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.