of the hundreds of online qualifiers who will belly up to the tables in Las Vegas this summer.

Steps SNGs represent one of the most straightforward ways to play your way to a WSOP seat. For those of you who may not know: Steps SNGs are a string of SNG tournaments you need to climb in order to play for your WSOP prize package. There are usually quite a few SNGs in the Steps ladder. Full Tilt Poker has 7 in each, which means you need to fight your way through 7 SNGs with your eyes on the prize. Each of these SNGs features progressively bigger buy-ins, meaning that you can buy into any step directly, without the need to a actually win your way up. The whole thing only really makes true sense though if you play through all the steps, to finally get your hands on the prized reward for as small a buy-in as possible (a mere few dollars). I know what you’ll say: fighting your way up through 7 steps is quite a long-shot, isn’t it? Well, not quite. You see, it’s not just the winner who advances. As a matter of fact, there’s a lot more to Steps SNGs than to regular ones in the sense that instead of just one money bubble, there are several bubbles in Steps tourneys, each of them with different significance.
Here’s a sample breakdown of one of Full Tilt Poker’s Steps SNGs: first and second place move on up to the next step. 3rd and 4th stay on the current step. 5th and 6th move down one step and the remaining players move all the way down to the first level. As you can see, first you play not to move down to the very bottom, then you play to stay on your current step and then to advance. A Steps SNG is therefore non stop action almost from the get go.

As you probably know, the money bubble is the most delicate part of a SNG strategy wise. Because you’ll have to deal with no fewer than 3 such bubbles in each and every one of the Steps SNGs in which you play, that’s exactly the part of SNG strategy you want to excel at.
When making these recommendations, I’m assuming that you’re 100% in the know as far as regular SNG strategy goes. If you’re not, I’m sorry to break it to you but Steps tourneys are just not for you then.
You should start out your Steps SNGs the regular way: being extra tight in the beginning. This approach is justified and even called for by a whole bunch of factors which I’m not going to detail in this here piece. After the initial warm-up stage though, the Steps SNG turns into an entirely different animal, and aggression becomes the key word. Despite the fact that these tournaments feature several bubbles, you need to focus on surviving the last one, because otherwise you just won’t advance. Bubbles can be played in two different ways: the farmer way and the fox way. The farmer tightens up looking to make it past the bubble with the chips he has. The fox begins stealing blinds, taking advantage of the farmers’ extra tightness to accumulate chips for the later stages. Obviously, you need to be a fox. Aggression can be extremely tricky though, as it’s a volatile weapon that may backfire in any moment. You need to be selective about your aggression by picking your spots properly.

WPT Grand Prix de Paris aftermath

The WPT’s Grand Prix de Paris has been in the books for a while now, but we do need to take a look back at it, because the event carried special significance in more than one respect. First of all, it proved that not only did the WPT belong on the old continent, it definitely belonged in the Aviation Club de France. The venue marks a return to the roots of the game, conjuring times when one had to dress a certain way to be allowed into the club to play. This aspect may not be all that appealing to the new generation of online poker players, but then again, those same folks may want to experience too what it’s like to play the game the way it was meant to be played in ye olden days. Located in the very heart of Paris, the Aviation Club de France may not be suited for hosting truly massive-scale events, because of the lack of space. It should remain on the schedule nonetheless, as a speck of color, because its old-world charm is not something many of the modern venues can ever hope to deliver.

The WPT’s Grand Prix de Paris event drew attention to the number of registrants such an event can muster, in the wake of the EPT, just before the WSOP kicks off (and players take a little bit of time off to man up to the task ahead). The 247 players who coughed up the €10,000 buy-in may not look like an impressive number, but believe me, considering the above named circumstances and the fact that the event had only been announced a few weeks before kick-off, the starting field was more than decent. There’s been a lot of talk lately about how the vast number of various regional poker tours that are available has limited participant numbers in WPT events. I think the Grand Prix de Paris comes to show there’s little substance in such theories.
The bottom line is, WPT player numbers are just fine, and with a massive event announced in London this autumn, soon we’ll have solid proof to that.

What else did the GPDP teach us? Properly regulated poker works, that’s what. Not only does it work the way it’s supposed to, it’s good for the game in general. Now, I’m not saying that the French model is something the good old US of A should pick up too, but as imperfect as it is, it has managed to drive home the point that regulated poker is not only working for the government, but for the players as well. At the Grand Prix de Paris, there were numerous amateur players present, who pretty much altered the face of the game. The pros did prevail in the end, but the amateurs put up a great fight and generated a lot of extra value.

Sorel Mizzi was amongst the revelations of the tournament. This guy has unfolded into a true monster during the Grand Prix de Paris and even though he did not win the high rollers’ event, he finished 2nd, taking down a substantial prize, and scoring yet another mark in the W column of a series of live events in which he seemed like he cashed at will lately.
Not so long ago, Mizzi used to be known as an online player, but he seems to have happened upon some sort of revelation recently, as far as live poker is concerned. Whether or not he’s WSOP bracelet material will be revealed this summer, as he will certainly look to extend his excellent run, by taking part in as many WSOP events as possible.

Rush Poker: a profitable long-term choice?

Rush Poker is great. There are no downtimes and finally, there are no reasons whatsoever for you to play anything less than premium hands. All you need to do is to hit the fold button a few times to pick up a hand good enough to take to the flop against just about anyone. Rush Poker is online poker on crack. People love it, and the pace of the game is enough to hook even skeptics within a few minutes.
Is Rush Poker a viable alternative to the regular online poker tables when it comes to long term success though?

Let’s take a look at some of the advantages that Rush Poker offers. First of all, there’s the number of hands played per hour. Rush Poker is quite unbeatable on this level: in live poker games, a player can stuff about 30 hands into the hour. At the online tables that number goes up to 80-90, depending on the number of opponents one faces. At the Rush Poker tables, squeezing 250 hands into the hour is within anyone’s reach. What kind of changes does this increased speed bring about? Well, if you know how to secure a nice edge, you’ll love to play that many hands: your hourly rate will go right through the roof. You can even relax a little and exploit more marginal situations too: despite the increased variance, your hourly rate will still be a more than decent one. The problems rear their heads when you lose though. If you’re an overall loser, Rush Poker will amplify your losses and you’ll end up dropping far more per hour.
Another thing about playing this many hands per hour: the poker rake that you pay to Full Tilt Poker will sky-rocket as well. Now, I’m not saying that this is the reason behind the launching of the new poker variant by Full Tilt, but it definitely doesn’t hurt the room’s interests to collect several times as much rake at the Rush Poker tables than at the regular ones.

What this means to you is that you simply must sign up for the Full Tilt rakeback, As the novelty value of Rush Poker wears off and as players become more and more adept at maximizing their Rush Poker edges (a task which is not exactly difficult either), the edges will shrink to the point where without a Full Tilt Poker rakeback deal, you’ll find it impossible to beat the rake.
The fact that you have no history with your opponents is often listed as an advantage for Rush Poker, but most of the time it’s a huge drawback. Once you establish your basic ABC approach to the game, you’ll find yourself pressed to move on and to create new edges, only it’ll be an impossible undertaking. Good players build the majority of their edges on reading their opponents, on getting to know their betting patterns and on exploiting their mistakes, using the reads that they make. In Rush Poker, they’ll be denied all that. They’ll have to rely 100% on the mathematical aspect of the game and that will hurt their ability to go out and to create value for themselves.

This leads us to the another huge disadvantage that Rush Poker carries: players will simply see their poker skills peak and their growth as players stunted. If you stick with Rush Poker, you’ll pretty much reduce yourself to a fish in due time.
In conclusion: Rush Poker is great fun and it is excellent as a temporary solution to taking a break from the “real” poker tables. It is by no means fit to build a bankroll (let alone a career) on.

The year of the women – Liv Boeree and the others

2010 is the year that will go down in poker history as the year of the women. Women have traditionally been viewed as eye candy in the poker industry. Poker sites would hire female poker players as in-house pros, but trust them with the simplest of tasks only, at the poker tables. That’s right, with a few exceptions, all the women had to do was to look good and to make sure everyone caught a glimpse of the badge they were wearing. In order to break out of that mold, a female poker player would have to achieve something truly phenomenal. Something like winning the largest ever EPT Main Event…but I’m cutting ahead of myself here.

Signs pointing towards 2010 turning into the year of the tigress rather than the tiger had popped up in earnest. In March, Annie Duke, a long-time poker industry presence and acknowledged poker talent, won the NBC Heads-up Poker Championship. Given that it was Annie Duke who did it, the industry wasn’t exactly surprised. It was not like Duke had to prove anything to shake off the mere eye-candy status. Her achievements were honored numerous times and she was indeed one of the few female players the industry viewed as one of the boys.
Things took a serious turn not long after though, when Vanessa Selbst took down the North American Poker Tour’s Mohegan Sun Main Event, in a rather dominant fashion, pocketing the $750k top prize.

The real story of the year – as far as female poker players are concerned – was that of Liv Boeree. The British pro, who is by the way an Astrophysicist and a model, not mention a guitar player for a rock band, got into poker on a reality show. The UltimatePoker Showdown was the perfect setup for her to get in touch with the game. Coached by Ultimate Bet’s Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke she had the perfect introduction to the poker world. It was Hellmuth and Duke who provided the inspiration for her, and it was their image that prompted her to start thinking seriously about a career in poker.
Fortunately for her, she found someone who would stake her in just about any live event with a buy-in under £2,000. While the limitation had her hands tied as far as high-buy-in events were concerned, she found a way to turn this handicap into an advantage. She started playing in satellites and she began winning seats in events to which she couldn’t have otherwise afforded the buy-in. The EPT’s recent San Remo Main Event – which she won – was no exception. She satellited her way into the poker tournament through a €500 qualifier, and ended up pocketing a return of €1.25 million on that small investment.

Boeree’s poker career started arching upwards when she signed her first sponsorship deal with Absolute Poker. At AP, her role was still that of eye-candy. She was supposed to be an ambassador for the room that would appeal to the young male segment, her actual poker skills forced to take a back seat to that image.
When UB signed her though, it would be an entirely different ballgame. The site would focus on selling her image as that of a real poker player. That new sort of attitude obviously helped her, and now with that spectacular EPT win under her belt, the sky is the limit.
What’s next for Liv? She says she’s looking forward to the WSOP. As the biggest live poker stage of the year, the WSOP would definitely be the right venue for these tigresses of the green felt to make a truly solid statement.

Sleep Deprivation and Poker

For serious players, the issue of sleep deprivation at the table is a stringent one indeed. Of course, I’m not talking about recreational players who only spend a few hours at the table on every session. I’m talking about hard grinders and online poker professionals for whom getting as much time in at the tables as possible is a matter of building up a solid bankroll or making a living. Of course, all those who aspire to join the ranks of poker professionals may also want to read this piece just to gain a basic understanding of what’s awaiting them once there.

Playing poker for a living is about grinding. You don’t need to look far for examples of professional players battling it out in a sleep deprived state. The durrrr challenge series had both players interrupting sessions several times on account of sleep deprivation. When you know you can potentially pocket millions in a few hours, it becomes an extremely counterproductive proposition to catch a few Zs. The problem is though that nature doesn’t really care about how much money one can make at the table, and when nature calls, top level poker pro or not, you’d do better to answer.
How exactly will sleep deprivation affect your play though? What sort of tricks will your body play on you once you deny it one of its most fundamental necessities? There’s no better way to run a case study on the effects of sleep deprivation at the poker table than taking a look at the Party Poker Big Game IV. The 48-hour long cash game marathon does push players right to the edge in every respect.

The first stage of sleep deprivation will accentuate players’ already existing weaknesses. If you’re someone who’s prone to tilting, you’ll tilt much easier. If you’re the master of the short-stack, you’ll find deep stacked play more difficult than ever. Thinking and staying focused at the poker table takes up energy. During the first stage of sleep deprivation, your body runs out of energy, thus you’ll end up exposed to a whole array of factors you dread.
During the middle stages, problems only get worse. Perception problems seep into the system as players start to misread situations. They give a bigger importance to less important issues and a smaller weight to more important ones. Memory will suffer too during this stage and players will tend to forget things they would’ve otherwise remembered.
Extreme sleep deprivation is a realm we should not even consider. It can drive people crazy and it can eventually lead to death, but obviously – as a poker player under reasonable circumstances – you will never push things this far.

Sleep deprivation – like all other things in poker – can be wonderfully exploited by those who are trained to better withstand its assault. Players who are trained to put in long hours at he tables, or who play an unusually high number of tables simultaneously will enjoy an advantage over their peers. Interestingly enough, such marathon poker events act as an equalizer, offering a fair chance to those whose skills are otherwise inferior. The long run puts good players to the test, and it does take away quite a bit from their edges. The key to staying focused over the long-run is to stay on your toes, and the key to that is adrenaline. If you’re playing at higher than usual stakes, you experience a rush of adrenaline. Adrenaline is the body’s way to keep your senses sharp under extreme circumstances. It is a valuable survival tool, one that can offer you help at the poker tables too.

The bottom line about sleep deprivation and the long-run is that those who are best when playing their worst will triumph. Everyone will be forced to play his/her worst in such games sooner or later. He who maintains a higher degree of control over his actions will walk away a winner.

A look back at the European Poker Tour 6th season – Monte Carlo

The European Poker Tour 6th season came to an end after a culmination in the Grand Final in Monte Carlo last week. Looking back at the series, it’s obvious it was a season just as good as any previous one, even better here and there, despite a rocky start that saw the first stop moved from Moscow to Kyiv on account of chaotic Russian legislation. Declared a sport a few years back, poker was suddenly outlawed in Russia on the eve of the EPT’s Moscow event. The organizers moved the setup to Kyiv, where Russia’s Maxim Lykov bested 300 players to walk away with the €330k top prize. The Russian then proceeded to finish 13th in the Snowfest stop of the series and he finished in the money in three other side events as well. More importantly, at the end of it all, he pocketed the EPT Player of the Year title as well.

Lykov’s Player of the Year title wasn’t the only noteworthy achievement of season 6 though. Jan Skampa became the final table king after he followed his EPT Villamoura 4th place with a win in the EPT’s Prague stop, which landed him a €683,100 prize. Skampa wasn’t the only Czech to do well. Martin Kabrhel became the side event king of the season. While his best Main Event performance was only a 60th place finish, Kabrhel dominated the side event scene by winning three such events during the season. He won in Villamoura and Prague and he won the high roller event in Deauville to top it all off. That win alone netted him a quarter million Euros.
On account of Kabrhel’s and Skampa’s great runs, the Czech Republic became the EPT Country of the year.

The 6th season of the EPT stood out on many more accounts too though. It broke the records for the largest and the smallest ever EPT events too. The EPT’s recent San Remo stop proved to be a huge success, attracting no fewer than 1,200 players. Liv Boeree won the event, after she’d secured her seat through a €500 super satellite .
The EPT Kyiv’s high roller event was the smallest EPT event in history: only 3 players registered. The eventual winner, Shaun Deeb, disposed of his opponents after a few hours of play, to pocket the €60,000 top prize.

As far as WSOP Main Event Champions were concerned, Peter Eastgate took the laurels in that category without any sort of problems. The Dane finished runner-up in the London event, and proceeded to cash in the Copenhagen Main Event followed by a final table finish in Deauville. This guy is certainly not the type of WSOP champion that goes and hides under a rock after the deed.
When it comes to surreal EPT moments, who could forget the EPT Berlin robbery, which saw masked gunmen brazenly attack the tournament security personnel, then walk away with the prize-pool. The perpetrators have been apprehended since and most of the money they stole was recovered. Kevin MacPhee won the event and walked away with €1 million, without the need to pull a gun on anyone.

The biggest winner of the 6th season was Harrison Gimbel of the US, who took down a €2.2 million prize in the PCA. Nicholas Chouity, the winner of the Grand Final came in second with €1.7 million.

Season 7 kicks off in August, but players eager to secure a seat in one of the events needn’t wait that long to get going. PokerStars will feature plenty of online qualifying possibilities throughout the summer.

Daniel Negreanu and his online poker antics

It’s quite unfathomable to imagine someone even remotely involved with poker who does not know Daniel Negreanu. The Canadian, also known at the poker table as Kid Poker, has built a career, a stellar reputation and the equivalent of what mere mortals consider “a fortune” several times over, through skill, spunk and stamina. He is one of the best known ambassadors of the game and – unlike some of the other similar-caliber poker personalities, he’s pretty much liked by everyone. Never the one to back out of a crazy live poker confrontation, Negreanu is currently second on the all-time tournament money list, and it’s difficult to even begin to comprehend the amount of money he’d amassed in high stakes cash games. Due to his easy-going personality, the Kid is a fixture on televised poker shows. The bottom line: when it comes to poker, this guy is the Full Package. Apparently. Or maybe not…Every successful person has an Achilles’ heel and online poker is apparently Negreanu’s.

Have you never wondered why you almost never hear anything about Kid Poker’s online antics? Well there was a reason for that. Word has it that that he himself has admitted online poker was not exactly something he excelled at. Apparently, the Kid has problems putting his reading and psychology skills to use at the online poker table.

Nonetheless, far be it from him to back down from a challenge. After working on his short handed skills for a while, Kid Poker took the proverbial bull by the horns and hit the high stakes online poker tables on Feb 25th this year. By high stakes one shouldn’t understand the nosebleed stakes that Dwan and his buddies play over at Full Tilt, but $100/$200 NL Holdem is a pretty respectable point to start, even for a poker superstar like Negreanu.

In the beginning of his high stakes run, Negreanu seemed to have shaken the online poker monkey off his back. He made around $200k from Feb 25th to about March 22nd. This data needs to be taken with a grain of salt though, as PokerStars doesn’t quite endorse data mining, so nothing’s 100% certain when someone tries to track a player at that poker room.

Apparently spring spelt the end of Negreanu’s good online poker run though. From March 22nd, he started slipping, and by 28th, he had squandered all his previous winnings. Writing it all off to a natural downswing, he got back into the fray, and began posting good numbers again. At one point, he was back up around $221k, and appeared to have done away with that monkey once again. Enter Mr. Zahmat. I don’t know who he is either, but Negreanu sure does by now. Kid Poker embarked on a huge losing streak again and dropped all his winnings, most of them to this guy. The largest pot that Mr. Zahmat took off Negreanu was a $85k whooper. Justin Bonomo was involved in that game as well, though he drew the short end of the stick again as he dropped $73k to Negreanu.

By the end of it all, Negreanu had apparently lost not only all his previous winnings, but found himself in a $8k hole too. Now I know the sample size is just too small to call Negreanu an online poker fish based on it. One thing is rather certain though: that online poker monkey is a tough one to beat off for the Canadian. Am I in a position to criticize him for his online poker performance (or lack thereof)? Definitely not. Are those who do so in such a position? Probably not. Therefore I say let’s just wait and see. Time will surely tell.