Two new poker rooms for your delectation

Date: Mon, Dec 17, 2007 Internet

Cardplayer's Spade Club will no doubt grab the lion's share of the headlines but note also 
Greyhound Poker.

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History comes Mob-handed to Vegas

Date: Mon, Dec 17, 2007 Internet

One more blow for the 'bad guys never prosper' theory: they do at least get museums built to them:

"Las Vegas is building a museum about some of its founding fathers and most influential figures – guys with names like Bugsy, Lefty and Lansky.

The mob museum will stand as frank acknowledgment of the major role mobsters played in developing Las Vegas into the gambling capital of America and giving the city its rakish glamour during the 1940s and '50s."

Only one alarm bell sounds as I read about this Mount Rushmore for the Underworld:

"Organizers hope to have an oral-history area where visitors 'can sit down in front of a camera and say, `I knew Bugsy,' or `I saw Meyer,' or whatever'"

You might be able to think of a better carrot to dangle before every delusional attention-seeker in America but, for the life of me, I can't.

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Never underestimate gamblers' burning ambition

Date: Thu, Dec 13, 2007 Internet

Can't tell you how proud to be a gambler this story makes me:

You probably won't be surprised to learn that the resolute passengers were from the era that can still remember a World War. Or maybe it is just New York bloody-mindedness; you decide. In any event, the 'money quote' is a gem:

"'This is nothing to me,' said one intrepid gambler, who boasted that he has made the trek to [Atlantic City] 400 times -- including one trip in which a fellow passenger died en route."

I'm reminded of Walter Matthau's famous quote during the home poker game in The Odd Couple:

"Marriages may come and go, but the game must go on..."

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Don't look my way as Vaughn's Bluff is called

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Internet

And so the spectre of online wrongdoing now hovers over the poker media itself. Every journalist knows it's usually time to go when he himself has become the story.

Obviously, you only have my word for this, but I feel it is incumbent upon every poker scribe at this time to confirm openly that he is all above board.

So know this: down at the humble depths of $2.25 Sit & Go land, my hands are more than full with the following poker concepts:

Pot Odds
Implied Odds
EV
Stop and Go
Online Bluffs
Note-Taking
The Pre-Imperilled Shove
The Squeeze Play
Pushing the Flush

I'm still trying to master getting cute with my chips. Don't even talk to me about getting cute with my account...

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Chip Reese - 1951-2007

Date: Wed, Dec 5, 2007 Internet

I didn't know much about Chip Reese but what I did know, I liked.

In a game not short on yappers and narcissists, he played with a quiet style and dignity and a mellow smile that played across his features whenever the deck revealed its quirks.

Together, those qualities formed the facade that hid a gambling titan.

Even those of us yet to set foot in Vegas have had long enough to grow accustomed to poker's 'names' by now to feel genuine sadness at his passing.



Chip Reese - a life in fragments:

"He suffered from rheumatic fever during his elementary years at school and had to stay at home for almost a year. During this time, his mother taught him how to play several board and card games and Reese later described himself as 'a product of that year'." - 72os



"He was admitted to Stanford Business School, but decided instead to play poker professionally after winning $40,000 in a tournament in Las Vegas...calling several days later to quit his day job in Arizona and later hiring someone to fly to Arizona to clean out his apartment and drive his car to Las Vegas." - ibid.

"Turning the $400 he had in his pocket into $60,000, Reese concluded, 'Law doesn’t have the same monetary incentive as poker.' It was a full year before David Reese told his parents that he was no longer going to be a lawyer." - Poker Pages

"He just accidentally stumbled into Las Vegas and never left." - Nolan Dalla

"I knew him for 35 years, I never saw him get mad or raise his voice. He had the most even disposition of anyone I've ever met." - Doyle Brunson



Who is Chip Reese and How Has He Become Poker's Most Unheard About Player? - Associated Content headline

“If my family’s lives were threatened and I had to win a poker match in order to save them, Chip is the player I would definitely choose.” - Doyle Brunson

'Reese died in his sleep and was found by his son early Tuesday morning at his Las Vegas home after suffering from symptoms of pneumonia...' - Associated Press report

"When asked when he might consider quitting poker...Reese has been quoted as replying, 'I’ll stop playing at my funeral, and only God knows what I’ll do after that.'” - Poker Pages

"He's certainly the best poker player that ever lived." - Doyle Brunson

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Poker mind games (includes tasteful silhouette nude)

Date: Mon, Dec 3, 2007 Internet

How you make use of this in your next poker home game is up to you but flicking through an old issue of Men's Health magazine, I came across an article called Decode her Home, offering pointers in assessing a woman by the state of her home furnishings:

• "Unlike over-sized, sensual cushions, designer or leather suggest she's a cool and calculating individual".


• "If she's always front and centre [of her photographs] you've got a high-maintenance attention-seeker." (Bluffer? Calling station?)


• Bookshelves - alphabetical order = neuroticism; general orderliness = responsibility; clutter = open-minded free-thinker


• Decor: "Blue indicates calmness and order". Red = aggression; green = nurturing. Not sure how you prepare for "nurturing"...


• Furniture: "A cluttered room suggests an open book: she'll spill her guts to you. But a more private person will have backs of chairs facing doors and confined traffic patterns."

But enough of this: it's the tasteful nude you're really after. She's here: observe and learn how your brain works, then adjust your game accordingly.

Some smart Alecs tell me they can make her spin both ways after a while. Some of us, on the other hand, are just happy to watch her spin at all...


[Picture courtesy of AJC1]

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Silence isn't golden if poker hopes to grow

Date: Thu, Nov 29, 2007 Internet

Perturbing extracts from the latest Gambling Online:

"A 47-year-old father of three wins EPT London at an all-too-quiet final table..."

"...there were precious few 'epic' moments at the final table"

"All the big names, among them such chatterers and natterers as Daniel Negreanu, Roland de Wolfe and last year's winner Vicky Coren were all out - so the glamour factor was severely lacking..."

"Starved of the motor-mouths, this was the quietest final table GOM has ever witnessed...This was poker doing a very decent impression of a chess match."

"We imagine that PokerStars weren't best pleased to have so little drama on their televised final table, either."

"But the overall impression for the casual first-time spectator...would be that poker is a quiet and unspectacular game."

I tread on thin ice in highlighting this as a problem, because at the other extreme, the antics of messrs Guoga and Hellmuth at their worst have been criticised as much here as anywhere else.

I also acknowledge that poker tournaments should be about skill rather than cabaret and that asking people to play at being something they're not sets up a far greater potential fiasco than a televised table masquerading as a monastery.

So all I can do is warn what might happen if EPT London becomes the norm. TV will flex its muscles.

Open tournaments will become invitationals. Players in the upper echelon of an accepted global ranking system will be given a bye, entering the latter stages of a tournament with a starting stack adjusted to a percentage of the average chip count at the time of their entry. Don't be surprised if that percentage occasionally exceeds 100%.

Alternatively, the favoured few will start at the same stage as everyone else but with re-buy options, should they bust out.

If that doesn't lure enough 'name' players to the event, TV and sponsors will be given a number of invitations they can offer to the more charismatic 'faces' in tournament poker, with the entry fee being waived. Maybe this happens already, I don't know.

But something will happen. No matter how contrived, nor how much it spits in the face of poker tradition. Television cannot afford glorified 'dead air' where a final table is meant to be.

It will do whatever it takes.

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Annie Duke - don't live off the fat of the hands

Date: Tue, Nov 27, 2007 Internet

Interesting article on how poker player Annie Duke keeps in shape - seeing flops needn't mean seeing flab.

I'm doing my own bit for fitness in the face of all odds, incidentally. Two S&Gs a night - the first with a laptop perched on a board across the handles of my exercise bike, the second while I sit back at my desk, doing some Bullworker toning in between plays.

Two equally ridiculous images, to be sure. Hopefully the pay-off will make them worthwhile.

Whether it's Annie or me, though, the moral of our striving against poker's culture of sedentary consumption is clear.

Pleeeease can we stop calling it a sport...?

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One Cake you'll want a piece of - CakePoker's $Million Freerolls

Date: Tue, Nov 27, 2007 Internet

"The Million Dollar Freeroll Series at CakePoker is providing players with eight more chances to get a piece of a million-dollar pie by hosting a $100,000 freeroll tournament every month.

There are three ways that players can qualify and one way is absolutely free..."

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Free Poker Magazine - trial offer

Date: Sat, Nov 24, 2007 Internet

Pokernews Magazine - New UK/Ireland Poker News Magazine

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Not doing the hustle

Date: Sat, Nov 24, 2007 Internet

The Demise of the pool hustler - New York Times

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Down in the Den, it's not just the Dragons blowing smoke

Date: Fri, Nov 23, 2007 Internet

Wagering War is nothing but compassionate. Despite having uninstalled Poker Alerts in disillusionment once already (scroll down entry for 4th March) I was prepared to give it a second chance, particularly when I learnt that Dragons' Den panellist Theo Paphitis was prepared to invest £200,000 in the whole Gaming Alerts business.

I re-downloaded the Poker Alerts software. It jammed.

This is on an 18-month old computer running Windows XP, by the way.

I tried again, got it running for two minutes and it jammed again.

I can confirm, however, that it uninstalls like a dream.

If you're interested, Theo, I have a wheelbarrow with no wheel and one handle missing. Give me a week and I reckon I'll have FedEx quaking in its boots.

Just £100,000 buys you a 5% stake in the other handle.

Call me.

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Palms Casino - fantasy suite or love-shaq?

Date: Wed, Nov 21, 2007 Internet

Looking for Vegas accommodation with a difference? Twenty-five grand a night gets you this:

"This is the only suite in the world with an indoor basketball court.
"Covering 10,000 square feet on two floors, this party room features a basketball half-court, adjacent separate professional locker rooms with private access, scoreboard, pool table, full bar with lounge and room to dance.
"But wait, that's not all. This suite wouldn't be up to stature without three NBA-sized Murphy beds on the basketball court, NBA memorabilia, a large dining area, living/media room, iPod® Hi-Fi, Jacuzzi® tub, and 42" plasma TVs.
"Plus, you can customize your stay with your very own team jerseys and cheerleaders on the sidelines. Game on!"

On-court beds, cheerleaders, "customise your stay"?

I'm very naive in these matters but is there a hidden agenda here?
......................................................................................

If so, but it's waaaay beyond your budget, seek solace here instead.

Wagering War - proud to cater for those gamblers the casinos forgot, since 2004...

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