The Poker Lab Rat

Phil Ivey does it again in Event #25 of the 2009 WSOP winning his 7th WSOP gold bracelet - and his second in ten days.

Ivey, was the eventual winner of Event 25 - $2,500 Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo 8-or-better and is now tied for sixth on the all-time wins list.

We can report that the PDC Poker Bad Beat Jackpot has paid out again at Carbon Poker – this time at over $734,000.

Nine players were present at the table to witness Quad Queens beat Quad 7’s – and all the players received massive payouts.

Congrats to the lucky players who were present for the jackpot – especially Ween10, the “losing” holder of quad 7’s who picked up $257,089.81 for his bad beat, and kdawg1979 with his miraculous four Queens who was a $128,544.90 winner.

The seven remaining players at the table were all paid out just over $18,000 simply for being there at Carbon Poker.

Remember :
The Bad Beat Jackpot is triggered at Carbon Poker when a hand of quad 7’s or better is beaten. That is the lowest qualifying hand in the industry – if this happened at another site, the jackpot simply wouldn’t have gone off. 

So what are you waiting for - get into the action at Carbon Poker now.

In the second week of the 2004 Series, I just missed a final table, finishing eleventh in a $2,000 Limit Hold’em event. Daniel (Negreanu) went on to win that tournament for his third bracelet. What I remember most about that tournament was a hand that came up about eight hours into Day One.

“Syracuse Chris” Tsiprailidis had pocket queens, Cecilia Reyes Mortensen was dealt pocket kings, and I looked down at two aces. Not surprisingly, the betting got capped preflop. I really didn’t know what Chris had, but I put Cecilia on kings.

When Q-4-4 flopped, Chris bet out with his full house, queens full of fours, and both Cecilia and I just called. I suspected Chris for the boat at this point, but the size of the pot was sitting on the borderline of being worth a call to try to spike an ace. When the turn came with a king, Chris bet out again and Cecilia ?at-called. The pot was huge by then, but I was sure Cecilia had kings and was laying a trap for us both with her kings full.
 
In a cash game, you still might make a call, but saving a bet in a limit tournament is a lot more important. Although I was almost sure I was beaten, I went in the tank for awhile with my aces, wondering if I could be wrong. If there were two boats against me, they would clearly pay me off if I hit an ace on the river. This one pot would ensure that the winner would go deep in the tournament. I eventually called, hoping for a miracle ace on the river. 

Miracles do happen! When that big fat perfect ace hit on the river, Syracuse Chris led out again and Cecilia raised. I reraised. Chris immediately showed his pocket queens to the spectators sitting behind him and folded. Cecilia went into the tank for about three minutes.

“I can’t believe I only called on the turn. I know you have aces. How could I play this so badly?” she moaned.
 
These were not deep stack tournaments in 2004; saving one bet at this point in a tournament could make a huge difference, but she finally made the call. I showed my aces full, Cecilia showed her kings full, and Chris flipped over his folded queens full.

Everyone at the table went wild when they saw the cards, and tournament players from the other tables came over to stare at the board.

Mike
PS: You can win copies of my new book (Check Raising the Devil) online at FullTiltPoker.

You can play and chat with Mike Matusow, and other top professional poker players online at FullTiltPoker.com. Tables highlighted red in the lobby have a pro registered so check it out! Playing a pro sounds daunting, but really is a great way to learn more about poker.

For the latest player reviews and poker fact sheets on FullTiltPoker.com check out:
>>Gooners Guide to Gambling Full Tilt Poker Review and Rating
>>PokerLabRat.com’s Review of FullTilt Poker

Daniel Negreanu says it hard to play pocket jacks. The creator of this video completely disagrees with him - and made this video to prove him wrong.

Or here is a direct link if your browser is not showing it correctly
It’s easy to play Pocket Jacks - Video Tutorial

Be warned that the language gets a little strong throughout the video when the play does not QUITE go as the narrator planned - don’t play this one out loud in the office !

:-)

If you want to become a complete poker player, you need to learn how to play all the variations of the game. You should do this because it’s no good being the world’s best Hold ’em player when the biggest sucker in town only wants to play Seven-Card Stud. Ideally, you want to be able to play whatever game looks to be the most profitable on any given day.

When I first started playing poker, Five-Card Stud and Five-Card Draw were two of the most popular games, but now they’re both almost completely dead. They got replaced by Seven-Card Stud, which has also decreased in popularity. For a while No-Limit Hold ’em looked like it might be dying out because in the high-stakes cash games the tightest players always won, but it proved to be the perfect game for television so now it’s the most popular game. Because of how prevalent Hold ’em has become, I would advise beginning poker players to start out by learning its many variations, including Limit, No-Limit, cash games, and tournaments.

After Hold ’em, you should learn how to play Omaha, particularly Pot-Limit. Limit Omaha doesn’t work very well because deciding whether or not to call a bet on the river when a third flush card hits and you make a Queen-high flush isn’t a very big decision if you only have to call one bet and there are twelve in the pot. But if you’re playing Pot-Limit and your opponent bets the size of the pot on the river, whether you should call with your Queen-high flush or not becomes a much more difficult decision. In general, Pot-Limit games require a bit more skill than No-Limit games. Because you don’t have the all-in move to fall back on, you have to be equally capable of playing before the flop and after the flop.

Next you should learn the Hi/Lo games, particularly Stud Hi/Lo and Omaha Hi/Lo. Another good game is 2-7 Triple Draw, a tremendous action game that’s catching on very quickly. Like the best card games, it has a lot of mathematical elements to it, but there’s also a lot of card reading and bluffing involved. In 2-7, a drawing hand with one card to come is almost always an underdog to a hand that stands pat, so if you have a 9 and you can force your opponent to break his 9 you’ve gained a big advantage.

Beginning poker players are lucky nowadays because they can learn and practice all these games online. When I was starting out, most poker games were private games and you had to pay your dues just to get invited to play. If you were a winning player and you wanted to get invited back, you needed to show up on time, be nice to the suckers, and you couldn’t quit when you were winning a little bit. Even then, there might not be a place at the table for you the following week.

Contrast that with today’s world where you can play on your computer at home any time you want. Playing online offers an unprecedented level of convenience. Let’s say you’re about to go the movies and your girlfriend’s just gotten out of the shower but she’s taking forever to dry her hair. You can actually play an entire Sit & Go while you’re waiting for her. Sit & Gos can be very profitable. They’re also an ideal way to test out new strategies. By studying your hand history afterwards, you can see what worked and what didn’t. You can make notes about how you fared with a big stack and how you did with a short stack, and you can develop new ideas to try out in the future.

I still enjoy playing live because one of my skills is the ability to read people, but there are little tricks you can pick up that will help you gather information about your opponents when you’re playing online. If you’re playing at a single table and one of your opponents is multi-tabling, you can bring up all the tables he’s sitting at and watch how he plays. If he suffers a bad beat on another table, it could affect the way he plays a hand at your table, and you can take advantage of it.

For beginning players, online poker offers a convenient way of gaining a ton of experience in a very short period of time. If you choose to go this route, I suggest you take the time to learn all the games available to you so you’ll never have to pass up an opportunity to play against a big sucker just because he wants to play a game you’re unfamiliar with.

ABOUT STEVE ZOLOTOW: His Nicknames “Z” and “The Bald Eagle”, he has 2 WSOP Bracelets and is a renowned game theorist. Steve Zolotow plays poker online at Full Tilt Poker.

“Learn, Chat and Play With The Pros” is not just the blather of Full Tilt Poker’s marketing team - these really are aspects that we consider make this great poker site stand out. Here’s how:

Learn: Access the Fullt Tilt Poker library of poker lessons written by the game’s best players.  
Chat: Get answers to your questions directly from the FulltTilt pros at the table or in their pro chat sessions
Play: Sit down with any of their 100+ pros, who play more than 1,600 hours every week at Full Tilt Poker

>>Compare FullTilt Poker to the other poker sites we recommend for players from around the world including US based poker players.

AFTER A tough Budget and a difficult year for the Irish economy, you couldn’t blame the organisers of the €3,500 entry Irish Open poker championships for feeling tetchy in the run-up to the event.

Since last year’s tournament, which 667 people entered, consumer spending has dropped, the dole queues have extended and the tide of disposable income which brought about the worldwide poker boom has slowed to a trickle.

However, despite the prevailing economic wind, 701 players turned up at the Citywest Hotel in Dublin Friday afternoon to take their seat in the event, more eager than ever to compete for a prize pool of more than €2.2 million.

The eventual winner of the Texas Hold’em event, which runs until Easter Monday (13th April), will take home some €600,000.

“We had to work much harder to get the numbers this year,” said Paul Burke of tournament host Paddy Power. “A lot of poker players don’t have the same disposable income they had this time last year. If we had got 600 players we would have been very happy.”

The $10,000 buy-in World Series of Poker Main Event is either one of the most prestigious tournaments in poker or an insufferable donkfest, depending on who’s doing the talking.

No matter which way you think, the speculation over who could take down the largest prize in poker or what kind of player might win runs rampant for months before the event kicks off. To this end, Bodog has released a series of prop bets covering this subject, giving action junkies the chance to put their money where their mouths are and wager on how different types of poker players will fare in the 2009 WSOP, which kicks off on July 3.

One of the biggest areas of speculation surrounding the Main Event always involves the performance of previous Main Event champions.

Will one of them repeat their feat and win again (Yes +2500)?
Or will one of them reach the final table (Yes +900)?

The champions listed as the favorites to last the longest this year are Phil Hellmuth, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and Peter Eastgate at 9 to 2 with Chris Moneymaker and Jerry Yang not getting much respect at 16 to 1.

The performance of any poker pro is always of considerable interest and this year the Bodog oddsmakers have pegged Phil Ivey as the favorite to last the longest at 5 to 1. He is followed by Phil Hellmuth and Bodog poker pros David Williams and Justin Bonomo all at 6 to 1.

Female poker pros also get a lot of attention (as they should) and Bodog is asking if a woman will win the Main Event (Yes +1800), reach the final table (Yes +400, No -800) and which will last longer, the favorites being Jennifer Harman and Kathy Liebert at 5/1.

To view the full list of 2009 WSOP prop bets, head over to the Bodog Sportsbook and place your wagers now.

For me, poker is a game that is meant to be played joyfully, and the path to playing the game joyfully begins with finding the game that’s right for you and entering it in the right frame of mind.

If you’re going to be an emotional prisoner when it comes to your wins and losses, you won’t play at your best. You need to play with patience, joy and a certain amount of indifference towards winning and losing. You need to be cool, calm, collected and happy. It’s not about your skill level – that’s something you can improve on continuously. It’s about how you feel, as this affects the moves you make more than your skill or playing style.

Once you’ve attained the right mindset, you can proceed to finding the right game. I believe in watching a game for a while before you enter it. This gives you an advantage over your opponents because you can pick up on their tendencies. If you observe the way they play, you can adjust accordingly before they’ve had a chance to adjust to you.

This ties in directly to the concept of playing with joy, because experiencing different games and different opponents is what I think makes the game of poker so wonderful. Every time I wake up in my hotel room, ready to start a new day at the World Series of Poker, I’m excited. I know it is going to be different from the game I had yesterday—and different from every game I’ve ever had, really.

Another beautiful element of the game that I really appreciate is the way it provides me with fresh stimulation. Many people are under the mistaken impression that once you get used to playing the game, it becomes monotonous. This kind of attitude comes from people who are not true poker players. True poker players appreciate the diversity, the changes and the differences from day to day.

Ultimately, finding the right game comes down to finding the highest stakes at which you will be consistently successful. If you’re a beginning player who’s becoming a winning player, you’ll want to step outside your comfort zone and move up in stakes since that’s the only way to increase your earnings. It’s fairly self-explanatory that the higher the games you play, the more you will win; but that’s only if the players you are up against are worse than you. Remember, there’s not much point in being the 9th best player in the world if you only play against the top eight.

Once you’ve found your game, just remember that whenever you’re feeling good, you should go with the flow and play on, and whenever you’re not, you should stop. Either way, you must keep an even temper. When things go right for you, it’s great. When things don’t go right for you, as long as you did your best and you made your best decisions, you can still feel happy about your game. Take your losses gracefully. When you can take your losses well – when your losses and wins have the same meaning to you – then you have the chance to become a great player as opposed to just a good one. Poker is supposed to be a journey of joy, and anything that is a departure from that, is off your path.
Ben Roberts plays poker online at FullTiltPoker.com - join him at a table some time!
For more on Full Tilt Poker read the latest Player Poker Room Reviews here:

>>PokerLabRat.com FullTilt Poker Review
>>Full Tilt Poker Review and Rating at Gooners Guide to Gambling

Latest promotions onsite at FullTiltPoker.com:

1. Introducing Full Tilt Poker Academy: the most comprehensive training ground in poker.

With teachers like Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer and Phil Gordon, you’ll learn using a library of multimedia content, including video, podcasts, hand replayers, interactive quizzes and tests.  Begin with Lessons on key strategies and techniques, view live Sessions to see the theory in action, take a Pro Challenge online at Full Tilt Poker or put your knowledge to the test with an interactive Sit-N-Learn.

To start, go to Full Tilt Poker Academy and log-in with your Full Tilt username and password.

2. Triple Points for St. Patrick’s Day
Play for your own pot of gold in the special Triple Points Happy Hours on St. Patrick’s Day at FullTiltPoker.com. Instead of double points, you’ll earn triple Full Tilt Points during normal Happy Hours on March 17th.

Here’s the latest contribution to PokerLabRat.com from the team at Bodog Poker. Check them out if you’re looking for a no hassle online poker room that welcomes players from around the World including Americans. 

If you’re going to play poker online or in casinos you will run into two types of players - there are the recreational players and the professionals. A recreational player can be anyone from a novice, who barely has a clue how to play, to a weekend grinder who treats poker as a serious hobby. Professional players live the game of poker, and have a lot of experience playing the game and recognizing situations they’ve been in many times before. Both types of player can be beaten if you’re able to recognize their level of play, and then play them accordingly.

A common leak in cash games you’ll encounter in a recreational player is that they’ll play too many hands. They’ve been waiting all week to play poker, and they don’t feel like waiting for pocket aces when they’ve only got four or five hours to play. Recreational players will try to limp into as many pots as they can, hoping to hit a flop in a big way. Professional players are more interested in the long-term gain of poker, so they practice a patient game regardless of how limited a session may be.

Another good way to determine if an opponent is a recreational player is by their river bets. A player making a river bet when the only hands that would possibly pay them off would beat them, or raising a bet with second best when they could have just called, are sure signs of a player who just isn’t into the game that much. A professional player knows not to put himself into a situation where he could easily be getting trapped, when there’s little or no chance the bet can be called.

An easy way to recognize a professional player is if they change playing styles during a session of play. Recreational players play the way they play. The have their moves and they set their traps. They repeat betting patterns over and over again and become predictable. They have their game and they don’t even attempt to change it. Professional players are experienced enough to recognize the tempo of the game, and adjust their playing style to best combat other players. They’ll also change up the way they play to keep everyone guessing on their style.

Online one of the easiest ways to recognize a professional is by the time they take to play. If there’s always a pause when it’s their turn, it’s not because they’re still on dial-up. This player is likely playing numerous tables at once. You should be able to find out how many they’re playing through the poker room software, and any player that’s playing more than four tables at a time tends to be a professional, or at least a really good recreational player that’s very serious about their hobby.

It helps to know if an opponent is a pro or a part-time grinder. There are lots of good recreational players, but there are few bad professionals. Stay out of the games with too many pros in them; it’s always a tough game to beat.

Practice your poker skills. Start playing online poker with Bodog now!

For more on Bodog Poker, check out the latest poker room reviews at:
>>PokerLabRat.com’s Review of Bodog Poker
>>GoonersGuide.com Bodog Poker Site Review and Rating

The team at PokerLabRat.com has been waiting with interest as two top names in the online poker arena have transitioned to new poker player consolidation networks this month.

First up we can happily report that the poker room, promoted by none other than the great Doyle Brunson himself (DoylesRoom.com), has successfully transferred to the Cake Poker Network.

This move allows Doyles Room poker to continue to offer great online poker to players from around the world - including the USA (except residents of  WA, KY and LA).

Doyles Room has introduced some new promotions (such as the Gold Card Jackpot where special gold cards are dealt at random as hole cards at real money ring game tables) Be first to collect the entire deck of 52 gold cards in any Series and you’II win $52,000! You can also redeem them as you go for tournament entry, etc.

In general the new poker compares favorably with the previous Microgaming poker client. It’s stylish, quick to play and offers some good levels of action…they jury is still out on the Real Time Gaming casino side games now on offer at Doyle Room Poker, we seem to still have major access difficulties but assume this is just a wrinkle in the transfer and will be ironed out shortly.

>>Visit Doyles Room Poker Site
>>Find out more about DoylesRoom.com in the latest PokerLabRat.com Review

This week has also seen the poker division of one of the UK largest companies, Ladbrokes, transition from a stand-alone Microgaming-powered Poker site to become a member of the Microgaming Poker Network. This will have huge impact on this poker Network, especially at the big money cash game level as Ladbrokes was renowned for some of more lucrative UK and European poker play.

Poker games will be available in both U.S. Dollars and Euros, retaining the convenience-factor for European players (sorry, Germans cannot become members of Ladbrokes Poker). Ladbrokes offers web access in 11 languages, accepts 16 currencies and has a wide range of popular payment methods available for players.

The move has come at a great time for poker players wanting to experience this popular poker network as the $4,000,000 Ladbrokes Rake Race runs monthly until April 2009. This poker promotion rewards the top 3,000 cash game players in the Ladbrokes Rake Race Leaderboard with an automatic monthly payout (min prize $100) with no claim required - that’s a share of an extra $1,000,000 in prizes you can play for each month.

To celebrate the move, Ladbrokes are currently offering new players a welcome bonus of up to $1000 as a 100% first deposit match. Only the very committed players will be able to achieve the full $1000 (requiring 10,000 raked hands in 30 days) but even novices should be able to earn a $50 bonus having deposited $50, as this only requires 600 raked hands… be there or be square! 

>>Visit Ladbrokes Poker
>>Find out more about LadbrokesPoker.com in the latest PokerLabRat.com Review