Reader Mail: Lord, Thy Name Be Antonius

Posted by One Angry Monkey | Filed under The Week at FTP

We’re only a few days into the World Series of Poker, and Full Tilt Poker is already lighting the poker world on fire. We’ve just signed uber-hunk (and The All-In-Uit fave) Patrik Antonius to Team Full Tilt, we’ve had more than a few of our pros reach final tables in the first couple of events, and we even had the first bracelet winner of 2008 in Nenad Medic. Expect all this and more to be fodder in this week’s edition of Reader Mail. Email us at pokerfromtherail@fulltiltpoker.com with any comments, questions, or non-sexually explicit fantasies about the poker playing hottie of your choice. On to the show:

Nenad Medic, really? I mean, who the hell is this guy?

I knew a couple of questions like this would be popping into the old inbox as soon as I heard the news of Medic’s astounding victory. Why do I say this was an astounding victory? Well, that final table was absolutely stacked with talent (including our new man Antonius) and he was heads up versus Andy Bloch, a favorite of ours here at the office and a man long overdue to win his first bracelet. But Medic did have more than a 2-1 chip lead entering heads-up play, so you can’t be too surprised that he came through for the victory.

At any rate, according to the bio we have on Full Tilt Poker, Medic is a really tall (6’5”) Serb who grew up in Canada wanting to be a basketball player. Talk about being really mixed up; I mean, you can be a Serb and play basketball (thank you Vlade Divac) or you can be a Canadian and play basketball (thank you Steve Nash), but there’s no way you can be a Serb who grew up in Canada AND play basketball. Inconceivable!

Basketball ambitions aside (Medic obviously never made it to the NBA), Nenad has turned himself into quite a formidable poker player. Though mainly a cash game specialist, Medic already had a WPT title under his belt (the 2006 WPT Championship at Foxwoods), so adding this WSOP bracelet really solidifies him as a solid player. So yes, I guess that means no more Nenad Medic jokes from now on. This is truly a sad day for us all…

Well done on the Patrik Antonius signing. Does this mean that FTP is back to signing real pros only or will you soon return to signing every flavor of the month?

Hey, be nice now. I know we’ve signed a lot of pros over the past few months, but almost all of them have been legitimate pros (sorry Bruce Buffer, you’re not included on this list). It’s possible we might have gone a little overboard signing German pros recently, but Germany is fast becoming a huge poker country and most of those players are pretty solid (plus Hans Martin Vogl is da bomb yo, at least imo).

But yeah, the Antonius signing is pretty huge for us. It’s actually been worth it just to see the perpetual stream of drool running down The All-In-Uit’s chin as she dreams of getting to interview Patrik at some point in time. Other than that, Antonius is obviously one of the top players in the world and a god to all the 2+2ers out there. Actually, the reverence that Antonius evokes on 2+2 is downright frightening at times. Come back to the real world people, it’s not as scary as you think…

I see that Phil Ivey is leading Event #5 at the WSOP, which is a rebuy event. Any advice you can give on playing a rebuy tourney?

Yeah, I have some advice: don’t play them. I mean, if you want to participate in the most donk-tastic hour of poker in your life, by all means go ahead. But those rebuy periods tend to be unbearably painful for me most of the time. Sure, it can be fun to basically do flips for an hour or so, but your pockets have to be pretty deep to do that. Plus, once you’re done with the rebuy and add-on period, most of the chip stacks are so deep that it takes forever for the blinds to catch up. Some might call that good structure; I call it a boring day at the poker table. Give me a turbo tourney over a rebuy tourney any day of the week.

With that said, if you really want to go through the pain of a rebuy tourney, make sure that you have a strategy going in ahead of time. Other than the initial rebuy that you can make right away to double your stack and the add-on you know you’ll take, plan out how many rebuys you can afford to make. If you can only afford three rebuys on your bankroll, then just stick to three. If your luck runs out and you can’t afford to rebuy again, please do the smart thing and call it a day.

You also have to remember to loosen up quite a bit during the rebuy period. The goal in any tournament is to accumulate as many chips as possible, but this is even more important in a rebuy tourney. If you can’t gather a good pile of chips by the end of the rebuy period, you’re going to be in trouble very soon. After the rebuy period has ended, you’re back to standard tourney style, just with a lot of extra chips in play.

One amusing anecdote I’ve heard through the grapevine (which means there’s a 99% chance that it’s actually not true) about Ivey at Event #5: the man sat down with $100K in casino chips ready to use as his rebuys. That’s right, Phil Ivey was prepared to rebuy 100 times in this tourney (rebuys were running at $1K a pop). If that’s not baller, I don’t know what is. And that’s why Phil Ivey is Phil Fracken’ Ivey. Until next week…

Popularity: 4% [?]