Speedyfold Poker Blog

Liv Boeree is becoming an established face on the poker scene, as a player and promoter, and reporter. She started off in a poker experiment in the UK, taking people who’d never played the game before and matching them up against one another and a guest player. They got some coaching from Phil Hellmuth along the way. Academically orientated Liv managed to win the show, and his since developed a love for the game and got heavily involved in the poker scene. She is currently one of Absolute Poker’s sponsored players, and can be seen at most major tournaments around the globe.

It is a difficult task to negociate 6494 poker players, but if anyone can then Phil Ivey surly can. He is still going strong with just 19 players left. The final table is almost in touching distance. Lets hope Phil can make it. He’s already picked up 2 bracelets this series, so it’s proving to be an excellent WSOP year for Phil, who is one of a very few people ever to get 3 bracelets in one series (in 2002).

Another biggish name is also still alive in the tourney, that being Jeff Shulman. So, a slightly smaller cheer for Jeff too

PokerStars have introduced a late reg policy for the WHOLE of the first hour of a tournament. At first it seemed like very selective tournaments, but now it appears to have been rolled out to about half of the whole schedule. It produces some very wierd situations, such as playing for 3 hours and finishing lower on the list than someone who lasted 10 minutes. This is because when you bust you simply get allocated the finish position of NO. OF PLAYERS NOW LEFT + 1. At the beginning you might only have 2000 entrants and bust first hand and get placed in 2000th, whereas by the end of the late reg hour there might be 5000 entrants, with 3500 left in, meaning if you bust at that point you get positioned lower (3500th) than the guy who busted the first hand.

It is good from the sense of increased prizepools in your favorite tournaments, and less good if you like an idea of what you are letting yourself in for in terms of field size. I suppose if you’re late it’s also good too (if we take things to the literal max!)

In the picture below you see 13 tournaments with late reg…. most of the screen. Perhaps this is too much, the jury is out.

Poker has some unusual surnames, and it is surprising when you see 2 or more of the more unusual ones in the same tournament. What is more surprising is they often are unrelated, which makes the coincidence a bit spooky. Here are some examples:

Freedy Deeb
Shaun Deeb (no relation)

Howard Lederer
Rob Lederer (no relation)

Phil Ivey
Craig Ivey (no relation)

Nguyens and Trans - let’s not even go there. There are easily 8-10 top pros with the surname Nguyen, and a good 5-6 with the surname Tran. Virtually without exception these are all unrelated to one another, and you will often see 2 or 3 or 4 them all deep in the same tourney at the same time.

Dan Harrington
Richard Harrington (no relation) - ok, name not that rare this time, but I thought I’d chuck it in there as both are still alive in Day 5 of the WSOP 2009 ME :p

Joe Sebok
Joe Serock (not technically a match, but hey pretty damn confusing ;))

Ones who DO have a relationship

Tom Dwan
Thomas Dwan (father of Durrrr, and often refered to as ‘Tom Dwan’)

Joe Hachem
Tony Hachem (brother of Joe)

TJ Cloutier
Eric Cloutier (son of TJ)

Grant Hinkle
Blair Hinkle (brother of Grant) - they both won WSOP bracelets in the same year in 2008

Thierry van den Berg
Erik van den Berg - both players still alive at Day 5 of the 2009 WSOP ME

I thought I would cover the subject of who owns Full Tilt Poker

Full Tilt is owned by the Kolyma Corporation based out of Aruba, and licenses it’s software from Tiltware LLC, based in California. It is regulated by the Alderney Gambling Control Corporation. Tiltware LLC moved to Ireland in Summer 2006 and was renamed Pocket Kings Ltd. This move was mainly motivated by the adverse online gambling situation in the USA; namely as a consequence of the UIGEA bill, to be specific.

The fees that Pocket Kings charge the holding company for the software licence are likely very high, meaning that the majority of what could be loosely deemed “gross profit” filters back to the founding stake holders and pros, with the actual owning company making a only a small net profit on their books.

Due to this structure, and due to the fact that many of the pros were involved from inception and foundation, it is reasonable to refer to some of the pros as the “owners” of Full Tilt.

Players with likely the highest shares

Howard Lederer
Chris Ferguson
Phil Ivey
Erik Seidel
Andy Bloch
Jen Harmen

Players with likely high shares

Phil Gorden
Erick Lindgren

Players who it is unclear whether they have high shares or only endorsement deals

John Juanda
Gus Hansen - it is likely he had higher shares at one point, but either sold his stake or reduced it (remember heavy involvement with PokerChamps)

Players with likely strong endorsement deals only (It is reasonably assumed that 1% profit share is a likely good guess on this front, as this is definately the percentage what Clonie Gowen got for her endorsement)

Allen Cunningham - came onboard in 2006

Mike Matusow - cerainly not part of the original team, as he has moaned about it previously as one of his worse decisions not to get involved.

Patrik Antonius - only came on board recently, so therefore certainly on an endorsement deal like 1% ownership

Non-Playing Stakeholder

Raymond Bitar