Poker From The Rail
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Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
This week was a super-exciting one in the world of poker, but never mind all that. Exciting is for other people, not for the likes of me. Here’s my nonsense:
5. Gold Coast Closes. Yes, sadly but truly, the Coast has announced that their poker room is officially “closed”, which means “replaced by a few banks of slot machines.” With poker rooms now restricted to only the Rio, the Orleans, the Venetian, Caesar’s Palace, Bill’s, The Excalibur, New York, New York, The Bellagio, The Stratosphere, The Imperial Palace, Circus Circus, Harrah’s, The MGM Grand, Planet Hollywood, The Luxor, Mandalay Bay, Aria, The Mirage, Bally’s, Monte Carlo, O’Shea’s, The Sahara, Treasure Island, Flamingo, The Encore and the Wynn, could this be a sign that the “poker boom” is finally over?
4. Bluff Magazine Announces Their Power 20 – The powerful poker magazine has given a powerful list of powerful poker people, which means the people who hold the most influence in the poker world, as it turns out. I was disappointed to discover that this was not a ranking based on odor, but the newsstand guy wouldn’t let me return it. You’ve been warned.
3. Carlos Mortensen Wins A Major Prize – I think we all know that el Matador is one of the most skilled poker players in the history of cards. The former WSOP champ was chasing his fourth WPT championship, the guy was stacked over five million, giving him the chip lead. But I don’t want to talk about that; I want to talk about how he got that stack. Mortensen got all in with QQ vs. KK vs. AA and turned a flush to crack them both. For that reason, we’re going to award him with the first monthly Darvin Award. Named for 2009 November Niner Darvin Moon, this prestigious prize awarded to the player who gets in way behind but gets rewarded anyway. Congratulations, Carlos, and best of luck!
2. Chris Christie Hates New Jersey, Poker, You – So New Jersey tried to officially legalize intrastate online poker for their state, and governor Chris Christie vetoed it. Because he believes in small government, one imagines. Anyway, New Jersey citizens can sleep well tonight, knowing that their wives and kids and grandmothers won’t get violently and brutally two-outed in their beds tonight.
1. Erik Seidel Wins Everything – Erik Seidel has won around four million dollars. Not in his career, no; just in the first two months (and 6 days) of 2011. Your body is 90% water. Erik Seidel’s is 90% run-good. He has Adonis card cappers. He has tiger blood running through unicorn veins. He intimidated Donald Trump. You can’t hope to stop him, you can only hope to contain him, except that you can’t hope to contain him. There are not four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, there are five, and all of them are Erik Seidel.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Carlos Mortensen, Erik Seidel, Guest Posts, Julius_Goat
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
by Julius_Goat
Yes, another week, another five serious poker items in this week’s news getting torn into silly little ribbons by the logic-shredder that is my brain. Anybody seeking a valid news source from my articles will be prosecuted. Anybody quoting them will be shot. Anybody trusting them is welcome to play me heads up.
5. Racener vs. Mizzi - So there’s been a bit of a kerfuffle starting over on the 2+2 forums regarding some alleged malfeasance. November Niner John Racener has accused BLUFF Magazine player of the year Sorel Mizzi of dealing off the bottom of the deck in Chinese poker. Later, Racener hit the boards to say that his accusation stands, but that he’s dealing with it and considers the matter closed. Now, obviously Racener is a Full Tilt pro, so you maybe be surprised to see this covered right here. Most online sites, they’d clamp down on this sort of thing, asking that there be no commentary made on their official blogs. But Tilt is a classy site, and forthright, and honest, and faces controversy head on, so I’m just going to come out and say the honest truth: I have no idea how to play Chinese poker.
4. WPT Celebrity Invitational 2011 – Though luminaries such as Lou “Diamond” Phillips, Don “Oscar Nominated” Cheadle, and the Fat “Rudy” Hobbit were in attendance, the star-studded final table included Dinara Khaziyeva, Damon Schramm, George Rechnitzer, Dan Heimiller, Davidi Kitai, and Almira Skripchenko. I don’t have a joke here.
3. Vinnie Vinh Wins the LAPC Event #29 – OK, this isn’t huge news except to say that we’re all very happy that Vinnie is still alive and able to finish tournaments without vanishing. One more disappearing act and I would figure him for Keyser Soze.
2. Professional Poker League Announces Its Schedule – This Jeffrey Pollack/Annie Duke helmed attempt to wrest poker from the proletariat “anybody can win!” pit into a more elite “no, not you, Darvin” pros-only PGA model, have announced their first four events. Looks like each event will be in three parts: (1) A $1500 buy-in Pro Am, where the hoi poloi can try to satellite in and rub shoulders with the pros; (2) A special tournament with all money going to Charity, whoever that is; (3) the Main Event, where the pros will compete in a rake-free $20K buyin sort of poker-stravaganza-gasm. Who will win? (Hint: Not you.)
1. FTOPS Main Event Sets A Record – With 14,000+ runners able to buy in 6 times each, the prize pool ballooned to brobdingnagian proportions. We’re talking over eight and a half million in the prize pool of an online poker tournament (or to put it in perspective, nearly 50% of Tom Dwan’s prop betting budget for the first quarter of 2011). By the time it was finished, Blair Hinkle was richer by more than a million dollars, and he didn’t even have to deal with Jeff Probst and lie to fifteen strangers to do it. Holy crap on a stick, multi-entry, thought by some to be the newest fad, just may have turned into the wave of the future. Let’s face it folks, we are living in a multi-tabling world and poker is a multi-tabling girl. The only downside is that if anybody ever multi-accounts a multi-entry, nobody will ever be able to explain the scandal to non-poker people.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Julius_Goat
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
by Julius_Goat
Walt Disney always famously introduced us to the idea, “It’s a Small World After All”, but Walt never had to consider what his opponent’s four-bet range was on an uncoordinated flop, and something like Rush PLO would have melted his face off faster than the lost ark. Let’s face it, the small world is passé: It’s a big world of poker out there.
So what I want to do is this: Each week, I’d like to ruminate (which is legal in my state) on the world of poker, in my utter imitable style, by which I mean I’d like to take real poker things and occasionally make stuff up about them, for the purposes of laughs and mutual enjoyment. Hopefully, we’ll all learn something, or at least I’ll get paid*.
So if you don’t know what happened last week, and (more importantly) you still don’t want to know when you’re done, check out my dumb list.
5. Eastgate Returns. The entire world was stunned when 2008 WSOP Main Event winner Peter Eastgate was walking away from the poker world. Well, OK, not the WHOLE world, but the 2+2 forums started several separate threads, which turned into memes, which turned, like 96% of 2+2 threads, into Photoshopped collages of cookies that look like TJ Cloutier. Where was I? Oh yeah, his retirement ended last week. My guess is that he got drunk and accidentally misclick-blocked himself from his online accounts and was embarrassed to admit it. Or maybe he just remembered that he is really good at poker.
4. High Stakes Poker Shakeup. Word came down that the well-liked host of HSP has been shown the door in favor of professional funnyman and amateur poker player Norm MacDonald, who will be providing commentary over the next season’s action. I have no explanation for this, but my suggestions inlude:
• HSP producers are looking for somebody who will say “crack whore” at least five times an hour (Kaplan was stuck at a woeful 1.2 CWpH).
• This is all an elaborate set-up for an inevitably underwhelming “Welcome Back Kotter” campaign.
• AJ Benza’s elaborate revenge scheme, step 14 of 86.
3. FTOPS Runs Multi-Entry. They say you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. The fact is, you can make an omelet without breaking an egg. You just wouldn’t want to eat it. They also say that when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade. They don’t tell you what to do if you don’t like lemonade, but forget all that – that’s good advice. Trust Full Tilt to make some hella-lemonade out of some of the sourest lemons of all time. By “lemons”, I mean the multi-accounting scandals that rocked the online world in late 2006, and by ‘lemonade’, I mean the way that Full Tilt was able to alchemize that scandal into a legitimate tournament option. Multi-entry tournament play lets you play up to four different entries at a time, which guarantees that you will win the tournament.** This is not just a flash-in-the-pan, either; Full Tilt has given Multi the main stage on its premier tournament series. The FTOPS Main Event (among others), running this Sunday, is a Multi.
I am just looking forward to the first Multi-Entry Rush Matrix Super Turbo Rebuy tournament series. The way that tournament works is that everybody buys in, and the last person still playing with an unexploded head wins.
2. November 9 Foxwoods Reunion. That’s right, the 2010 November Nine got back together for a $15K freeroll. Strangely, there were 30 runners, and I just didn’t think those guys had gained that much weight. Perhaps it was a multi-entry tournament, or perhaps there is some other perfectly reasonable explanation; I’d find out, but frankly that would require research and this platter of natchos grande are not going to eat themselves.
Anyway, this was a collection of 9 of the most successful tournament players of all time, facing down for a 2nd chance to prove their dominance of the entire poker world. In the end, an amateur named Ben Hopkins, who picked up the top purse, $5K and Lon McEarchern’s upper dentures, beat them all. This means a lot of things, but the most important one is this: If you can find him and best him in single combat, you will become the new Highlander.
1. 70 Miles To Glory. We all know the story. Two young online poker phenoms caught in a prop-bet psychodrama. Ashton Griffin set up a prop that he could run 70 miles in 24 hours at 3:1 and Hasseb Quereshi took him up on it to the tune of $300K, claiming not to realize until the game was already afoot what the bet’s dangerous essential character truly was: that being, a bet on whether or not Griffin’s body would fail. Some have praised the bet as the apotheosis of the “baller” lifestyle of young poker pros, others have blasted all parties as irresponsible and cold-blooded. Rather than weigh in on either side, I’d rather just point out that (1) we are now using the terms “online poker player” and “physical exertion” in the same sentence, which has to be considered progress, and (2) much like Harry Potter helping middle school children in the Aughts, I’m in favor of anything that gets poker players to read. At least without typing “TLDR, LOL.”
*In the interest of full disclosure: I get 50 chicken nuggets for this, still warm.
** This may not be true.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Julius_Goat
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
While today is not necessary the “middle” of MiniFTOPS XIV, it was on Tuesday when I finally emerged from my self-imposed hibernation to check back into the fantastic world of online poker. Yesterday found us with 12 of the 25 events completed and 3 more to run throughout the day with something for everybody. Event #13 kicked off in the afternoon as a sold out 6-max shootout tournament. Events #14 and #15 ran consecutively with a little HORSE action and Turbo NLHE. It was a rough day for the Full Tilt pros as Eddy Sharf was the only one with a small cash in the turbo.
The first half was up and down for the rest of the red letter names. Christian Kruel started things off well by making the final table and finishing 4th in Event #1 ($14,872.79). After that only Sascha Biorac has been able to make another final table. Scott Fischman, Esther Rossi, and Roy Winston have cashed in 3 of the 15 tournaments but nothing big finishes to set the world on fire. 26 Full Tilt pros have cashed in the series so far which has attracted just south of 100,000 players and $3,000,000 total.
It has been a great series so far for us lower bankrolled players, big payouts for low buyins. There hasn’t been much ballyhoo from those busy writing about nosebleed tables but I’ve got our back. Here are the current numbers as we get ready for two more events today.
Number of events: 15
Players: 98,887
Guarantee Prizepool: $2,210,000
Actual Prizepool: $2,996,820
Largest Prizepool: $536,370 (Event #10 NLHE)
Smallest Prizepool: $36,450 (Event #3 Shootout)
Overlay: NO OVERLAY
Largest FTP Pro Payout: $14,872.79 (Christian Kruel)
Total FTP pro cash (#): 26
Total FTP pro cash ($): $27,927.13
You can find the final table results as well as another Julius_Goat report after the jump:
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Julius_Goat, MiniFTOPS
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
MiniFTOPS XIV" width="234" height="281" align="right" />Every once in a blue moon I feel the need to pull away from the laptop for a little live action. This weekend provided that and even more. It was the yearly gathering of bloggers in Las Vegas and I once again stuck my head into the craziness. Much more to come later on that insanity including your (barely) humble author finishing second in the blogger poker tournament at Caesar’s.
Naturally the timing of my run to the west coincided with the kickoff of MiniFTOPS XIV and reporting on it here. My laptop never left the bag so I had regular guest blogger Julius_Goat keep track of the action this weekend since he was one of the few unfortunate who could not make the trip.
I asked him to keep an eye on the Full Tilt pros and big online names for anything spectacular or out of the ordinary. He passed along a bunch of reports but I figure my favorite is from Event #7.
The Full tilt pros got mowed down in Event #7 like extras in Saving Private Ryan and thus there was nothing to report on their actions in that event.
He stuck around the entire final table of Event #4, $200 rebuy tournament with a $600,000 guarantee. His first reports as well as the final table results after the jump.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Julius_Goat, MiniFTOPS
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
We are just a few days away from giving lower bankrolled players a chance at huge chunks of cash within proper bankroll management levels. That means the next round of the MiniFTOPS series is upon us. A set of 25 tournaments set across a week and a half with the same schedule as the main FTOPS series yet with just at 1/10th of the buyin. MiniFTOPS XIV kicks off on December 9th with a $250,000 guarantee tournament for just $20+2 and things just get better from there.
The prizepools will swell to over $4,000,000 for buyins between $10+1 for the rebuys and $250+16 for the 2 Day Event #22. Even if you aren’t bankrolled to those levels, satellites are available for all events starting as low as $0.50 or 50 Full Tilt Points. If tournaments are your favorite poker variant or want to give them a shot with dumping your entire roll on one event, then this is for you. You get the same deepstack and slow structures as the big boys, if you one of the fortunate to win the entire thing you will event get your own MiniFTOPS avatar for a good brag at the tables.
You can join players like Bruno Steffaneli, Fabrice Soulier, Chris “Moormanl” Moorman, and Brandon “bgitty” Garrity as MiniFTOPS champions and create a name for yourself. Every great poker player in the world had to start somewhere.
You can find the entire MiniFTOPS XIV schedule by following the link as well as the new set of MiniFTOPS XIV Challenges to go along with the tournaments and satellites. I will be around for the first event of the series but then will be hopping a plane westward to Las Vegas for some blogger shenanigans but will leave you in the capable hands of Julius_Goat until I return next Monday. Or Tuesday depending on the amount of degeneracy involved.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Julius_Goat, MiniFTOPS
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
You’ve had a tough week at the office, the kids are driving you nuts, or maybe none of that is true. You can use any excuse available to justify a little personal time hitting the tables at Full Tilt. There are plenty of chances to hit up the big games online this weekend or you can hit up the small ball games while railing your favorite pros.
Full Tilt Poker started a new promotion which is running at the moment. Take 2 is running now through April 10th where you have a chance to earn double points as well as cash bonuses. All for playing multiples cash game tables which you are probably doing already. Click on the link above to get the full details.
There are big guarantee tournaments running all weekend long starting this evening as well as some special blogger games. Some of the tournaments highlighted after the jump.
Tags: AlCantHang, Battle of the Blogger Tournaments, Big Money Sunday, Bloggers on the Rail, durrrr Challenge, Friday Night Fights, Full Tilt Poker Academy, Julius_Goat
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
A few weeks ago, our guest blogger Julius_Goat issued a challenge to fellow Full Tilt blogger Michael Craig similar to the durrrr Challenge. Except it would be micro-limit, far fewer hands and nothing major at stake. But completely the same other than that.
Well Mr. Craig responded and now Julius_Goat offers up his end of the bet. I hope this happens and it’s nearly as funny as we all think it will be. You can read his terms after the jump.
(On a serious note, you need to check out the durrrr Challenge stat tracker. Just shy of 6,000 and they are almost dead even.)
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Julius_Goat, Michael Craig
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
The Battle of the Blogger Tournaments 4 started up this weekend with a great showing. Bloggers/readers and a few big name online pros made their appearance in the first few events. These are not your average smaller buyin events, the play is a little tougher than you would expect at these levels. Not unexpected with thousands of dollars in added prizes on the line and 7 WSoP seats.
You will also find some very interesting banter in the chat as a lot of players have seen each other over the course of play and sometimes it gets a little heated. When that happens you need to know how to use it to your benefit.
Funnyman/blogger Drizztdj brings us a primer on that very subject. Stop back later in the week for a roundup of the week’s action as well as Michael Craig responding to the Julius_Goatttt Challenge.
Chatting For Profit
by Drizztdj
You’re a busy person.
Work, kids, school, A-Rod Fan Club President, professional poker player, needs to get a haircut. In the mist of getting twenty-five things done at once, you find the time to sit down at your favorite laptop , PC, or MAC and decide to fire up a few tournament tables here at Full Tilt. With that extra block of time you choose a couple of MTTs with fat guarantees and settle into your chair with a favorite beverage or eight sitting to your right.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, drizztdj, Guest Posts, Julius_Goat, Michael Craig
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
No doubt every online player knows that Tom “durrrr” Dwan is in the middle of his Challenge with Patrik Antonius on the Full Tilt PLO tables. They have played near 10% of the 50,000 hands and Dwan is currently leading. A long ways to go.
While you are watching those great games from the rail, we have another challenge that could be fun to watch. Blogger versus blogger, a little bit of money but a ton of smack talk. Resident Poker From the Rail guest blogger is throwing down the gauntlet to fellow FTP blogger Michael Craig. Not nearly the amount of money in play as the durrrr Challenge but these guys have their egos on the line.
Waiting on Michael’s response.
The Goatttt Challenge: Calling Out Michael Craig
by Julius_Goat
Like most of you, I am following two new developments in the wold of Full Tilt Poker with great interest. Unlike most of you, I am following it with nothing but two atrophied brain cells and a complete lack of fact checking as I write this, but I’m sure I am getting all the details correct, so just take my word for it, okay?
The first development is the now-famous “Durrrr Challenge” named after the young internet poker phenom Tom “Durrrr Dwan” Challenge, who first came to national prominence in a televised heads-up match with Phil Hellmuth, who accused him of using far too many of the letter “r” in a row.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Julius_Goat, Michael Craig, Tom Dwan
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