Posts Tagged ‘live poker’

Rafael Nadal wins EPT Prague Celebrity Tournament

Thursday, December 12th, 2013

Rafael Nadal might want to consider playing more live poker tournaments in the future. After all, the world’s number one tennis player won the EPT Prague celebrity event, which is just his first ever live tourney. Rafa now gets to donate €50,000 to the charity of his choice.

Despite that fact that Nadal only had five other players to contend with in this tournament, it was a tough path to victory. First off, he had to deal with 6-time WSOP champion Daniel Negreanu, who is one of the best poker players of all-time.

Rafa needed some luck to get by KidPoker, though, as he doubled up through Negreanu twice. The first time, Nadal had Q3 vs. Negreanu’s A9, but managed to win the pot anyways. The second time he paired one of his overcards with Q9 to beat KidPoker’s pocket 3’s.

Another tough player was Dutch field hockey legend Fatima Moreira de Melo, whom Nadal met heads-up. Fatima is actually a very experienced player since she has $336,575 in live tournament winnings. But she still couldn’t stop Nadal en route to his victory.

Afterward, the 13-time Grand Slam winner said that he was really nervous playing in his first live tournament. But he also added that he wanted to do well and remain competitive. Nadal actually went beyond just being competitive by winning the EPT Prague celebrity event.

Other players who competed in this tournament include Italian skier Alberto Tomba, Ukrainian footballer Andriy Shevchenko, and retired Brazilian football legend Ronaldo. Here’s a look at how everybody fared in the tourney and how much money they won for charity:

1st. Rafael Nadal – €50,000
2nd. Fatima Moreira de Melo – €25,000
3rd. Andriy Shevchenko – €10,000
4th. Daniel Negreanu – €5,000
5th. Ronaldo – €5,000
6th. Alberto Tomba – €5,000

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Staying focused during Live Poker Games

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

Many grinders these days like to play online poker because of the convenience and ability to get more hands in per hour. But that’s not to say the live poker scene is dead because many players feel they still have a big edge here. The only problem involves keeping this edge since it’s harder to stay focused during the lengthy process of playing live hands.

First the dealer has to deal cards to everybody. Then players decide how much they want to bet, which involves lots of chip counting. Finally, there’s no official timer in live games like with online poker, and this can sometimes lead to people abusing decision-making time.

Taking all of this into account, it’s not always easy staying focused during live poker sessions. However, there are a few tips that can help you with this process, and here’s a look at some of the best ones.

Use some Motion in between Hands – One way to keep yourself into the live action is to have some sort of motion in between each hand. For example, you could move your chip stacks around or count chips while waiting. No matter what the motion is, you’ll be able to reset your brain following each hand.

Don’t stop thinking when Hands end – When we’ve folded, most of us like to enter La-La land and stop concentrating on the game. However, you can keep your focus better by sticking with hands after folding your cards. This could involve either thinking about what you’d do as an opponent in each situation, or acting like you are still playing a hand.

Constantly analyze Opponents – One very simple way to stay in the game is by mentally documenting each move your opponents make. Sure you might not pick up on everything this way, but as long as you are trying to figure out what each opponent is doing, you’ll rarely get bored with live poker.

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Jesse Sylvia – 2012 Main Event Leader

Thursday, July 19th, 2012

A few days ago, we discussed how the 2012 WSOP Main Event final table has officially been decided. Furthermore, little known Jesse Sylvia currently leads this group with 43,875,000 chips, which puts him in the best position to win the $8.5 million first place prize. Taking this fact into account, it’s no wonder why much of the poker community is currently interested in Sylvia. We’re also pretty interested in him, which is why we’ve discussed the current 2012 Main Event leader below.

Strange Origins

Most people spend their lives trying to get a place on Martha’s Vineyard island in Massachusetts. However, Sylvia moved away from the beautiful vacation spot in order to further his poker career.

The Tisbury, Massachusetts native spent his high school days waiting tables and playing online poker on Martha’s Vineyard. Some time after graduation, Sylvia chose to move to Las Vegas because he wanted a better live poker scene. Following his move to Sin City, Sylvia has made a good living through live cash games.

First Poker Tournament Success

While Jesse Sylvia has no doubt proven himself in the mid-stakes cash games in Las Vegas, he’s just now coming into some poker tournament success. Before bolting into the Main Event final table lead, his largest cash of $15,078 came in a 2008 Mega Stack Series side event. He also took 175th in a 2011 WSOP NLHE tourney, which earned him $2,954.

The average grinder wouldn’t mind either of these cashes; however, it’s hardly enough to make one a poker star. But a Main Event title…..now that’s definitely a different circumstance. Of course, we may be getting ahead of ourselves here because Sylvia still has to win the WSOP Main Event, which has proven to be a tall order for chip leaders in the past. But Sylvia no doubt has the experience and skills to win if he runs good.

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Online Poker Tells

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

One very important aspect of poker strategy involves figuring out online poker tells, or actions by an opponent that tip you off to their hand strength. Unfortunately, online poker is not like live poker where people give off physical tells that help you out – i.e. somebody picking their nose when they have a great hand. Instead, online poker tells are much more subtle and hard to read.

Now most people will advise you to look for how long it takes an opponent to make a call or raise. For example, if a player makes a quick call, they might have a great hand, and didn’t need to think twice about doing so. On the other hand, a marginal hand would require more thought on their part.

However, the truth is that you can’t really tell much from the time it takes a player to perform an action because there are too many variables. For instance, somebody could be multi-tabling, and their decisions are lengthy.

So instead of relying on the amount of time a person is taking or what their avatar looks like, a better online poker tell is to watch their poker betting patterns. For example, if a player frequently calls from late position with marginal hands, but makes huge raises when they have a big pocket pair, you can use this as a tell. Likewise, if a player makes a two-thirds pot-sized bet when they’re bluffing, you can also store this information away.

Of course, you’ll need to spend some time observing opponents in order to figure this information out, so don’t come onto a poker table and start making snap judgements. Instead, watch how each person is playing, and try to figure out online poker tells based on their betting actions. The more time you spend doing this, the more successful you’re going to be with the game.

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2011 WSOP Attendance Fears

Monday, July 11th, 2011

One of the main concerns going into the 2011 WSOP was that attendance figures would be way down. And these concerns were certainly valid following Black Friday (April 15th), where PokerStars, UB Poker, Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker were temporarily shut down. On top of this, all four poker rooms were forced to stop taking US players, which cut down on their ability to offer as many WSOP prize packages.

One last thing worth mentioning is that many players who would’ve been at the WSOP couldn’t play because the bulk of their money was frozen on one or more of the largest poker sites. In short, there was a lot of stuff working against strong attendance figures in 2011.

But as logical as it seemed, the 2011 WSOP attendance figures have defied all logic since they smashed the previous records. Over 66,000 players entered tournaments this year, and a collective $121 million prize pool was offered throughout 58 tournaments.

So what’s the driving force behind the record numbers? Well it’s hard to pinpoint a single thing, but one aspect that certainly helped increase WSOP participation is that many of the online poker pros have been forced to turn to live poker. After all, their livelihood was taken, so they’ve jumped in WSOP tournaments as a means of filling this void.

Moving to a secondary reason, this year may have been more attractive to pros than any other because of the decreased number of amateur prize package winners populating the fields; this in theory would lead to smaller tournaments and a better chance of winning. Of course, the fields turned out to be saturated anyways because of how many people entered the events.

Whatever the case may be, it’s nice to see that the 2011 WSOP has remained popular – even after the events of Black Friday.

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