Speedyfold Poker Blog

The WCOOP on PokerStars is well underway. In previous years this has been a tournament series that has got me licking my lips in anticipation. Large field, large buy-in, large stack, long blind levels, etc. OMG what was not to love. However this year’s WCOOP has been somewhat of a disappointment. Gone are virtually all of the 30 min blind levels. The stacks have frequently been a reduced size, and the starting blinds often have come in at a higher level. It is difficult not to think the series has been cheapened somewhat. It just doesnt feel that special.

Lets take tonights $320 HORSE event as a case in point:

There is a regular $33 HORSE tourney on Stars with 3000 starting chips, 12 minute blinds, and first levels of 20/40, 30/60, 40/80, 60/120, and 80/160. Regular, run-of-the-mill, ordinary HORSE tourney.

So, how special was Event 25 of the WCOOP I here you ask? A HORSE event with a $320 buy-in and 1180 entrants? I will tell you how special: 10 min blinds!! 5000 starting chips and first levels of 50/100, 50/100, 60/120, 60/120, and 80/160!!

It is a major disppointment that this has happened to virtually all events. God did I used to love playing this highly skillful series, where you’d still be pitting your wits 17 hours deep. Now it feels like so un-very-special in comparison.

All I can do is pray enough poker players moan in order that Stars re-instates the former glory of this series next year.

Full Tilt first introduced synchronized breaks in tournaments, a great help for multi-tablers to actually get a proper break without having to sit out.

PokerStars followed suit in their tit-for-tat battle of feature development and enhancement, and they now have sychroniszed breaks fully operational too.

Gratefullly PokerStars did the right thing and married up their break time with Full Tilt’s much to the delight of cross-site multitablers, myself included.

Now at 55 mins past every hour, it’s all stop in MTT land of the 2 major sites, and those much needed trips to the fridge or WC can be looked forward to and completed without a sprint.

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.

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

The Bad Beat Jackpot on Carbon Poker recently was hit, paying out a whopping $734,542.27

The hand in question saw “Ween10″ with quad 7s and “kdawg1979″ with quad Queens

This won Ween10 a collosal $257,089.81 for the bad beat. Well at least if you can call it bad

kdawg1979 won $60.92 in the actual hand and more importantly $128,544.90 for having the winning hand at the bad beat scenario.

The other remaining 7 players at the table each got $18,363.55. Not bad for just being sat around

It was a great result for Ween10, not least because many sites dont pay out bad beat jackpots on quad 7’s being beaten, but as chance would have it Carbon poker is the one known site that does.

kdawg1979 amazingly had no money on the site a few days before. He won $5 in a freeroll, and run that up to $60 at the cash tables, and then after just 2 hours at the bad beat tables he had $128K!

He said “It came at the right time. I have three boys and a wife. We were literally getting evicted. This was a blessing from God. Thank you again”

Bad Beat Jackpots are a great way of attracting players to a poker room. Let’s face it everyone wouldnt mind getting their hands on a big win for little work. I’ve always been slightly curious about live poker rooms that do it as the chance of some regular colluding with the dealer seems high. The only thing I can think in their defence is that several levels of management probably all have to check the CCTV footage to validate the Bad Beat.

Online things are a bit more straightforward I think. Either the RGN is going to shuffle the cards as you would love them, or not. More often than not obviously the latter.

One lucky customer to be lucky enough to be at the table when a Bad Beat Jackpot qualifying hand was dealt was ‘Ruggio’ who pocketed a cool $417,000 as the jackpot was hit on the Merge network (Carbon Poker, Aced Poker, etc). The total jackpot money paid out to the table was around $1.2 million. Quite possibly the biggest online bad beat jackpot ever.

One of the unluckiest people around was definately Pokerbunny69 who had just joined the table but hadn’t actually been dealt into the hand, therefore didnt get any cut of the money…ouch

Below is the chat log from the table:

MrC4shier>SADOMSADSOADMAS
MrC4shier>OMFG
MrC4shier>LOOOOOL
Pokerbunny69>AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
MrC4shier>DO YOU GUYS REALISE WHAT JUST
MrC4shier>OOOOOOOOOOOOLT
MrC4shier>OMG
MrC4shier>INCREDIBLE
MrC4shier>HOLY MOTHER OF shit
Pokerbunny69>i wasnt iin yet
MrC4shier>why is everyone quiet lool

Pokerbunny69>I wasnt dealt in
aelani>WOW
RUGGIO>ya
aelani>ty
aelani>all
aelani>i love you
RUGGIO>what hapopened
RUGGIO>lol
MrC4shier>so sick jesus
RUGGIO>417k in my bank
MrC4shier>how much did the loser get
RUGGIO>what u get?
aelani>200 k in mine

lll11133>let’s party
MrC4shier>lool how sick
aelani>st8 flush
aelani>str8
aelani>lol
MrC4shier>i got 40k

peokunn>wowo

MrC4shier>I’m suprised that no one is typing anything lol
lll11133>move to higher limit

Pokerbunny69>I did
MrC4shier>hm I think I wont yet
name2008>who won the mo

name2008>who won the jack p

MrC4shier>god really unlucky for you pokerbunny69 ..
RUGGIO>bad beat

MrC4shier>I think some people at this table have not realised that there was a bad beat at this table
Pokerbunny69>I DID
MrC4shier>LOL yeah
name2008>you get any m
Pokerbunny69>NOO
RUGGIO>HOW MUCH U GUYS GET?

RUGGIO>417K
Pokerbunny69>NOPE
MrC4shier>sick I would have killed myself lo
RUGGIO>rockon

Pokerbunny69>CAn u imagine…….??
RUGGIO>how do I cash out lol
MrC4shier>wait RUGGIO did you win that BBJ or the guy next to you
Pokerbunny69>was a minute away
RUGGIO>noooooooooo
RUGGIO>YA

RUGGIO>I LOST
MrC4shier>you
name2008>i was in line to get in
MrC4shier>sick lol, u got 417k ?
RUGGIO>87 HEARTS
Pokerbunny69>ME 2

MrC4shier>jesus how do you feel now lol
MrC4shier>after winning 417k
Pokerbunny69>BAF
Pokerbunny69>BADDDDDDDDDD

MrC4shier>and I was about to move to party poker in a week lol

MrC4shier>p a r t y p o k e r
name2008>how about rest of table
Pokerbunny69>I think I gonna get a knife
MrC4shier>lool

name2008>any mo

MrC4shier>so sick this , but I think I deserve it after all those months of running horrible

Pokerbunny69>well congrats anyway

MrC4shier>ty

Pokerbunny69>why dont u go and get drunk??

MrC4shier>I am still shocked I don’t know lol

Pokerbunny69>I would
MrC4shier>feels weird to see 50k in my account

Pokerbunny69>just send me half if u cant handle!!
Pokerbunny69>

=THE END=

Not bad for a couple of hands of poker

There has been some very interesting challenges made recently in the world of online poker. Firstly we have Durrrr (high stakes cash game player Tom Dwan) who has laid down a challenge that he cant be beaten over 50,000 hands of NL Holdem or PL Omaha.

To put his money where his mouth is he has offered to put up $1.5 million against any challenger, to their commitment of $500,000. Effectively offering a $1 million prize.

This challenge has obviously created a lot of interest and it looks like a minimum of David Benyamine and Phil Ivey are set to take him up on the offer. You can probably safely add Patrick Antonius to that list.

With the minimum limits of 200/400 there is much speculation that someone could go broke and the challenge wont ever reach 50,000 hands. We could certainly see someone being so far down that they would have to make the decision to pay off the bounty early to stop going even further down overall.

This challenge will take place on Full Tilt Poker, and I will post again when any firm dates are arranged.

A second very interesting challenge recently made is by PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu, he has said he’ll be able to run a starting bankroll of $10 all the way up to $100,000 just through good poker and good bankroll management. It certainly seems a long grind. We have seen Chris “Jesus” Ferguson accomplish something similar, going from zero to $20,000. It will be interesting to monitor the progress of this and see whether Daniel really does have the patience to play at such low limits compared to what he is accustomed too.

60 Minutes have produced an interesting investigative program on the Absoulte Poker and Ultimate Bet scandal that occured last year. Whilst this story is fairly old news for those of us in the online poker community, it is nevertheless always interesting to see it all in a televised form. The program is a little biased against online poker, as they dont really highlight enough the fact that there are very legitimate sites out there, and that in a way there is a large level of self-regulation by the poker players themselves, to keep the sites honest. The latter point itself being emphasized by the fact that the isolated corruption in the industry was exposed by the sophistication of the online players in this very case. Here is the video:

Todd Witteles comes accross well in his ever-eloquent form, however they have probably edited out any comments about industry leaders such as PokerStars, and how the poker community has substantially more faith in sites like them (and others) regarding a level playing field being provided.

The Kahnawake Cheif appears in jeans and a Fred-Perry style sportsshirt, probably not doing great wonders for nurturing much faith in the presence of a highly regulated community. Not that sartorial factors should lead to any prejudgement ever, but they certainly impact in some form on people’s perceptions.

The most important outcome of the Kahnawake gaming commission’s investigation is that the players themselves were paid back. It is up to us to remain vigilant in the cases of unusual winning patterns or unusually played hands, and not be afraid to raise concerns quickly.

We as players are the ones who keep the sites operating by playing there and providing the rake, so any concerns need to be instantly raised with and addressed by the sites to ensure their legitamacy and maintain their ultimate survival.

Online poker is here to stay, and as always through poker history, the players have a huge part in being judge and jury into the legitmacy of the game they enter

A very dramatic final table took place in the WCOOP Main Event on PokerStars, with many swings and bad beats taking place. The players agreed a chop with 5 players remaining. Here are the details of the agreement:

StaffBryanS [Host]: ckingusc: $1,065,432
StaffBryanS [Host]: liberace: $1,375,249
StaffBryanS [Host]: AJKHoosier1: $782,542
StaffBryanS [Host]: ShoesRDurrty: $801,153
StaffBryanS [Host]: Markush13: $961,718

They carried on playing with ckingusc picking up the win and the extra $200,000 left on the table

1st: ckingusc - $1,265,432
2nd: liberace - $1,375,249
3rd: AJKHoosier1 - $782,542
4th: Markush13 - $961,718
5th: ShoesRDurrty - $801,153

WCOOP $25,500 Heads-up Event

1 stevesbets United States $560,000.00
2 ElkY United Kingdom $320,000.00
3 zivziv Israel $160,000.00
4 GavinGriffin United States $160,000.00
5 LadyMaverick United States $100,000.00
6 VictorRamdin United States $100,000.00
7 PAW717 United States $100,000.00
8 brianm15 United States $100,000.00