Archive for the ‘Poker World Commentary’ Category Newer Entries » Joe Cada on Letterman Friday, November 20th, 2009 If you haven’t heard (or seen) already, Joe Cada was on the Late Show with David Letterman earlier this week to discuss his win at the 2009 WSOP Main Event. You can watch the video here: I thought Cada did a good job and seemed pretty composed and relaxed for a 21 year old. It’s unfortunate that Letterman was too busy joking about poker being shady business to give Cada more opportunities to speak. But I suppose mediocre mainstream poker exposure is better than no mainstream poker exposure. Nice work, Joe! Posted in Poker World Commentary | 1 Comment » Listening to the WSOP Final Table Live Sunday, November 8th, 2009 For anyone interested, Bluff Magazine is hosting live audio commentary of the WSOP. They’ve had kind of a rotating group of commentators except for David “TheMaven” Chicotsky who seems to be always in the booth. He’s a little bit on the self-absorbed side which can be annoying since he keeps talking about himself, but otherwise it’s a hell of a lot better than reading live updates. Other commentators have been Annie Duke (surprisingly good), Phil Hellmuth (always entertaining to listen to), Justin Bonomo (nerdy and overly-technical, but not terrible to listen to), and quite a few others. Play is down to 7 at the moment after Akenhead and Schaffel busted. Odds are it will take several more hours before they’re down to heads-up. Posted in Poker World Commentary | No Comments » The Great Phil Ivey Bubble Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 In sports-betting, a bubble will occasionally materialize that presents savvy bettors with an opportunity to make some cash. In the 2007 NFL season, the New England Patriots became the first team to go 16-0 in the regular season. There’s no question that the Patriots were very good – the best in the league for sure – but over-enthusiasm for them on the betting market created an interesting opportunity. At the start of the playoffs, the New York Giants were listed at 70:1 to win the Super Bowl. Seventy to one even after they had already secured a playoff spot! This author put a c-note on that line and enjoyed the Super Bowl of a lifetime after deciding against hedging the wager. Our resident TwoGun bet quite a great deal more than that and also neglected to hedge. Everyone knows the rest of the story: David Tyree makes the greatest catch in Super Bowl history which helps lead the Giants to a thrilling victory thereby spoiling the Patriots near-perfect season. Right now in poker, there are some similar betting opportunities that involve fading a dominant entity. Phil Ivey’s presence at the 2009 Main Event final table has created these opportunities. What happened in the NFL in 2007 is that bettors were piling on the Patriots so much that sports-books were forced to list teams like the Giants with very long odds in order to entice action away from the Patriots. Ivey’s presence at the final table has created an identical scenario. Take a look at the WSOP betting odds at Pinnacle Sports. You’ll see that Ivey is currently +504 (risk $100 to win $504) to win the Main Event. With roughly 5% of the chips in play, he should be a +1900 longshot to win the tournament if he were viewed as having an average skill-set. But Ivey isn’t viewed as having an average skill-set. He is viewed as having a super-human, unbeatable, best-player-in-the-world set of skills. For that reason, his odds of winning have increased all the way to +504. While it’s true that Ivey is probably the best poker player in the world, there is way too much optimism regarding his chances of winning this tournament. Remember, the other eight players at the table aren’t total slouches. They navigated through a field of 6,494 to get to where they are and have now enjoyed four months to polish their play for the final table. The over-optimism regarding Ivey’s chances has resulted in some great value in placing a wager on others at the table. For example, I made a bet that 21 year-old Joe Cada will win the event at odds of +1537 (which moved the line to its current listing of +1300). Cada has about 50% more chips than Ivey but was considered nearly three times less likely to win the tournament! Preposterous, I said. The youngster Cada has been crushing poker since before he was supposed to be playing it (not unlike Ivey as a young man) and has booked a six-figure victory in an online poker tournament during the break before the Main Event final table. Cada was one of the chip leaders after day one of this tournament and essentially went wire-to-wire with a formidable stack to make this final table. At odds of +1537, Cada was being given a 6% chance to win the tournament despite having a little more than 7% of the chips in play!. That’s the Ivey factor for you. Normally on a proposition of this nature, the vigorish taken by the sports-book would make it nearly impossible to find any shred of value, but thanks to Ivey, great players like Cada are graded at having less of a chance to win than the percentage of chips they possess. Other players with similarly good betting value are Kevin Schaffel (who showed he’s no fluke by finishing 2nd in a WPT event in August) at +1558 and chip-leader Darvin Moon at +381. Moon has 30.2% of the chips in play but is being given just a 20.8% chance of winning the tournament at those odds. Bubbles like this don’t come around often. At the start of last year’s NFL playoffs, the longshot team was the Arizona Cardinals at 40:1. During the Patriots bubble from the year before, no less than five teams had longer odds than that. Posted in Poker World Commentary | No Comments » What a Dikshit Friday, October 23rd, 2009 A lot of noise in the poker world was made this week when Anurag Dikshit sold off the majority of his stake in Party Gaming, the company that owns Party Poker. Dikshit said he plans on donating the proceeds of the sale to his charity, the Kusuma Trust, which helps at-risk children in India, the United Kingdom, and Gibraltar (where Party Poker is based and he lives). Dikshit has been giving away hundreds of millions of his fortune lately. Earlier this year, he plead guilty to violating US gambling laws and agreed to a fine of $300 million. Remember, he’s not pleading guilty to violating the UIGEA here…this was a plea to gambling laws prior to the enactment of the UIGEA. Party Gaming agreed to settle with the DOJ last year for around $100 million. In other words, Dikshit, who owned 28% of Party Gaming, paid three times as much as the company itself. Nice negotiating skills, Dikshit. Many were perplexed why Dikshit agreed to pay such a huge fine. He basically said he just wanted to get that era behind him and move on with his life. Now, he’s selling off the rest of his stake in Party Gaming to donate to charity. I’ve got two rants I have to get off my chest: Rant #1: The media and the poker world need to stop acting like this is good for Party Poker and poker in general. This sale doesn’t matter. Some have suggested that by selling his stake to the public, Dikshit will no longer listed as a beneficial owner/director. Since he plead guilty and technically has a criminal record in the United States, his removal from Party Gaming means Party Gaming will no longer be ‘blemished’ and can somehow re-enter the US market easier when the UIGEA repeals. There’s a lot of if’s here. This line of logic is similar to me thinking: I’ve heard that Britney Sears does not like to use condoms and doesn’t use birth control. Therefore, I should get a vasectomy. If I get a vasectomy, I can enter Britney Spears without me worrying about a baby. Party Gaming (and everyone else in the poker world) should count on the UIGEA being repealed about as much as I should count on sleeping with Britney Spears. There is the chance of states allowing online poker (gambling is primarily a state law in the US). If online poker came back in the US and was fully legal, it would be on a state by state basis. Nonetheless, let’s wait and let that happen first and see how the states implement it before we cheer about some random dude selling his stock shares. OK people? Rant #2: I’m sick of Dikshit giving away all his money A lot of people applaud billionaires when they give away all of their money to charity. I suppose it is honorable to do so. But there’s something that just doesn’t quite sit right with me. What’s the point of these billionaires going through all the hoops to create these businesses in tax shelters if they’re just going to give all that money away later? Can one of these billionaires that gives away all their money do something different for once? Everyone feeds the children and gives money towards disease pandemics. Yes, good causes I know. But cmon Dikshit, if you feel so guilty about all the money you made from gambling, maybe give the money to Gambler’s Anonymous and other groups that help problem gambling. Maybe track down some people that lost a lot of money on Party Poker and have one huge bad beat jackpot for them. How about you give some of that money to the company that made you rich in the first place? Party is now 4th place in terms of poker traffic. It’s not even the #1 non-US site anymore. Or at the very least, go on one huge coke and hooker binge. If none of this sounds appealing, why be a youngish billionaire? You’re just making the case that the government should tax those with huge windfalls (i.e. $30 million+) at 75% or whatever. Posted in Poker World Commentary | No Comments » Why Tough Ring Games Are Very -EV Friday, October 16th, 2009 When talking about EV and variance, many poker players prefer to play ring games since the variance is much lower than tournaments and they can grind out a solid profit over time. Back when I was playing poker on a professional/near-professoinal basis, I played ring games the majority of the time, and rarely had a month where I lost money. Times have changed though and games are much tougher than in the past. There aren’t $15-$30 fixed-limit games where players will just cold-call a raise with A7 offsuit preflop. Rake has gone up, not down. A higher percentage of players playing poker have been playing for at least few years, and the number of new players as a percentage of online players in general is much lower. For these and other reasons, ring games have gotten tougher. But one thing to remember about ring games is that even if you are an average player at the table, the game is very -EV. The rake at a ring game is about 5% of the pot (it’s lower at higher stakes since the max rake kicks in, but these games are also shark filled). If you are an entirely neutral player, this means the game has a 5% edge. That’s slot machine type play. You need to be significantly better than the other players at the table. This means you can’t just be good, you need to be confident that everyone else is terrible. Tournaments are a bit different. While technically the vigorish is around 9-10% for a tournament, you get many, many hands in a tournament, so the vigorish per hand played is much lower. In other words, when factoring in skill, luck, and vigorish paid, when you pay the 5% vigorish in a ring game, the skill you use to make up for that vigorish lasts that one hand only. In a tournament, you have dozens of hands where you can employ skill to overcome the 10% vigorish. Also, in a tournament, the lottery-aspect of the tournament will continue to bring in the fish. Tournaments also offer better value for skill-neutral players. If you play a $100+$10 tournament for 2 hours, and let’s say you are exactly an average-skilled player, you are paying $10 in EV for 2 hours of entertainment. That’s still pretty cheap entertainment. In comparison, a ring game where $2 in rake is taken on average a hand, with about 50 hands per hour and 8 players, amounts to about $12 in rake paid. That’s quite a bit more per hour going to the casino, which makes it that much harder for you to turn a profit. What to make all of this? Well, quite frankly, if you are playing ring games a lot, and your numbers are looking bad, then it may be time and suck it up and admit they are -EV for you. They probably are for 90% or more of most players out there. If you still want to play poker, try low buy-in tournaments. At the very least, the variance is so horrible that if you continuously wash out, you can trick yourself for years into thinking you’re a +EV player. Posted in Online Poker Information, Poker World Commentary | No Comments » Darvin Moon is the Genuine Article Sunday, October 4th, 2009 Anyone with an interest in poker should check out this Washington Post article on Main Event chip-leader Darvin Moon. How can you not root for this guy?! Some highlights from the article: Moon has been playing poker semi-seriously for just a few years. He has never read a single page of a strategy book. He doesn’t play cards online, where nascent players can quickly flatten the learning curve. (Actually, Moon says he doesn’t spend any time online. Also doesn’t use a credit card.) “I ain’t no different than you or anybody else,” he says. “My business is my business. People are driving me crazy with their questions. Their favorite one is, ‘What’d you do with your money?’ My favorite answer is, ‘What’d you do with your paycheck last week?’ “ Moon, who turns 46 at the end of October, has gone back to his job cutting pines. “I’ve gotta get up and go to work every day,” he says. “I’m not rich.” Of the 6,494 players who entered the Main Event, Moon figures “there were 6,300 that were better than me.” Moon says: “I really believe all eight of my opponents are better than I am. How can’t I believe that? They all have more experience than I do. I play three nights every two weeks at little tournaments.” So Moon flew to Vegas in July (the first time he’d ever been on a commercial jet) and crushed the field with, he admits, an insanely lucky run of cards. “I got incredible cards for eight days,” he says, almost apologetically. “No matter what I did, it seemed like it worked.” After that round of the tournament, Moon and his wife of 15 years, Wendy — a CVS pharmacy technician — came home to their old 14-by-70 trailer (three bedrooms, two baths, no children) with a $1,263,602 check And he still lives in that trailer!!! While the other players try to elevate their games — Shulman, for instance, just hired 1989 champion Phil Hellmuth to coach him on his final-table play — Moon has been playing with Meat and Hunk, Mama and Ducky, Joey and Bubba and the other regulars at the Elks and the American Legion and over at the fire hall in Clarysville. Soon, he’s going into hiding. “We’re leaving Oct. 7 to go to Wyoming for three weeks of mule deer hunting,” he says. “I’ll be out there in the mountains, in a little cabin with no electric, no water. Can’t wait.” Seriously… I love this guy. I’ve got quite a bit of money on Joe Cada to win the tournament, but screw it. I’m rooting for Moon! Posted in Poker World Commentary | No Comments » I Wanna Run Like Yevgeniy Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 About a year and a half ago, I won a package to the Irish Open. After busting out of the Main Event in Dublin, I joined a group of weary bustos in a €1,500 buy-in second chance event. A few levels into the tournament, I shoved ~12 big blinds or so with Ace-Seven. A young player in the small blind looked me up for about half of his stack with Ace-Jack. When I flopped a Seven, I felt pretty bad about it. I looked over at the young man and was surprised to see that he wasn’t even watching the flop! He was too busy talking to a friend that had just come up to the table. After the board bricked out and the pot was shipped my way, I offered some consolation to him, “ugh… sorry about that man,” as I shrugged my shoulders. He didn’t respond nor did he even seem to care. “Who is this guy?!” I thought. “That guy,” or to put it more appropriately, “that kid,” was Yevgeniy Timoshenko, who I later learned was the defending champion of that particular event. Fast forward a year later, and it’s clear to me why Yevgeniy wasn’t sweating that Seven: he’s got mad skills. There is no one in tournament poker having a hotter 2009 than Yevgeniy. He is currently ranked #1 on the Card Player POY standings with a comfortable 800 point lead over Eric Baldwin. How did he get there? Ohhh… just by winning the $25k buy-in WPT Championship in April ($2.15 million), and the $5k buy-in World Championships of Online Poker Main Event this month ($1.7 million) under the screenname “Jovial Gent”. When Yevgeniy won the WCOOP Main Event, he had to hold off on the celebration for a while: he was one of the chip-leaders with 14 players remaining in a $1k buy-in event (that started with 277 players) at another site. A few hours later… yup… won that too for another $75k. **Yawn** This week, the poker world’s fears that Yevgeniy might gobble up all of the money in the game began to mount as he was one of the chipleaders with 45 players remaining at the WSOP Europe Main Event. It was almost comforting to see him bust out in 25th place. I mean, no one can run that hot, right?! For now, the 21 year old with already more than $6 million in lifetime winnings will have to wait another day to claim his first WSOP bracelet. Posted in Poker World Commentary | No Comments » Pretty Good Turn Card Monday, September 21st, 2009 I played in the $5200 buy-in World Championships of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event yesterday at PokerStars. My starting table was pretty brutal. The lineup was: Joe “jcada99″ Cada Jason “jcarver” Somerville (Taknopotin) Geoff “GeoffRas22″ Rasmussen Bryan “devo” Devonshire (badbeatninja) Jason “TheMasterJ33″ Dewitt Two other good online regulars and… Former tennis star Boris Becker Very early in the tournament when our stacks were 400 big blinds deep, I witnessed the following hand: PokerStars Game #33081236533: Tournament #200909045, $5000+$200 USD Hold’em No Limit – Level I (25/50) – 2009/09/20 16:26:53 CT [2009/09/20 17:26:53 ET] Table ‘200909045 164′ 9-max Seat #5 is the button Seat 1: D.K.5 (18150 in chips) Seat 2: KidPokerJD (22375 in chips) Seat 3: TheMasterJ33 (19075 in chips) Seat 4: Taknapotin (20825 in chips) Seat 5: badbeatninja (19450 in chips) Seat 6: jcada99 (20500 in chips) Seat 7: Ozone23 (22300 in chips) Seat 8: Boris Becker (10500 in chips) Seat 9: GeoffRas22 (26825 in chips) jcada99: posts small blind 25 Ozone23: posts big blind 50 *** HOLE CARDS *** Dealt to Ozone23 [4h 6c] Boris Becker: calls 50 GeoffRas22: folds D.K.5: folds KidPokerJD: folds TheMasterJ33: calls 50 Taknapotin: folds badbeatninja: raises 200 to 250 jcada99: folds Ozone23: folds Boris Becker: calls 200 TheMasterJ33: calls 200 *** FLOP *** [7d 8h 4d] Boris Becker: checks TheMasterJ33: checks badbeatninja: bets 500 Boris Becker: calls 500 TheMasterJ33: raises 1450 to 1950 badbeatninja: raises 3470 to 5420 Boris Becker: folds TheMasterJ33: raises 13405 to 18825 and is all-in badbeatninja: calls 13405 *** TURN *** [7d 8h 4d] [6d] *** RIVER *** [7d 8h 4d 6d] [Ac] *** SHOW DOWN *** TheMasterJ33: shows [Kd 3d] (a flush, King high) badbeatninja: shows [8d 8s] (three of a kind, Eights) badbeatninja said, “sigh” TheMasterJ33 collected 38975 from pot And who is the chipleader heading into day two of this event? You guessed it! TheMasterJ33! It was pretty ridiculous watching him get 400 big blinds all-in with a non-nut flush draw and no pair only to bink his draw against devo’s top set. But hey… more power to him. Gotta get lucky in these big tournaments. As for me, I got Boris Becker all-in with pocket Queens against his pocket Tens. He hit a Ten on the flop to win a 100 big blind pot. The amount of chips I would have had if I had won that pot was more than I ever wound up accumulating. Despite that, I still went deep enough to think a cash might be possible. However, with 570 players left (306 paid), I got 17 big blinds all-in with pocket Jacks against Ace-King and yea… not my year. But maybe it is TheMasterJ33’s year. It certainly seemed like it to me watching the way he was running yesterday. The 178 remaining players resume action in 30 minutes… Posted in Poker World Commentary | No Comments » Welcome to the PokerTips Blog! Friday, September 4th, 2009 We here at PokerTips decided that if everyone else has a blog, why can’t we? I mean, most teenage girls have a blog where they write about glitter and pencils and whatever else. Surely we’re more interesting than them, right? Right?! Okay, don’t answer that. In our effort to prove that we are indeed more interesting bloggers than your average teenage girl, we will strive to maintain mediocre or slightly better than mediocre commentary on the poker world on this part of the internet, including poker strategy advice from a varying group of top players. Additionally, keep an eye open for special online poker offers that we are able to share with our readers through this blog. Alright, now that we have those formalities out of the way, did anyone hear about the guy who won the ladies-only event at the Borgata in Atlantic City? Apparently casinos are disallowed from prohibiting entry into an event based on gender. For years, most “Ladies Only” events at casinos operate under a gentleman’s understanding that only women should play in the event. Abraham Korotki chose to turn a blind eye to this arrangement and entered the $300 ladies-only event last weekend. Out of a field of 260, Korotki made it all the way to a heads-up battle… against a woman that was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and was hoping that top prize would pay for her living expenses while she recuperates from an upcoming mastectomy. Ouch. **Editor’s Note: If she’s really that concerned about her living expenses, what’s she doing playing in a $300 buy-in poker tournament?** Apparently the guilt must have set in a little on Korotki, because after he defeated Nicole Rowe, he said he will donate all of his winnings to three charities, one of which is dedicated to breast cancer research. He explained that his motives for playing the tournament were purely innocent and that he just wanted to play some poker and thought it would be alright since he saw 5-10 other men playing too. Alright, Korotki, alright. We’re putting our flaming torches down for now. Just don’t let it happen again!