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

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!

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.

Full Tilt’s ironman rewards scheme must be one of the worst explained I’ve ever seen. How difficult can it be to explain this things in plain English and make them appealing to it’s players. Most poker players are inherently a little lazy when it comes to reading large chunks of text. Lets remember we stare at images and click buttons for most of the day ; Most of us want to glance at something and understand the gist of it within the first paragraph.

Full Tilt’s Ironman explanation though is a long ramble that doesnt really tell you much. What the hell is an Ironman Chip for instance, and how about Ironman Medals? And they have these very vague tables which imply you need to accumulate a certain number of points every day. However it doesnt explicity state that. Then they add more layers like Ironman Plus levels, and the need to opt-in and decide in advance what you want to use the points towards.

Language such as “You could receive bonus medals at the end of the month if you reach at least Bronze status and earn at least 500 points in a day. ”

It is the sort of information page that has just been repeatedly amended over time, and no-one has actually taken the step of sitting back for 2 mins and considering how it looks to “fresh eyes” to the page. I say all this not even really in personal frustration or anything, just more the fact that it such a poor use of an incentive scheme and marketing tool.

There was an interesting thing in the news today. In the UK Annette_15 was being used by Betfair to advertise their site. However there was a complaint. Not only is Annette quite young looking, but it was suggested that her actual screenname “Annette_15″ suggested she is younger than she actually is (she is currently 20 btw).

Whilst reviewing this complaint it was declared that there was in fact a law banning persons below 25 from being used for gambling advertising. Betfair seemed unaware of this law. They have therefore subsequently stated that they wont use Annette_15 again in the UK in any advertising compaigns.

It seems a little harsh considering that Annette won the WSOPE main event in the UK, making her a prime advertising asset. I guess I can see both sides of the argument, and hopefully it wont mean that Annette’s Betfair sponsorship is not renewed.

Every poker player on the planet must at some point in their career pay a visit to the gambling mecca of Las Vegas, Nevada

Las Vegas is truely unique. It is like no other city on earth. Out in the desert rises up some of the most fantastic and elaborate buildings you could ever imagine. A visual bombardment of extravagance and more entertainment than you can shake a stick at.

Here is a map of the strip to give you a general idea of getting around and where some of the most major hotels and resorts are located. Enjoy your trip

If you are looking for one particular time to go, then around June time each year is WSOP season. Although the action is very much 365 days a year, so you’ll always find plenty of games going on whenever you choose to go.

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.

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.

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