Staking does not just occur in live poker tournaments or cash games. Staking players takes place online as well. The player putting up the money is referred to as a “staker” and the person seeking a stake is the “stakee.”

Poker Staking Forums

Staking poker players online is becoming a larger part of the online landscape. It literally has turned into a business with several sites hosting hundreds of members looking to collaborate with each other via a stake.

How do I know I am going to get paid?

Reputable forums have forms that must be filled out and agreed to by both the staker and the stakee so that each individual is protected and on equal footing. Once the terms have been agreed to the “stakee” plays the tournament and proceeds accordingly. Usually, if a person is seeking to stake someone he is going to check out that players stats on www.sharkscope.com or www.officialpokerrankings.com so that they know exactly how successful that player has been both past and present.

Usually, players with a positive ROI or high ITM percentage are the ones that get staked.

How Staking Sites Operate

Most sites do charge a nominal fee for posting to cover operations costs and insurance on the site. 

Think your good enough to get staked? If you do then take your time and pick the site that’s best for you.

Good luck!

With only seventy players left there are still quite a few pros fighting it out for the Pot Limit bracelet. Here is a list of the players still left:

Eli Elezra $302,900
Patrik Antonius $236,300
Phil Laak $169,000
Andy Bloch $113,100
David Benyamine $107,200
Humberto Brenes $103,300

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Two representatives of Stoxpoker, the online training site, will battle against Polaris, a poker-playing series of computer programs developed by researchers at the University of Alberta. The match will take place July 4-6 during the Gaming Life Expo in the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

One of the two human competitors will be Nick “Stoxtrader” Grudzien, the successful high-stakes online player and co-founder of Stoxpoker. The other has yet to be named, though will also come from the group of Stoxpoker pros. The match represents a chance for Polaris — and its creators, the University of Alberta’s Computer Poker Research Group (CPRG) — to avenge its narrow loss last July to Phil Laak and Ali Eslami.

The competition will follow a similar format to that used for last year’s event which took place in Vancouver at the annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. There will be a series of 500-hand “duplicate” matches of fixed-limit hold’em, meaning in each match the two human competitors will simultaneously play 500 hands of LHE against Polaris, with the same series of cards being dealt in both contests; only the hole cards will be reversed. The total number of chips won or lost by each team will then be added together to determine the winner of that match. Following the “duplicate” poker format lessens the luck factor, making the match a more accurate measure of the relative poker-playing skill of the humans and that of Polaris.

“My goal will be to stay aggressive and to avoid tendencies that can be exploited,” says Grudzien. Such a strategy will no doubt be necessary. Prior to last summer’s competition, Jonathan Schaeffer, chair of the Computing Science department at the University of Alberta and head of the CPRG, explained that Polaris is has in fact been designed in such a way that it “learns, adapts, and exploits the weaknesses of any opponent.”

As Schaeffer told me last summer when I spoke to him prior to the Laak-Eslami match, “If we lose, we lick our wounds and go back to the drawing board to try to develop new and better technology.” At the time he stated he fully believed that “one of these days — within 5 to 10 years — two-person, limit hold’em will be solved.” It will be interesting to see in July how far the Alberta group’s AI research has progressed.

(Courtesy of PokerNews)

There is a new site that I found with a compilation of strategy insights from around the web called www.roundersbuzz.com  It is similar to Digg, where you can submit and vote on the best stories, but only contains poker content.  So, blog owners looking to drive traffic to their site, can submit poker articles, stories or news at RoundersBuzz.  Poker players looking to improve their game can quickly sift through the best poker content voted up to the main page by the community.

Enjoy!

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We hear the word “luck” all the time in poker. Over and over again you see the best hand go up in flames against an inferior hand. So what is variance? Can it be avoided? How do you deal with it?

Variance, by definition, is “an event that departs from expectations.”

Therein lies the key to maintaining your sanity. It is something that we as poker players have no control over. Yet we all must learn to deal with variance at the most in opportune times. The fact of the matter is that no matter how well you play your hand there is no such thing as always. Even if you get your chips in as a 98% favorite your opponent can still hit the one outer to make the miracle four of a kind on the river.

Yes, it stings but only for a moment. A seasoned poker player knows and accepts this as part of the game. He will suck it up and shake the mans hand and move on to the next hand or tournament. It’s all in how you choose to handle yourself at the table. It’s not always easy to be gracious when you clearly have out played someone but it is always appreciated when you’re on the other end and you hit the miracle. So think about that the next time you lose a big hand when your way ahead.

Remember, “bad beats” do not happen to bad players.

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The PokerStars 2008 WSOP Steps Tournament is still running. If you are looking for an inexpensive way to enter the 2008 Main Event then this is your ticket. You can enter with Frequent Player Points or with Cash. Heres how you can qualify:

Steps Sit & Go satellites start with a buy-in of just $7.50 or 500 FPP credits. Players that finish in the top two spots of any step will win entry to the one above. Any player who makes it to Step 6 will get the chance to play for that all important prize package. If you don’t finish in the top two places of an individual step, you could still win another ticket to that same step. Players can also buy-in directly to any of the step levels.

With so many chances to win, Steps Sit & Go qualifiers give everyone a shot at glory.

Entry into Steps Sit & Go satellites is available at any time. To register: open the PokerStars lobby, click ‘Events’, ‘WSOP’ and then ‘Sit & Go Satellites’.

(Courtesy of PokerStars)

Thank you God! My prayer has been answered. Talk about having impeccable timing. PokerStars has brought back my favorite tournament. You can now play in the $10+$1 (Max 180 Players) tournament again.

A while back this tournament was removed from play in lieu of the $11+1 Turbo with the same number of players. I still remember PokerStars response when I had spoken with them. They said that the players were excited about the Turbo tournaments. I told them thats fine but why take away a great tournament with great format for the low buy-in player? Why not keep both and keep it movin’?

Well apparently I was not the only one that wanted to see this tournament back on the schedule. So dig in poker players. As far as online poker tournaments go this is one of the premier tournaments available and has a first prize payout of $540 big one. An excellent pay day indeed.

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Ahhhh, what a nice way to make a come back. I didn’t take it down but I did make the final table. Not much has changed since I have been gone I see. There was all kinds of crazy all-ins going on in the first level.

The second hand of the tournament had three players all in with [3][3], [Q][Q], and [A][A]! I mean absolutely mind boggling calls when it was obvious they were beat.

After seeing that I quickly was reminded that I was playing ONLINE POKER and not at a casino.

LOL

Otherwise, I played well throughout the tournament and got my chips in good and my hands held up. That’s about as good as one can expect I suppose. I got to the final table eighth in chips. I doubled up almost immediately but still got blinded down and then doubled up again. I was still playing behind both times though and I had a maniac big stack to my left that was calling and hitting everthing since we got down to 18 players.

He must have been smoking weed while he was playing because there was not thought process in his calls at all. I enjoyed it though. It’s nice to be back.

Talk to ya later.

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The following poker rooms accept e-checks from US poker players:

• Doyles Room
• Full Tilt
• PokerStars
• Carbon Poker

Should there be any additional rooms we will be sure to update the post.

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What is the eCheck?

An eCheck is the electronic version or representation of a paper check.

eChecks:

• contain the same information as paper checks contain
• are based on the same rich legal framework as paper checks
• can be linked with unlimited information and exchanged directly between parties
• can be used in any and all remote transactions where paper checks are used today
• enhance the functions and features provided by bank checking accounts
• expand on the usefulness of paper checks by providing value-added information

How do echecks work?

eChecks work the same way a check does.

• the check writer “writes” the eCheck using one of many types of electronic devices and “gives” the eCheck to the payee electronically.
• the payee “deposits” the Electronic Check, receives credit, and the payee’s bank “clears” the eCheck to the paying bank.
• the paying bank validates the eCheck and then “charges” the check writer’s account for the check.

Alright folks. Today will mark my first day back at the real money tables on PokerStars in over a month. After having a bad run I decided to get away from the game for a while. I continued to play FPP qualifier games but no serious online tournaments. The game was frustrating me and I didn’t want to attempt to play through the frustration this time around. Instead I stepped away and did a lot of reading.

One of the first books I picked up was The Poker Tournament Formula by Arnold Schneider. This was the last book that I purchased about eight months ago and I thought it had very relevant content. In particular relevant content in regards to fast format online poker tournaments. What I also realized is that, although being successful, the game has changed yet again and I was not making the adjustments I needed to make to recalibrate. The low-buy poker tournaments are now hyper aggressive where they used to simply be aggressive.

The difference being that guys are now playing this style of poker througout the entire poker tournament. This was not the case one year ago on PokerStars. I am not sure what prompted the change nor am I overly thrilled about it but I definitely was having a hard time adjusting to it and had refused to alter my style of play enough to combat it. Funny thing is that I was still making final tables at the same rate but I was getting busted with people taking draws on me with tons of chips. Even in the Sunday Millions a while back I was doing really well and a guy drew out on me for a flush over my set.

This is the kind of poker that is being played online now. Poker strategy be damned! So, now that I have had an opportunity to ponder my own shortcomings and address them I expect to reap the benefits of my analysis. We will find out very soon. I will be back at it tonight.

Take care!

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Poker players will be seeing even more of Phil Hellmuth at this years World Series of Poker. A picture of Hellmuth will be on every can of Milwaukee Lite sold at the 2008 WSOP.

Are you kidding me?

The marketing machine is at it again. I gotta give Hellmuth a whole lot of credit though. Love him or hate him he knows how to keep his name in the public eye. Besides all the fanfare he can play a little poker too. I am not sure that any poker player in the business markets themselves as well as Hellmuth does and this is yet another testimony to his business acumen.

Unfortunately for the rest of us we have to see his ugly mug on the damn beer cans too.

Brutal.

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What the hell is wrong with Harrah’s? This corporate crap has gone way too far and I have just about had enough. First, these clowns completely eliminated Binions from the entire process despite Binions originator of the World Series of Poker. No poker tournament was more recognizable than the WSOP and it was all because of Binions hard work over the years branding their product.

Second, Harrah’s could have found some kind of way to include Binions in the process so as not to alienate the roots of the very tournament they claim to love and endorse. Why not have the final table played at Harrah’s? Just pushing them aside wreaks of corporate bullying and a lack of understanding of the history of the game.

Third, you gotta find a way to cut down on so many damn entries into the World Series of Poker. It’s ridiculous to have a crap shoot for what was generally considered the best tournament of the year. 8000+ players? Are you kidding me? This needs to be cut down to 4000 or fewer players. This would be very easy to do and can be accomplished by limiting the number of satellites online sites are able to award to players.

Lastly, get a damn clue or buy a vowel for all of the knuckle head executives at Harrah’s who’s only quest is money and not the integrity of the game. Shame on them and their lack of understanding of the game and it’s history. The WSOP has been ruined by a bunch of greedy, non-poker playing, knuckle heads that are not smart enough to listen to the players that they claim to love so much. What a load of crap! Pay attention to the professionals on the WSOP panel that you guys claim to have put together and actually implement some of the information you are being given.

The WSOP should be the industry standard for tournaments. Instead we get clowns acting stupid in front of the cameras looking for a poker deal with over the top behavior and dumb ass comments. We really need to take a hard look at what this is doing to the game and how it is being portrayed publicly. I will be watching closely this year and can only hope that we do not have another episode of some clown that watched Havad Khan and thought that was cool. As for Harrah’s the jury is still out. I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that they are “still learning” and these are simply growing pains.

One can only hope.

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I don’t know about you but I was curious. Do you drink at the poker tables? I know and have played with guys that do. Personally, I tend to stay away from drinking at the table. I figure I want to be in a solid state of mind to make optimum decisions at the tables. Drinking would be the last thing I would want to do in a poker tournament.

On the other hand I have watched players drink and be perfectly fine at the table sans a few really silly comments to the waitresses.

What do you think? Is it smart or not? By drinking I mean liquor.