Poker From The Rail
a Poker Blog brought to you by Full Tilt Poker
Posted by Dave McCarthy | Filed under Bloggers Corner
Jack Julian Ury of Terre Haute Indiana, US Navy veteran of World War II and the oldest World Series of Poker Main Event participant ever, passed away Tuesday night, February 1, 2011.
Ury set the Main Event age record each of the last four years, competing in this year’s event at the age of 97.
Ury’s most memorable television moment came in a hand against Stephen Friedlander in the 2009 Main Event. Ury and Friedlander saw a flop of 7-6-6 and all of the chips found their way into the middle. Friedlander showed 7-6 and Ury said “You’re in trouble,” while waiting to turn over his 7-7, giving him a better full house and leaving Friedlander drawing to the case six. After fading the one-outer, Ury scooped the pot and stacked his chips with the help of his grandson, Seth Harrold.
The poker world remembers Ury – and his sevens full – with a Two Plus Two thread.
Ury was born on March 22, 1913 and married his wife Elizabeth on January 12, 1942. He served in the Navy during World War II and upon returning home worked in the postal service before retiring in 1978.
Ury in the 2009 Main Event:
Posted by Dave McCarthy | Filed under Bloggers Corner
We’re happy to have a guest post from ThePicotrain who Poker from the Rail staked in the MiniFTOPS Main Event back in a September writing contest. ThePicotrain wanted to discuss tournament selection with other Poker from the Rail readers. While normally this sort of thing would be directed to the Full Tilt Poker Forums, we figured we’d make an exception for a past contest winner. It’s also an interesting topic: How do you select which tournaments to play in?
Leave your thoughts on tournament selection in the comments section and ThePicotrain will select 3 entries to win FTP t-shirts. Be sure to sign your comment with your (FTP ID in parenthesis).
Thoughts on Tournament Selection
by ThePicotrain
This scenario may sound familiar to you: You’re playing in a poker tournament and the cards have not been going your way of late. What started as a journey to winning the grand prize has become a struggle just to get inside the bubble…
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers Corner
It was a big day on the site with the monthly $1,000,000 Guarantee hitting at the same time as the final events of MiniFTOPS XVIII. That created two prizepools over $1,000,000 and five players with paydays over 6 digits if you include the final day of Event #29. While spending my day railing I was having difficultly coming up with a theme for today’s post. Nothing spectacular was occurring deep in the final MiniFTOPS event, with the final one not finishing until the sun was up on the east coast, and the best final table at the time was in the $200k Guarantee. That table featured Lauren “locoenlacabeza” Kling, Jeff “YoungSupremacy” Hakim, Bryan “Boston3Party” Leskowitz, and former FTOPS winner “LuCkyTDoGG”.
This was until the $1,000,000 Guarantee started getting deep and one name jumped near the top. I had to double check a few times on the authenticity, but sure enough we had “missgrinder” ready to make a huge final table. “missgrinder” is none other than the better half of 2010 November Nine Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi (pictured above in the stands). She was near the top of the field while play condensed down and came to the final table as one of three players over a million in chips. She hung in tough and played well down the stretch but was unable to defeat table bully “dlanger610″. She finished the day collecting $141,000 for her efforts and easily the biggest rail at the final table.
While researching today’s post I could only find a little on the winner “dlanger610″. The best I came up with is being banned from the 2+2 forum. Congrats on that great accomplishment, I need to work on my efforts to get banned.
The rest of the evening was spent contemplating how much money was added to the prizepool of our smaller rolled players. The were very few huge names making a splash during MiniFTOPS XVIII meaning there are lot of players making a bump to the bankroll. I’ve spend a good part of the last few years railing tournaments both online and live (see the title of the blog) but found very few names marquee names deep in the fields. Over 210,000 players bought into this incarnation of the MiniFTOPS series pocketing well over $7.3million, I’m willing to bet the lower limit cash games are going to be juicy for the next few weeks.
Big Money Sunday and MiniFTOPS XVIII results below.
Tags: AlCantHang, Big Money Sunday, Bloggers on the Rail, MiniFTOPS
Posted by Dave McCarthy | Filed under Bloggers Corner
We’re happy to have Friend of the Blog — and one of poker’s best writers — guest posting at Poker from the Rail. Dr. Pauly, author of Tao of Poker and Lost Vegas, takes a wide-angled look at the biggest cash games in the world: from the days of Amarillo Slim to Isildur1, from tables in cyberspace to those in Macau, and players from Russian kingpins to Tom Dwan.
The Land of Unicorns: Macau
By Paul ‘Dr. Pauly’ McGuire
Last year at this time, everyone became enraptured with the true identity of Isildur1. The player from Sweden incurred massive swings at the nosebleed tables against Patrik Antonius and Tom “durrrr” Dwan. In a short period of time, Isildur1 went from being an unknown to the most talked-about player in the poker community. The mythical Scandi was thrust into poker spotlight. Isildur1’s story sounded too good to be true – a tilty 20-something young gun who never backed down to a challenger and was willing to give action to anyone.
It’s no secret that global economy tanked over the last two years, and the poker community absorbed a hit. As a result, players were forced to work a little harder to find juicy games. During the glorious poker boom, there was an abundance of fishy games to pad your bankroll. However, in the lean years, vast pools of horrendous players with deep pockets dried up. No wonder everyone in the high-stakes community was fighting to get in line to play exclusively against Isildur1. Not only he was fresh meat and new blood, but it was also incredibly easy to find him – all you had to do was fire up Full Tilt and locate him at the nosebleed tables. Taking on Islidur1 did not require traveling, nor were you forced to endure the bleak darkness of a Scandinavian winter to play against the Swedish ATM.
Does it really get any better than that for a poker pro? You can wake up, multi-table cash games against an erratic Scandi, and log off a couple of hours later $420,000 richer.
Isildur1 became the proverbial white whale. My apologies if the Moby Dick analogy is a little too literary. The crux of Herman Meville’s opus is Captain Ahab’s obsession with killing an elusive white whale. Islidur1 became the white whale that every online poker player wanted to hunt down. Islidur1 hemorrhaged his bank roll and went busto. He attempted couple of comebacks and faded in and out of the high-stakes scene in 2010 before fizzling out of the rotation. Even though Isildur1 was nevermore, his myth stirred up enough interest that pros scoured the virtual waters in search of similar white whales.
In November of 2010, Macau popped up on everyone’s radar when a group of Las Vegas-based pros flew out to China to engage a series of locals in high-stakes cash games. The pros found a rare opportunity to play against newcomers with deep pockets. All of a sudden, Macau became the land of unicorns.
Over the last few years, the poker scene in Macau slowly evolved. The cash game scene has been fueled by a group of baccarat high-rollers (essentially wealthy industrialists and businessmen from China) who became fascinated with learning the intricacies of poker. The regulars welcomed outsiders and wanted to play against better players so they could improve their skills. A few regional pros and Aussies took a shot, but they had their hands full when a contingent of Americans arrived in Macau. Among them were Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, John Juanda, Chau Giang, Johnny Chan, and Ted Forrest.
The Chinese high rollers didn’t care that they were outmatched because they were action junkies and thrived on competition. The only caveat? No nits allowed. Pros were welcome to join the game initially, but they would not receive future invitations if they played too tight.
The Macau Big Game started at the Hard Rock. They played NL hold’em with blinds starting at $10,000 HKD/$20,000 HKD with a $10,000 HKD ante. Hong Kong Dollars (HKD) are the local currency in Macau; converted to U.S. dollars at the time, the stakes were roughly $1,300/$2,600 with a $1,300 ante.
The Big Game moved to a more secluded location inside the Starworld Casino, because the poker room at the Hard Rock had too much public access. A railbird snapped a photo with his mobile phone, and later posted it on the internet. That was the first time we caught a glimpse of Dwan in action against the Chinese whales. We finally had proof that unicorns existed.
Sporadic reports of the Big Games were posted on 2+2, but for the most part, it was difficult to obtain information on the status of the action. Dwan was up a million or so before he played a heads-up match against a local businessman. At one point, over $15 million HKD (or around $4 million in USD) sat on Dwan’s table. Exact figures won by Dwan and the rest of the pros are still unconfirmed.
Photographs of the cash games were not permitted, but a few more mobile phone pictures made their way to the internet. The American pros were used to media coverage, but the Chinese high rollers were extremely shy. Perhaps it’s just a cultural difference, but the high rollers were not comfortable with any media attention, and that their photographs and names would become fodder for the media. Some reports suggested that was the primary reason why the games tailed off after a week or so of intense action.
No one knows when Dwan and Ivey are expected to return. But, if the Americans play again anytime soon, the Big Game will most likely be held in private to accommodate the high rollers’ desire for anonymity.
In the decade after the fall of communism, Russian millionaires cropped up as the country embraced capitalism. A few legit businessmen struck it big during Russia’s oil boom in the 1990s, while others acquired their wealth through multi-national crime syndicates. Regardless of the origins of their wealth, many of the new-money businessmen had a penchant for high-stakes poker. The underground games flourished in Moscow, where Russian tycoons and mafia bosses played action games like PLO and PL Seven-Card Stud.
The sums of money were ridiculous, but the location turned away many pros because of legitimate security concerns. Even if you were not robbed or harmed from the roving gangs of thugs who prey on foreigners, you had the insurmountable task of trying to withdraw any winnings. As one of my contacts in Moscow explained, “Anyone can play as long as they don’t win. And if you do win? Good luck getting your money out of Russia.”
I heard whispers about big cash games in different locations in Central America involving Colombian drug lords and Venezuelan oilmen. Even if you had a proficiency in conversational Spanish (knowing the local language is an additional layer of personal security to prevent explicit colluding), those games had a potential for extreme violence because you still had to worry about the behavior of hot-headed drug lords on uber-tilt.
Let’s not forget that the internet poker boom is less than a decade old, and before that you had to actually leave the safety and comfort of your home to play cards. Only a generation ago, poker was considered a game for outlaws and criminals. Many of the legendary Texas rounders, like Doyle Brunson and Amarillo Slim, were nomadic gamblers who drove all over Texas and the Southwest in search of action. Their opponents were often men of ill repute – ruthless oilmen, drug dealers, pimps, and loan sharks. Many pros risked their lives just for a chance to sit in a game, because if the games were not busted by the local Sherriff’s department, then they had to fend off potential robbers. So much has changed since the early days of poker with improved safety measures and legalization. But one thing remains the same – the best pros in the world will travel long distances for a soft table.
As 2010 comes to a close, it appears that Macau’s high-stakes cash games are an untapped pool of unlimited revenue. It’s been difficult to find juicy games overseas that offer up the serenity and safety of Macau. Unless another Scandi white whale splashes onto the high-stakes scene, the likes of Dwan, Juanda, and Ivey are going to have to make another arduous journey across the Pacific if they want a huge payday.
Tags: Dr. Pauly
Posted by Dave McCarthy | Filed under Bloggers Corner
It took 219 hands and about 14 hours for the November Nine to play down to two. In between, the clocks moved back an hour, Frank Kassela won Player of the Year, and the biggest pot in WSOP history was played.
When play resumes Monday at 8pm, Jonathan Duham will take a 6-1 chip lead heads up against John Racener. But it’s not all over for the Port Richey Florida pro. With 30 million chips and 600k/1.2m blinds, he’s still got a little wiggle room.
Early Saturday afternoon, Soi Nguyen was eliminated first, getting all in preflop w/ AK vs. QQ, only to see a queen in the door.
Next was Matt Jarvis, whose 99 couldn’t stay ahead of Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi’s AQ, when the board came down Q8Q9A – a bit of a roller coaster echoing Phil Ivey’s elimination at the hands of Chris Moneymaker back in 2003.
Jason Senti and John Dolan were eliminated in 7th and 6th place, respectively, both losing coin flips.
The Grinder’s Main Event (and Player of the Year) run ended when a tricky Duhamel completed the big blind with pocket aces, and the two got it all in on a Q-high flop.
Filippo Candio was only a few hands behind The Grinder, his KQ failing to catch up to Joseph Cheong’s A3.
Three handed, Racener managed (as he did all day) to stay afloat in the 25 BB range while Cheong and Duhamel when at it. Cheong was the first player to reach 100m in chips, playing what Phil Hellmuth called “beautiful poker” from the ESPN 3 booth.
Then Hand 213 came along…
Cheong opened on the button for 2.9m, Duhamel rereaised to 6.75 million, Cheong 4-bet to 14.25m, Duhamel 5-bet to 22.75m, and Cheong shoved, getting a quick call from Duhamel. Cheong grimaced at the sight of Duhamel’s QQ, flipping over A7, and telling Duhamel before the flop was dealt that 22.75m was the perfect amount to get him to shove. Five straight bricks left Cheong crippled, and sent roughly 180m chips – the largest pot in WSOP history – Duhamel’s way.
Despite a double up first, Cheong only lasted 6 more hands, going out with Q10 to Duhamel’s A2.
Which brings us to Monday night, 8pm Pacific time. With about 14 minutes remaining at level 40 – 600,000/1,200,000 blinds, 200,000 ante – Duhamel will take 188,950,000 chips heads up against Racener’s 30,750,000. They’re guaranteed $5,545,955, with the winner taking an additional $3,398,355.
We’ll have live updates and video from heads up play at the Rio at our WSOP 2010 Final Table Coverage site , and ESPN airs their 2 hour Final Table broadcast November 9, at 10pm.
Tags: November Nine
Posted by Dave McCarthy | Filed under Bloggers Corner
The WSOP Main Event Final Table is only days away. On Saturday November 6, the November Nine – Soi Nguyen, Filippo Candio, Matthew Jarvis, John Racener, Joseph Cheong, John Dolan, Michael Mizrachi, Jason Senti, and Jonathan Duhamel – will play down to two. Heads up play will resume Monday November 8, and ESPN will air the Final Table (probably not coincidentally) on November 9.
With so many Full Tilt Pros playing for the lion’s share of the 2nd largest purse in the history of poker – just short of $9m – we’ll have plenty of exclusive November Nine content.
In particular, our WSOP 2010 Final Table Coverage page will be bringing you videos, hourly updates, interviews, photos, and more – live from the Penn and Teller theater at the Rio.
Readers of the blog will have already seen AlCantHang’s November Nine handicapping, in which Al, Kevmath, and Spaceman analyzed and made their predictions for the final table’s constituents. There, you can also find the chip counts, M-ratios, and Vegas odds of all nine players.
November Nine Handicapping Part 1 reviews Jonathan Duhamel, John Dolan, and Joseph Cheong.
November Nine Handicapping Part 2 reviews John Racener, Matthew Jarvis, and Filippo Candio.
November Nine Handicapping Part 3 reviews Michael Mizrachi, Soi Nguyen, and Jason Senti.
Below, you’ll find a quick bio of the guys we’re rooting for, along with some Full Tilt commercials that never made it to TV over fears that it would spoil WSOP broadcasts for those who didn’t already know who made the November 9. They’re pretty good, even if we are a bit partial…
Hometown: Santa Ana, California, USA
Age: 37
Bio: The only remaining competitor who doesn’t play poker professionally, Nguyen works for a medical supply company in his home state of California. The Vietnamese-born Nguyen has many friends within the California pro poker community, including Nam Le, who have been helping Soi to improve his game since play was suspended. Soi doesn’t play poker too often and claims to have only played in three or four prior live tournaments, but still managed to cash in this year’s L.A. Poker Classic. His nickname is derived from his childhood love of soy sauce.
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Hometown: Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy
Age: 26
Bio: Candio is the first ever Italian player at the WSOP final table and the last remaining European this year. Filippo has been playing professionally for a little over 3 years now and has cashed in several Italian events, including a win at the Italian Pro Championships in San Remo which netted him 185k. This is his first year at the WSOP, where he played in 7 events and cashed in only one before landing a coveted place amongst the November Nine.
Hometown: Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Age: 26
Bio: One of two remaining Canadian players vying to be the first ever Canadian Main Event Champ, Jarvis played well in online tournaments, but didn’t cash too often in live tournaments prior to the WSOP. Since becoming a member of the final nine, Jarvis has won two tournaments, the Canadian Open Poker Heads Up Championship and the 1k buyin Festa al Lago, showing just how dangerous he can be at this final table. Jarvis almost didn’t attend the WSOP this summer, when his dad was diagnosed with cancer, but his father insisted he play anyway.
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Hometown: Port Richey, Florida, USA
Age: 24
Bio: Racener has been a poker professional since finishing third in a WSOP Circuit Event which started within hours of his 21st birthday. He has never held any other job since discovering just how profitable the poker tables could be. Despite his youth, Racener is already well known in most poker circles, with over a million dollars in tournament winnings. Perhaps even more impressive, this November marks the 3rd straight year that he will make a WSOP final table.
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Hometown: La Mirada, California, USA
Age: 24
Bio: The South Korean born pro emigrated to the United States with his parents when he was 6 years old. Cheong is a very active online tournament player, entering in over 10,000 events and earning countless final table appearances under the moniker ‘subiime’. He has only started transitioning to live events in the past two years and his discipline in online play has given him remarkable stamina in live tournaments. He played every single day of the 2010 WSOP, entering in 19 events and cashing in two of them before becoming one of the November Nine.
For Joseph’s Cheong never-to-be-aired commercial, visit Friend of the Blog Dr. Pauly’s Tao of Poker. Cheong’s is a particularly good one…
Hometown: Bonita Springs, Florida, USA
Age: 24
Bio: Dolan attended Florida State, studying business for two years before dropping out to concentrate on poker. It’s a move that he admits was premature and risky, but has worked out in the end. Dolan has earned most of his money playing online where his most notable win is probably the 1k Monday on Full Tilt in 2009 which earned him about 94k. This tournament will be the 3rd WSOP event Dolan has cashed in this year, and his 6th cash finish in his career.
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Michael Mizrachi
Hometown: Miami, Florida, USA
Age: 29
Bio: ‘The Grinder’ has been one of the top tournament players for years, with over 8 million dollars in tournament winnings since his first event in 2004. He was Card Player Magazine’s 2006 Player of the Year, but 2010 looks like it will be his best year to date. Coming into this WSOP, Mizrachi was considered to be one of the best players to never win a bracelet. The Grinder ended that quickly, winning event #2, the 50k buyin Players Championship, for over 1.5 million dollars. It’s a hefty sum to add to the 22 other times he has cashed in a WSOP event. The Main Event could add another 9 million dollars and gold bracelet to an already impressive poker resume. One of the more interesting bits of trivia from this year’s Main Event is that all three of Mizrachi’s brothers (Robert, Danny, and Eric) cashed as well. Since the Grinder is married with three children, it may only be a matter of time before we have an entire final table of Mizrachis.
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Tags: 2010 World Series of Poker, Filippo Candio, John Dolan, John Racener, Joseph Cheong, Matt Jarvis, Michael Mizrachi, Soi Nguyen
Posted by Dave McCarthy | Filed under Bloggers Corner
Dell recently released their “Streak” — a tablet/phone hybrid that runs on the Android platform.
After a little work under the hood, we were able to get flash on it so we could play some Rush Poker mobile. Online poker on your phone…kids these days!
(You can also see more in our Rush Mobile beta video.)
If you’d like to syndicate this video, please leave a comment here with your website’s URL and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Posted by Dave McCarthy | Filed under Bloggers Corner
I was recently invited to help test the Rush Poker Mobile beta version. Specifically, Full Tilt wanted to know how the game would handle really poor play…
Beta testing is available to Black Card holders. This is an excerpt from the email sent to Black Card holders:
A new application that works on select mobile devices and web browsers on your computer, Rush Poker Mobile features both real money and play money Rush Poker tables.
Rush Poker* Mobile is supported on the following mobile devices running
Android 2.2:
* Acer Liquid Stream S110
* HTC Desire
* HTC Droid Incredible
* HTC Evo 4G
* HTC Google Nexus One
* HTC Desire HD
* Motorola Droid 2
* Motorola Droid Pro / Droid 2 World Edition
* Motorola Droid X
* T-Mobile G2
Here’s a video of Rush Poker Mobile in action:
Posted by Dave McCarthy | Filed under Bloggers Corner
If you want to play free poker online, you’ve got a few options:
Online Play Money
As far as I know, all major online poker card rooms offer play money. It’s free to sign up. You can’t lose anything, but you can’t really win anything either.
Zynga Poker
In Zynga Poker (available at social networking sites), you can buy chips with real money, but you can’t cash them out. In other words, you can play for real money with a 100% chance of losing. Statisticians and game theorists call this “negative EV.”
Freerolls
Major online poker card rooms, including Full Tilt, offer a wide selection of freerolls. You don’t need to deposit any money, you just need to create an account (see the big red “Play for Free” button at the top right of this page).
A simple google search or scanning of any major online poker news site will alert you to freerolls all over the place. We’ve got them over on the Full Tilt Poker Facebook page. And we’re starting a little Freeroll League for the next four Thursdays at 7pm ET. The passwords to these freerolls are released on the Wall of our Facebook page 5 minutes before the freerolls start, and if you sign up for the league on the Freeroll League tab, you’re eligible for weekly prize drawings and we’ll put you on our leaderboard where the top 64 players are entered in a $200 Heads Up Tournament of Champions.
Freeroll Strategy
In honor of our Freeroll League’s debut this evening, we’ve got some freeroll strategy advice from online pro, freelance writer, and Friend of the Blog Steve Schult.
Tags: Free Poker
Posted by Dave McCarthy | Filed under Bloggers Corner
Last week we asked for suggestions for how players could refresh their Texas Hold’em games if their rate of improvement had slowed or they were no longer enjoying the game like they once did. We offered 7 suggestions and asked for three more to round out a Top 10. (For our list, see: Texas Hold’em Jumpstart.)
Congratulations to xwing1987, abn0x, and Jasons0147, whose suggestions earned them an FTP t-shirt.
There were a lot of great ideas, so we organized them by topic and they’re included in this post. As a token of our thanks, we’ll add the ~55 players/readers who offered suggestions into a private $25 freeroll Sunday, October 10, at 1500 ET. (See comments for tournament details.)
#1. abn0x: Talk to fellow players, friends, and coaches:
I find sometimes the way to remind myself how to best play the game is when I discuss strategies with fellow players. Not saying give up your game but its always good practice as it covers grounds you have been focusing on, as well as plugging any other holes your mates might have been watching out for.
Seeking coaching is a also good form of practice to constantly refresh your own game.
#2. Jasons0147: Limit the length of your sessions
People who play poker tend to be some of the most result oriented people on the planet. We can avoid this by setting an exact amount of time that we will play regardless of our results. This will allow us to play while we are at out best and not continue when we are playing sub-par.
#3. xwing1987: Review hand histories and use resources like pokerstove.com
The most key thing I have done to improve my game is to review my hand histories.
During play try to put a player on a range of possible hands from what you’ve observed in play so far. Always take notes on players. When you review your HH after tournaments, use the resources at a site like pokerstove.com and try to learn the math behind the game.
Once you put your opponent on a range of hands, it’ll be easier for you to see how your hand matches up against his/hers.
Pokerstove won’t work with FTP open, so it’s important to go back and review by doing taking some time and stepping away for a few hours a week.
The more you review your hand histories, and the more you use software to figure out our odds with hands, the better we will become at putting our opponent on ranges which will give us an edge over others. And even a small edge, over large volumes of games will add up to $$$ overtime.
Best of luck at the tables! (Unless I’m there).
An organized collection of our readers’ suggestions can be found after the jump.
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The opinions expressed by this blog and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of Full Tilt Poker. Full Tilt Poker is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the author of this blog nor any content contained herein.
