• Home

• Poker Home Games
• Poker News
• Poker Stories

Subscribe

BetFair Poker Live London Schedule Released

BetFair Poker just released the schedule for their BetFair Poker Live London event, which is scheduled for 2012. The main event will run from February 17th – February 19th 2012 in London, but there are also plenty of other events going on. Players will be able to join in on several side events and cash games that I’m sure will run all the time. BetFair Poker always makes sure they host a great event when they host BetFair Poker Live events and I’m sure this time won’t be any different in London.

BetFair Poker hosts live poker events fairly regularly and the last event they hosted was earlier this year. A total of 171 players took part in the main event at the last BetFair Poker Live event and the prize pool was nearly £40K. BetFair Poker expects more players to participate in the event in London and hopefully the prize pool can exceed £50K this time around. You can buy-in to the event directly in February for $600 + $50, but why pay full price when you can earn a seat through BetFair Poker.

For the next few months BetFair Poker will be running satellite tournaments to the BetFair Poker Live event. Tournament prize packages will include your buy-in plus other benefits such as travel money and accommodations. We highly recommend taking a look at the available BetFair Poker Live satellites running in the online BetFair Poker room. You may be able to earn a seat into the BetFair Poker Live event in London for a few bucks, which is much better than paying the full $650 buy-in.

If you plan on playing in the BetFair Poker Live event make sure you have a BetFair Poker account. BetFair Poker will reward the winner of the tournament with a $1400 prize package that includes your buy-in to the next BetFair Poker live event. BetFair will only credit the winner of the tournament with a prize package if they have a real-money BetFair Poker account with at least $.01 on the account. The player that’s eliminated on the bubble on the BetFair Poker Live event in London will receive a $120 satellite ticket if they have a real-money BetFair Poker account with funds on it.

You still have plenty of time before this event, but you should plan early. This is a great way to kick-off 2012 and you could add a lot of money to your bankroll with a successful weekend in London. Lots of quality players will be in London for the tournament and the cash games running are going to be really deep. BetFair Poker wants a large attendance in London next year, so they’ll be looking to reward a lot of tournament prize packages to players.

Qualifying for a tournament prize package shouldn’t be that difficult at BetFair Poker. The action is loose and you’ll find that most of the players in the satellite tournaments are simply throwing their chips into the middle with almost any two cards. Grab a bonus from BetFair Poker when you sign-up to play in the satellite tournaments and you could earn enough to help you towards your trip to London to play in the BetFair Poker Live tournament in February 2012.

PokerStars Celebrating 10th Anniversary

PokerStars started running real money poker games online back in December 2001 and they’ve been the biggest online poker room in the industry for a long time now. PokerStars is almost ready to celebrate their 10th anniversary and they’ve scheduled some special events for the month of December that you won’t want to miss out on. PokerStars will be releasing ten special events in the month of December that players can participate in.

So far PokerStars has released details on two of the ten special events. In order to find out more about the remaining 8 events you’ll need to keep checking the PokerStars website for the rest of this month and December. We’re going to take a look at the two special promotions already released for the PokerStars anniversary festival. By the looks of things PokerStars wants to have a huge celebration because the 1st two promotions are wicked and definitely promotions that everyone should check out.

Win a PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Prize Package

Right now PokerStars is giving away tons of prizes packages to the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA). One way to earn one of the prize packages is by competing in one of the $160K Weekly PCA Finals. There are numerous ways to qualify for a seat in the weekly PCA Finals, but right now there is a way to earn a seat directly into the finals without having to qualify in one of the massive satellite tournaments. Players that make a deposit using the bonus code “PCA100” will receive a seat into the weekly $160K PCA Finals where you’ll have a chance at winning 1 of 10 PCA prize packages or a share of $10,000.

PokerStars Sunday Million $10M Guarantee

The 2nd promotion that PokerStars has already released details on is the PokerStars Sunday Million $10M Guarantee. Normally the tournament has a $1M guarantee, but on December 18th 2011 you’ll be able to play in the Sunday Million with $10M GTD in the prize pool. The winner of the PokerStars Sunday Million on December 18th 2011 is also guaranteed to walk away with a minimum payout of $2M, which is simply remarkable and a tournament that you don’t want to miss out on.

The buy-in for the tournament will still be $215, which means it’ll be affordable for 1000’s of players. If you want to buy yourself a Christmas present this year you should definitely consider buying a ticket into this tournament. You could become a millionaire overnight and the great thing about the tournament is the fact that it’s scheduled just before Christmas this year. PokerStars is hosting qualifier tournaments into the $10M Sunday Million, so you may be able to win a seat into the tournament for a lot less than the buy-in of $215 with a bit of luck.

PokerStars will be releasing 8 more promotions throughout December, but we have no idea when they’ll be released or what they’ll be. We’ll be sure to update everyone once more details are released on the special 10th anniversary promotions, but in the meantime we recommend trying to win a seat into the $10M Sunday Million on December 18th 2011.

Poker Home Games: Cyclone

I enjoy a good night of serious, skill-heavy poker the same as any gambling enthusiast out there. However, there are also those nights when you want to get together with your friends and just kick back and play some cards. You’re more than likely going to drink some alcohol, have a sports game on television and/or music playing on a stereo, too. Point being, your concentration will not be on the finer points of the game most of the time.

In these situations my favorite games to play are ones that are fun, outside the box, with crazy rules you know somebody made up when they were drunk in the same situation. You don’t have to take yourself too seriously as a player, and you can get in and out for less than $50. That’s a good night.

Here’s one such game that I recently learned. Its main rule is absolutely ludicrous, but when you’re bored with your regular rotation of games, you’re always willing to give a new one a try. One thing I do like about this one is the potential for a different number of cards to be “in play” on any different hand, and I’ll explain now with the rules to a game called Cyclone.

There are actually two different variations to this, one that plays more like Texas Hold ‘Em, and one that plays more like Omaha.

• Each player is dealt two hidden cards (or four for the Omaha variation). NOTE: I’d keep the number of players in this game to between 6-8. As with many of these “off beat” games, if you have too few, you get no pots at all, and even in a fun game, that’s just no fun.

• Once all players have their cards, there is an initial round of betting.

• 10 cards are now taken from the deck and stacked tightly in the dealer’s hand. The dealer then holds them face up, and flips them around onto the table in a whirlwind motion (mimicking that of…you got it…a cyclone!)

• Here’s the rules for play: Any card that has it’s corner area more than half exposed (the number and suit symbol), and is still touching the other cards (and, obviously, it has to still be face up) is fair game to use as a community card in combination with your down cards.

• Final round of betting and reveal.

NOTE: It is usually the dealer’s call as to whether a card qualifies as “in.” And this is definitely the type of game you’ll want to consider whether the dealer can play a hand of his own. If you can trust each other, more power to you, but it’s something that should decided before the hand is dealt.

NOTE: If you’re playing the Omaha variation, you can still only use two cards from you hand, but the options open up depending on how many cards from the cyclone qualify to be used as community.

Please: Spare me the small talk

On a recent trip to the Texas Hold ‘Em poker tables at a Seminole casino, something dawned on me. Not only do I hate people in general, but I especially hate interacting with them at and around the tables. The answer is simple, their unbearable small talk. It’s unnecessary, it’s annoying and it stems from transparent, depressing insecurity and the need to fill dead air with something other than the soft volume of a TV playing women’s golf (that’s another complaint, but we’ll stay on track for this week.)

I’ll start off with an example. Last week, I believe, I wrote about winning a hand on the river, making three of a kind. It was a nice hand, I was lucky but proud of my play at the same time. I didn’t get bullied early and played smart risk/return for the low limit game I was at. All right, enough tooting my own horn. Here’s the aftermath I didn’t get to last time. As soon as it was common knowledge that I had won the hand, somebody else at the table (not the dealer and not the gentleman I’d beaten after he went all-in) started singing some weird tune that had the words “the River” in it. This went on for a good 10 seconds, and eventually the dealer joined in, so it couldn’t have been that obscure. The guy was probably 60 or older, which apparently gives him full authority to call me “young man,” even though I’m over 30 now. Whatever, that’s no big deal. But the fact that he feels he has to talk to me between shuffles is what gets my going.

“So, young man, you got the lucky river card. You ever heard that song, The River?”

“No, but I’ve heard the song, “The River Runs Red with Your Annoying Blood.”

Yeah, yeah, but I should’ve said that. Would’ve taught him to small talk me.

So that’s just one example. But the nasty habit of blabbering to your tablemates simply because they’re the ones sitting next to you is an archaic need for some type of feedback. And let’s be straight about something, I have a fairly decent judge of people and have at least the basic skills of reading somebody, within or outside of the poker setting, and these people have no ulterior motive. They aren’t trying to learn something about you or your emotions. They’re not trying to get you snap or reveal something about your character. Not at a $2-$4 low-limit table. Sorry, it ain’t happening. It’s hard enough to even see these people’s faces through the dense fog of smoke. If the background on my cards weren’t white I have to squint to make out what the hell they were in the first place.

I also can’t stand the story guys in the middle of a hand. In the middle of the damn hand they’ll see a combination of cards or someone makes a call that “reminds them of a time.” Like they’re a retired player with a purple heart telling me war stories of the summer of 1947 when he almost hit that Royal Flush but didn’t want to…blah, blah, blah. Please just stop. It’s bad enough I have to hear this story when I’m trying to concentrate on my hand, the community cards and the other player’s bets, but usually this joker will inevitably hold up the game in the process.

I’m sure I sound bitter here, but it’s one of my worst pet peeves. Worse than the women who thinks she can use her feminist charm to dupe players into believing she’s a helpless newbie, worse than the table bully who keeps betting himself into the red even when it stops working after the first three hands, worse than the guy who thinks he can shuffle cards himself and then ends up bending half the deck on his bridge attempt. You ever get a call from somebody who you just couldn’t get off the phone? They keep talking and talking, and you’re just waiting for that half-a-second where you can slide in with “Well, let me let you go here…”

Well, that’s what small talk is like to me. Except I can’t hang up.

Back in the swing of things

 I recently had the opportunity to play at a casino I’ve never been into before, which was the Seminole Hard Rock just outside of Tampa, Fla. In fact, it’s been a while since I’ve been in any professional casino setting. Not that a whole lot has changed, though. The floor was still infested with hundreds of different types of slot machines (I played a few video poker only, winning a staggering $6). I was pleased to see, though, that off in the corner was a sizable poker room.

I wasn’t planning on playing much money here. We were really only there as a time-killer, so I cashed in $50 and went to sit $2-$4 low-limit Hold ‘Em.

It was a full table when I sat down, all nine seats taken. It took me a minute to adjust to the pace, as the dealer was throwing the cards out like they were on-fire, and the players were making decisions like their comp depended on it. Of course, what’s nice about Hold ‘Em at a full table is that you essentially get to play 7 out of every 9 hands for free, so if you’re not feeling it, you can dump and get settled, and wait for the next one.

It just so happened that I got caught up in the first hand quickly. I had J, 8 clubs, and called the blind. Both blinds and two other players stayed in beside me, making for five players before the flop. Nobody raised, so there was a decent pot but nothing to write home about.

The flop was 8, Q, 4, no club in the bunch. I was sitting second to last at the table, and not having played a single hand before this, had no feel for how everyone else was betting, or whether there was a bluffer at the table, etc… I was just going off odds and my position at this point – not the best place to be in, but I felt I had to run with my options.

Three checks before my play. I bet $2. I had a pair, but it wasn’t top pair, I thought the minimum bet would give me a good chance to see if anyone was trying to coast on a high card. The next player raised to $6. The other three players folded in order, and I quickly while staring at the felt, raised back to $10.

It’s not often you see the all-in in low-limit games, but this guy threw in the remaining $4 he had left. After I called, he tossed up Q, J. I showed my hand, and realized I was in serious trouble. In fact, there was only one more card that could’ve saved me now, since both of us had the Jack and he had the higher pair.

The turn was no help to either of us, and he wasn’t threatening a straight or flush, either.

The river, ah the sweet river, was the 8 of diamonds. Welcome home big pot. I caught a lucky card on the river on my first hand, forced the competitor to buy in with more chips, and started stacking $5 chips like I was riding a bicycle. A thing of beauty. I kept the sly grin to myself and played tight the rest of the time. It paid off, too, as I walked away a winner on my terms, something I’ll get into more in a future article.

After the hand, one of the other players, not the one I beat, starting singing “On the river.” I couldn’t tell if he was making it up as he went along, but then the dealer started joining in, too. It was a surreal moment I’m sure I wouldn’t have even noticed if I were as drunk as some of the people there. Oh, did I mention this was midday? Yeah, around 2 p.m. Of course, inside the casino, in the back where the poker room is, gated off and secluded from the rest of the quarter sliders in the joint, it’s so dark and musky you wouldn’t know what time of day it was anyway.

Anyhow, it was proud win for me. I’ve always felt better winning in a casino than in an online game. You can see the expressions on everyone’s faces, and you can stack your own chips right in front of you. I love that.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

For more information on Poker Home Games, check out Google.