Speedyfold Poker Blog

Has Pokerstars got too much of a stranglehold of the poker tour world? It is certainly open to debate. Pokerstars owns and operates numerous live poker tours such as:

EPT - European Poker Tour
NAPT - North American Poker Tour (including the PCA)
LAPT - Latin America Poker Tour
APPT - Asia Pacific Poker Tour
ANZPT - Australia and New Zealand Poker Tour
IPT - Italian Poker Tour
UKIPT - UK and Ireland Poker Tour
RPT - Russian Poker Tour
CSPT - Czech-Slovak Poker Tour

It is an impressive portfolio for sure. But is it too much? We have seen recently the Full Tilt pros not being allowed to play in the NAPT because it is basically heavily promoting the Pokerstars brand.

I would tend to disagree though. It isnt like they’ve been buying up existing poker tours and taking them over. They are new tours, providing some great tournaments for poker players. Their immediate success is a product of the power and pockets of the Pokerstars brand. They have generated field sizes that any fledging tour could only dream of. If some of the major competing brands stop their players playing it is both unfortunate but also fully understandable. On the flip side I doubt Pokerstars will be allowing their main guys to play in any Full Tilt live tours either.

The saving grace to all this is that more well run and reliable live tournaments is a good thing for the average well-rolled poker player, and that the ultimate of all poker tours the WSOP remains unaffected, largely independant and the utlimate unifying tour for every player. In many sports and skill games such as Boxing, Darts, Chess etc there have been major splits at the top basically creating more than 1 world title. Thankfully with Poker this situation doesnt exist and long may that continue

If you are interested in qualifying for any of the above poker tours then signup with a $600 deposit bonus to Pokerstars who have plenty of online satellites available for all the tours

Congrats to Senecady who won the 40th Billionth hand on Pokerstars, winning himself $24,000

PokerStars Game #40000000000: Hold’em No Limit ($2/$4 USD) - 2010/02/19 12:43:11 ET
Table ‘Naef III’ 6-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: Senecady ($117 in chips)
Seat 2: Joe Hahn ($412 in chips)
Seat 3: zawaaa ($266.45 in chips)
Seat 4: 13_Xerxes_13 ($400 in chips)
Seat 5: thecooler992 ($142.55 in chips)
Seat 6: jeckjeck ($515.40 in chips)
13_Xerxes_13: posts small blind $2
thecooler992: posts big blind $4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Joe Hahn said, “oh great, I just sat.. lol”
Joe Hahn said, “heh thanks”
thecooler992 said, “b quiet sir”
Joe Hahn said, “lol, hmm, ok!”
jeckjeck: folds
Senecady: raises $113 to $117 and is all-in
Joe Hahn: raises $295 to $412 and is all-in
zawaaa: folds
13_Xerxes_13: folds
thecooler992: calls $138.55 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($269.45) returned to Joe Hahn
*** FLOP *** [7s Qh 7d]
*** TURN *** [7s Qh 7d] [Tc]
*** RIVER *** [7s Qh 7d Tc] [7c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
thecooler992: shows [5d Kh] (three of a kind, Sevens)
Joe Hahn: shows [Jd Kd] (three of a kind, Sevens)
thecooler992 collected $25.55 from side pot
Joe Hahn collected $25.55 from side pot
Senecady: shows [Kc Ts] (a full house, Sevens full of Tens)
Senecady collected $350 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $404.10 Main pot $350. Side pot $51.10. | Rake $3
Board [7s Qh 7d Tc 7c]
Seat 1: Senecady showed [Kc Ts] and won ($350) with a full house, Sevens full of Tens
Seat 2: Joe Hahn showed [Jd Kd] and won ($25.55) with three of a kind, Sevens
Seat 3: zawaaa (button) folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 4: 13_Xerxes_13 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: thecooler992 (big blind) showed [5d Kh] and won ($25.55) with three of a kind, Sevens
Seat 6: jeckjeck folded before Flop (didn’t bet)

jeckjeck, zawaaa and 13_Xerxes_13 all managed to somehow decide to fold!

The other guys who played in the hand picked up between $12,000 and $15,000. The folders just picked up something like $1500

I recently watched some of the replay of the Sunday Million final table from the end of Jan. The one where OX45AL won. There was one of the most farcical chop attempts ever witnessed.

OX45AL had a significant chip lead with 93 million chips. His 3 opponents (eMarkM, OBVAMENTS and celofyz33) had 37 million, 32 million, and 30 million respectively. Obviously its a good chip lead but it’s still just 1 double-up of any opponent to put one of them at approx 60 million to 60 million.

The chip count chop finally got posted after a long delay, with OX45AL penciled in for $455K, with 30K left on the table. This is obviously way way over any reasonable expectation of what the seat is currently worth. However OX45AL not content with that said he needed 500K!!!. Now at this point you should note that the actual first prize was only $550K. So he was asking for a lock on 91% of the first prize money with 4 players left! with another 30K left to play for!!

Needless to say it got rejected and the players said to just continue the action. However at this point the action didnt resume and assadourian (a Pokerstars Team Pro, and apparently the final table “host”) set about a 1 man campaign from the rail to actually try to persuade OX45AL that 500K was too much and preceded to also tell him what was reasonable. What the hell was he thinking???? He had absolutely no place there whatsoever. OX45AL had to tell him to basically stfu. It really was totally ridiculous.

I saw a new tourney format on Pokerstars today. It was a Heads-up Hyper-turbo. The buy-in was $10.20 and there were 512 entrants.
You started with 1000 chips and the blinds increased every 2 mins starting at 50/100. The blind levels in full were:

50/100
75/150
100/200
150/300
200/400
300/600
400/800
500/1000
750/1500
1000/2000

The whole tounament from start to finish lasted a mere 44 mins. First place won $1280.00

Yes that is 9 entire rounds of heads-up battles all completed in 44 mins! Dont pause for breath, you might just miss it.

Ancillia Tilia has been seen a bit on the poker scene recently, including at the Twente Classics poker event in Holland. She is a model particularly well known for the fetish scene, so dont be surpirsed to see her in leathers or even rubber!

Somewhat bizarly it would seem, some of the poker rooms on the iPoker network have been forced to trim back on the number of profitable players.

Firsty we saw Blonde Poker being told to find a new network, and being given a months notice to vacate iPoker. Now we have also seen some sites such as Victor Chandler being told they must reduce the profitable players and hence forcing some players to leave. The have actually emailed players citing this reason.

At first glance this does seem totally ridiculous, but if we think further about possible motivations we can derive a probable reason for it:

Several skins are likely to have been part financed by some online pros in collaberation. Obviously they spend their time playing on their own skin and mopping up the fish. This basically looks like it applies to Blonde Poker. Similarly others have actively targeted a small market of good/better players (lurring them over from sites for example) and are reliant heavily on them to make money.

These type of operators dont really have the millions needed to effectively market to a broad audience so they are largely reliant upon their inner circle and niche marketing for their players.

The problem though is that the network (ipoker) generates its revenue from part flat fee and part commission of the skins rake. Commission making up the lions share. So if sites like those described exist they contribute very little to ipoker’s revenue but they are drawing lots of withdrawals from money on the network. Effectively there’s too much of a shortfall between the two. Too much money out, not enough money in.

It seems very unlikely any site which does market heavily on the ipoker network, like Titan or Sun Poker etc, are going to be told to change anything. But it seems increasing likely that the small operators will need to justify their place by having enough deposits (by players) in relation to the pseudo shortfall. Otherwise they are essentially draining funds from the hard work of the major skins, and contributing very small commissions for the priviledge.

Nanonoko is a absolute legend from the mid-stakes games on PokerStars. He recently broke through the $1 million profit barrier. This is a totally sick acheivement considering most of his hands were played at $2/$4, $3/$6 and $5/$10 (all NLHE Shorthanded). He plays long sessions with often as many as 24 tables running at a time. It takes tremendously focus to deliver that volume, but Nanonoko has done it.

He acheived $1,019,091 profit from 2,318,079 hands (at a win rate 3.65 BB per 100). Just 2.3 million hands in a year and a bit, about 5.5K hands a day… an average internet grinder eh

WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack has just announced he is stepping down from his position. In some parting words he said “Thank you for allowing me to be part of the WSOP these last few years. I will always be a fan and friend to the poker community”.

It is unclear as to the reasons or motivations why, but I speculate he will have another high profile position lined up before long (if it isnt already). I think he just thought the time was right and he needed a change.

Pollack did good jobs for both the NBA, and Nascar before being recruited by Harrahs for the WSOP role. Generally speaking I think he was very successful at that also. Sure he had his knockers and doubters, but that is par for the course for any sort of role where you need to make tricky decisions. I met him a view times at one venue or another and always found him amiable and professional. Whatever the reasons for the departure I wish him well, and I am sure he’ll be successful with his next venture.

Darvin Moon, a likeable lumberjack and WSOP Main Event final tablist lost out to Joe Cada in the Heads-up battle to be crowned world champion.

Moon, who has refused many endorsement and martketing deals is fully commited not to let the $5 million winnings change his lifestyle. He is going to go back to his job chopping trees, and his wife has been told she cant have a new lawn trimmer, as the old one is just fine.

Perhaps the sites and the poker industry in general are happier to have Cada as the winner. At least there will be some marketing miles in him. Joe Cada became the youngest Main Event champion ever, surpassing Peter Eastgate’s record of last year. He won $8.5 million and the much coverted WSOP ME Bracelet. He has been signed up by PokerStars.

yes my friends, you did indeed hear it here first, at the hands of super fast speed typer speedyfold.

Two players from the WSOP 2009 Main Event table (November Niners) have also made it to the final table of the WSOP Europe Main Event (WSOPE ME Niners). Sick Sick Sick. When you run good you run good! wow.

The November Nine men in question are James Akenhead (of Hitsquad fame) and Antoine Saout (a baguette munching, garlic chewing man from a medium sized town somewhere in northern Europe)

When I called up my pal at a local bookermakers and enquired on some odds of this sort of thing, he said he havent got a clue. After further prompting he/we agreed on 850,000-1. Wow again. Epic? For sure

over and out, Speedyfold (fastest blogger in town)