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 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.

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

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.

I recently finished first in 8 out of 20 nine-seater STTs! Sick run. I even won a prize from PokerStars in the Battle of the Planets in relation to it.

For those of you who are not familiar with Battle of the Planets, it is basically a SNG leaderboard on PokerStars that runs Sunday through to Saturday every week. The top players for the week get listed and get some money from a cash prizepool. Not bad

Overall I had a successful WCOOP. I cashed in 3 and made a nice overall profit. One of the new events this year was an 8-game event. I decided to chart my progress in this event for all to see. Here are the chip swings by game:-

2-7 Trip Draw - 4000 up to 4250
Limit Holdem - 4250 down to 4030
FL Omaha Hi-Lo - 4030 up to 4052
Razz - 4052 down to 3712
Stud - 3712 down to 3317
Stud Hi-Lo - 3317 down to 3312
NL Holdem - 3312 up to 3367
PL Omaha - 3367 down to 2137

2-7 Trip Draw - 2137 up to 2647
Limit Holdem - 2647 down to 2227
FL Omaha Hi-Lo - 2227 up to 3127
Razz - 3127 up yo 3332
Stud - 3332 up to 3442
Stud Hi-Lo - 3442 down to 3392
NL Holdem - 3392 up to 3681
PL Omaha - 3681 up to 4821

2-7 Trip Draw - 4821 up to 4981
Limit Holdem - 4981 down to 2821
FL Omaha Hi-Lo 0 2821 down to 653
Razz - 653 down to 0

From this, extremely limited sample, my most consistantly productive game was 2-7 trip draw (3 increase out of 3). My least productive was Limit Holdem (3 decreases out of 3). NL Holdem also saw 2 increase out of 2.

In terms of swings PLO is probably the big one, no doubt reflective of my kamikaze approach. In the first rotation I lost over a third of my stack. And in the 2nd rotation I gained almost a third on my stack.

The biggest killer of all was the final LHE rotation sliding from 4981 to 2821.

Whilst the tournament was enjoyable, despite a rubbish result, the structure left a lot to be desired. The limit games were running at stakes 4 times the blinds, rather then double the blinds. It left a wierd feeling of comfortable stack, following by a feeling of extreme shortness.

All said and done, a bit of fun, but structure improvements needed, and better play needed from yours truely

WCOOP 2008 Main Event

This is the current online MTT stats of the final table players

ckingusc $55,623 profit
liberace $79,181 profit
AJKHoosier1 $379,240 profit
Markush13 - Negative ROI from 333 MTTs, Qualified via a $215 satellite
ShoesRDurrty - Negative ROI from 11 MTTs, ABI $20!
Sumpas - Negative ROI from 335 MTTs, Qualified via a $215 satellite
klslcz - Negative ROI from 558 MTTs
BOLLPOKER - Negative ROI from 125 MTTs
kovi99 - Negative ROI from 801 MTTs

125 players entered the $10,300 HORSE Event in the WCOOP. A tough contest saw DocHolatchya beat PokerStars Pro aakkari to the bracelet

1 DocHolatchya United States $287,500.00
2 aakkari Brazil $200,000.00
3 crazyjanie United States $150,000.00
4 pycb United States $112,500.00
5 pumped4good United States $75,000.00
6 djk123 United States $59,375.00
7 7CardRyon United States $46,875.00
8 gipsy74 Russian Federation $38,750.00
9 MadCaddy United States $25,000.00
10 Empire2000 United States $25,000.00
11 goodolehank United States $25,000.00
12 MrSmokey1 United States $25,000.00
13 Humberto B. Costa Rica $18,750.00
14 ozenc Netherlands $18,750.00
15 floes United States $18,750.00
16 jerrod United States $18,750.00
17 Exclusive Netherlands $13,125.00
18 double joker United States $13,125.00
19 THAY3R United States $13,125.00
20 LeeNelsonP* New Zealand $13,125.00
21 gibralter11 United States $13,125.00
22 bigjoe2003 United States $13,125.00
23 str8flushin5 United States $13,125.00
24 astarisborn United States $13,125.00