Yes, it’s that time again. I will be playing in the Majestic Star Deep Stacks poker tournament this coming weekend in Indiana. The tournament usually has around 70 players. The structure has 30 minute levels and starts you out with $9000 chips and $50 / $25 blinds. Its about time for me to break through to the final table having bubbled twice in five tries. I’m looking forward to it!

If you haven’t heard about it Joe Sebok just inked a deal with Ultimate Bet. You may have read some of my previous posts about the non-sense that was taking place over there a few years back with all of the cheating scandals. I don’t want to get into the gory details as most of you are already aware of what happened. I read the article Joe was featured on in Bluff Magazine and it was very insightful.  From my perspective this is an extremely important step that Ultimate Bet had to make. Their reputation was in the mud and they had either let go of or lost a lot of pros with all of the drama and doubt from the cheating scandal. I said a while back that until they actually admitted they were wrong and made some serious management changes nothing would change.

Well sure enough Joe Sebok is now “Media and Operations Consultant” for the “new” Ultimate Bet online poker room. When I first heard about this I questioned Seboks’ sanity. However, after reading Seboks’ reasoning I have to commend him for this move. Sebok is in a can’t lose scenario. If UB fails everyone will say it was going to fold anyway because the cheating scandal was just too much. If UB succeeds Sebok is hailed as a hero (rightly so). I say that with the belief that Joe Sebok is serious about this enough to put his name on the product. To me that means he is going to do everything in his power to make the changes necessary and bring credibility back to the site.

Sebok indicated that he has visited the UB offices in Costa Rica and spoken with the operations staff and security face to face. That has got to be a good thing. He also has a few things that he wants to get accomplished while in this post. I won’t give away the entire article but it is certainly worth a read.

True, he won’t be able to win over everyone and that is understandable. However, if he can find a way to turn around the debacle that was UB just a few years ago he will have made one of the smartest business decisions of his young life.

Good luck Joe.

It took 88 hands for Joe Cada to defeat Darvin Moon heads-up for the bracelet. Cada is now the youngest main event world series of poker winner in history. Cada also takes down $8.5 million dollars in prize money for his efforts. Hopefully Cada puts the money to good use and does not gamble it all away. At this point he is literally set for life if he manages his money properly.

Good luck and well done to Joe Cada!

I got out from behind the computer yesterday and played a live Deep Stacks tournament. The going was kind tough early but I already had it in my mind that I was going to play a lot of hands. That is exactly what I did. I lost about 1k in the first level but I continued to stay involved. There were a lot of hands I picked up small and middle pairs that did not hit on the flop. Finally I picked up [A][K} and took down a nice pot and from there things came together.

The entire day the largest pair I had was [T][T] but I also flopped a straight when I picked up [J][T] and limped on the button with three other players. That allowed me to pick up another big pot but I was steady winning small pots with timely bluffs against weak players. By the second break I was chip leader at my table after hitting an inside straight draw while holding [K][J] of diamonds and also having the nut flush draw. I busted a player holding Ace Queen when he hit two pair on the river for a huge pot. Once we got to the final two tables I busted out 16th. The funny thing is that this tournament wasn’t  really a deep stacks tournament in the true sense of the word. Why? Because once we got down to the final two tables everyone was short stacked due to the blind structure.

Mike Sexton has been elected into pokers Hall of Fame. Sexton, a former Ohio State University gymnast, is now in the poker HOF. How sweet is that? Mike has been on the scene for years and became the high profile host of the fledgling PartyPoker web site when it first came on the scene. Since then Sexton has gone on to host a number of poker tournaments as well as winning the Tournament of Champions a few years back. We also recognize Mike from his work with Vince Van Patten on the World Poker Tour. Most of us acknowledge Sexton as the best TV analyst in the game. I know I do. It was only a matter of time before the induction of Mike Sexton into the HOF and I am extremely happy for him.

Best wishes and congratulation to Hall of Fame poker player and TV poker analyst Mike Sexton.

I don’t know about you but making final tables isn’t quite as fun when you are not grabbing the ring. How can anyone run so good and never get there? It seems almost impossible to make this many final tables and only have 2 wins to show for it. On the other hand I have seen J.C. Tran constantly make final tables only to run into bad luck before he had his break through year. To say that I am frustrated would be accurate. I do realize the math has to catch up to me sooner or later. Going over my final table histories I found one situation where I made an really poor fold with [A][K] that would have put me 2nd in chips and positioned to win the tournament with 5 players left.

It happens.

The other tables I felt like I made all the correct plays. Ultimately we all have to be consistent and true to our beliefs and style of play. For as  frustrating as it may be now to make so many final tables I could just as easily run off 5 wins in one month. Things tend to come in waves in this game. I suppose I should be glad those waves aren’t drowning me.

I played a tournament last Thursday night. I figured why not enjoy an evening at the tables with the wife. No big deal. I get my seat and my wife and I are chit chatting and finally the table comes together as the tourney begins. We all speak lightly and get acquainted with one another while making and taking jokes back and forth. Normal stuff to most of us that play live. Now here comes the doo doo. We have one guy at the table in seat number 8 that seemed to know everything about everything. In particular he knew everything about poker.

The problem with this guy is that as he would prophesies about the hand you played and speculate on what you were holding he was losing hand after hand after hand. He couldn’t have been any more than forty-five or so. After about 15 minutes of listening to his mouth one of the older gentlemen asked for some duct tape and the table roared with laughter. Finally, the guy got the message that he wasn’t that good and he really needed to stop embarrassing himself.

You gotta love it though!

This is the first time I have ever hit a Royal Flush in a large MTT. I was just as shocked when the guy started betting into me. He had no intentions of folding. Anyhow, it was nice to play out a hand knowing that you could never be Bad Beat out of.
SWEET!!!!!

Check it out!

I am sure we have all discussed with our poker friends just how much you need in order to be bankrolled properly for tournament play. It doesn’t matter whether you play mid stakes, high stakes, or low stakes. If you play tournament poker you need a bankroll that can withstand bad runs. Most everyone that I know has gone broke several times. Some learn from their mistakes and go on to do very well. Others, never learn how to properly manage their bankroll and they are no longer playing the game anymore.

One of the things I see most professional players preaching is that you never spend more than 10 percent of your bankroll on any one tournament. You can scale this to your particular stakes easily and it is a great rule of thumb to follow. If your bankroll is $500 dollars then you should play tournaments that are no larger than $50 dollars. Your average tournament buy-in should be around $10 bucks. For a good to above average player they will typically be in the money around 10 to 20 percent of the time and have a first, second, or third around 5 percent of the times they cash. As with anything your results will vary depending how well or poorly you are running at the moment.

Your tournament bankroll should be around 100 times your average buy-in. If you want to play $100 dollar tournaments then you need $10k. If you want to play $1000 buy-ins then you need $100,000 and so on. If you can consistently play well and endure a little bad luck every now and then you will continue to be successful and keep your bankroll intact.

I just got done reading Poker Wizards by Warwick Dunnett.  This book is not your typical poker book and I welcome Warwicks approach to bringing you useful information in a very easy to read manner. You will not find a whole lot of number crunching algorithms or anything of that nature in Poker Wizards. However, what you do find is a wealth of knowledge from some of the best No Limit poker professionals in the world.

Yes, Warwick Dunnett sat down with the likes of Dan Negreanu, Mike Sexton, Kathy Liebert, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and many others and asked them to share their thoughts at length on how they approach the game of poker. Just the idea that you get that kind of in site is extremely appealing and informative. Warwick chimes in at the beginning of each chapter introducing each of the “Poker Wizards”  with a brief bio and how they started on their journey.

Lastly, Warwick himself chimes in with his own take on playing in poker tournaments and cash games and the various facets of play such as:

• Discipline
• Strategy
• Money Management
• Online Poker

Again, this book is an extremely easy read and one that has plenty of meaningful content with no fluff. I particularly enjoyed the sections on Mike Sexton and Kathy Liebert as they explored various levels of thinking and the “why?” in how they approach No Limit poker tournaments. I recommend this book for intermediate and advanced players as the reader should have a good understanding of poker concepts and fundamental strategy and play.

Phil Ivey is now part of the 2009 WSOP November Nine. After a grueling ten days of poker nine players are now playing for $8.5 Million dollars First Prize money. Ivey is tied for 8th with $10 million chips. He will have plenty of time to pick up a hand or two and build his stack  from there. Here is what the Final Table will look like:

If you hadn’t noticed Phil Ivey is at it again. Ivey is making another run in the 2009 WSOP No Limit Championship event. There are several notable poker professionals that are still in the tournament. It seems like they are all taking a stand since so few seem to have made big runs since the game of No Limit poker took off in the 2003 WSOP.

Anyhow, Ivey started the day 4 with $1.2 million and is now at $967k with the average stack around $632k. If Phil Ivey can avoid bad beats and the poker gods shine a little light on him I think he will make a big run at the Final Table after today. Other poker professionals still doing well are Tom Schneider, Bertrans “Elky” Grospellier, David Benyamine and Dennis Phillips who made the Final Table in the 2008 WSOP.

I am sure by now you know that PokerStars has announced the schedule for the 2009 World Championship of Online Poker. Also, the Heartland Poker Tour is in my neighborhood again at the Majestic Star in Indiana. I will be playing a couple of satellites again as I did last time. Also, you guys are the first to know that I will be playing in my first PokerStars WCOOP this year. I will be buying into the $215 No Limit $1 Million Guaranteed event. There is a forty thousand player cap and I am sure we will be awfully close with the smaller buy-in. I am really looking forward to this tournament. As usual I will let you know how things are going in both.

Things have heated up at the 2009 World Series of Poker No Limit Main Event Championship event and not in a good way. Apparently Harrah’s had to turn away 500 or so players because the venue was at capacity. Players included T.J. Cloutier, Ted Forrest, and Patrick Antonious. As it stands there is a total of around 6400 players that are playing in the WSOP No Limit Championship event. PokerStars had a few players that were part of this group as well.

WSOP commissioner Jeff Pollack says this problem will be his top priority going into the 2010 WSOP. We can only hope.

It looks like I may be playing the Sunday Millions this weekend. I plowed through thirty-six players for the one guaranteed seat and took it down after a little more than two hours. I got to the Final Table with half the average stack and I was kind of surprised at some of the careless play by the Big Stacks at the table. At least two of them could have easily played down to final four players but each of them made really careless mistakes. Fortunately I was able to take advantage of that and I got really lucky when my Pocket Eights hit a Set against Pocket Aces and Nine Ten off-suite.

Heads-up took about thirty minutes as I was facing an extremely aggressive player that had me out chipped three to one. Once I doubled up I felt very confident that if I hit any kind of hand I was gonna get paid off and that is exactly what happened when I hit my straight. I immediately un-registered from the tournament. I am seriously considering playing a large buy-in tournament with far fewer people. This will give me an opportunity to play a Deep Stacks tournament with around 300 to 1000 people depending on which tourney I play.