Posts Tagged ‘Pot Limit Omaha’

Sports Stars Roberto Luongo and Paul Pierce turn out for 2013 WSOP

Saturday, July 6th, 2013

It’s taken a while, but the sports stars have finally turned out for the 2013 World Series of Poker. Both 10-time NBA All-Star Paul Pierce and two-time NHL Second All-Star Roberto Luongo have descended upon Las Vegas in hopes of winning a gold bracelet for the athletes.

Pierce is particularly notable because he’s already playing in the Event #61 $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship. 172 players began this event and 143 are still alive, including Pierce. In fact, the 6’7″ small forward is more than alive since he’s currently 12th in chips with 195,000. Pierce has never cashed in a WSOP event, but judging from the early going, he’s got a solid chance to do so now.

Just last week, the 2008 NBA Finals MVP found out where he’ll be playing basketball next season. His team of 15 seasons, the Boston Celtics, sent Pierce and teammate Kevin Garnett to the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for three first round draft picks and expiring contracts.

As for Luongo, he’s in Las Vegas for the start of the 2013 WSOP Main Event. The 6’3″ goalie will be hoping to continue his success from last year, when he finished 643rd and cashed for $19,227.

At the moment, most people aren’t concerned about Luongo’s poker play, but rather his NHL future. Once a mainstay in the Vancouver Canucks’ net, he was demoted to the number two goalie in favor of Cory Schneider. However, Schneider was injured towards the end of the regular season and had a shaky playoff performance when he did play.

Vancouver then traded Schneider to the New Jersey Devils for the 9th overall pick in the 2013 NHL Draft. After this shocking turn of events, it’s unclear what the Canucks will do with Luongo, who still has nine years left on his 12-year, $64 million deal.

Vladimir Shchemelev steps back into WSOP Limelight

Friday, June 28th, 2013

The 2010 WSOP was a breakout party for Vladimir Shchemelev. The Russian poker pro made four final tables, including a runner-up finish in the $50k Players Championship ($963,375). In all, he earned $1,144,617 along with the prestige that comes with so much WSOP success.

Since then, he’s managed to do pretty well after final tabling one tourney and finishing 10th in another $50k Players Championship in 2011. However, Shchemelev has failed to capture the magic that he had in ’10….at least until now that is.

The 40-year-old recently won a 2013 WSOP $3,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi/Lo tourney and earned a $279,094 payout. Perhaps just as important is that Shchemelev captured his first gold bracelet after beating an extremely tough final table.

Some of the grinders whom the St. Petersburg native was competing against included two-time gold bracelet winner Mel Judah, three-time bracelet winner “Miami” John Cernuto, and bracelet winner Allyn Jaffrey Shulman.

Judah was actually hoping to become the first British player to win at the 2013 WSOP, after a number of close calls. However, he fell just short of his third career bracelet and the first for Great Britain after losing to Shchemelev.

As for Vladimir, he now has $1,748,430 in live poker tournament winnings, which ranks 13th among Russians. He also becomes the seventh Russian player to taste victory at the WSOP, and the first in 2013. Shchemelev also returns to the limelight after his bust-out year in ’10.

2013 WSOP Event #46 $3,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Final Table
1. Vladimir Shchemelev – $279,094
2. Mel Judah – $172,361
3. Ashly Butler – $124,645
4. Brian Hacker – $91,085
5. “Miami” John Cernuto – $67,262
6. Tyler Nelson – $50,197
7. Andrey Zaichenko – $37,847
8. Allyn Jaffrey Shulman – $28,821
9. Alexey Makarov – $22,171

Full Tilt Poker gets Player Segregation Right

Sunday, April 21st, 2013

One of the bigger poker stories from last week involved Full Tilt Poker rolling out their ‘New to the Game’ tables. The games are meant to help new and/or recreational players get used to real money poker without being throwing into shark-infested waters (a.k.a. player segregation).

New to the Game tables are open to any real money player, they’re offered in low stakes NL Hold’em and Omaha ring games/tournaments, and players can try these tables for 2,000 cash game hands or 75 tourneys. Additionally, New to the Game tables run at a slower pace and players can only try two tables at a time.

The key in all of this is that players can only participate in 2,000 ring game hands or 75 tournaments. And this is where Full Tilt gets the idea of player segregation right, versus other rooms like Party Poker and Lock Poker.

Both Party and Lock run similar player segregation models where they prevent winning grinders from competing against losing players. In Party’s case, they didn’t even warn players about segregation; they just hid the losing players from winners and certain people happened to notice. In either case, there is no limit on how long the players are divided up, which really punishes winners.

Full Tilt, on the other hand, puts a restriction on how long players can try the New to the Game tables. Once the 2k cash game hands or 75 tourneys are up, people are forced to “graduate” to the regular games. What’s more is that everybody has a chance to try these tables, rather than being restricted to losing players.

Segregation is still in the early stages in the online poker world. So it’ll be interesting to see if more sites take a similar approach to the matter as FTP.

Ways to make Poker More Fun

Friday, March 1st, 2013

Poker can definitely be fun and exciting – especially when you’re new to the game. But as with anything you do continuously, poker can also become dull and boring at times. Fortunately, there are some things that you can do to re-inspire your love for the game. It just takes a little effort and imagination.

Play with Friends

Get together with some friends for a poker night so you can remember how fun the game can be. There’s nothing like a group of 3-9 friends playing poker and getting some social interaction! And if you’ve got more people wanting in on the action, you may even need to get two tables going. Just make sure to have the right people involved in your game so nothing gets out of hand or too crazy.

Set the Mood

It’s not the same mood you may be thinking of. Create a comfortable area to play poker in, get a table, buy a nice set of chips, and use warm lighting. Also, include music in your new setup, but don’t play it too loud. Creating the right feel for your home poker room is a perfect way to add to the game’s enjoyment.

Do Side Activities while playing Poker

Serious poker players realize that it’s important to focus on the game for the best results. However, if you’re getting bored on the online poker tables, a good way to pump up the action is by dropping down in stakes and enjoying side games and activities in between. For example, you could throw darts, shoot pool, or play video games when you’re waiting for the next hand to begin.

Try New Poker Games

One more suggestion that we have for making poker fun involves trying a new variation. Assuming you always play No-Limit Hold’em, you could try some low stakes (or free) Pot-Limit Omaha. There are also plenty of other games such as Seven Card Stud, Five Card Stud, Badugi, 2-7 Triple Draw and Razz.

Assuming your interest in poker is waning or the game feels mundane, try some of the simple steps we’ve suggested to increase fun on the felt.

2011 WSOP Final Table is True International Affair

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

Over the past decade, we’ve seen plenty of international players make deep runs in the WSOP Main Event. Joe Hachem (Australia, 2005), Peter Eastgate (Denmark, 2008) and Jonathan Duhamel (Canada, 2010) are all non-American Main Event winners who perfectly illustrate this fact. However, we have yet to see a WSOP Main Event that’s featured as many global participants as the 2011 Main Event. The non-US players involved include Martin Staszko (Czech Replublic), Eoghan O’Dea (Ireland), Badih Bou-Nahra (Belize), Anton Makiievskiy (Ukraine), Piuz Heinz (Germany), Samuel Holden (United Kingdom), while the Americans include Phil Collins, Matt Giannetti and Ben Lamb.

As you can see, a rare occurrence has happened where US players are outnumbered 2-1 on the Main Event final table. If you’re good at math, you can see that there’s a two-thirds chance that an international player will win the world’s biggest poker tournament this year. But no matter who wins, the number of people who’ve flown to Las Vegas from different countries is pretty impressive.

Looking at things from an even bigger perspective, the final table makeup perfectly exemplifies how global poker has become with six players joining the November Nine. After all, it’s not exactly cheap for pros to fly to Sin City for this poker extravaganza, and the buy-ins don’t make things any more affordable.

Even still, thousands of international players have anted up $1k, $3k, $5k and $10k buy-ins to play in the 2011 WSOP. And you can definitely count on this trend continuing – especialy in the Pot Limit Omaha sector, where Europeans seem to have claimed this game for their own. Getting back to the subject, it will be interesting to see if we have yet another non-American Main Event winner come November.