Posts Tagged ‘online poker’
Daniel Cates Tops Online Poker Winners in 2010
December 28th, 2010
It’s been a very good year for jungleman12.
If things continue the way they have for the last 12 months, Daniel “jungleman12” Cates will be the top winner in online poker for 2010.
Cates has really made a name for himself this year, winning more than $4.9 million this year playing both no-limit hold’em and pot-limit Omaha. at stakes as high as $500/$1,000. Just two years removed from the $.25/$.50 heads-up tables where he got his start, he has consistently held his own against top-class competition at the high-stakes online poker tables throughout 2010. Included in his win total for the year is a $500,000 win against Tom Dwan over the course of the first 14,000 or so hands of their Durrrr Challenge. Perhaps most impressively of all, Cates has enjoyed all this success while continuing his studies in economics at American University.
Behind jungleman12 on the list of top winners in online poker for the year is Norwegian pot-limit Omaha specialist Andreas Torbergsen, known online as “skjervoy.” He has won $3.7 million in 2010, just ahead of Dwan ($3.6 million) and Phil Ivey ($3 million). With a few more days left on the calendar there’s still time for things to change, but as it stands right now it’s been an impressive year for Daniel Cates and his high-stakes competition.
Poker Reality Show Young Guns Coming in 2011
December 21st, 2010
More reality TV about online poker players could be coming to your cable box soon.
If you loved 2 Months, 2 Million but don’t want to wait for those guys to wrangle up another cable network to follow them around, you’ll want to keep your eyes peeled for a new show called Young Guns.
The show follows four online pros – Chris Jackson, Chris Sparks, Jarran Joshu and Seth Otterstad – as they live their lives in the world of professional poker. Sounds familiar, right? Pretty much, though the show’s approach does differ a bit from last year’s big poker reality show sensation. For instance, instead of living in Las Vegas during the World Series of Poker like 2M2M, the Young Guns play online poker in Los Angeles when the WSOP isn’t running. And instead of living in a posh, fully appointed Vegas condo, the Young Guns are living in a posh, fully appointed $7 million mansion owned by some dude named Chris Murphy, whose role is apparently “the guy who goes around annoying the hell out of the poker players by having a fit over everything they do.” Seriously, this guy missed his calling when he was born too late to play the square who tries to keep the cool cats from having a good time in a 1960s beach movie.
The show is really pretty standard stuff for reality TV about poker, and it looks interesting enough apart from the jerk landlord. You can check out the trailer for the show, which was apparently linked from Rounders 2 production house Miramax, at the top of this post. The producers are still searching for a network to air Young Guns but there’s a good chance the entire 13-episode run could be at your Tivo-ing fingertips sometime next year.
Cristiano Ronaldo Plays Online Poker
December 7th, 2010
Now here’s a guy who’s fully bankrolled for the Durrrr Challenge.
Cristiano Ronaldo, as the online kids would say, has a “sick life.” At just 25 years old the Portuguese star has already won the FIFA World Player of the Year and is one of the highest-paid soccer players in the world, having milked Manchester United for all they were worth before jumping ship to play in Spain with Real Madrid last year. With all that money lying around, what better way to pass the time than playing online poker with some of the game’s most recognizable names?
The cat was out of the bag when Daniel “Jungleman12” Cates posted to Twitter a few days ago that he was playing against Cristiano Ronaldo. Cates started off the session winning, telling a Twitter follower “I’m winning lol, fortunately not playing football 
”. But that turned around eventually, with Cates telling his Twitter followers that he didn’t do so well against Ronaldo despite the good start. Luckily for him he still has the Durrrr Challenge waiting for him, where he’s been making his name by scalping Tom Dwan.
Ronaldo was later spotted before a training session playing $25/$50 no-limit hold’em against none other than superstar Patrik Antonius. When a railbird asked why Antonius stepped down in limits, Ronaldo replied, “Didn’t move down in levels…we are friends.” As he left the table for training – and left the table up for the session, no less – Ronaldo told Antonius to “text my mobile” so they could play again the next day.
It’s too early to say just yet that we can expect Cristiano Ronaldo to bring his soccer millions to the tables regularly – but wouldn’t it be great if he did?
Darvin Moon Hosting Foxwoods Poker Tournaments
December 2nd, 2010
Don’t piss off Darvin Moon. He has a chainsaw and he knows how to use it!
Ah, Darvin Moon. Going into the 2009 November Nine as the overwhelming chip leader, the fiercely independent logger from Maryland turned his nose up at the gold mine of online poker sponsorships because he didn’t want anyone telling him where to go and what to do. Now that he has the longest Wikipedia entry of any self-employed logger in America Moon is apparently perfectly okay with taking orders, because he’s the host of the upcoming Mega Stack Challenge poker tournaments at Foxwoods.
The six-tournament schedule at the Mega Stack Challenge XVIII (that’s “18” if you’re not into Roman numerals) is all no-limit hold’em, all the time. Buy-ins range from $200 for the bounty tournament to $1,100 for the Main Event, and each tournament also has a guaranteed prize pool. The biggest guarantee is $100,000 for the Main Event, with another $275,000 guaranteed across the other five events.
Darvin Moon isn’t the first November Nine star to host the Foxwoods Mega Stack Challenge – 2010 world champ Jonathan Duhamel hosted the last installment earlier this year while he was waiting for the final table to resume. Moon’s tour as host begins this Saturday, December 4, when the $560 event gets started at 11:00 a.m. at Foxwoods, and continues through next weekend when the Main Event will play out. If you want to keep up how poker’s version of the Tea Party handles his hosting duties you can check out Foxwoods Live.
New Poker Advice Book Called “Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth”
November 30th, 2010
Is this the face of a man you want giving you advice? Or anything else?
Phil Hellmuth may have more WSOP bracelets than anyone else, but that doesn’t mean he’s the most respected mind in the game. In fact, a lot of us whipper-snapper online poker types think of him as a bit of a dinosaur. The title of a new poker book by Dusty “Leatherass” Schmidt seems to take that sentiment and run with it. It’s called: “Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth”, with a sub-title: “Correcting the 50 worst pieces of poker advice you ever heard.”
The author, Leatherass, is an online legend. In just over five years, he’s won more than $3 million playing live games and has, as he states, never had a losing month. He’s built a reputation for being a thinking man’s player who, again as he says, looks at poker as a business. And so what sort of advice fills his awesomely titled new poker advice book?
It’s all about correcting some of the advice you may have heard as you learned to play the game. And it’s not just Phil that’s dishing out the bad tips. He also points to other poker authors, TV commentators and various experts as being full of questionable wisdom. Each of the chapters seeks to correct a common poker misconception. A couple examples: “Misconception #7: Make all your preflop bets the same size”, “Misconception #27: If you have the best hand, raise!” and “Misconception #31: Always play your draws aggressively.”
As he mentions in the synopsis posted on his website, Leatherass admits that there’s some truth to a lot of those theories, but that the reality is that they’re all big misconceptions. And if you buy the book, you’ll get to see exactly why.
The 450-page book sells for $49.95 and can be pre-ordered on his website. The e-version will be sent on December 6th, with the hard-copies going out January 2nd.
Online Poker Player Wins Florida WPT Event
November 24th, 2010
He can’t legally buy a drink, but he could buy a couple of Ferraris if he wanted to. (Photo: Michael Laster)
Florida is one of the only places in the United States where you don’t have to be 21 years old to play live poker, so it’s no big surprise that a 20-year-old Floridian won the state’s first live tournament with a $5,000-buy-in.
Harrison Gimbel, known to his fellow online poker players as “gibler321,” conquered the Fall Poker Open at the Seminole Hard Rock casino and took home $330,000 for his efforts. Gimbel, who lives in Jupiter, Fla., had to overcome a field of more than 300 players, including a number of experienced poker pros, on his way to the win. Shannon Shorr and Shawn Cunix were among those who made the money, while Gimbel had to fend off Allie Prescott (9th), Raj “BadCardsAA” Vohra (4th), and Fred Goldberg (3rd) at the final table. Gimbel’s even-numbered payout came as the result of a deal with Anthony Ruberto, the second-place finisher who took home an extra $42,000 over what first place was scheduled to pay.
The win is actually the second major victory of 2010 for Gimbel. Back in January he won the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, an event noted for its enormous fields packed with tough online poker players, and claimed $2.2 million in the process. Not bad for a guy who won’t be eligible to play in the World Series of Poker until 2012.
The Fall Poker Open was the first WPT Regional Event, a series of tournaments recently announced by the World Poker Tour that will sport the WPT brand but not feature any television coverage. They also apparently won’t feature much in the way of online coverage, so a tip of the hat here goes to Nick Sortal at the Action South Florida Gambling blog, who put in a marathon reporting session to get the info out where the WPT didn’t.
Aussie Casino Players Defecate and Urinate at Poker Machines
November 23rd, 2010
Avid players take a, um, rest from their gambling.
Say what you want about the habits of online poker players. Yes, we frequently play long hours wearing only underwear and Cheetoh crumbs. And yes, we’ll sometimes forgo shaving and bathing for the sake of a few more hours of multi-table action. But, at least most of us don’t relieve ourselves right on our chair as we’re playing. Which is unlike, say, the urinating and defecating patrons of the Crown Casino in Sydney, Australia.
The allegations, and they’re only allegations at this point, come from an anonymous study of 225 employees of the casino. According to many of the staff, they’ve witnessed unacceptable levels of violence while on the job, not to mention the poker machine players who prefer to take their bathroom breaks right there on the casino floor, rather than risk losing a seat at their preferred game.
One employee made this comment: “They won’t get off their ass and get a drink, they won’t even go to the toilet… They just sit there and go to the toilet at the machine.” A university prof who helped conduct the study said: “Staff report constantly that they have up to a dozen stools out the back that need to be fumigated and reupholstered, and people who work in the reupholstering business confirm that.”
A spokesman for the casino didn’t accept the allegations. Gary O’Neill said the urinating, defecating story is an “urban myth” and that: “if anybody committed such an act, they would be instantly barred from the casino.” Hopefully not before being given a couple of wet-naps though…
Online Poker Players are Disagreeable Introverts
November 16th, 2010
A future online poker player.
They say that the surest way to victory is to know your enemy. So for anyone who’s serious about winning at online poker, the results of an in-depth Poker Personality Study should be required reading. It provides a very interesting snapshot about what type of people play the game, and how their personalities compare to the general public.
So, what are we like? Well, the short answer is that we’re introverted, disagreeable and not all that conscientious. And that’s probably not a huge surprise to anyone who’s been on the receiving end of a chat session with an angry, tilt-ing opponent. But the long answer is more interesting, if also a bit more complex.
Online poker players showed themselves to be below average in a variety of commonly measured personality traits, including Agreeableness, Extraversion and Conscientiousness. Disagreeable people are: “unconcerned with others’ well being”, and interested more in themselves than getting along with others. Introverts are: “quiet, low-key and deliberate” and require less stimulation and enjoy more time alone. Those with low conscientiousness are: “laid-back, less goal oriented” and are often procrastinators.
One other interesting, and surprising, finding in the study is that people who identify as high in aggression are often anything but at the tables. The study found that people who described themselves as very aggressive actually scored low on some aggression-related game stats.
Obviously what you see here is a pretty high-level description and the actual study provides a whole lot more detail, including some stats and figures that show how all these results were determined.
To conduct the study the authors, Paul Fayngersh and Mark Kizelshteyn, found 73 volunteers via the poker forums TwoPlusTwo and DeucesCracked. They filled out a detailed questionnaire and, in some cases, provided detailed stats about their poker play.
Tom Dwan Playing High Stakes Poker in Macau
November 15th, 2010
Who has time for online poker when there are Chinese businessmen to play against?
If you’ve been waiting for Tom Dwan and Daniel Cates to get back to their Durrrr Challenge, you could end up waiting a long time for satisfaction now that Dwan has discovered the nosebleed-stakes cash games on the Chinese island of Macau.
Dwan was in town for the Asian Poker Tour event held at the City of Dreams casino, but a semi-private cash game populated by Chinese businessmen who enjoy taking on the world’s best poker players turned out to be the real draw for the young poker pro. Along with Phil Ivey, Chau Giang and John Juanda, Dwan sat in a no-limit hold’em game that internationally famed tournament director Matt Savage described in a 2+2 thread as “some of the biggest in history.” The game started with blinds of 5,000/10,000 Hong Kong Dollars (roughly $650/$1,300 in US dollars) before the American pros convinced their hosts to bump the blinds up to 10,000/20,000 HKD (roughly $1,300/$2,600 USD).
Savage posted a few short updates on the game, which started at the Hard Rock Hotel before moving to Starworld Casino. Then he sent a link to the thread to Tom Hall, the CEO of gambling industry business AsianLogic and an occasional player in the game himself. Hall, who personally invited Ivey and Dwan to Macau to play in the game, then began posting more details in the 2+2 thread.
“These ‘businessmen’ are generally involved in the gaming industry in some form, casino junkets, sports betting etc and instead of losing tens of millions playing baccarat every year discovered poker 2 years ago and have taken to it. Some have become very, very good. Obviously not to the level of Ivey and Tom, but can hold their own and they are fearless which makes them dangerous,” wrote Hall. “They like action and thats why people like Tom Dwan they find very fun to play against. The length of the sessions are also legendary with 20-30 hour sessions with a 6 hour break and then being repeated 4-5 times relatively common. Bluffing is highly respected (but don’t get caught – its expensive)!!”
Details on the actual gameplay from the weekend are a bit sparse, as you might expect, but it appears that Dwan started off down before winning a huge pot with A-K against Q-Q and T-T to find himself up $1.7 million USD early yesterday morning. Savage said at that point that Ivey was “back to even,” though Hall wrote late on Sunday night that Ivey was “apparently up large now.” He also wrote that Ted Forrest had turned up and that there two games are now running, one with 10,000/20,000 HKD blinds and another with 5,000/10,000 HKD blinds.
You can keep up with the latest news at the 2+2 High Stakes Poker in Macau thread.
Ohio Poker Player Wins WSOP Circuit Regional Championship
October 29th, 2010
From a freeroll to a major poker tournament win: not a bad day at the tables. (Photo: WSOP)
Jim Anderson, a poker player from Wooster, Ohio, is the champion of the first WSOP Circuit Regional Championship.
Anderson, a 24-year-old former bartender, was overshadowed by his tablemates when the final table began. With just $54,040 in live tournament cashes to his credit, his accomplishments paled next to the tens of millions of dollars won both live and online by his more experienced competition. But the bulk of Anderson’s career earnings had come from a run in this year’s WSOP Main Event, where he finished 242nd, and the experience he gained there helped him make his way to the top at Horseshoe Hammond.
After the departures of Chicago options trader Mark Owens (9th place, $48,615) and Minneapolis poker pro Tony Hartmann (8th, $60,952), poker pro Brandon Adams hit the rail in 7th place ($77,556) after moving his short stack in with A-5 and running into A-Q. Shannon Shorr, who came in third in chips but never got any traction at the final table, was next out (6th, $100,151) when he ran his pocket jacks into the pocket aces of Gabe Patgorski. Online poker star Dave “Doc” Sands met a similar fate in 5th place ($131,299) when he moved his relatively short stack all-in with Q-T, only to meet Curt Kohlberg’s pocket aces. Kohlberg wouldn’t last much longer, though, falling 4th place ($174,807) when his A-T couldn’t crack Jim Anderson’s pocket jacks despite picking up flush and straight draws on the flop.
That left just Anderson, Patgorski, and ESPN poker analyst Bernard Lee in the running. Lee had entered the day with one of the shortest stacks and never really picked up any steam, but he managed to double up into second place when his pocket queens held up in a pot against Anderson. Just when things were looking good, though, he lost a critical race for all his chips with T-T against Patgorski’s A-K. That sent Lee home in 3rd place ($236,368) and set up the heads-up match for the WSOP Circuit Regional Championship.
Anderson came in with roughly a 5-to-2 chip lead, thanks to a double-up at Patgorski’s expense during three-handed play, and it didn’t take long for him to lock up the title. The final hand saw him and Patgorski get five bets in before the flop – perfectly reasonable, considering they were heads-up holding A-J (Patgorski) and A-A (Anderson). The board never came close to giving Patgorski any help, and he was eliminated in 2nd place ($324,770).
Anderson walked away with $525,449 and his second gold WSOP Circuit winner’s ring. Amazingly enough, the Ohio poker player had never intended to play in the Regional Championship – he only entered because he won his seat along with his first gold ring the previous week. With that kind of parlay under his belt, Anderson will likely be playing a lot more poker in the years to come.
