The largest gathering of poker players in the world has begun. The World Series of Poker continues to be the biggest event poker players attend each year. The fields have grown to record levels and their are fewer and fewer fish each year. The tournament has changed so much in the past six years. We added the $50,000 Championship H.O.R.S.E. event and taken away the Re-Buy tournaments, at least for the time being.

The players have gotten better too. So many new names have popped up since Moneymaker won it all in 2003. Guys like Greg Raymer, Peter Eastgate, Jaime Gold, and Joe Hachem. True, these guys were doing well before winning the big one but it still shows the popularity of tournament poker. The WSOP Main Event still has a luster about it. It’s intriguing to just about anyone that plays the game. We all would love to be at that Final Table and win it all. Just to be King for a day, what a wonderful feeling that would be.

It’s not too late though so keep plugging away at those satellites. You may win your seat yet!

My editor at www.777.com has asked me to write for an additional web site soon. They are very pleased with the work I have done on my blog there and traffic has steadily increased over the past year since we started. Now, I will be writing regularly for another site to be named with an Australian audience. This is extremely exciting for me and yet another challenge in my journey as a poker writer.

This project will be a bit more open as I will be writing about poker news, poker strategy and the goings on in the poker industry. As soon as I have all the details I will gladly post them so you can stop by and take a read.

Take care!

Which type of poker are you best at? Are you a better live player than online poker player? Do you play better online than you do live? This has been a constant question I have asked myself over the years and the answer is that I am a better online player at this time. It is not because i have not done well live. On the contrary, I have done quite well live but I simply do not play live nearly as often as I do online.

Playing online is a different story. While I do enjoy the experience and have been successful it is still not as satisfying as playing at a live table. It also does not have the element of real people either which limits your ability to “read” your opponent to betting patterns. The online game is also hyper-aggressive which I find to a much lesser degree in live tournaments.Yet and still online poker is extremely popular and has its own core of professionals led by Tom Dwan that do extremely well for themselves.

As more and more casinos create new poker rooms in the mid-west I see that the majority of them are packed with players. The game of poker is still as popular as ever despite the UIGEA and attempts to slow down online poker. This means that for now the game is healthy and although there are not as many fish in live tournaments or cash games there is still plenty of money to go around.

So whether you play online or live poker there are still plenty of places to sit down and enjoy the game.

With time and a whole lot of experience I have learned some things that were glaringly obvious. It kinda makes you wonder why you don’t think this way when you first start playing poker but you cannot teach experience. Going All-In is the most powerful move in No Limit Hold’em. However, the timing of this move makes it even more powerful after the flop.

If you watch and / or speak with a skilled poker player they will likely tell you how they prefer to be all-in after the flop and not before. Why is that? Well it’s pretty simple. You do not want to give your opponent five cards to hit his hand. Poker strategy dictates that we make the highest percentage play as often as possible. When you allow your opponent to see five cards instead of three before making your move it gives them better percentages of hitting their hand on the turn or river. However, if they miss on the flop their percentages drop down to 13% if they have a smaller pocket pair than you.

This also allows you to maximize your profit in the hand. There are other variables that go along with this such as: flop texture, chip stack, ranking in tournament, etc. These variables will also help determine what the best play is for your particular scenario. The fact of the matter is that the All-In move should be your last resort and not your first so use it wisely when the opportunity presents itself. Obviously you must make allowances for online play due to the hyper-aggressive nature of the game. Again, pick your spots.

Over the past two weeks I have been playing nothing but satellites to the WSOP Main Event. All of them are freerolls on Full Tilt and Pokerstars. I still have not won the seat yet but I have been awfully close several times already. I figure if I simply get enough numbers eventually I will hit it. The easiest way is to play on Pokerstars because they have only one preliminary satellite before you actually play for the seat. Full Tilt has two preliminary tournaments where you must win First or Second to advance. Once you get to the actual Super Satellite for the Main Event seat they award eight seats to the winners.

It seems like every time I turn around another freeroll tot he WSOP Main Event is popping up. Even Facebook jumped into the fray. Every major poker site has a freeroll of some kind to get you to the big tournament. This year I figure there will be even fewer players than last year as the economy continues to take a bite out of bankrolls around the globe.

On the other hand the play in these freerolls can be pretty wild so don’t expect people to fold flush draws early because it’s not going to happen. I have made the semi-finals on Full Tilt twice now and even in that tournament the play was still very loose almost all the way to the Final Table. So play your premium hands strong and forget about value betting unless you have the absolute nutz!

Facebook poker players will get the chance to make it to the World Series of Poker Main Event following the announcement of an alliance between WSOP and Zynga, one of the world’s largest developers of social games.

Zynga’s free Texas Holdem game is Facebook’s most popular game application, with over 12 million active users each month.

Following the announcement of its partnership with WSOP, Zynga will host several tournaments on the Facebook application that will give two winners the chance to make it to the Main Event, the biggest tournament in world poker.

“We build our Texas Hold ‘Em Poker game into the largest game on Facebook by keeping an eye on what is important to our players,” said Zynga CEO Mark Pincus.

“We know that poker is a lifestyle which includes playing online and offline, and watching it on TV. This partnership is an opportunity to bring those worlds together.”

The prize includes round trip airfare to Las Vegas and three nights’ accommodation at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino, as well as a backstage tour of the WSOP venue and pass to the VIP player’s lounge.

The Facebook “shootout” tournaments will run from June 8 – 22. Eighteen tournament winners will then be randomly selected for the final on June 29-30, from which the two lucky WSOP winners will be selected.

One of the most commonly asked questions is, “How much bankroll do you need to play comfortably?” Usually this question pertains to cash games. My pat answer is 300BB’s or more. Based on this response I have created a chart to correspond with the general bankroll requirements for cash games.

I just got bounced out of the tournament at the Majestic Star. The tourney was well run as usual and I managed to build my starting stack of 6k to 10k in the first hour. I busted out holding [As][Js] and the flop came down [Ac][Jc][8c]. There was a raise pre flop and I simply flat called hoping to hit a flush draw or better. Anyhow, I decided that I was going to push and I got insta-called with my opponent holding [Ac][Kh]. A [9c] came on the turn and a blank on the river. Off to the rail I go.

A little frustrating but that’s the way it goes sometimes. As long as I get my chips in good I am OK with the outcome even if it is not too favorable. This is one of those times I had to suck it up.

If you are anything like me you have a trusty iPod or iPod touch to keep your day moving along during those slow moments of the day. I have posted a few links below to the latest and greatest poker applications. I will continue to update as I find new poker apps that work on the iPod. Happy gaming!

http://casinogambling.about.com/od/poker/gr/pokercruncher.htm

http://www.candywriter.com/imaginepokertouch.html

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/03/17/facebook-live-poker-comes-to-iphone/

http://www.leastbest.com/great_poker_app_for_the_ipod_touch.htm

http://www.iphoneappindex.com/2009/08/14/pokerpartner-demystifies-poker-hands/

http://www.pokerzig.com

I usually do not care for Turbo tournaments but I have been doing exceptionally well in them the past few weeks. Anyhow, I decided to play the Full Tilt qualifier for the Main Event and won it tonight out of a field of 225 players.

The Final Table was pretty wild but I had plenty of chips and picked up some great hands to get me through. Only the Top Two players advanced to Round Two of the Main Event freeroll.

I will likely play this tournament over the weekend so that I am well rested. I am looking forward to it. My player name on Full Tilt is “SnookyThePimp”

Wish me luck!

Poker professional Phil Ivey decided he has had enough of staking poker players and released several notable pros of all debt. Apparently staking began to get a little too stressful for Ivey who is the epitome of “cool” and under control. Players like Paul Darden, David Williams, Mike Mizrachi and several others are now on their own.

Most poker fans know that Ivey is the very definition of what a gambler is past or present. He has his hands in a little bit of everything both on and off the poker table. This move is likely saving Ivey several hundreds of thousands of dollars and gives him an opportunity to re-focus his attention accordingly. We’ll just have to see how this affects his game if at all one way or the other.

A while back I mentioned that I had recently read Arnold Snyder’s Poker Tournament Formula 2. In this book there were many concepts that we are familiar with. However, one concept particularly caught my attention and that is his take on Chip Utility. By definition Chip Utility is the usability or serviceability of your chips. This concept is utilized for tournament play only.

I have also talked about putting your chips into action and Chip Utility takes this concept to the next level. Basically, winning a lot of chips is always a wonderful thing for any tournament player. The more chips you have the more opportunity you have to play pots. The more Chip Utility you have allows you to play pots and bet and call draws based on your stack instead of based on Pot Odds.

One concept that Snyder talked about frequently is that playing Pot Odds was incorrect most of the time and he made the argument that Chip Utility should be your primary barometer of making the call with a draw or calling a large raise with a speculative hand against a big stack and the like. After reading this particular section it didn’t necessarily cause me to have an epiphany but it did cause me to rethink what Pot Odds are vs Chip Utility and ultimately changed how I view my chip stack in a tournament.

Having used this concept over the past week or so I can’t say that I have had any drastic changes in my results. I am still cashing in 25% of the tournaments I play with 180 players or less but I do feel as though I have a bit more knowledge and an additional edge due to the way I view my stack versus relying on Pot Odds so heavily as I used to before reading PTF2.

You also have to consider that Snyder is primarily talking about slow structure tournaments versus fast structure tournaments too. Even though this concept can be used in a fast structure tournament it is not always optimal depending on the level of aggression at your table. So, as with any poker strategy, you have to pick your spots. I will be touching on various concepts from Poker Tournament Formula 2 as time goes on. Again, it’s a great read and has excellent tournament concepts to incorporate into your game.

After weeks of watching some of our most famous and infamous celebrities take on task after task Joan Rivers finally takes down the title of Celebrity Apprentice. Joan beat out poker professional Annie Duke. Duke was a heavy favorite to win in the finale in what some view as a very controversial ending.

Personally, although very entertaining at the beginning, I am glad this show is over. However, it has already been renewed for next season.

For those of us that not only play Holdem but Omaha too there is a new analysis tool available from the makers of Holdem manager. Omaha Manager works on the same premise as Holdem Manager. There are two additions of this product available: Omaha Manager Pro and Omaha Manager Small Stakes. Omaha Manager Pro costs $80 and Small Stakes costs $55.

For now Omaha Manager works with Full Tilt and Pokerstars although other sites are coming soon. They are also offering a FREE download and use of the product for a 15 day trial period. The installation is easy and you will be up and running in minutes. OM works with both Omaha Hi and Omaha Hi/Lo and is integrated into Holdem manager so you can easily switch between the two. Click the link below to download and try it out:

Omaha Manager Software