Posts Tagged ‘professional poker’

Peter Eastgate Throws In His Chips, Retires From Professional Poker at 24

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Peter Eastgate became a household name in the world of professional poker when he beat Ivan Demidov and took home the title in the WSOP 2008 Main Event, taking home $9,152,416. In 2008, Eastgate was the youngest player to ever win a Main Event in the WSOP (though Joe Cada overturned the record the following year). Now, Eastgate is one of the youngest professional poker players to retire, throwing in his chips at the age of 24.

Eastgate has been lucky enough to rake in win after win over the course of his poker career. In 2009, he took home $343,000 in a European Poker Tour Caribbean Poker Adventure Hold’em event; he also won over $1.3 million when he took second place at the EPT London Championship Event. Eastgate is in fourth place on the all-time money winners’ leader board and has earned more than $11.3 million in a few short years. Why is he giving all of this up?

Eastgate says that he never had any intention of playing poker forever, and he’s ready to figure out what he wants to do with the rest of his life. He says, “When I started playing poker for a living, it was never my goal to spend the rest of my life as a professional poker player. My goal was to become financially independent. I have decided that now is the time to find out what I want to do with the rest of my life.”

There are poker players who strive for their entire lives to earn a quarter of what Eastgate has won in the past few years. It will be interesting to see if Eastgate will be as successful at whatever he decides to do with his life as he has been in the world of professional poker.

Poker Players Giving Back To The Community

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

Poker players sometimes catch a bad rap for being involved with gambling. After all, the activity is not legal everywhere and the game is often associated with mobsters and con men. That’s why I always like to see professional poker players giving back to the community, showing the world that we’re completely legit. This Thursday Annie Duke will be giving back by hosting a charity event to support California Governor Schwarzenegger’s nonprofit youth group, After-School All-Stars.

Duke’s event is slated for 7:30 pm this Thursday at the Commerce Casino in LA. Celebrity guests including David Zayas, Don Cheadle, Trishelle Cannatella, Jennifer Elise Cox, Joshua Malina and Sara Rue are expected to attend, in addition to pro pro poker players Tiffany Michelle and Adam Levy. The celebs and poker pros will be competing for $35,000 in prizes. Of course, the prize money will all be donated to After-School All-Stars.

Duke feels very strongly about this organization. She says, “The children [After-School All-Stars] serves live in some of the most poverty-stricken areas in the country where their other options are gangs, drugs, or worse.” Duke really likes the fact that the program gives kids extra support with schoolwork and an alternative from the criminal lifestyle many of these at risk children are faced with. She says, “Poker players can be incredibly generous people, so it was a no-brainer for me that this event should happen.”

Check Out The ‘Poker That Sucks’ Blog

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

A friend of mine, Michael Olsen, writes a poker blog at PokerThatSucks.com and I thought I’d let my readers know about it. Michael makes his living playing poker – a fact that I have always been a tad jealous of – and his blog is about everything having to do with poker.

At Poker That Sucks, you can find posts about poker news, different pro poker players, poker tips and strategies, and more. The tips and strategies are great, as Michael has done a lot of practicing and research to figure out what works and what doesn’t over his years of going from poker newbie to poker professional. He posts on a pretty regular basis, so you should check back often for new content.

The thing I like best about his blog is that Michael writes from his own experience. He has been playing poker for 5 years and has grown a lot as a player in that time. He has put a lot into figuring out various poker trends, analyzing why poker players do the things they do and the best ways to improve your game and work your way into the world of professional poker.

I highly recommend heading over to Poker That Sucks for some great poker reading material!

World Team Poker’s USA Roster Announced

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

One of the poker world’s most exciting events, World Team Poker, is coming up and the roster for the USA team has been announced. For those of you that don’t know, World Team Poker is an international league for poker players. Each team is lead by a designated captain and the captain chooses four professional poker players from his or her country, plus an alternate, to join the team. Teams compete in regular matches throughout the season to see which country comes out on top.

What makes World Team Poker really exciting is that team captains serve as couches and are allowed to play themselves, substitute players and make calls just like in live sports. I’m really excited to see how the USA team will work together and look forward to watching the games when they are broadcast on television.

This year’s USA team captain is Doyle Brunson. Phil Hellmuth is going to be Brunson’s number two man, with Howard Lederer, Annie Duke, Allen Cunningham, Chris Ferguson, Mike Matusow, Jennifer Harmon and Erik Seidel also taking part.

The USA team will compete against seven other countries-Australia, China, England, Greece, Vietnam, Israel, and Brazil. Events include Limit Hold’em, No Limit Hold’em, Pot Limit Hold’em, Stud, Omaha and others and the games will commence on May 19 at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. World Team Poker games will be televised as well as broadcast on the Internet with interactive chat.

Twitter and the World of Professional Poker

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Are you on Twitter? These days it seems like everyone is on Twitter – Oprah, Ashton Kutcher, Obama… But what you may not know is that many professional poker players are on Twitter as well, tweeting away about life and even giving play-by-plays during poker games and tournaments.

For those of you that don’t know, Twitter is a website that allows you to post about what you are doing at any given moment in 140 words or less. You can follow others to see what they’re up to, and others can follow you. It’s a simple idea that has really taken off.

If you’ve already got a Twitter account then it can be fun to follow some of poker’s biggest names and if you don’t have an account it’s easy to open one. You don’t have to feel obligated to tweet about what you’re doing. You can simply open an account to follow your favorite poker players and read about what they’re up to.

The following are a few of my favorite poker players to follow on Twitter:

Annie Duke – @RealAnnieDuke
Daniel Negreanu – @RealKidPoker
Phil Hellmuth – @Phil_Hellmuth
Phil Ivey – @PhilIvey
Doyle Brunson – @TexDolly
Barry Greenstein – @BarryGreenstein
Andy Bloch – @Andy_Bloch
Howard Lederer – @HowardLederer
Gavin Smith – @OleGSmith
Joe Sebok – @JoeSebok

You can also follow the following users for tournament updates:

World Series of Poker – @WSOPLiveUpdates
World Poker Tour – @WPTLiveUpdates