PKR Stacked Issue 14 by People Like You

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I S S U E 14 I au t u m n 2011

OUR 50 GREATEST MOMENTS

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stacked♠ issue 14 | autumn 2011 | luck, what luck?

autumn 2011 | contents

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stacked♠ Community

24 PKR in Vegas

6 News

The experience of a lifetime as PKR hits Vegas

Qualify for the PKR.com WPT Ireland

9 Anatomy of a PKR player Woo Woos all round as we profile the popular forumite Pkr1princess

Features 30 PKR’s 50 greatest moments

Counting down the greatest moments from the world’s greatest poker room

10 Pwn a pro

PKR’s first lady welllbet takes on Wolfington

13 Stuff you might miss

Find out what events the world is enjoying while you’re grinding the PKR tables

14 Q&A Special: BAMMA

40 WSOP Main Event

An Englishmen, an Irishman and a bloke from Belize feature as the November Nine is set

44 Phil Hellmuth

Get to grips with the UK’s biggest fighters

After a summer of poker redemption the Poker Brat bites back at his critics

16 alt. news.poker

48 Poker in the movies

The weirdest news from the poker world, plus a look at the latest forum shenanigans

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A stone-cold bluff from Cool Hand Luke

Knowledge

20 My world

Stilt-walking caban on living in the now

22 PKR around the world

stacked♠ says bonjour to France

50 Q&A: Jared Tendler

The poker world’s leading mind coach on how to banish tilt from your game

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59 Top ten WSOP moments that haven’t happened yet A look into the WSOP crystal ball

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60 The Art of Poker

How Sun Tzu’s treatise on combat can transform your poker game

62 Change your game

Take your hold’em tactics to Omaha and terrorise the tables

64 james666’s poker clinic

PKR’s poker doctor will see you now

The River 66 Big-time giveaway

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Win seats in big-money tournaments with our exclusive prize giveaway

68 Heroes of poker

JC Tran: All-round poker hot-shot

72 stacked♠ court Phil Hellmuth faces the jury

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community | ed’s letter

The wolfpack I

’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the PKR community is like no other in the world. Every time I go to a PKR Live, or a BAMMA night, or post on the forums, or ask players for ideas for stacked♠ , I’m overwhelmed by the spirit, the camaraderie, the enthusiasm and the togetherness. That’s why this issue is a bit special. When we started this issue the original plan was to run with a round-up of the most memorable poker moments of all time. We compiled a list of 50 and then suddenly realised the truly memorable moments were far closer to home. Before you could say, ‘How could you call with that?’ I’d ripped up the original blueprint and set about compiling the ultimate list of PKR’s greatest moments. But that doesn’t really do the feature justice. They’re not really PKR’s moments, they’re your moments. When you start looking through the top 50 you’ll quickly realise that the majority are all about you – and the PKR community at large. Without the PKR community the list would read like a limp marketing exercise: numbers of players, volume of hands, amount of liquidity, rather than individual moments of triumph and collective celebrations. Turn to p30 and give yourself a pat on the back – you’ve deserved it. And when you’ve finished reading the feature let me know what you think. Have we got it spot on? Or have we missed out one of the highlights of your PKR life? Let me know by emailing me at stacked@pkr.com. And if you haven’t dipped your toes into the PKR community yet, come on in, the water’s warm! You can get involved on the forums, make new friends at meet-ups and follow us on Facebook and Twitter (@PKRLetsPlay). Let’s make the next 50 even more memorable…

Dave Woods Editor

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community | your shout

Street talk

Got something you want to get off your chest? Email us at stacked@pkr.com and you could win yourself a DVD box set Fishy tales

Tweets of the month James666PKR Stephen Hawking most brainy man in the world… Gimme a break! Do you know how much brainpower it is taking me to NOT tweet how bad I’m running? Erik_Seidel How is that kids who can play 20-40 screens at once online need 3-5 mins for every minor decision live? PKR_Beyn First episode of German Highrollers is over (will be four in total). Up 18k so far – lol donkaments! James666PKR Instead of starting the day with a healthy bowl of cereal, I like to start with a big bowl of Sklansky bucks and a glass of emotes! PKR_Sofia Blue nails = God mode in poker? :) AshleyHames Apologies to everyone that I didn’t make the cut for Celebrity Big Brother. Evidently Bobby Sobel is far better value, even though I would have done it for free :)

Tweet us today! PKR has landed on Twitter with a bang. Find out about all things PKR by following @PKRLetsPlay. Let us know what you think about stacked♠ and we’ll tweet back as soon as we can.

I’ll get the sack). Roll on the November Nine!

I’d like to know why poker players can’t be more like fishermen instead of miserable buggers? With all this talk of fish and strategies for catching them, why do we spend all our time going on about the ones that got away and not those giant catches that were this big [stretches arms wide]?

Man up! We watched the WSOP coverage and still staggered into work to ensure you got this issue of stacked♠ on time.

Back to school

MaKivar You’ve got a good point. We’re going to start a campaign to replace bad beats with good beats – as son as we stop getting two-outered.

TV addict

I’d like to give a shout out to ESPN for this year’s coverage of the Main Event. I was watching the streaming on the WSOP.com site and it was brilliant – nearly live coverage with hole cards, although I gather that some players weren’t too happy about the world and their opponents’ best friends feeding info back to them in the breaks. I’ve also got a complaint – the coverage was so exciting that I had to take a couple of sickies to catch up on my beauty sleep (don’t print my username or

Competition winners Last issue we asked you who was the biggest tool in our Poker Tool Academy. The answer was Billy ‘The Croc’ Argyros for being one of the most ‘tedious, witless and self-regarding players in all of poker’. 1st ($270 Masters seat) – bvb87 2nd ($77 Monte Carlo seats) – blunz00 Runners-up – thahype, vanthecard, CraigWild, true2form, Snelly40

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If you didn’t win, try, try again on p66 where you’ll find this month’s big-money giveaway.

I think stacked♠ is really cool and it’s great that I get it here in Hungary. I did however find a small mistake in the ‘Astronomical luck’ article last issue. It says that the odds of hitting the same number twice in a row on a European roulette table is 1369/1. Okay, first it should be 1368/1, but the problem is that this is the odds of hitting a specific number, not any. The odds for hitting the same number twice is 36/1, as the first roll could be any number but the second must be the same. Blame me and my maths’ obsession! V1kt0r You’re right, of course. We would like to hang our collective head in shame. Congratulations though – the odds of you noticing that and bothering to email us to let us know is a startling 349/1. We think.

Warning: bad beat!

Hey guys! Yesterday I busted with Kings against Aces in the bubble of the High Roller Main Event. Perhaps that is finally a good reason to be mentioned in the next issue of stacked♠. A money finish would have been a nice return as I qualified in the lottery stages for $10. KnutHansen Poker’s a cruel game but we think allowing you to air your bad beat laundry in front of the world is compensation enough.

Win a PKR Live IV DVD If we print your letter we’ll send you an exclusive PKR Live IV DVD box set. Send your emails to stacked@pkr.com

stacked♠

community | news

Qualify for the WPT Ireland on PKR and you could end up playing for a life-changing sum of money

Shuffle Up

Make sure you’ve got a shot at taking down the first major title of 2012 as PKR takes over the World Poker Tour – remember, you’ve got to be in it to win it!

ualification for the PKR.com WPT Ireland is now in full swing, and while the folks at PKR Towers have been upping their tolerance to the famous black stuff in preparation, the first few WPT Experience places have already been bagged. Rising star of Greek poker Patatosalatas was the opening name on the list, and you wouldn’t put it past the hyperaggressive young shark to go all the way in the 2,500 Main Event. The 20-year-old MTT expert can’t play in his native country yet (you have to be 21 to play live in Greece), and his only bricks-andmortar experience has been at the last three 6

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PKR Lives, but he believes his game is ready to showcase in front of the world. A dominating performance at PKR Live V saw him start the final table as chip leader and he was unlucky not to finish higher than 6th place. The WPT Ireland will be by far the biggest tournament he’s ever played, but he’s already dreaming of emulating Athanasios ‘Athanasios 9’ Polychronopoulos, the only Greek player to have won a major title. ‘I have never felt more confident’, said Patatosalatas when we caught up with him after he’d secured his golden ticket. ‘I am totally ready for the WPT! And obviously it would be a dream come true if I could go over there and win it.’

The Craic

As anyone who’s qualified to a major event with PKR before knows though, it’s not just about the winning. PKR knows how to throw a party when it goes on tour and the WPT Experience will be no different. On the roster of VIP events this time round is 1997 World Snooker Champ and poker fan Ken Doherty. The Irishman’s Pool Night will be exclusive to WPT Experience qualifiers, as will the Jameson’s whiskey tasting, Guinness factory tour, Dublin pub crawl and PKR Welcome Drinks. Will there be any time for poker, we hear you ask? Well, aside from the Main Event, there’ll be a number of side games to

Learn the lingo

If you want to be a champion you need to talk like a champion – brush up on your Gaelic with our handy poker phrasebook Sláinte! Cheers! Go n-éirí an t-ádh leat! Good luck! To be used if you end up on Tony G’s table: Is minic a gheibhean beal oscailt diog dunta! An open mouth often catches a closed fist! To be used against the bloke who two-outers you: Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat May the cat eat you and the devil eat the cat To the other PKR qualifiers once you’ve hit the rail: Nár laga Dia do lámh May God not weaken your hand

‘Vince, I have absolutely no idea what they’re saying!’

and Deal! keep you amused, not least the 750 buy-in Irish Poker Championship, previously held in Galway. And to make you feel just that extra bit special, PKR has added an exclusive Social Lounge area for WPT Experience qualifiers to hang out, chill out or possibly pass out in. Not even Phil Ivey will be allowed in (well, we might make the odd exception). Now that we’ve wet your whistles, you’ll want to know how to book your seat and with a host of qualification methods from just $3, you’ve little excuse for absence. There are two routes to winning your $5K WPT Experience package, and both are open to high and low rollers alike. First up, there’s the standard satellite schedule, which features a weekly $270 buy-in Final Stage, propped up by daily $59 Semi-Finals, $13 Stage Twos and $2.90 Stage Ones.

At this year’s WSOP, seven of PKR’s qualifiers 40 or more and you’ll begin the huge freeroll, won their package courtesy of the Vegas Nights with an estimated four WPT Experience promotion. Two months on, cue Dublin Nights packages up for grabs, with 8,000 additional – the promotion’s latest bonus chips. It might seem incarnation and your second complicated but it’s very bite at the WPT cherry. Play straightforward: play a any one of 50 daily Dublin bunch of qualifying tournos, Nights tournaments ($22 start the freeroll final with a ten-handed or six-max nice stack of chips, win your freezeouts, and $11 w/1 $5K package, celebrate the rebuy) and you’ll earn 100 New Year in Dublin, bink the chips for the freeroll grand WPT Ireland Main Event, final. Play 14 for example, live happily ever after. and you’ll start with 1,400 Simple... chips. And that’s not all. Play ten or more and we’ll throw The PKR.com WPT Ireland in an extra 1,000 bonus runs January 4-8, 2012, in Join Patatosalatas as chips. Play 25 or more and Dublin. Satellites are running PKR descends on Dublin you’ll snag 3,000 chips. Play now from just $3 stacked♠

community | news

PKR’s Tourney Trail As the grinders grind, those wily MTT stars have been shuffling towards fame and fortune Masters of the house The Masters, PKR’s richest event, continues to be the title players dream of luckboxing. Charming Swede Kusken777 cleaned up in May for $27,375. khalidzahoor16 profited by $27,562 in June, while tomnc did it for the Brits in July for $25,000. In August JennyDoom earned $27,264 by defeating a 459-strong field in the $270 event, but it was September’s champ Vizdy who reminded us what tournaments are all about, spinning a $1.81 satellite entry into a $26,111 Masters title. If that doesn’t bring out the green-eyed monster in you, nothing will...

Rocken1900 tops the All Time Money List with $316,000

he return of the Player of the Month MTT award sees three nominees put to a public vote (it’s free mind, no Ant & Dec scam here), with the winner scooping a prize package including a custom avatar, ring game table and MTT title. May’s winner has few peers when it comes to consistency in PKR’s biggest events. Norwegian Hall of Famer ovnis pipped Rocken1900 and Barkieboy to the gong thanks to a $15k month, with two wins and a second place in the PKR Open among other enviable binks. In June, the community endowed Wygie with the award after the Belgian’s bumper $15k month including four

THE million dollar QUESTION What for you was the highlight of the 2011 WSOP?

four-figure scores, the best a $4,981 Sunday High Roller victory. July was a tight affair with Durrrrsucks, betonme and wuarblwarbl proving popular. But with 52% of the vote it was Greek shark betonme who picked up his first POTM award after a monstrous $27k upswing, thanks in part to a second place finish in the PKR Masters. August’s winner surprised no one either – not only is Rocken1900 in the Hall of Fame, he also leads (by some distance) our All Time Money List with $316,000 in lifetime earnings. The $17,317 he won in August put more clear water between the Swedish daemon and the rest of us mere mortals.

Ashley Hames PKR media guru

Daniel Negreanu Poker pro

James Sudworth Team PKR Pro

Vicky Coren Poker pro

PKR_Danski PKR Community Manager

Richard Ashby Poker pro

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Rankings The first of the new breed of monthly freerolls – whose gargantuan prize pools are drawn from eligible rankings events throughout the previous weeks – saw a host of players walking away with four figure payouts. Some had parlayed huge starting stacks, sized in proportion to their month-end ranking, into final table finishes, while others completed improbable short stack spin-ups to cash for tasty sums. Fifth ranked MTT man Rocken1900 scooped the $48k MTT Rankings Freeroll top prize of $6,593 while 16th ranked Frenchy1986 topped the $31k SNG Rankings Freeroll for $4,374.

Arriving at the PKR Party at Revolution in work mode only to be told we had been unable to get permission to film in the venue. That meant I could settle down for the evening and get absolutely mullered! Quality! I can’t really think of anything good at all! [Daniel, you’d better hope that Krisztina Polgár doesn’t read this – see p16] Being able to sweat not one but two friends who were heading deep in the Main Event, from the comfort of my home! Brit JP Kelly and PKR pro Vladimir Geshkenbein both put in sterling efforts and provided some exciting worldwide railing! The Jubilee burlesque show at Bally’s, when they recreate the sinking of the Titanic with fifty topless girls, dancing merrily on a ship, then sinking and drowning. I’d like to meet whoever had that idea and ask what the hell they were taking! I’ve got two highlights, coz I’m cheeky. Wet Republic, hands down the best party on Earth. Plus Hellmuth’s performance: $1.6M, three runner-up finishes including the Eight-game Players Championship. The champ is alive and well... Without a doubt it was being chip leader going into the 10k 2/7 no-limit final table – there were so many big names! [Ashby came third, behind Phil Hellmuth and John Juanda]

community | profile

Anatomy of a poker player

#4: Pkr1princess All rise for the Woo Woo drinking, breath holding, nit-in-learning forum legend And breathe… As the second highest poster on the PKR forums and head honcho of the legendary Leeds meet-ups, Pkr1princess has earned her caricature. But she was still suitably honoured, emoting, ‘/wow, /gasp, /zomg’ on hearing the news. She describes herself as a ‘nit-in-learning’ at the poker table and apparently holds her breath when she bets big or moves all-in. This can get quite dangerous when people decide to use the time bank, and is also very amusing if you play her live.

Secret weapon Pkr1princess’ secret weapon is her gift of the gab. When she puts her mind to it she can literally talk people into doing what she wants them to (although she’s convinced it’s more a case of players being afraid to donk her in case she trashes their reputations in the Badbeats section on the PKR forums). She’s also learning to ramp up the aggression – she claims to have finally found out what a three-bet is, although she’s yet to take a breath big enough to enable her to execute the move successfully.

How to play her Pkr1princess loves a Woo Woo (vodka, peach schnapps and cranberry juice if you’re not a mixologist) so if you happen to play her live offer to buy her a few drinks in a bid to loosen up her natural born nittiness. If she three-bets you should instamuck and if she starts talking to you during a hand you need to put your earphones on and pump the volume up. If you find yourself succumbing to her charms just tank until she’s carried away by paramedics.

Next month

Your face here?

illustration pete ellis

Nominate a friend and win our money-can’t-buy prize! Anatomy of a Poker Player has turned its attentions from the denizens of live cardrooms to PKR’s own star players – and you get to choose who joins their ranks. All you have to do is nominate a PKR player that you think deserves some time in the spotlight. Email us at stacked@pkr.com and include your username (and that of your nominee) and why you think they should be in the mag. The closing date for entries is November 30.

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community | pwn a pro

welllbet Sofia ‘welllbet’ Lovgren became the first and only female member of Team PKR Pro back in March last year. She followed this with a deep run at the Irish Open where she finished 29th for a career-best cash of $13,215. Wolfington has his work cut out.

pwn a pro

welllbet vs Wolfington

PKR’s very own Little Red Riding Hood faces the Big Bad Wolfington. Who’ll have the fairytale ending? f you want to be a successful poker player you need patience. In spades. This is especially true when you’re playing deep-stacked heads-up games. PWN A PRO matches start with blinds of 10/20 and 4,000 stacks, which means there’s no need to get out of line early doors. And, with a $270 Masters ticket on the line for Wolfington, and bragging rights in Team PKR Pro for welllbet, both players were happy to play pots and fold hands in the face of aggression. That’s not to say that either of them played passively. In fact, this is the first PWN A PRO

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have strengthened Wolf’s hand but it also put another overcard on the Do you and slowed welllbet down. wanna fight? board The K♠ river was a tricky card, If you think you’re good and Wolfington made a small enough to take on a member value bet which welllbet called of Team PKR Pro, check the to leave the chips 4,356 to 3,644 ‘PKR Lounge’ forum at in favour of the Wolf. PKR.com for details on how to qualify

match where neither player limped the button. Not once. Raise or fold was the name of the game and Wolfington made his intentions clear from the start, raising his first two buttons with 7-4 and 8-2 respectively, and taking both pots down uncontested. welllbet played a much more ABC style, and she lost the first hand of note when she raised with J♦-7♠ and got a call from Wolfington with J♣-Q♠. Weaker players might have got themselves in trouble on the J♥-K♦-5♣ flop but after Wolfington checked, welllbet responded with a little tickler bet which Wolfington called. The Q♣ turn might

What big hands you have!

The game slipped into a familiar pattern, with Wolfington showing more aggression and hitting cards. After welllbet raised with J♥-8♦, Wolfington defended with K♥-5♥ and was rewarded with a 5♦-6♦-5♣ flop which boosted his chip stack further. And this continued when welllbet raised with 3♣-3♠. Wolfington popped it up again with 2♦-2♥ and despite a welllbet call, the momentum was with Wolfington and a bet on the flop took the pot down. To welllbet’s credit though she didn’t change her game. She carried on making exactly the same raises (double the big blind) and playing the cards in front of her. And she turned Wolfington’s aggression back on him the first opportunity she got. After Wolfington raised

risk Small Why losing chips don’t ball you need to put poker on the line?

 Wolfington makes it around 3.5x every

time. It’s fairly inconsequential when the blinds are low and Wolfington takes a number of small pots down uncontested.

welllbet

Wolfington

3,189

4,811

Wolfington Forum favourite Wolfington played almost exclusively at $10 no-limit until he decided to take a break from the game. He realised he missed the PKR forums too much though and returned to the delight of the community and a shot at a $270 Masters ticket in PWN A PRO.

 welllbet’s small raises make it much

Blinds: 75/150 1

with 4♣-5♣, welllbet called with A♦-2♥. Both players checked the 3♦-J♠-10♦ and the 2♦ turn. When another Ten dropped on the river Wolfington put out a chunky bluff and welllbet snapped him off to level the scores. Wolfington ground out another chip lead over the course of the next 20 hands but with the blinds rising Wolfington’s big preflop raises started to get him into trouble. With 100/200 blinds he raised to 666 with 3♥-K♥ and welllbet shipped with A♣-K♠. Wolfington had to fold which levelled the stacks for the second time. And it took another misstep for welllbet to take control of the game. With blinds at 125/250 welllbet doubled the big blind with 9♣-9♠ only to see Wolfington raise to 1,111 with Q♦-7♠. The Team PKR Pro didn’t hesitate to get the rest of her chips in and Wolfington was forced to fold. After folding his next button he decided to make a stand when welllbet raised with A♥-8♥. With another middling hand Wolfington shipped and saw the last of his chips sail away on the 7♥-A♦-J♦-2♦-K♣ board. It was an epic game but ultimately Wolfington played into welllbet’s hands. She was patient, played solid cards and ultimately let Wolfington huff and puff himself out. n

cheaper for her to get away from a hand if Wolfington plays back at her. In this hand she’s actually got the best of it but is happy to let Wolfington’s three-bet claim the pot.

**pics n **match will hav

Main op  welllbet is obviously confident about her

 The standard preflop raises start having a

postflop play and makes a standard 2x raise (double the big blind) every single time she decides to play from the button.

bigger impact on the game. The tide turns when, with blinds at 100/200, Wolfington raises to 666 with K♥-3♥.

 The small raise could entice her opponent but this is all part of her strategy. She has a fairly tight button raising range, so she’s happy to play hands in position with likely the best hand.

 welllbet has A-K and ships her stack over the

top. Wolfington has to fold with around 1/6 of his stack committed. If he’d bet 400 he would have lost a lot less chips. stacked♠

Boxsho Pre-flop Boxsho Close u 36 mins Boxsho Pre-flop Boxsho Wolfing starts 11 Boxsho Wolfing starts 3 Boxsho Welllbe hand

community | news

Leeding the way

Gone, but not forgotten, PKR’s Jabba puts himself out to pasture

It’s not grim up North, as long as there’s a community meet-up on

Jabba heads for the hills PKR’s legendary Community Manager retires to Welsh retreat for a taste of the good life fter five years at the coalface, James ‘Jabba’ Bach has left the PKR family for a life of subsistence, permaculture and renewable energy in the Welsh countryside. Jabba joined PKR as a Customer Service Executive in 2006, quickly rising to a key role in the cardroom thanks to his sharp intellect, unique character and passion for poker. That and a non-stop mouth. His continual development of the MTT schedule, where he created many of our most popular and innovative tournaments, will endure, while it is hard to consider the history of one of the best communities in poker without his priceless and unique contribution. In his half decade at PKR Towers, he

travelled the world, losing his marbles in Vegas and his pasty complexion in Manila. He played pool with his poker heroine, Annette Obrestad and interviewed many of the game’s greats including Phil Hellmuth. He added the Bach flavour to every PKR Live and Social event (once in a Tellytubby outfit), and left a unique impression on every player he met. Despite his multitudinous oddities, legendary verbosity and boundless capacity for incredulous life choices, Jabba has personified the spirit of the PKR Community and leaves behind a rich legacy. You can wish him luck and follow his progress in Wales via the Harmony Hill Facebook page (tinyurl.com/jabbawales) and on Twitter (@Harmony_Hill). n

Where’s Jabba?

Find him and win the world’s last Jabba Bobblehead

Jabba might have moved to a compound in Wales to survive the oncoming apocalypse (Jabba, never listen to summer blockbusters), but we’ve ensured that he lives on forever in this issue of stacked♠. We’ve hidden a number of Jabbas in the mag – all you have to do is email us at stacked@pkr.com with the total number of Jabbas you’ve found in red fancy dress. The winner will be awarded the very last Jabba Bobblehead in the world. A truly priceless gift.

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The UK’s most popular unofficial community meet-up is now in its third year and with the likes of 2010 Forumite of the Year Pkr1princess at the helm, the franchise is in fine hands. The most recent incarnation – Leeds V – drew the usual assortment of renegades, ne’er-do-wells and PKR fanatics from the mean streets of Northern England and beyond for another weekend of high octane poker. In the first of four tournaments, hokey emerged with the £15 Welcome Tourney title, while MArteta took down the £25 PLO event. 2010 WSOP qualifier Lesstax2pay won the Bounty event leaving only the coveted Main Event title unclaimed. Fittingly, Leeds head honcho Pkr1princess and MANonFIRE reached the final three but it was Charlie58 who lifted the trophy aloft, bringing to a close one of the wildest weekend in poker. The last word on Leeds V goes to event organiser Prinny. ‘Yet again it was a total blast. Big thanks to Lesstax2pay and ddaz83 for donating the amazing trophies again, and a big thank you to everyone who turned up. You are what makes the weekend. My highlight? Catweasil actually winning something (the Flower of Leeds award for the best flowery shirt. Big congrats, petal).’

Want to join the fun? Sign up for Leeds VI, February 17-19 2012, in the Community Meetups section on the PKR forum

community | what’s on

Scare yourself stupid

Who is going to be the next Main Event winner?

Now in its 12th year, Frightfest, the UK’s premiere fantasy and horror film festival is gaining lots of mainstream attention, with sponsors Film4 and a regular home in the heart of London’s West End. And you can still get tickets for its annual Halloween all-nighter, likely to contain the very best in British and world horror, with special guests and a very enthusiastic crowd.

6,865 players stumped up $10k for a shot at poker’s 2011 world championship and now only nine remain. We’d love Eoghan O’Dea to complete a memorable story following his father’s final table appearance in 1983 (see p40). And you can cheer him on in person if you’re in Vegas November 5-7. The Nine play down to two on November 5, before reconvening for the heads-up on November 7. The winner will get a paltry $8,711,956 plus interest for his troubles.

Stuff you might miss The very best the real world can offer – close the curtains and keep grinding instead The highlight of the recent Frightfest

The WSOP 2011 November Nine showdown will be held at the Rio in Las Vegas November 5-7. Entry is free or you can watch ESPN’s awesome coverage at home. See wsop.com for more details

The 2011 Oktoberfest is already being rowdy in the centre of Munich. Find out more at www.oktoberfest.de

Beer, beer, beer, we all like drinking beer!

Gladiators ready… If you haven’t already been down to a BAMMA event with PKR you should clear your December diaries. BAMMA 8 is taking over the Capital FM Arena in Nottingham, and the UK promotion is stepping up its game with the debut of former UFC middleweight title contender Nate ‘The Great’ Marquardt. stacked♠ caught up with three of BAMMA’s biggest stars in London – turn the page for an exclusive round table interview with Paul Daley, Nate Marquardt and Tom Watson. BAMMA 8 is encouraging big men to fight each other on December 10 at the Capital FM Arena in Nottingham. Check the PKR forums for details and a chance of bagging some free tickets

Men in tights You’ve got to be quick if you want to make last orders at the 2011 drinking marathon Oktoberfest. Grown men in lederhosen are already quaffing premium lagers for breakfast and the bell is going to ring for the last time on October 3. A ‘mass’ or litre of beer will set you back between €8.70 and €9.20, but having been there last year stacked♠ can assure that you won’t remember how much you spent the next morning.

If you believe the bookies, the Rugby World Cup is already over. The All Blacks – a team that’s won a frightening 75% of all rugby union games it’s played since 1903 – were huge favourites before a ball was picked, caught and run with, and barring a disaster they’ll be contesting the final in Auckland on October 23. The question is, who will be rolling over after the Haka?

The Rugby World Cup is being played now and the final is set for October 23 at Eden Park in Auckland. See the complete fixture list and get ticketing info from www.rugbyworldcup.com

Frightfest’s 2011 All-Nighter takes place on Saturday October 29 at the Vue Cinema in Leicester Square. www.frightfest.co.uk

The biggest game

Game over?

Frieze Art Fair stacked♠ would like to make

Join the PKR community as it descends on BAMMA 8

it clear right now that we’re not just interested in poker, drinking, bloody films and blood sports. We’re also more than a little partial to a drop of contemporary art, and if that’s more your bag don’t miss the annual Frieze Art Fair which is held in Regent’s Park in London. With over 170 artists showing their work it’s the perfect opportunity to gawk at pictures you can’t afford to buy. The 2011 Frieze Art Fair takes place October 13-16. See www. friezeartfair.com for tickets stacked♠

community | profile

Q&A

Fighting talk  In a STACKED♠ special, we talk to three of BAMMA’s biggest stars about cage fighting, intense training, educating people about MMA and even a little bit of poker!

or the uninitiated, what is Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)?    Tom Watson: It’s a combination of different variants within martial arts under uniform rules. You can use any technique [such as boxing, Jiu-Jitsu or judo] but you can’t headbutt, eye gouge or hit to the groin while in the cage.  Nate Marquardt: It’s an ancient sport that has become more and more popular over the past decade. It’s getting to the point where it is becoming one of the most watched sports in the world. How popular around the world is MMA now and how big can it get? NM: I think it will be the biggest sport in the world alongside soccer.  TW: In many parts of the western world it’s already more popular than boxing, and it’s more of an athletic sport because of the different areas of fighting that we cover.  Paul Daley: Simply because it’s a combat sport I don’t think it will ever be as popular as soccer. To the common viewer MMA is always going to look more brutal than sports like soccer and American football. But I do think MMA can get to the level that boxing was in its heyday. There can still be huge marquee fights in MMA like there were in boxing with Ali and Frazier. MMA’s top stars could be huge if the TV sticks with us and we get sponsors to help push the sport. Some people still see MMA in a negative light. Why do you think that is and how can the perception of the sport change? NM: Mixed Martial Arts started off with a bad image because that’s how it was portrayed by the media and even by the promotional companies putting on shows 14

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themselves [in the early-mid 1990s]. They thought it would be a good way to get viewers.  PD: Depending on what people’s taste in sport and combat are, if you see somebody getting kicked and punched in the head with blood everywhere then it will turn some people off.   NM: If you want to change people’s views it’s all about educating them that this is just mixed martial arts, and that it’s an exciting and highly skilled sport. What is your training regime like? NM: I train six days a week, twice a day. Training consists of anything from strength

week of a fight a lot of guys are losing 10lbs, some guys are even losing as much as 20lbs. What are your thoughts on BAMMA? TW: BAMMA is vying to be the second or third biggest organisation in the world. Although the UFC comes over to the UK and Europe to do their shows, they aren’t that regular. I think BAMMA can really be at the forefront of MMA in Europe. PD: This is my second fight with them, they’re a great promotion. My first fight was at BAMMA 5 and I knocked out the Japanese champion Yuya Shirai. BAMMA now has UFC and PRIDE veterans so there’s a high level of competition and it’s growing.

I love poker. I played in a tournament in Vegas the last time I was there and got down to the last 12, but went out on the bubble! and conditioning to boxing, wrestling or Jiu-Jitsu. We have technical sessions where you learn technique over and over, and we have sparring sessions to test out the moves that you know. Most fighters train year-round. The training is very much harder on your body than the fight. TW: My preparation will start around ten weeks before I have a fight. A lot of people just see the actual event that you compete in [and don’t realise how much we train].   PD: In terms of nutrition we have to fight within a certain weight class so we really must eat clean. It’s pretty much following government guidelines in making sure you eat your fruit and veg and keeping calories down – what you learn in school basically! It’s not good, especially if you like food! The

Are there any fights you want to have next? NM: I’m really hoping to get a fight with Paul Daley. Not only does he talk a lot but I think he’s a great fighter and I’d love to take him on at a future BAMMA event. He’s a very good striker but I feel I can dominate him in any area and I could win the fight in any area. Obviously I’ll be better on the ground and am a better wrestler but I really feel my skillset on the feet is better than his as well.  PD: It’s potentially a great fight. The UK public would love to see that fight and they would turn out in their droves to watch it. I think internationally it would really stand out as well. It would really help put BAMMA on the map.

ba m M

Paul ‘Semtex’ Daley: he’s a sweetheart really

BAMM A 7 too we we k place nt don’t w to press. If y just after o Decem orry – the bo u missed it ys are ber 10 back o at the in Not Capit n tin show a gham. It’s se al FM Arena t to be s well, a good with N fightin ate M g for Keep c the first tim arquardt e heckin g the P in BAMMA. for full KR for details ums an free tic d a shot at kets

Do you play poker? TW: I love tournament poker. I played in a tournament in Vegas the last time I was there and got down to the last 12, but went out on the bubble!  NM: Yeah, I play Texas hold’em a lot. When I’m in Albuquerque, New Mexico [where Nate trains] I play with Keith ‘Dean of Mean’ Jardine, ‘Suga’ Rashad Evans, Joe ‘Daddy’ Stevenson and Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone. I’ve thought about going to Vegas to play in the WSOP. It’d be great but I don’t want to have to pay for it!  PD: I played once, lost a lot of money and I’m not very good at it. I do love gambling though – get me on a roulette table picking numbers, that’s where I’m best! n

Tom ‘Kong’ Watson: current BAMMA middleweight champ

Nate ‘The Great’ Marquardt: set to make BAMMA debut

PHOTOGRAPHY PAUL CONDRON

What’s it like fighting in the UK compared to Vegas or Canada? PD: It’s definitely more relaxed over here as the sport is still growing. When you’re in Vegas during fight week it’s very different – you constantly get recognised on the street and there are cameras flashing everywhere. I prefer the chill-out of the UK, but I also like the glamour that goes with it in America.   NM: It’s great. The crowd always has a lot of energy and they come to watch a good performance. That’s all they care about and it takes a lot of the pressure off as a fighter.  PD: The good thing now [about the UK] is that if you say you’re a Mixed Martial Arts fighter people generally know what you are talking about, as opposed to thinking you’re just an animal!

PKR is a headline sponsor of BAMMA and will be running meet-ups at future fights. Check the forums for the latest info and get the results from BAMMA 7 online now stacked♠

community | news

alt .news.poker The stories that are off the record, on the QT and very hush-hush utspoken Canadian chipmunk Daniel Negreanu has surprised everyone by unveiling an attractive new beard. The neatly trimmed chin glove was on display while the non-meat eater spoke candidly about his personal life, which took an interesting turn during his disastrous WSOP. ‘I met my new girlfriend at the World Series,’ revealed the devout vegan. ‘She plays poker too… We just started, you know, hitting it off, and she’s super cool… She was Miss Earth Hungary in 2008.’ A one-handed internet search by the denizens of a popular poker forum has unearthed some fetching photographs, with one particularly eloquent poster moved to admit: ‘I’d prob let her poop on me.’ Touching stuff. An online poker player has been publicly humiliated on the world’s biggest poker forum after attempting to cheat a fellow forumite. TheShipper befriended a fellow player on 2+2 and asked if he could sweat him online via Skype to improve his game. His opponent became suspicious after hearing noises that corresponded with in-game bets. TheShipper immediately came clean, apologised and transferred $10 hush money to his ‘friend’ who then decided to out him anyway. Incredibly, during the session, TheShipper lived up to his name by losing a grand total of $3. One inspired move saw TheShipper attempt to raise his opponent off the

We just started, you know, hitting it off. She’s super cool

flopped nuts. One poster summed up the general community feeling when he said, ‘Can we please discuss the fact that the scammer LOST money to OP while he was watching his cards. LOLOLOLOLOL! I don’t know if I will ever run that bad.’ Meanwhile, a judge’s son who claimed to be ‘truly sorry’ for holding up two Vegas casinos while whacked on cocaine and OxyContin has

World’s worst date? Blogger has tables turned after ‘mean-spirited’ post F

inally, we’d like to congratulate Alyssa Bereznak, a Gizmodo blogger, for making herself as popular as Muammar Gaddafi. Bereznak created a profile for herself on a US dating site and ended up having dinner with Jon Finkel, high-level Magic: The Gathering and poker player. The date took a turn for the worse when Finkel mentioned he was the Magic world champion before whisking her to a one-man show based on

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the life of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Bereznak, in a breathtakingly ill-advised blog, attempted to ridicule Finkel after the date with lines like, ‘You’ll think you’ve found a normal bearded guy with a job, only to end up sharing goat cheese with a world champion of nerds.’ She also accused him of lying and ‘luring’ her into a date for not admitting to

been sentenced to a paltry three (to 11) years in prison for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. In December 2010, Anthony Carleo walked into the Bellagio dressed in black, wearing a motorcycle helmet and wielding a gun, and made off with fistfuls of $25,000 chips as onlookers hysterically confirmed: ‘he has a gun!’ He later sold 14 of the chips to an undercover cop. The perceived leniency of the sentence has provoked ire among the Vegas hierarchy, although Carleo provided mitigating circumstances – his father, a former Las Vegas municipal Judge, had recently cut his monthly allowance from $1,000 to $600. Anthony Carleo is 30 years old.

his penchant for Magic in his online profile. (This, despite not putting in her profile that she was a journalist who would write up details of her date afterwards for the world to feast on.) Unfortunately, Bereznak has since found that the internet is not the place to make fun of geeks. Disowned by Gizmodo, she has also been abused by everyone who has read her blog. ‘Wow… first of all: Alyssa, you’re a gigantic a$$ douche’, said one particularly insightful poster. Proof that Finkel is a catch for any self-respecting female can be found here – tinyurl.com/jonfinkel.

BobbyConkers’ PKR Forum Review Part of the fine team of PKR forum mods, BobbyConkers is on patrol to seek out the funniest and most controversial posts he can find – make your mark today!

Farewell to a legend tinyurl.com/pkrjabba

By far the most significant event recently in the PKR community has been the departure of the doyen of the forums, PKR_Jabba. We bid him farewell in July, and never have more hankies been wept into. Jabba’s last days were filled with tales of his forthcoming adventure, herding carrots, milking ducks and planting pigs. We weren’t sure he’d

quite got the hang of it, but didn’t want to ruin his leaving do. The community as a whole expressed their admiration for Jabba’s utopian idealism, his geothermal project, solar energising, barnraising, greenhouse-not-gassing and pond scraping. Accusations that there’s going to be a bit more Jeremy Kyle in the equation than he’s letting on are wide of the mark.

Of course, PKR held the derigueur Forum Invitational Farewell Tourney on Jabba’s last day. We couldn’t have him knocked out in his usual 11 minutes, so he was softplayed for a couple of hours, until he stumbled into the path of Sofia ‘Hippie Killer’ Lövgren. ‘Permaculture this, beardy,’ she didn’t say as he was sent to the rail for the very last time.

Grassroots action

tinyurl.com/tigerrrwin

Following on from mudbone’s Heads Up Championship (see issue 13), popular forumite kabotajoe kindly set up a low-stakes version, giving the less heralded members of the community a chance of glory. Naturally, the big boys still fancied a crack and the likes of brutusnr1, and Patatosalatas were warmly

welcomed by others praying someone else had to play them. This is our house though and after some stunning performances, sit-and-go grinder smilerr lined up against host kabotajoe, while forum queen Tigerrr took on the mighty Patatosalatas. Naturally nervous beforehand, Tigerrr’s triumph led

The Last Jägermeister

tinyurl.com/dunbarshop; tinyurl.com/riggedcover Frisky forum agitator Dunbar has impressed with his Photoshop skills this summer. Given the opportunity to win a chunk of james666’s whopping Vegas cash, Dunbar redefined the entire Renaissance period with ‘The Last Jägermeister’, complete with PKR_Scott as a hunchback, locodice as Usain Bolt and much PKR staff jazz-handing. Brian Sewell called it a ‘Tour de Force’, Charles Baudelaire a ‘damning indictment of post-

impressionist modernist thingies’, while the forum community delivered a collective ‘Looooool!!!! F***ing brilliant! Rofldavincis!!!’ Not content with his inevitable place in the new Tate Modern, Dunbar turned his hand to magazine design with a hardhitting Stacked spoof. We feel nothing more needs to be said of this work of genius, soon to be published with geordiemark as guest editor.

Join us! Now! The PKR forums are the best place to improve your game, post up sick bragz, or simply chew the fat with your favourite PKR players. Get involved now at: www.pkr.com/en/community/forums

her to declare ‘I washed his ears!’, while kabotajoe triumphed over smilerr. The Hall Of Famer then beat the host in a very close final. Rumours of kabotajoe setting up a 10c giveaway challenge have been met with excitement from Team PKR Pro who are looking to recoup their Vegas expenses.

Bobby’s of e Forumitnth t h e Mo tonBear goes to Ban

e Month Quote of th gem. ‘I have ker related po nno a h wit s that has ith a specie ng a problem w av tr el wasti tergalactic sands ou mastered in th ss ro ing off ac its time piss on Bootle.’ rs to drop in ea -y ht lig of ation m m su A marvelous ry. eo th cy ra of conspi

Follow stacked♠, PKR, and the various members of Team PKR Pro on Twitter: @PKRLetsPlay

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community | poker on demand

small screen action

Feeling bad about your game? Hit the internet and watch the pros lose instead Can you spot this year’s world champ?

Poker After Dark Cash Game

If High Stakes Poker paved the way for sick cash action on TV, Poker After Dark, traditionally a six-man sit-and-go affair, has taken the baton and run with it. As is usual with US TV shows, the line-up is fairly odd. Mike Matusow provides the intentional humour, Jean-Robert Bellande the unintentional, but with minimum $100k sit-downs the action is good and the entertainment factor picks up with the introduction of Phil Hellmuth down the line. Watch it

tinyurl.com/padark

2011 WSOP Main Event

‘There is no event on the planet like it!’ ESPN loves hyping up its coverage of the Main Event but no-one can accuse them of doing it badly. This year 6,865 players anted up the $10k and, in addition to the controversial nearly-live footage that was streamed as the tournament was playing out, the ESPN editors have somehow cut through the chaos to bring you a coherent narrative of all the

action through to the final table. It’s an impressive feat – more so if you’ve been there and know the conditions they work in. It might not be an accurate represntation of the greatest tournament of the year, but it’s undeniably entertaining. Get yourself up to date with all the episodes here and then settle back to find out who becomes world champion in November.

2011 Aussie Millions $25k Shootout

There’s an argument that says invitationals should be excluded from all rankings. The beauty of poker is supposed to be that if you can stump up the money you can take a seat with the superstars. Saying that though, there’s nothing wrong with watching 24 of the best poker players in the world (okay we’re buying into the hype a little bit here) tear it up in a $25k 24-seater shootout.

Watch it

tinyurl.com/espnwsop

tinyurl.com/25kshootout

stacked♠ bounty! Jump in – we’re actually giving money away Good news for all stacked♠ readers. Our performances in the last two bounty tournaments have been so woeful, we’ve been ordered to keep playing them until one of us makes the final table. By way of compensation we’re not charging you any money to play against us. The $5 entry fee has been waived – if you want a shot at the $500 prize pool it will cost you just 500 PKR Points. What’s more, knock any of the stacked♠ bounties out – it’s proved very easy to date – and we’ll give you a PKR hoodie.

tournament details Name Stacked Invitational Bounty Date November 21, 19.30 GMT Buy-in 500 PKR Points Password dublin Prize pool $500 Bounties (knock any of them out to win a PKR hoodie) Dave Woods (PKR_Dave) Colin Morris (PKR_Colin) Dan Grant (PKR_Danski) Ashley Hames (PKR_ashleyhames1) Scott Shelley (PKR_Scott)

Issue 13 final table 1. FacelessFoe – $372.60 2. marathonman1 – $220.80 3. karatsj – $151.80 4. XXzwiebackXX – $110.40 5. bingowinner – $96.60

6. ezoteric – $82.80 7. TheSpace – $65.55 8. SleepyngB – $48.30 9. leigh104 – $34.50 10. CantBullyMe – $24.15 stacked♠

community | profile

MyWorld caban

Meet the stilt-walking, bodysurfing, trance DJ with a perfect one-from-one WSOP record Call of nature

First time in Vegas, first time playing in the WSOP, first cash – life is good!

When I’m not playing poker I like to properly get away from things. I grew up next to the Alps in Austria and the mountains are where I feel truly blissed out. The freedom of trekking and climbing is completely pure, like a meditation. You’ll also find me bodysurfing in Bali, on walkabout in the Moroccan desert, climbing a volcano in Lombok or up waterfalls in Samothraki. I love to travel.

Living in the NOW

I truly believe there is only NOW – no past and no future, and no time for any unnecessary thoughts. If I make a mistake I try to make sure that it’s my last. This gives me the power I need to enjoy life and experience myself and my surroundings. I might be too tight at the poker table but I balance that by making sure I’m not tight at all in the real world!

Career man

I worked for ten years in two different factories as an electromechanic, then left to develop different massage therapies and started screen-printing t-shirts. For the past ten years I’ve been a DJ, producing psytrance and progressive electro music, and playing at different festivals around the world. I’ve also walked stilts in Dubai and built domes for exhibitions in Austria and Germany.

Tears of joy

Vegas was unreal! I really can’t find words to describe it. It all came about when I came back from a festival and didn’t touch anything electronic for over a week. Then I logged onto PKR and saw that the last WSOP final stage satellite was starting in a minute. I decided to play it and won a package! When I got to Las Vegas I started crying when I realised what a good life I have!

PHOTOGRAPHY PAUL CONDRON

In the money

The $1k tournament was my first ever WSOP experience and I lost half my stack when some guy got incredibly lucky with J-4 against my Aces. He made a full house on the river and I thought that I was going to have travelled all that way just to be out after a couple of hours. I started grinding back and finished day one under average chips, but still in. On the second day I sat next to jonscorp for nearly the whole day and we were shoving our arses off! I was 20

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all-in about 20 times and only got called once. I finished the day with hardly any chips, maybe around 9k. The third day I tried to hang in until the money but ended up having to shove Queens right on the bubble. It was a scary moment but thankfully they held up against A-9 and boom, I made the cash!

What goes, stays

If you’re thinking of heading out to Vegas the best advice I can give you is to stay smart and don’t be tempted to go over your limits. Sin City shows no mercy and offers you about a million different ways for you to spend your

money. It’s true what they say – what goes to Vegas stays in Vegas! And that includes my memory about what happened on the second night we were there. Thankfully I didn’t have a tiger in my bathroom when I woke up! n

caban AKA Patrick Pagjura Age 37 Resides Wolkersdorf, Austria Plays MTTs ($5 – $100) Biggest PKR win $4,250 (1st in The Daily, August 2009)

community | column

THE

Ross ‘MrStarch’ Jarvis

Potato Chronicles

You can find new Stacked columnist Ross ‘MrStarch’ Jarvis grinding away on the $5/$10 PKR cash tables – or stuck on Twitter had always considered poker tournaments to be a bit of a joke. Since joining PKR around two years ago I’d only played a handful of tournaments while grinding out nearly 500,000 cash game hands and moving up from $0.25c/$0.50c to where I now play, $5/$10. After playing that many hands of cash you get a rough estimate of how much you should be expecting to win (or lose) each month, even when accounting for the beast that is variance. Tournaments always seem much more like a lottery. You can play for hours on end, only to have one bad beat on the bubble and still go home with no money. However, after looking at the rankings and seeing players like Rocken1900 and ForFoxSake with total winnings well in excess of $100k, I decided it was time to get into the action. I started registering for every MTT with a buy-in over $20 to see how I’d stack up to these PKR MTT legends. That was on a Saturday afternoon – by the time I went to sleep I’d somehow managed to win both the Monte Carlo and the PKR Open in the same night, for $3,600 total. The next day was even better as I finished sixth in the inaugural PKR 500 for an extra $3,690. Since I started playing more tournaments on July 16th I’ve won over $14k – and while I’ve definitely run good in that time, there’s no reason why you can’t do the same. In cricket an all-rounder can be the most important player on the team, and the same is true of poker. There are three main variants on PKR; cash games, tournaments and sit-and-gos. If you’re experienced and good at all three it’s quite likely that you’ll make more money. Give something new a try next time you log on – you may be ignoring your best game.

#rungoodforlife

Fellow cash gamer JJBird22 has been having a lot of MTT success lately too and we’ve started a little club on Twitter called #rungoodforlife in the hope that saying it over and over again will compel the poker Gods to keep on giving. PKR Pro james666 has been actively campaigning to join for a while now but the team is worried that his continual bad beat whining will disrupt the natural order of things – when he starts giving off positive vibes we may reconsider…

Follow MrStarch on Twitter for the latest Cher Lloyd chat and camp cookery tips

As I write this, I can’t believe I am now on Twitter. I used to hate Twitter. And blogs. And people who tweeted and blogged. I just couldn’t see the point in it. Unless you had something interesting or profound to say – and that rules out much of the world apart from Joey Barton – why would anyone want to read a 140 character tweet about the status of your slowly roasting chicken thigh or thoughts on the latest Cher Lloyd phat beat? Fast forward a few months and I’m a fully certified social media whore. I blog, I post on the PKR forum and – most of all – I love to tweet. In two months I’ve racked up 798 tweets and accrued 151 followers, most of whom are all new friends from the PKR Community. Twitter has quickly become a hub for PKR players at all levels to talk about hands, organise meet-ups and – more commonly – take the piss out of each other. It’s not unusual now for BrotherMuzone17, WongaMan, Rhymenoceros and I to be playing nine tables of $2/$4 against each other while tweeting away about TV box sets or how Japete runs like God. I may have to stop tweeting while I play though. I don’t necessarily have proof yet but there does seem to be a direct correlation between the number of tweets I send and the amount of absolutely awful bluffs I attempt online. Maybe I’ll write a tweet about it and see if anyone has any advice… n Follow MrStarch on Twitter @Starch_Jarvis or read his blog at MrStarch.blogspot.com

Starch on this When he’s not grinding away, MrStarch has been enjoying…

SPUNTINO spuntino.co.uk What is it? An amazing Brooklyn-style diner in the heart of Soho, London. Why is it amazing? Currently the coolest new place on London’s foodie scene, Spuntino serves up some of the best burgers in town, plays Johnny Cash on loop and makes some wicked bourbon cocktails. Squint your eyes and you could be on the Lower East Side. Be prepared to queue though as you can’t book in advance but don’t worry – it’s worth the wait.

SENNA tinyurl.com/ sennafilm

What is it? A feature-length documentary about legendary Formula One racer Ayrton Senna. Why is it amazing? If you missed this in the cinema, make sure you get the DVD when it is released in October. A great, moving story about one of the 20th century’s greatest sportsmen that isn’t actually about cars at all but the people who drive them.

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community | pkr around the world

pkr around the world

France

With the WSOPE decamping over the English Channel in search of high-class dining and a pack of Capstan Full Strength, French poker stock has never been so high

relocating The WSOPE is October is to Cannes th

Theo Jørgensen won the WPT Gran Prix de Paris in May 2010, beating French pro Antoine Amourette

Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier is the shining light of French poker

ournament poker is undoubtedly at an all-time high in France. For the next six months, it seems like all roads converge on our Gallic friends. September plays host to the WPT Grand Prix de Paris at the Aviation Club and just days later many of those same players will make their way to Cannes for the €4m Grand Final of the Partouche Poker Tour. Amnéville – near the border of France and Luxembourg – is the site of another WPT towards the end of the year. Perhaps the biggest coup though is the fact that the

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Get yourself a qu ick photo and then head to the Aviation Club

WSOPE has upped sticks from London and moved onto Cannes at the Casino Barriere de Cannes Croisette (October 7-15). ‘I’m really looking forward to it,’ says French superstar Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier. ‘London was good but the cardroom was a bit small,’ he admits. Organisers say there is space for 75 tables, double that of London’s Empire casino. There will also be more bracelets up for grabs – seven in total, with a novel split no-limit hold’em event that sees players progress through nine-handed, six-handed and heads-up tables before the final table.

The 2011 WSOPE also boasts six-handed no-limit hold’em and PLO events, plus a shootout, a ladies’ event (non-bracelet) and the five-day Main Event.

Vive la France

Step into the newly refurbished Aviation Club in Paris and the cash game scene also seems to be buzzing. Fabrice Soulier, winner of this year’s $10k WSOP H.O.R.S.E. event remembers the world-famous cardroom back in 1996. ‘There were three or four tables and you had to wait for hours until you could find

Where to play Paris is still the premier location for poker in France thanks to the Aviation Club and its bedmate the Cercle Gaillion – a few hundred metres apart off the Champs Elysee. Cash games at the Aviation Club range from no-limit €2/€2 to €5/€10 with a minimum sit down of €50, but you can also get PLO, mixed and dealer’s choice games. The only niggle is the strict dress code and their €100 yearly membership fee. In the past, you could get away with it by saying you were in town for a few days but anecdotal evidence suggests that’s no longer true. Outside of Paris, the next best poker hotspot seems to be Cannes. Palm Beach is the location of the Partouche Poker Tour (PPT) Grand Final and offers six cash games with a €200 sit down. There’s one tournament each day at 9pm – either a single table PPT satellite or a 40-runner regular freezeout. The Croisette-Casino Barrière de Cannes is the place to go for deep-stack tournament action. One weekend a month there is a two-day €900 deep-stack event with 45 minute blinds and 30,000 starting chips.

Step into the newly refurbished Aviation Club in Paris and the cash game scene seems to be buzzing a game,’ he says. ‘Now when you go in, it’s got 20 tables and it’s full of people.’ Soulier smiles when he reminisces about the standard of play. ‘Players used to fold A-K face up,’ he says. ‘Now they don’t even think about folding anymore. I was one of the pioneers of the aggressive style.’ The cash game scene isn’t what it used to be though. In addition to the Aviation Club, Paris was also served by the Cercle Wagram and Cercle Haussmann casinos which have both been shut down due to alleged criminal activity. The scarcity of games is such that ElkY admits the Aviation Club is the only place in France he would consider playing at. In addition, Soulier, now relocated in London, says he wouldn’t be attracted back to the games unless the rake went down from 4% to 2%. ‘It’s quasi unbeatable and it’s very hard to be a winning player with this level of rake. We’re waiting for a redraft of the law,’ he says. As we went to press it looked like change could be on the way soon. A Toulouse court has just ruled that poker is a game of skill, which will hopefully loosen up the restrictions that current laws are placing on the game. n

The pro Dav id Benyamine Few poker players epitomise the high stakes degenerate quite like 39-year-old Frenchman David Benyamine. Ever since pulling up a chair in Las Vegas’ renowned Big Game with a $40k stack in a $2k/$4k game he’s embraced million dollar swings and outrageous variance, playing consistently underrolled and taking shots whenever he can. His online nosebleed swings are legendary: at the end of 2007 he found himself in an $8 million hole, the very next year he was in profit by $4.7m. His financial irresponsibility is such that even his opponents have been known to look out for him. In High Stakes Poker Season 2, billionaire Guy Laliberte let Benyamine off the hook in a $1.2m pot – see the hand play out at tinyurl.com/degenyamine.

Q&A

Waswini

What’s the live poker scene in France like? The level of play in France is pretty poor in general and I definitely think the juiciest international tournaments are played out here. It’s getting bigger as well. You can play the BPT (Barriere Poker Tour), the FPS (France Poker Series), the WPT Paris, the PPT (Partouche Poker Tour), the WSOPE Cannes, and the EPT Deauville. I think the future of poker in France looks really bright. Has it changed much over the past few years – for better or worse? Yes it has changed, even if it’s still true that the standard is generally low. Before, you would expect to have six really bad players at your table, now it’s more like four. Where do you play regularly? I like to play in Deauville. It’s close to the beach and very close to where I live, so I usually go there when there is an event. If I could though I’d head off from France and go to Macau – the city is amazing and the games even better! Where are the juiciest games in France? For cash games, the Aviation Club in Paris is usually the place, but some places on the Riviera or Monaco can be good. Some of the Parisian games are getting closed down though, so you should go there before they all close. What about games for low-stakes players? You can find low-stakes games everywhere. Circles de jeu (gambling clubs) and casinos both offer low buy-in games. It’s pretty rare to see big buy-in games in France unless there’s a big event. Which French players do you rate highest on PKR? For cash games I would say keefkeef, Fxfresh and zlatan35, and tournaments my votes would go to shooye and yohann1062. Tell us something we don’t know about France… The standard of play might not be the highest, but without the French you wouldn’t have poker. It comes from an old French game called poque. stacked♠

feature | pkr in vegas

the pkr vegas experience

are you

PHOTOGRAPHY paul condron

PKR’s fifth excursion to Las Vegas was the best yet – join Dan ‘Danski’ Grant on a fantastic voyage to the party capital of the world

stacked♠

hanks to a myriad of documentary exposés and hackneyed Hollywood pastiches, there’s no mystery to the world’s most famous party destination. From Theroux to Hames, Hunter S Thompson to The Hangover, Las Vegas’ lurid charms have been much publicised. But aside from the classic Sin City fairytale –nightclub to strip joint to blackjack table to mafia sledgehammer threat to pawn shop to craps table to digging your own hole in the desert – it’s also the poker mecca. Well, at least that’s the justification we use to our significant others. Since our first WSOP Experience in 2007, we’ve been trimming off the fat, bringing out the best flavours and perfecting a recipe that will please both virgins and veterans. And, though I say it myself, our fifth visit was as close to the perfect WSOP experience as we’ve ever come. While other poker sites whack a few bucks in your account and wish you well, we’ve morphed into a bona fide tailor-made travel agency. I think we’ll call ourselves Hijack Holidays (maybe not), Going South (endorsed by Freddy Deeb?), Top Top Travel or maybe Sin Searchers? Roll up, roll up! From plane to hotel to poker table to party and back, all expenses paid. We’ll do everything but tuck you in each night – or morning. Ask PKR_Jake nicely and he might even do that too.

Bright lights, big city

The 24-strong group of wayfarers who signed up for this year’s voyage included 21-year-olds, 71-year-olds, three wise Irishmen and a pack of cash game kings. They came from all over Europe, many having qualified for just a few dollars. Some, like Belgium’s pax69 were taking flight for the first time (and what a sick destination for your first plane ride) while some old hands like bennythejet, Twister86 and Rocken1900 were returning to Vegas for their second or third WSOP Experience.

ElJardi

Vegas during the World Series is all about poker, tournaments and money, but it says a lot that almost all PKR qualifiers only talk about the great people they met, the fun times and the unforgettable nights out. You guys managed to make poker of secondary importance for degenerate poker players. It was a fantastic week in a great hotel, already looking forward to next year.

Beyne

Vegas as usual. A truly great PKR week, as always. As far as poker goes, I am split between two thoughts. On one side, I should be happy and proud to have gone that far in the Main Event. On the other, I am disappointed not to have gone further. I was close to my Top 50 goal and yet so far. But there is always next year! Hope dies last...

Base camp for our crew was the Cosmopolitan, the city’s newest hotel completed earlier in the year. Our search for the ideal home-from-home has taken us from the Venetian to the Aria via the Palms, yet in the Cosmopolitan we met our bricks and mortar match. Classy, sleek, stylish, sophisticated, it’s a hub of upmarket activity.

“This was as close to the perfect WSOP experience as we’ve ever come” With 15 restaurants, the town’s top superclub, three bangin’ pools, a state-of-the-art fitness centre and a health spa to whom, for their steam room and cucumber-infused ice water, I owe my grateful thanks and possibly life. Being just a short walk from The Strip it was the perfect location. One of the great benefits of housing our gang of qualifiers in the same hotel is obvious. You’ll run into a PKR player at any hour of the day, be it Littlewood slumped over the blackjack table or caban – fantastically hairy chest on display – living it up at the Chandelier Bar. Despite its gross stacked♠

feature | pkr in vegas

dimensions, we’ve succeeded in reducing Las Vegas to an iniquitous, bacchanalian PKR commune.

Noobs and wise owls

The intricately organised WSOP Experience schedule, for which we should thank PKR_Erika, began on July 1 with a drinks reception at Bellagio’s Caramel Bar. Ivey, Doyle and the rest may well be responsible for the Bellagio’s high stakes heritage, but that’s history and our crew has taken the reigns now. Whether it’s Ashley Hames helping himself to greenbacks at their Casino War table or Twister86’s psychological dismantling of Roshambo opponents outside the drinks reception (‘I go Rock, okay? I go Rock, I promise you. Then you go Paper, so I go Scissors, and you go Rock, so I go Paper and you go Scissors. So I go Rock. Okay, let’s go’), the story is always the same. PKR players, pros and staff add a distinct flavour to any Vegas activity. Amid the darkness of the Caramel Bar (and Ashley Hames’ soul), the qualifiers merged, drank and picked the brains of the experienced few who possessed information vital to the fortunes of a Vegas noob. After three hours, wise owls hit the sack to prepare for the following day’s WSOP event, while the rest, unable to resist the lure of Sin City’s bright lights, were sucked into the black hole of Vegas. The following morning, the qualifiers took their seats for Day 1 of the $1,000 WSOP event, and the chance to realise their dreams. In WSOP terms, a $1k buy-in is comparable to your local pub game, yet despite the relatively fast structure and meagre 3,000 chip starting stack, a record six qualifiers made the money, returning on Day 2 for a date with poker destiny. A day later, and with just four tables remaining, two players, Frenchman Jonathan ‘eurojo’ Levy and poker tough guy Rik ‘ElJardi’ Alebregtse were still in the hunt. Sadly the cards fell the other way, and both players departed quickly – Rik in 34th place and Jonathan in 33rd, each cashing for $16,267.

mak131081

Great time, great fun, great experience! Not comparable to any other poker site. My and my girlfriend had an awesome time and made a lot of new friends. I’ll be back next year for sure!

stacked♠

“the only true sin is in never going”

My WSOP adventure was extraordinary. For one week I lived the life of a professional poker player. PKR’s VIP events were awesome.

Surpassing 4,544 opponents to come within a hair’s breadth of a WSOP bracelet is storming work, and both should be commended. In all, the qualifiers raided Event 54 for $48,000, a fine example of how PKR’s players are progressing with each year.

Singin’ in the rain

eurojo

Away from the tables, the zenith of the WSOP Experience week was Sunday’s ‘F**k Me I’m Famous’ pool party at Wet Republic, an extraordinary afternoon of poolside clubbing run by DJ legend David Guetta. Joined by Team PKR Pros and assorted PKR players, the qualifiers donned their budgiesmuggling euro fashionista poolwear and took to the pool-cum-dancefloor to shake their stuff. Under the enviable shade of three VIP cabanas, with a limitless supply of cocktails poured by busty sirens, our crew enjoyed seven hours of the finest house music known to man – an unbeatable combination. Unsurprisingly, this slice of Ibizan heaven transposed to the Nevada

Littlewood

A brilliant trip from start to finish. Credit to all the PKR qualifiers, pros and players in Vegas who were all top company, but special thanks to the PKR staff for putting on such an epic trip of a lifetime. Qualifying for next year is an absolute must!

$700,000 bar bill having bought each table a $2,000 bottle of Cristal! After last year’s Wheelchairgate incident [when his level of inebriation was such that a wheelchair was needed to escort him back to his room] I was lumbered with the unenviable task of shepherding Waswini to his hotel, despite PKR_Jake having already paid our table’s private security guard $100 for that very task. I was able to indulge in a spot of late-night wrestling on Waswini’s hotel room floor. Although I’d imagine I came out on top, I’m grateful to his roommates for their discretion. Got to be careful in these times of instant Facebook publication...

Viva Las Vegas

Event

#54

desert is the highlight of everyone who attended. And as if ordered by the great poker god in the sky, a rare tropical storm brought the occasion to a thunderous and fitting end, leaving us with enduring images of qualifiers barely visible through the sheet rain, hands in the air, ready to meet their maker as the lightning crackled around us. Incredible stuff! The following day – the Fourth of July no less – knowing that many of our lot, waning after three non-stop days, needed a good square meal, we headed to Table 10, celeb chef Emeril Lagasse’s restaurant in the Palazzo, for four sumptuous courses including a steak the size of a football. There are many sins in Vegas, but food might just be the biggest. To their credit, you get more for your money than anywhere on Earth, though sadly I can only imagine the immense wastage that goes on. Many players followed the feast with a visit to Marquee nightclub on the biggest night of the year, an evening which, rumour has it, saw one reveller foot a

Quite why we bring our qualifiers to the brink, I don’t know, but we do. Manoeuvring them from their poker tables (and in some cases beds) to the next party the following night, we shared another huge night on the town, forcing upon them another free bar courtesy of the Official PKR Party at the Mirage’s Revolution Lounge. It’s a simple mix of nightclub chic, big tunes, unlimited booze and fine young ladies, so I’m not sure why they enjoy it so much. But there we are. Simple creatures, poker players. Those with iron wills and livers concluded an unforgettable week on July 6 with a tour of Las Vegas, from the Vegas Sign to historic Fremont Street, the Bellagio fountains and a dose of shopping at Premium Outlets. And that was that for another year. From the first handshake to the final farewell, the PKR family rocked Las Vegas like no one else. Credit must go not to the city, but to the players themselves. Either we run good, or every member of the PKR clan we meet is great company. And for the rest of you sat at home, yearning for a taste of the distilled essence of Sin City, remember this – the only true sin is in never going... n

We came, we saw, we cashed… 33rd Jonathan ‘eurojo’ Levy $16,267 34th Hendrik ‘ElJardi’ Alebregtse $16,267 50th John ‘Rocken1900’ Pansar $10,707 147th Daniel ‘Rocafella’ Copeland $3,624 370th Patrick ‘caban’ Pagjura $2,059 378th Steven ‘enoobs’ Boone $2,059 397th Eleanor ‘Elz442’ Gudger $2,059 stacked♠

FEATURE | PKR’s 50 Greatest moments

The world’s greatest poker room has enjoyed the company of some of the world’s greatest online players who have helped create the greatest poker community and some of the greatest moments in poker history. Join stacked♠ , the world’s greatest poker magazine, as we count down – in order – the greatest of the great!

Greatest Moments O

stacked♠

n August 17, 2006, PKR launched with a promise to revolutionise the world of online poker. Now, just over five years later, more than 4.5 million players have registered, playing over 1.8 billion hands of poker and contributing to a vibrant community forum with over 600,000 posts. A lot has happened along the way – life-changing sums of money have been won and a handful of PKR players have achieved serious recognition, with EPT, WSOP and APT titles to their name. The PKR community has partied in Vegas, battled for bragging rights at six PKR Lives, and suffered the hangovers associated with PKR Socials across Europe. It’s been a ball, and we think this is the perfect time to roll back the years and relive the good times. Hold onto your hats…

Looking for action?

Omaha is a game that promises action but two players decided to take this to the next level – as jaywhat found when he stumbled upon a distinctly NSFW chat session that we can’t reprint in its entirety. If you want to see the unexpurgated version and find out what’s meant by, ‘There doesn’t have to be four, you know that’ (clue: they’re not talking about hole cards), check the thread at tinyurl.com/pkrchat.

PKR’s fight club

The first rule of PKR’s fight club is that you never pay for tickets. The second rule is that you tell as many people as possible. That was the good news when PKR announced it was partnering with the UK’s leading MMA outfit BAMMA. The first PKR/BAMMA trip, on February 26 2011, saw a raucous group of PKR players meet up for free drinks at The Printworks in Manchester before heading down to the MEN Arena to see headline act Paul ‘Semtex’ Daley destroy Japanese challenger Yuya Shirai. Turn to p14 to find out more about three of BAMMA’s biggest stars.

JC Tran and friends drop in

JC Tran is a poker legend (see p68) so we were thrilled when he – and fellow pros Nam Le, Chino Reem and Quinn Do – dropped into PKR towers in November 2008. They all played in a special Bounty tournament that attracted 1,130 players all eager to win the $5k APT Manila package. Tran – the first pro to represent PKR in a live tournament – went on to win the Premier League III, and $300,000, three days later.

The best of Mixed Martial Arts with BAMMA and PKR

TheSqueeze, among others, admitting, ‘This is pwnage of the highest order.’ Goldeneyehd went on to finish second in the 2010 EPT Deauville, winning a bankroll boosting €516,000.

Beyne fights law (law wins)

When Beyne arrived at the PKR party at the 2010 WSOP things were going well. He was still in the $1k WSOP event, in the cash, and guaranteed a deep run. Then things went a little awry. First he got kicked out of the party for dropping ice cubes off the balcony (the Mix Bar is on the 64th floor of the Mirage!). Tilted he played some blackjack on the way out, lost, cursed and was rebuked by the dealer. This prompted another round of cursing, which attracted a local cop who… You can guess the rest. The next day his stack was blinding off as he languished in a Vegas jail. Thankfully there was a happy ending. Beyne was released before his stack disappeared completely and he cashed for $7,438 in 62nd place.

Thomas Kremser looks on as Beyne wins HUGS

Return of the Mac

Before September 18, 2009, the ongoing debate between the relative superiority of Macs and PCs was a non-starter: you could play PKR on a PC and you couldn’t on a Mac. No contest. Equilibrium was delivered two years ago, meaning trendy media types and elitist wannabes could finally join in the fun.

Boys are back in town

What better way to announce yourself to the world than inviting 32 of the world’s best poker players into your backyard and systematically knocking them out in the televised 2009 PKR Heads Up Grand Slam. It left two of PKR’s biggest players – james666 and Beyne – to clash in an explosive and infamous semi-final remembered more for the banter, the drinking and the lack of any discernible or coherent poker strategies.

The ego has landed

Pictures speak louder than words. And on July 22, 2009, one of the finest threads ever to hit the PKR forums was started. Simply titled, ‘ty galanthus, beyne, soosick, james etc’, it comprised of a poor quality shot of a brand new car – complete with PKR numberplate – that Goldeneyehd had bought with his poker winnings (see tinyurl.com/ goldeneyecar). The thinly veiled brag caused hilarity on the forum with

OMG, It’s Phil Galfond!

As online phenom OMGClayAiken, high-stakes superstar Phil Galfond has forged a reputation as one of the best players in the world. That’s why the PKR community was abuzz when Galfond popped in for a spot of guest commentary on PKR TV. PKR players flocked to the four-hour ‘Galfond TV Cash Game’ special which ran on January 24, 2010, with buy-ins between $1k and $5k.

stacked♠

FEATURE | PKR’s 50 Greatest moments

PKR Awards

final table is an agony that very few endure. But that’s what happened to James ‘james666’ Sudworth who crashed out in seventh place in the 2009 six-handed event. He scooped $54k but came so, so close to winning PKR’s first bracelet at the WSOP proper.

The first PKR Community awards were held back in December 2010. Norwegian tournament destroyer ovnis won the MTT category, Beyne emerged with the cash game award for his epic battles with 1Kevboy and Goldeneyehd, and Pkr1princess was named Forumite of the Year.

In 2006, after watching the horrors of the genocide in Rwanda unfold, Hollywood actor Don Cheadle, Annie Duke and Norman Epstein set up poker charity Ante Up For Africa (AUFA). In May 2010 PKR joined forces, naming AUFA as its nominated charity for the year, holding regular MTTs in support and enabling players to donate via their PKR Points. Annie Duke said, ‘Once again we are seeing the tremendous generosity of the poker community. We are so appreciative of PKR’s support.’

The best gets better

Version 2.0 of PKR was released in August 2010 and it marked

POKEr’s

the single biggest change to the poker client since launch. Aside from a complete facelift, v2.0 finally made it possible to multi-table (up to nine tables) on PKR. Cash game regs – once they’d got used to their new environment – celebrated.

most memorable moments

Advertising for action

PKR put the fear of god into other poker sites in July 2008 when its first TV commercial was aired across the globe. Featuring in-game footage of PKR’s game-changing graphics and avatar technology, it’s safe to say that the poker world had never seen the like of it before.

Close, no cigar

Making the final table of a WSOP event in Vegas is a dream that most poker players never get to realise. Busting one place off the

Contrary to popular opinion, poker does exist outside of PKR – here are ten moments that shook the rest of the world

TEN 10 stacked♠

PKR joined forces with Ante Up For Africa in May 2010

PKR vs the world

The 2007 WSOP marked PKR’s first foray into the live poker world. And the first players to sit in PKR colours were three ladies – MinniMe, k29lewis and passdaces – who won a $2k package which included entry to the Ladies World Championship. The event drew a 1,286-strong field with $262k up top, but sadly none of our intrepid trio reached the money.

PKR Antes Up For Africa

Annette plays it blind Ever wondered how important position is in poker? Ask Annette Obrestad,

Meeting of minds

PKR’s community meet-ups can be traced back to July 2007 at the Gutshot in London. A series of poker nights featured a host of future pillars of the community, including Chivalrousgent, Rocafella, TheSqueeze, and Azurecoil, who succumbed to the PKR-sponsored bar. ‘The last thing I remember is looking down at pocket Threes. Next I was walking out of the hospital saying, “This isn’t the Gutshot.”’

Home from home

PKR might be an online site but poker in the real world is fun too, especially when you’ve got your own poker club. In August 2010, PKR announced it was sponsoring the Fox Poker Club on Shaftesbury Avenue in the heart of London’s West End. Since that time it’s played host to two successful PKR Lives, the first London Calling festival and super-juicy cash games.

Chan is a fish

Lots of players are intimidated when they’re faced with a true old-school legend, doubly so when they’re playing for a massive sum of money. Not so Beyne, who came up against Johnny Chan heads-up at the 2009 APPT Macau High

who played a $4 180-man sit-andgo effectively blind. Covering her hole cards she played purely from position and stack sizes, and won it – admitting to peeking at her cards just the once. As a pure poker exercise there’s probably nothing better for your game than to try to emulate her amazing tale.

Isildur’s sick, sick run The man who nearly broke the poker world burst onto the scene on October 22, 2009, and proceeded to play some of the sickest high-stakes sessions ever. He won a record $5m from Tom Dwan before taking on a list of the world’s elite. His run fell apart on December 8, 2009 when he lost $3m to Brian Hastings who later admitted to using sharing hand histories from his poker buddies.

Roller event after spinning up his entry from a run on the blackjack tables. His reaction at beating him and bagging over $250,000? ‘Johnny Chan is a fish.’

Girl power

This year’s WSOP stats made for grim reading for anyone hoping that more women were being attracted to the game – 95% of all entries were from men. Despite the numbers game, women have come out on top in lots of big-money events and PKR almost had its own when Elz442 threatened the boys at PKR Live V. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be as Elz442 went out in eighth but she is still the first – and only – female to make a PKR Live final table.

We’ll take David Guetta’s word for it, but he definitely knows how to rock a party

next month. Got points to spare? You can bag yourself a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder – a snip at 831,283,910 points!

Open all hours

The PKR Shop opened for business on October 30, 2007, when a German player placed an order for a black PKR polo shirt. Now you can choose from a multitude of PKR goodies, with a new line promised for

Toms2up wins the big one

The Masters is PKR’s biggest tournament with first prizes usually in excess of $25k. It’s the one everyone wants to win, but Toms2up timed his win to perfection. He was part of the record 527-player crowd that stumped up the cash on July 26, 2008, and he topped the lot taking home $31,620, the single biggest MTT in PKR’s history.

Elz442 – the only female to final table a PKR Live

Andy Beal vs The Corporation Between 2001 and 2004, selfmade billionaire Andy Beal took on a consortium of the world’s best poker players including Doyle Brunson and Howard Lederer. He lost and left Vegas to lick his wounds, but returned in 2006 and quickly took The Corporation for vast sums of money playing stakes unheard of before or since. The games came to an explosive end in February

PKR TV: small screen action

and Colin Morris nervously entered the Videosonics studio on Delancey Street road in Camden (one time home to Monty Python!). Since then PKR has recorded over 300 episodes with luminaries such as Ashley Hames, Phil Galfond and DJ Talent. In October 2008, www.pkr.tv was launched – check it out now for the very latest poker action.

F*** Me I’m Famous!

PKR has partied at some of the most exclusive clubs in the world but nothing prepared the 2011 WSOP qualifiers for David Guetta’s party at Wet Republic. The music was perfect, the location – even better, and a day of dancing and being served free drinks was topped off in style with a huge tropical rainstorm. Best. Party. Ever.

PKR TV was launched back in 2007 when James Bach, Dan Grant

when he played Phil Ivey and lost an incredible $16m in just three days of brutal heads-up action.

WSOP moves house From 1970 to 2004 the WSOP was played out entirely at the Horseshoe Casino

in downtown Las Vegas. It was the end of an era when Harrah’s announced that the conclusion of the 2005 Main Event, and all future WSOP events, would be held at the Rio. Sentimentality aside, the numbers the event has attracted since has proved that the move was definitely a good one for the game.

Hellmuth wins first Like him or loathe him you can’t deny the legacy that Phil Hellmuth has built (see p44). A shadow of his later self, a very young Phil Hellmuth won his first bracelet when he took down the WSOP Main Event in 1989. He’s won another ten bracelets since and came back to shock his many detractors at this year’s World Series when he finished second in three different events. It’s fair to say the Poker Brat is back!

stacked♠

FEATURE | PKR’s 50 Greatest moments

The decadent setting for PKR’s infamous Party at the Palms

Policeman picks up PKR’s Porsche

Giving away a brand new Porsche Cayman worth $55,000 was one of PKR’s most spectacular promotions. Open to all registered players, you received one entry into the prize draw for each $25 you deposited between April 1-30 2010. In all a total of 322,887 entries qualified, with winner, 45-yearold Dane, Carsten ‘Levica’ Orum, holding just 25 of them. Orum, a police officer and car fanatic was suitably pumped about winning: ‘The car is ballistic!’

Power to the people

Tigerrr, sinistar and Chivalrousgent were recognised in August 2009 for their contribution to the forums, becoming the first players to wield the fearsome ban hammer. Since then the forum team has expanded to welcome gecko4you and BobbyConkers, and all five have combined to provide the perfect environment – fun, friendly and fair.

Good friends, fame, fortune and bad beats aren’t the only things you’ll find on PKR. daniofoz and ToxicAvenger found true love, meeting virtually in December 2006 before hooking up in the real world on January 27, 2007. On July 26, 2008, they were married, and PKR sent a huge bouquet of flowers to help mark the occasion. The moral of the story? Be careful who you start abusing in the chatbox – it could be your future partner.

stacked♠

Baby boomer

GimmeYaStack also met the love of his life, JaneDoe, playing on PKR and he posted this, to great community delight, on February 17, 2009. ‘We met on PKR July 2007 and in real life in September 2007. On September 2, 2008 our beloved son and little sunshine Moritz was born.We would never have met without PKR.’

The tables never lie

The official PKR Rankings were launched in June 2007, leading to the first rankings freerolls in early July, with $2k in prize money for both categories. Claedeus was the top-ranked MTT player but it was forum favourite ladyluna who took the $560 first prize.

Hole card cam changes TV forever If Chris Moneymaker was the single biggest catalyst in the worldwide poker boom, the huge TV support the game received in the early days wasn’t far behind. It not only introduced new players to the game but also, in all-action highlights, taught them how to play badly. The success of poker as a spectator support can be traced back to

Wedding bells

NLALEXMOHNL topped the sit-and-go pile for the month, with bjabbi scooping the $600 first prize.

Ever wondered what it feels like to be a millionaire? For one night only PKR pulled out all the stops with a party for its 2009 WSOP qualifiers at Hugh Hefner’s Sky Villa at the Palms hotel. Breathtakingly indulgent, the suite comes complete with private glass elevator, a juddering sound system and a private outdoor cantilevered Jacuzzi pool. The party was so good that Australian cricketer Shane Warne left his sponsor’s party in search of some real fun.

The world’s best poker mag™

It might be hard to imagine a toilet without it now, but stacked♠ was only born in the summer of 2008. It’s changed a lot since then and it’s hard to believe that we’re now on issue 14 and counting down the greatest moments in PKR’s five-year history. Read all the back issues at www. pkr.com.

Beyne’s big chill

A mix of world-class poker and snow-boarding for the players that hit the rail, Snowfest is an exciting new addition

the first series of the UK show Late Night Poker in 1999, which introduced hole card cams to the world.

Party at the Palms

Stu Ungar defies odds After Ungar’s back-toback Main Event wins in 1980 and 1981, the man described as the most natural card player of all time discovered drugs and his life started to slide. By the opening day of the 1997 WSOP Main Event

no-one gave Ungar a chance. Broke and high he managed to convince Billy Baxter to stake him and against all odds won the Main Event for a third time. Sadly that proved to be his last major cash before dying of an overdose the next year.

Unlawful gaming One of the most controversial pieces of legislation ever to affect poker,

to the EPT circuit. And Beyne might possibly be the most exciting addition to the EPT winner’s list. He scooped his career-best win in the 2011 event in March, but it was the manner of his victory – steamrollering tables, his first forays into the world of Twitter (@PKR_Beyn) and buying drinks for players he knocked out on the final table – that ensured all eyes were on him even before he lifted the trophy.

Masters launch

First run on February 23, 2008, the inaugural Masters attracted a field of 369 including most of PKR’s top cash gamers. British female player floyd07 claimed the title and $23,062 – the biggest tournament prize so far on PKR. Since that time over 50 Masters have been crowned.

Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan at PKR’s Heads Up Grand Slam

$14.3k respectively (1,100 and 715 big blinds!). There were plenty of railers to see Goldeneyehd raise to $160 with pocket Queens. OLD_HappyApple made the call with K♠-10♥. The flop of 7♠-8♦-7♣ led Goldeneyehd to type, ‘Why u call u pathetic twat’ before betting out $300. OLD_HappyApple called again. The turn was the 5♥, Goldeneyehd bet out $1,500, OLD_HappyApple shipped and Goldeneyehd called. The river bricked giving Goldeneyehd the $28,823 pot. Goldeneyehd was classy in victory, typing ‘hahahah… ahahaha’ in the chat.

Named, famed

Some PKR players deserve more than a rising bankroll and recognition in the forums. So it was, on February 24, 2010, that Adrien ‘zlatan35’ Allain became the first inductee in the PKR Hall of Fame. Now bursting with 13 members, including the most recent addition Destacker, this is one club you can’t buy your way into.

When bluffs go wrong

The high stakes players on PKR have flirted with $25/$50 games but the biggest PKR pot ever was played at $10/$20 on September 15, 2009. Goldeneyehd and OLD_HappyApple were mega-deep, with stacks of $22k and

the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) was tacked onto a completely unrelated piece of legislation – the 2006 SAFE Port Act, which regulated port security. It was signed into law by George Bush on October 13, just after PKR launched. It effectively outlawed online poker in the States, and meant US players have never sampled the delights of the poker site we call home.

Beyne arrives

One player does not a poker room make, but it’s fair to say that a young Russian called Vladimir ‘Beyne’ Geshkenbein made waves when he landed on PKR in March 2007. He started at 2c/4c, one year later, he was playing $1/$2 and three months after that he was playing $25/$50 against PKR’s toughest regs. By November 2010 he had cashed out $1m.

WSOP is born The idea for the World Series of Poker came from an event called the Texas Gambling Reunion, held in Reno in 1969. Crandell Addington won but the organisers passed on the event next year. Ever the opportunist, Benny Binion pounced, buying the rights to the event. He invited seven players to contest a series of cash games in 1970 and the WSOP as we know it, was born.

Hug a hoody

Televised poker was getting a little dull and predictable before PKR took centre stage in October 2009. Its Heads Up Grand Slam was a televised tournament that brought 32 of the world’s finest poker players (including Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan, Phil Laak and Tony G) together to play deepstacked knockout heads-up matches. With the faithful PKR community in attendance (and extremely vocal thanks to the free bar!) it was fitting that a PKR player – Beyne again, who else? – would end up lifting the trophy after battering a shell-shocked Juha Helppi into submission. HUGS was shown on worldwide TV, including primetime coverage on Sky Sports in the UK. Poker on TV hasn’t been the same since.

10k tigerrr is the forum queen

With over 600,000 posts and counting, the PKR forums are the backbone of the biggest, best and definitely warmest and funniest poker community. At the heart of the forums sits tigerrr, forum moderator, hall of famer and all-round PKR legend. She cemented her place in PKR folklore as the first person to hit 10k posts and now has over 13.5k to her name. You probably know her already but if not, pop onto the forums now and say hi. tigerrr – we salute you.

PKR’s forum queen, tigerrr was the first to 10k posts

1. Accountant wins the big one When Chris Moneymaker won the Main Event in 2003, beating old-school pro Sam Farha, the world realised that poker was the true field of dreams. Main Event numbers shot up dramatically, from 839 when Moneymaker won, to 2,576 in 2004, and peaking at 8,773 in 2006 when Jamie Gold won the bracelet and poker’s biggest ever payday.

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FEATURE | PKR’s 50 Greatest moments

PKR’s first lady, Sofia ‘welllbet’ Lovgren

PKR recruits first female pro

It’s not easy being an attractive and successful young female poker player, as welllbet found out when she was made a member of Team PKR Pro in April 2010. At her first big live tournament – the Irish Open – she was criticised by top UK pro Neil Channing in his TV commentary when he suggested she had been sponsored for her looks rather than her talent. welllbet’s response? She went mega-deep, finishing well inside the money in 28th place for $13,215. The Stockholmer is still a PKR pro but now gets rather more respect from men who really should know better.

Zero to hero as Waswini becomes Team PKR Pro

Ex-accountant and Kenny Powers-alike Chris Moneymaker might have single-handedly started the worldwide poker boom, but there’s an even more inspiring tale closer to home. Marc ‘Waswini’ Bariller started with a grand total of $0 on PKR, playing freerolls, then low-stakes games before becoming a mainstay on the site and a Team PKR Pro in June 2010. Proof that with dedication, hard work and some strict bankroll management, playing poker on PKR can change your life. Adrien

victory was also a landmark for PKR – it was the first major international title won by a PKR qualifier and signalled the start of an all-out assault on the world’s biggest and richest tournaments.

Viva Las Vegas

Most poker sites let you satellite into big money events on their site and then leave the rest to you. PKR does things a little differently as the 36 winners of the very first Vegas Experience packages found out in 2010. VIP treatment, parties and meals at the ‘zlatan35’ Allain very best and coolest won the APT Macau establishments in Las Vegas. Oh and a little French revolution bit of poker at the Rio of You don’t need a big course. PKR’s Vegas Experience is now bankroll to win a lifethe hottest ticket in poker. changing sum of money at poker. PKR proof came first in the shape of Adrien ‘zlatan35’ Allain, who entered a $5 Numbers game!  satellite and ended up winning the 2009 PKR has gone from strength APT Macau for $391,556. Along the way to strength since its launch he survived an all-in with Queens against in June 2006. By September 2007, there JC Tran’s Aces and then went on to knock were one million players registered out Tran on the final table. His previous worldwide. Numbers hit two million in biggest win was just $8,500. Allain’s September 2008, but the rush to play online poker in 3D shows no sign of abating. Incredibly PKR now boasts over 4.5 million players! And when the US opens its doors to online poker again, you can expect that to double, with lots of new fish to prey on. Yum, yum.

Back-to-back Masters for PatIvey

The Masters is PKR’s most prestigious tournament – an MTT that all PKR players dream of winning. PatIvey did the unthinkable back in November 2009 when he won back-to-back Masters titles, scooping $60k in the process. Even more incredibly he almost made it a hat-trick, final-tabling in the third month but eventually falling in third. It’s fair to say this is a feat that will probably never be repeated. PatIvey: the man they call ‘back-to-back’ strikes a pose

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Beyne withdraws a million

double that of the second placed company. PKR’s revenues – thanks to its loyal player base (that’s you!) – showed similarly exciting rises.

If poker is a game where cash is just a means of keeping score, Vladimir ‘Beyne’ Geshkenbein is quite simply the best there is on PKR. At the tail end of last year he became the first player to withdraw $1 million in total from his account. He doesn’t play many tournaments online so he made his million on the cash tables and in his own words, ‘20% from six-max and 80% from heads-up tables.’ For someone that plays $5/$10, $10/$20 and occasionally – if anyone will take him on – $25/$50 $25/$50, this is a truly epic achievement.

Beyne was the first PKR player to withdraw $1m

the players have gone on to enjoy success in the poker world.

Team PKR takes on the world

Team PKR Pro was unveiled to the poker world at PKR Live II on April 18, 2009. The six original players – James ‘james666’ Sudworth, Henrik ‘Pokey85’ Eklund, Andy ‘golfpro699’ Teng, Raymond ‘callmebabe’ O’Mahoney, Ashley ‘Ashleyhames1’ Hames and Kai ‘kingkai84’ Paulsen – were joined shortly after by Karl ‘discomonkey’ Fenton. Sudworth is the only surviving pro from the original line-up, but all

Say we are top of the league!

PKR has won a bucketload of awards since its launch but none quite as prestigious as in September 2010 when it was named the UK’s most successful technology company in the 2010 Sunday Times Tech Track 100. The 2010 report ranked PKR in first position thanks to a yearly sales growth of 356.44% – a rate almost

Jez San reimagines online poker

As a teenager Jez San founded Argonaut, a video games development company that hit the big time with Starglider for the Atari ST and Amiga. San went on to develop the world’s first 3D graphics chip and received an OBE for his service to the games industry in 2002. During a hiatus from video games, in a Russian tearoom near London’s Primrose Hill, San had an idea that was set to revolutionise the world of online poker. In 2005 he founded Crunchy Frog, which became PKR, the world’s first and best 3D online poker site. With his video gaming experience, San succeeded in dragging online poker into the 21st century, with 3D graphics and an ethos that puts the player at the centre of the experience. Without San’s brainwave, none of the rest of this top 50 would have been possible.

The original members of Team PKR Pro

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FEATURE | PKR’s 50 Greatest moments

The PKR community celebrates WSOPE gold

Scott Shelley wins WSOP gold

If there’s a moment that defines a poker player, it’s winning their very first WSOP bracelet. If there’s a moment that defines PKR, it’s the spontaneous group love-in that erupted when Scott Shelley won the £1k no-limit hold’em event at the 2009 WSOPE. As Scott began his chip climb to the final table, PKR staff and various friends and community members flocked to the Empire Casino in London to form what was described by PKR_Danski as ‘the most rambunctious cheering section ever seen at the WSOPE’. It might have been Scott Shelley’s bracelet but, as this picture shows, it was a moment celebrated and savoured by everyone connected with PKR.

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PKR Forums launch

The very first post on the PKR forums was made by Flameboy in March 2007. (Thursday, March 8 at 3.23pm to be precise!). He wanted to know what everyone’s favourite emote was and kicked things off with his: the ‘Shake Head and Cough’. It set the tone nicely for what is now over 600,000 fabulous posts and counting.

It all started here

By any other yardstick, the 2c/4c hand that played out on August 17, 2006 at 6.38pm, was unremarkable. There were seven players in the hand, which was eventually contested between two players, Bannatyne and Dusty02. The historic $3.20 pot was awarded to Bannatyne and it represented the first real-money hand of poker ever played on PKR.

KR Live PKRbrings Live our world brings together our world together *

When a long-term relationship is forged entirely online, the first live meeting is a nervy affair. No-one really knew what to expect from the first PKR Live in November 2008, but from the moment the Loose Cannon’s doors opened and the cavernous room was filled with PKR players from across the globe, swapping stories, buying drinks and playing the tournament like it was a home game, it was apparent that the PKR community was very special. PKR Live might have moved and evolved but those early memories from the Loose Cannon will stay with us forever.

Don’t agree? This top 50 was selected by the finest minds at PKR, but we’d have struggled to make a top 10 without you and the rest of the players who have helped make PKR a special place to play. Do you agree or strongly disagree with some of our choices? Do you think we’ve

stroked Beyne’s ego too much, or do you think we’ve overlooked something or someone that deserved to make the cut? Email us at stacked@pkr.com and send us your alternative top 10 if you really think we’ve missed the mark. We’ll print the best next month.

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feature | wsop 2011

2011 WSOP Main Event

A Chip off the block

In 1983, Donaccha O’Dea became the first Irish player to final table the Main Event. 28 years later, Michael Kaplan reports from the Rio as his son attempts to go one better

s days grind on at the World Series of Poker Main Event, the leader board becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. It pops up on monitors scattered around the Amazon Room, high above the action where players shove chips, show cards, flip out and high-five supporters. Invariably, after all that, somebody walks to the rail. It’s how things pan out for Tom Dwan, just hours into day 1, when his Jacks and Tens lose to a rivered straight and supposedly result in Dwan dropping millions of dollars worth of bracelet bets. Last year’s champ, Jonathan Duhamel, also bites the dust early, augmenting his departure with a tweet: ‘No repeat for me….’ And the last remaining big-name pro, Erick Lindgren, gets crippled when his Eights are outdrawn and eliminated as his Fours are outmatched. But he has a good run and a 43rd place finish to show for it. The field tightens. It’s easy to keep glancing up at the board, checking out the names, and mentally gauging each player’s likelihood of hanging in to make the final table. There’s Ben Lamb always riding high. David Bach seems to be a perpetual leader before being taken down by British pro John Hewitt. However, one name that eludes the board of elite players is

that of Eoghan O’Dea. His first name is pronounced Owen, his father Donnacha is considered the Doyle Brunson of Irish poker, and the younger O’Dea hangs in at the Main Event without ever taking flight. On the other hand, he rarely seems close to busting out and comes off as being completely unbothered by his marginal circumstances. If nothing else, it keeps him under the radar. Then, on day 8, with just ten players remaining in action, the slender, chisel-faced second-generation pro sips beer and looks a little cocky. At this point, whether O’Dea likes it or not, he’s no longer flying low and anonymous. He has the second biggest chip stack at the table, the coolest approach to the game, and, with just one elimination left to go, he seems to be a shoo-in for the November Nine. Then, sure enough, at 2:12am, on the morning of July 20, when PokerFarm-backed Hewitt shoves all-in, and loses, it’s set that O’Dea will be returning to Vegas in November. And he’ll be on hand with a healthy stack: 33,925,000 in chips, just behind the far less experienced leader Martin Staszko. When the final table, which is the most Euro-centric in the history of the Big Game, plays down to a single champion, O’Dea will be the one to watch.

He has the second biggest chip stack and coolest approach to the game

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O’Dea has emulated the Main Event success of his father Donnacha who finished 6th in 1983

Flying high

While there’s no such thing as being destined for greatness at the Main Event, it’s clear that O’Dea was on the right track from the start. After four years of lacklustre results at the WSOP, things clicked for him this year. Prior to the Main, he entered eight events, three of which were hold’em, and he cashed in all of the hold’em tournaments. ‘I was feeling good,’ he says. ‘Even the tournaments that I failed to cash in, I played well and ran deep enough that I felt comfortable.’ In terms of his Main Event play, comfort has been a continuing theme. ‘I was always grinding it out,’ he says. ‘I didn’t pick up many hands and found myself at good tables. From the start until we got into the money, I was

Daddy’s boy

average or below average in chips.’ On the upside, though, he didn’t get dealt the kinds of hands that required him to go all-in very often. Generally, it was a smooth ride. ‘In most tournaments you get hands where you need to hit four-outers to survive. Not here. I never got it in bad and avoided horrific situations.’ Away from the tables, O’Dea made it a point to live right. For most of the tournament, he stayed at the Vdara, a plush hotel/condo at City Center. It kept him away from the action when he wasn’t playing poker at the Rio. ‘I’d go to the gym and have a quick run outside each morning before I played,’ he says. ‘That wakes me up. Going right from bed to the World Series of Poker is not necessarily a good thing for me.’

Nevertheless, for the last few days of the Main Event, his stay at the Vdara ran out and he had to move to the Rio. He also had to change his flight home twice. Of course, he never expected to go as far as he did in chasing down poker’s biggest payday. Having made the final table, he is now guaranteed at least $782,115. Was it enough to warrant an upgrade for the long plane ride home to Dublin? ‘Nah,’ O’Dea says with a soft laugh. ‘I wouldn’t spend my money on that. I flew out coach and I flew home coach.’

Famous footsteps

For somebody who grew up around poker and went on to become pretty damned good at a game that bedevils most of us, O’Dea

The last profession that Donnacha O’Dea desired for his son was that of poker player. As the most famous pro in Ireland, he knows how hard it is to scratch out a living on the circuit and he wanted something better for Eoghan. But there are some things that you just can’t stop your kids from doing. And once Donnacha recognised that his son had the skills, he welcomed him to the family trade. But he also recognised that their styles of play are completely different. It’s why Donnacha gave his son virtually no advice over the course of the Main Event. ‘He’s more aggressive than me, and I wouldn’t want to interfere in any way,’ says Donnacha. ‘I would dread telling him what to do and seeing it go wrong. I was up all night, watching the stream online, and I sent him some texts about what I saw with the other players. But I didn’t get beyond that.’ Of course any father would be proud to have a son at the final table. But for Donnacha, the situation generates an especially high degree of pride. ‘Somebody sent me a text asking how excited I was on a scale of 1 to 100; I texted back that 100 doesn’t cover it,’ he says. ‘I hoped that Eoghan would win a bracelet someday. But, especially considering the size of the field, I didn’t expect him to be in the running to win this year’s Main Event!’

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feature | wsop 2011

His big splash came in 2008 when he finished second in the Poker Million

O’Dea is well placed to mount a serious challenge when the WSOP Main Event resumes in November

didn’t show much interest in it as he transformed from boy to man. In fact, he got inspired to take up card playing for the same reason that most young pros do: he saw it on TV and it looked cool. After high school, he embarked on a course that would have trained him to be a tennis coach, had he not flunked out, and he messed around a bit with poker on the side. He considered going to college and taking a business course or two, but that ambition was quickly derailed by increasingly frequent visits to the Marion Casino in Dublin. ‘I played the small tournament every day and the €1/€2 PLO and pot-limit hold’em games,’ he remembers, adding that he decided to try his luck for

slightly higher stakes in a €25 rebuy tournament. ‘I got really lucky and won it. Early on, I had no really bad runs.’

Nerves of steel

His big splash came in 2008 when he finished second in the Poker Million on Sky Sports for $260,000. It exposed him to a large audience of poker lovers and proved that he could compete in an elite field. Additionally, the tournament provided him with a level of experience that his November Nine opponents mostly lack. ‘If you haven’t been there before, with the big prize money and being on TV, it can feel strange,’ says O’Dea. ‘I’ve been there. I wasn’t nervous on Sky and I won’t be nervous in November.’

2011 WSOP $10k Main Event

The title of World Champion and £8.7m is up for grabs in November

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Prize pool $64,531,000 Entries 6,865 1st prize $8,711,956 Blinds 250,000/500,000 Total chips 205,950,000 Average chips 22,883,333

November Nine 1 Martin Staszko 40,175,000 2 Eoghan O’Dea 33,925,000 3 Matt Giannetti 24,750,000 4 Phil Collins 23,875,000 5 Ben Lamb 20,875,000 6 Badih Bounahra 19,700,000 7 Pius Heinz 16,425,000 8 Anton Makiievskyi 13,825,000 9 Samuel Holden 12,375,000

O’Dea was runner-up in the 2008 Poker Million

PHOTOGRAPHY cardplayer.com, Paddypower poker, pokernews.com

O’Dea: one half of the only father-son team to make the Main Event final table

Prior to hitting Vegas for the Main Event, O’Dea was living the life of your typical young-gun poker star. He maintains a luxury apartment in Dublin and usually rises at around noon. ‘I might play online for a few hours and then go to the gym,’ he says. ‘Then I get some food and see where the day takes me from there. I don’t go to the casino [in Dublin] much. They don’t play big games here. But I do go to London quite a lot. My dad has an apartment around the corner from the Grosvenor. I stay at his place and play there sometimes.’ Online he tends to play PLO $10/$20 and $25/$50, but, O’Dea acknowledges, things were not going as gangbusters as they could have been for the last several months. ‘There weren’t great games and I wasn’t doing too well. I wasn’t playing very well for a while,’ he says. ‘I changed my game a bit at the end of last year. I was trying to figure out what I could be doing wrong.’ As a consequence of his thinking and adjusting, ‘I felt fresh when I got to Vegas. I was focused and playing harder.’ Amazingly, considering where O’Dea ultimately winds up at the Main Event, when the field contracts to just 100 players he ranks nowhere near the leaderboard. In fact, he is below average in chips. Tables get tougher and tougher – because fewer bad players remain in action – and O’Dea suddenly finds himself playing at the feature table. Normally this would be a good thing. Most years it means cutting a deal to wear a site’s

patch and making an extra $20,000 or $30,000 for being on television. But, in the wake of Black Friday, these deals are not happening at the Main Event. And the feature table this year is something of an anomaly. Rather than being taped for broadcast, it airs live with a 30 minute delay and hole cards being shown. ‘I didn’t care about the cameras or anything, but the feature table was unfair,’ says O’Dea. ‘Players’ cards were being shown and some people were getting updates on how their opponents were playing. I asked friends to text me. But it was close to 7am in Ireland, so I didn’t get much while Ben Lamb was finding out about every hand being played.’

Party time

Bummed as O’Dea may have been by the circumstances of the feature table, he also has reasons to be happy. ‘Once you’re guaranteed $50,000 or $60,000 it seems

like a freeroll,’ says O’Dea. ‘You can’t force the action at that point. You hope for good cards or a few crazy guys at your table. I got to take advantage of them a little bit and managed to keep pace. In one instance, I got all-in with Jacks against Ace-Ten of hearts. Two hearts came on the flop, but my hand managed to hold.’ Then, on one of the last hands of the Main Event’s penultimate day, he shoves against Ben Lamb. It’s O’Dea’s Kings versus Lamb’s A-K. O’Dea wins, and suddenly he hits the leaderboard, number two in chips with just 22 players remaining. O’Dea’s Main Event performance is a poker lesson for all of us: ‘When you get no hands forever, as I did, it’s easy to make a crazy play with, say, J-7. But I was patient enough to give myself a chance to stay in the running and eventually get good hands. And then, when it came down to the final table bubble, and I had some chips, I tried taking advantage of the situation. I wasn’t thinking of making the final table, I was thinking of winning the biggest tournament in the world. I tried to be aggressive at that point, but it didn’t work out for me. I was card dead.’ Nevertheless, O’Dea makes the final table and he’ll be coming in with a healthy stack. Once the smoke clears and the final table is set, O’Dea wants to go out and celebrate. ‘I was going to meet the guys in Ben Lamb’s suite, but by the time I was ready to go up there, he texted me that everyone had gone to bed,’ recounts O’Dea. ‘I told him that he must be joking. But he wasn’t. So me and [fellow Irish pro] Peter Murphy went to the Spearmint Rhino and had a good time.’ How good of a time? He is reportedly spotted there after daybreak and goes AWOL that afternoon missing the November Nine press conference. The perfect finish to a perfect tournament! n stacked♠

interview | phil hellmuth

Hellmuth gets real He’s been ridiculed, denounced and disregarded by the poker community, but a renewed focus and refreshed attitude saw the Poker Brat bite back this summer man they call the Poker Brat has had to deal with his fair share T heof flak in recent years. Written off as yesterday’s man by many of

his fellow pros, ridiculed by the young upstarts on the poker forums and even bad-mouthed in poker tomes including Dusty Schmidt’s Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth, it’s fair to say that Hellmuth headed into this year’s World Series with a point to prove. And after a summer sprinkled with disappointment and redemption, including three second place finishes, Hellmuth has answered his critics with aplomb. Despite a nagging sense of what might have been – that even his current tipple of choice, 25-year-old single malt Macallan scotch can’t abate – it’s clear that Hellmuth is still a force to be reckoned with…

PHOTOGRAPHY POKERNEWS.COM

STACKED You had three 2nd place finishes at this year’s World Series of Poker and you’re in the running for WSOP Player of the Year. Some people would view those results as an amazing accomplishment. How do you feel about them? PHIL HELLMUTH The three second place finishes really hurt. I hate them. In the 2-7 tournament against John Juanda, I had a big chip lead and never gave myself a chance to win it. I never put him all-in. In the stud eight or better tournament, I was up against a guy who was very good short-handed. He won and gave me a really brutal backhanded compliment: ‘Wow, Phil. You play a lot better than I thought you would.’ That was a horrible thing to say. Then in the 50K H.O.R.S.E. I made it to the final table without ever going all-in. I had three opportunities to win the tournament and couldn’t get there. That probably hurt as much as the 2-7 tournament did, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. The Main Event was coming up. STACKED You almost slept through day two of the Main Event but showed up just in time to redeem yourself. You were getting anted off and managed to turn things around in a pretty stunning manner. PH I am enormously proud of the way I played that day. I ran my chips up from like 6,000 to 64,000 without ever going all-in. Shaun Deeb and these young guys ask me why I am so proud about not going all-in. I tell them that it should be pretty obvious: if you 44

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can play a strategy where you are never all-in, you will never get busted.

STACKED What did you think of the final table at the 50K? PH Well, Brian Rast is obviously tough, and he is not a mixed game player. For him to go that far, he had to play well while being a real fish out of water. Three or four of us at the final table had won bracelets or finished second this year. But that’s not surprising. We were super hot and super focused. We were seeing things more clearly than the other players. Next year of course may be a different story.

STACKED Wasn’t your wife with you for much of tournament? PH She was here 50 percent of the time. She would wake me up and I wouldn’t say five words to her. Then I would sit down to play and not say five words to the table. It was all about paying attention to what happens around me. My wife remembered that in 1993 I ran around with headphones and didn’t say a word to anyone. That year I had three first place finishes. STACKED What brought on the change of attitude? PH I wanted more. I decided it was time to take off the regulators and win tournaments. I haven’t done it since 2007 and people weren’t liking my play anymore. I realise that I inspire millions of people. I inspire them, Jordan inspires them, Phil Mickelson inspires them. People are inspired when you live to a full potential. Right now the good news is that, for once, I have 99 percent of the world rooting for me. They feel bad for me for the wrong reason. They feel bad for Phil because he had three second place finishes.

I got so sick at the table that I called an emergency medical technician during the 50K

STACKED How do you think you’re looking for next year? PH After a Series like this I usually have a good year. STACKED Your approach to poker was a little different this year than it had been in previous years. What was different? PH For one thing I was really focused. For example, I wore over-the-ear headphones and sat at a table with Mike Matusow and Huck Seed. I didn’t say a word to them for 50 minutes. Huck asked me if I was mad at him. Mike recognised that I was on my own planet. It went that way day after day.

STACKED Not to generate more sympathy, but I heard that this WSOP was a bit of a struggle healthwise. PH I got really sick at the table, so sick that I called an emergency medical technician during the 50k tournament. I was having trouble breathing out of my nose. He came to the table and we went back to my private suite. He examined me and thought I was dehydrated. Then I was so worried about it that I went to the clinic. Nobody knew what I had. I sat with my head in my hands through the tournament. Everybody told me how bad I looked. It was horrible.

STACKED Maybe you were stressed out. PH What would I have to be stressed out about? I already had a couple of second place finishes.

Hellmuth’s Haul Hellmuth’s performance at the 2011 WSOP might not have led to bracelet number 12, but it has proved to some of his naysayers that he’s still got what it takes to compete at the very top level June 9 $10k No-Limit 2-7 Draw World Championship 2nd $226,907 June 18 $10k Seven-Card Stud Hi/Lo Championship 2nd $273,233 June 23 $5k No-Limit Hold’em – Six Handed 36th $17,270 June 26 $1k No-Limit Hold’em 28th $10,560 July 2 $50k The Poker Players Championship – 8 Game 2nd $1,063,034

STACKED How do you feel about poker books that are being published which essentially badmouth you? The obvious example, of course, is Dusty Schmidt’s Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth. PH You have to be flattered. Otherwise you should just give up and go home. You’re going to let other people bother you all the time? That’s not my style now. Sometimes I talk to my poker player friends and hear that somebody insulted me. I don’t follow them on Twitter or on the internet. I don’t even know who this Dusty guy is. Mike Matusow tried to make me read a column the guy wrote in which he apologised and said that Phil is great and that he should lead the sport of poker. What’s the sense of even reading that, though? You still have to see all the negative stuff that he is apologising for. STACKED What’s up for the future? PH The future is that my youngest son goes away to college this year. So my wife and I are trying to figure out what life will be like when he’s gone. I want to travel more. I want to play more poker. I have been almost a part-time player for the last eight or nine years. Now I want to go back to playing poker full time. I’ll be in Cannes for the WSOPE this years, trying to win the WSOP Player of the Year title. That’s what’s up for grabs in the immediate future. n stacked♠

FEATURE | THE BIG PICTURE

2011 WSOP

It was a record-breaking year at the Rio, but the World Series went better for some than others. Gasp at the rich winners and point at the poor losers here

EvEnTs: 58

Total prize pool: $191,999,010

($187,109,850 in 2010 – 2.6% increase)

Total entries: 75,672 (72,966 in 2010 – 3.7% increase)

Canada

Great Britain 1

France

Total cashers: 7,709 United States 1 Main Event entries: 6,865 Brazil Largest non-Main Event field: 4,576 (event 54) Average age Participating countries: 105 of players MalE/fEMalE

(through 57 events) Men: 65,170 (94.7%) Women: 3,637 (5.3%)

Sweden

3 Russia

Ukraine

Average age of cashers

Average age at final tables

Average age of winners

MosT EvEnTs EnTEREd

ToTal CasHEs

Tom Dwan: 53 Shannon Shorr: 43 Justin Smith: 42 George Lind: 39 Roland Israelashvili: 39 Jason Mercier: 38 Sorel Mizzi: 38 Paul Volpe: 38

Tom Dwan: $225,435 Shannon Shorr: $24,102 Justin Smith: $75,581 George Lind: $587,995 Roland Israelashvili: $54,016 Jason Mercier: $696,438 Sorel Mizzi: $121,818 Paul Volpe: $85,569

MosT EvEnTs EnTEREd – fEMalE

ToTal CasHEs

Erica Schoenberg: 25 Maria Ho: 24 Liv Boeree: 24 Jennifer Tilly: 23 Odette Tremblay: 23 Vanessa Selbst: 21

Erica Schoenberg: $16,515 Maria Ho: $544,262 Liv Boeree: $0 Jennifer Tilly: $25,127 Odette Tremblay: $49,258 Vanessa Selbst: $23,519

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Pakistan

PHIl HEllMUTH All-time cashes 84 All-time final table appearances 46 Bracelets 11 WSOP earnings $7,808,333

RES ST FIGU utes A C D A BRO om (min

ESPN3.c : 23,000,000 d) e watche primetim ESPN2 ( 504,000 ): viewers

Most money won Ben Lamb (5 cashes): $2,113,947

WSOP Player of the Year leaderboard Top 5

Brian Rast (3 cashes): $1,952,443 Phil Hellmuth (5 cashes): $1,591,004 Joe Ebanks (3 cashes): $1,179,031

Ben Lamb

Chris Moorman (5 cashes): $1,051,466

Phil Hellmuth

Allen Bari (4 cashes): $894,259

Most money won – females Maria Ho (2 cashes): $544,262 Erika Moutinho (1 cash): $244,448

759.05* 710.25

Brian Rast

550.00

Chris Moorman

486.20

Bertrand Grospellier

479.25

*100 points minimum added as part of November Nine

Marsha Wolak (2 cashes): $194,239 Vanessa Peng (2 cashes): $137,983 Stephanie Nguyen (1 cash): $131,900

MAIN EVENT Entries: 6,865

(third largest ever: 7,319 in 2010; 8773 in 2006)

Top 10 countries

Germany 158 Russia 108 Italy 106 Brazil 83 Australia 80 Sweden 79

U.K

2 ce an Fr

Prize pool: $64,531,000 1st prize: $8,711,956 Chips in play: 205,950,000 Average age: 37.17

Canad

a 486

Oldest: Ellen Deeb, 91 Youngest: Logan Deen, 21 (on 8/7/11)

United States 4604

Male: 6,623 (96.5%)

Countries 85

Female: 242 (3.5%)

Road to the bracelet

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

6,865

4,521

1,865

853*

378

142

Day 11

*693 players got paid

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feature | poker in the movies

Cool Hand Luke (1967) Dir: Stuart Rosenberg Starring: Paul Newman, George Kennedy The scene Sent to prison for destroying municipal property while drunk, Luke Jackson (Paul Newman) has a run in with top dog Dragline. After getting his respect by refusing to quit in a boxing match, Jackson gets involved in a game of five-card stud with the other inmates. With a hand in progress Jackson gets the table’s attention by unwrapping a bundle of dollar bills and raising a buck. Lucas Jackson: Kick a buck. Koko: A dollar? All right, I call. Gambler: Hell, if I catch I’m gonna burn you, I call. King-Three, you got a Four. Queen-Deuce gets a Five and a pair of Sevens gets a John. And the big Ace gets slop in the face. Okay, you still do the talking. Koko: Pewter again. Gambler: I call. LJ: Kick a buck. [Murmering] Dragline: Whatcha got? Koko: Pair of Sevens. Dragline: I can see that mullet-head. What have you got in the hole? [Looks at his cards] He ain’t got nothing showing. Raise his head off. Koko: He’s been betting his head off. Dragline: All right, then you just call it. Koko: OK, I call. Misc: You’ve got to see it Gambler, you gotta. Gambler: I can’t. I can’t catch a damn thing. I’m snake-bit. I can’t catch, I fold. King-Four-Three, you got a Nine. Nothing visible. Pair of Sevens and a Jack gets a Six. Savannahs, you is still a better man. Koko: Pewter. LJ: Kick a buck. Dragline: Kick him back a buck. Koko: I’ll see your buck and back a buck. LJ: Kick a buck. Koko: Damn. Dragline: Don’t look at me mullet-head. Gambler: Well come on. What’re you going to do, play like a coconut? You got to call him. Koko: I know he’s got a pair of Kings. You don’t have to stuff them up my nose. Gambler: Well you still got to call him anyway. You gotta look at them. Dragline: The man’s got Kings. Get your tail out. Koko: Yeah [folds]. [Uproar… Dragline turns Luke’s cards over] Dragline: You want to see them. Right there. One, two, three, four, five. Nothing, a handful of nothing. You stupid mullet-head, he beat you with nothing. Just like today when he kept coming back at me with nothing. LJ: Yeah well, sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand. Dragline: Move over, I’m going to sit in here next to my boy, Cool Hand Luke.

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‘You stupid mullet-head, he beat you with nothing. Move over, I’m going to sit next to my boy, Cool Hand Luke’ Dragline (George Kennedy)

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knowledge | jared tendler

Jared Tendler If you suffer from tilt problems that are affecting your game, Jared Tendler has the answers. stacked♠ spoke to the poker world’s leading mind coach about the new book he claims can help cure your mental ills at the poker table

or the past decade top athletes have been using sports psychologists to improve their focus and mindset while competing. It’s a widely accepted benefit to an athlete’s career, yet in poker the mind coaching industry is still in its infancy. Former golf psychologist Jared Tendler is trying to change that. His new book (co-authored by Barry Carter) The Mental Game of Poker addresses issues such as confidence, motivation, focus and tilt that may be derailing your game just as much as a failure to play profitably in three-bet pots. We spoke to Tendler to find out what’s in his mind. How does your poker mind coaching differ from traditional sports psychology?  Many traditional sports psychologists take a resultsoriented viewpoint of the mental game. They know you have to be confident, focused, and not 50

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fearful but the ways in which they go about trying to encourage somebody to have that tend to be more about trying to embody it – ‘be confident, be fearless’ – instead of attacking the underlying causes. My techniques incorporate a lot of general sports psychology principles that help to manage those issues. But I also incorporate techniques that attempt to resolve and remove them so you can be free of that anxiety or anger, and be able to perform at a higher level without constantly managing yourself. Which players have your methods helped the most?   Liz ‘RikJamesB1atch’ Herrera is up there. She was playing $2/$4 [when I started working with her] and in a year’s time she moved up to $50/$100 and had an astronomical win rate. A lot of it had to do with tilt and work ethic for her. She felt that tilt was just part of the game, and everyone she talked to had told

her that. After she contacted me the changes weren’t immediate but after working her ass off she committed to my work with the same dedication she gave to the actual tactical side of poker. She’s since won $1 million two years in a row.    How neglected has the mental aspect of poker been?   The importance of the mental game is growing. The evolution has moved from the psychology of the poker game to the psychology of the person. If we compare poker to golf it’s about twenty years behind, perhaps even more. The impetus for the book was that I felt there was a potential to really shape the market and provide fuel for this next growth point. The game has become so tough and there is so much information already out there about strategy and tactics. It maybe outnumbers mental strategy by 1,000 to 1. The demand for the medium is under-appreciated and I think

I incorporate techniques so you can be free of anxiety or anger that now players are getting the hang of a more robust program they can start to see how transformational it can be. What would be the perfect personality type to make a successful poker player? I’m not usually that big into ‘personality types’ but if I were forced to answer I would say you have to be incredibly passionate and motivated. That comes from loving the game. You also have to love learning, growing and improving. You must have a high tolerance for risk and the dramatic fluctuations that exist, and also a very solid degree of

This man has just had his Aces cracked, and he’s still happy!

Little likes the relaxed pace of live MTTs, but the occasional milliondollar win doesn’t hurt either

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knowledge | jared tendler

Tendler is a renowned golf psychologist who has turned his expertise to poker

All smiles: it’s no wonder Jared Tendler is tilt-free

self-awareness along with a tough-as-nails psyche. Phil Galfond is an example of a player with a perfect attitude. The book is designed for everybody that doesn’t fit all of these categories. These intangibles exist and you are able to actually train them. That’s what we have done with the book. We have taken intangibles such as confidence and focus and identified what would be the reason why somebody wouldn’t have these naturally, before prescribing solutions to be able to develop and train them. Is there one problem that players approach you about the most?  Tilt. It’s not even close. I think out of everyone I have worked with 95% came to me with tilt problems and the other 5% didn’t realise they had it. A lot of times the tilt issue is a minor part of it but I’ve never met anybody who didn’t have some degree of anger. Tilt is the biggest and most misunderstood issue and that’s why we go into such detail on it in the book. Do you have a set definition for the word tilt?   I think tilt is just anger, or bad play caused by anger. 52

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When you recognise somebody has a tilt problem how do you start to combat those issues?  First I get them to express the nature of their issues. What are they getting pissed off about? Why are they getting angry about losing this hand or making a mistake? If they can’t explain that I’ll try to get the actual thoughts that are going through their head. From there I’ll try to define which of the types of tilt mentioned in the book they are struggling with. For example, it could be Entitlement Tilt where they believe they should be winning because they are better than the other player.    Do you find that issues outside of poker often cause players to tilt?   It happens a lot, especially for online players. They have the ability to play at any time and the stresses of life – such as relationship problems or a poor night’s sleep – are definitely a big part of the game. That’s why we emphasise the need to have a proper warm-up and good preparation because that automatically gets you ready to play and also creates a buffer for what is going on externally. Poker is your own business. It’s not like

I’ve never met anybody who didn’t have some degree of anger or tilt you’re going to a job at 8am every day, where a natural rhythm and routine is created for you. That rhythm and routine of a standard job is in effect your warm-up for work. You’re getting yourself ready. You can create that

yourself [in poker] but you just have to be the boss of it and put the emphasis around doing it regularly. Even if you think your mentality is fine there is always potential to improve. Do you see the importance of mind coaching in poker only increasing in the future?  As long as the game continues to evolve, yes. Depending on the person and the severity of the issue, mind coaching can have drastic results. There are a lot of players out there that don’t realise how big of an issue this is. n

jaredtendler.com It’s fair to say that poker is tougher than ever. You need to find any edge you can if you want to move up the levels. Tendler is here to point out that giving your brain a fine-tune could give you the jump you need to get up another rung or two. Turn the page to find an exclusive extract from his book and check out his website to find out more about his coaching services.

knowledge | book excerpt

it’s all in the The Mental Game of Poker

mind By mastering your mind, controlling tilt and understanding the role confidence has on your performance, you can take your game to the next level

You should know by now that poker isn’t just a card game. Your mental state is just as important as your skills, and no-one knows this better than Jared Tendler. Tendler is poker’s leading expert in the mental game. He coaches some of the world’s top poker pros including Dusty Schmidt who said, ‘He has been such an enormous help to me. I now play virtually tilt-free and bring my A-game nearly every time I play.’ The Mental Game of Poker draws all of his experience into one invaluable book. We’ve printed an excerpt from his chapter on confidence, along with special warm-up and cool-down routines to help you make the most out of each session. The full book contains chapters on all the important areas of the mental game, including tilt, emotion, fear and motivation.

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he variance in poker can turn confidence into a rollercoaster ride that rises and falls along with the cards. Win and you’re riding high. Lose and you’re down, and may even have to sit out the next few trips around. Results shouldn’t control your confidence, you know that, but you still can’t stop from going through the highs and lows of winning and losing. While riding a heater, you try not to book wins, play too many hands, or take on tougher opponents, but they are too hard to resist. Winning feels great. As you win more, you also win more confidence. Until variance turns on you. You are so caught up in riding the high, you don’t see losing coming. Suddenly, your results take a nosedive and destroy your confidence. ‘It’s variance, you’re playing fine. Just keep at it, eventually the cards will turn around,’ your friends or coach might say to ease your mind. You want to believe them, and logically you know they’re right, but all the money you’re losing makes you feel terrible about your game. When confidence is completely tied to results, there’s no way to avoid riding the confidence rollercoaster. The best way to stop these emotional swings and develop ‘stable confidence’ is by learning a set of rarely talked about poker skills and resolving the underlying flaws in your confidence.

business, or playing poker. Having confidence is important, but not as much as many players seem to think. After a large enough sample, regardless of how you feel about your ability, your results tell the real story. Having confidence does help you to perform at a higher level than when you’re lacking it; however, that still doesn’t mean you have the skill to succeed. Being confident that you can win doesn’t mean you will, just as lacking confidence doesn’t mean you won’t. Confidence is the most complex of the four major emotions covered in this book. Confidence should accurately be a reflection of the results and skill you’ve proven in poker. If you have attained solid results over a large sample of hands that prove you have real skill in the game, logically you should feel confident. On the other hand, if over that sample your results are terrible, logically you should lack confidence. However, that’s not always the case. There are players without a proven track record who display more confidence than other players who have a huge win rate over millions of hands. Conversely, there are players who have crushed games for years who lose confidence after just one losing session. Confidence is an unreliable measure of results and skill for two reasons:

Regardless of how you feel about your ability, your results tell the real story

The Nature of Confidence

It is common to think that you need confidence in order to have success or to win. The assumption is that if you lack confidence, you won’t succeed in sports, when starting a

1 Underlying flaws in your mental game create inaccurate feelings about the quality of your game. 2 Players use short-term results to form the foundation of their confidence. However, short-term results are unreliable for proving a

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Variance

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Fear

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Tilt

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Logic & Focus

A-Game

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knowledge | book excerpt

In the short term you can’t definitively prove your skill, you can only estimate it

player’s skill, therefore the basis of their confidence is also unreliable. In most other competitive arenas, results are the easiest way to prove a player’s skill level. But the fact is, such a large sample is required to determine your skill that by the time you get it, your skill has changed. In the short term you can’t definitively prove your skill, you can only estimate it. That’s one of the challenges in poker and what makes it perhaps harder than any other form of competition. If you can only prove your level of poker skill months – if not years – down the line, what do you do in the short term? If you’re like most players, you still use short-term results to define your skill, which is a bit like getting an opinion on your game from someone who has watched you play one hand. To keep variance from causing you to go insane, you’ve likely tried these options: 1 Build a proven track record over years. 2 Play a high volume to reach the long term faster. 3 Ignore, block out, or desensitise yourself to results. The intent is to prevent your emotions from going through cycles of over- and under-confidence as your results fluctuate.

4 Create the illusion in your mind that you’re a solid player, even if you can’t prove it. Since your level of confidence determines many of your decisions in poker, it’s important to have your confidence be as stable as possible. That’s why the goal of this chapter is to help you build stable confidence.

Stable Confidence

Having stable confidence means that your confidence never swings to extremes because of variance. This is possible when your game is built on a set of results and skills that give you more certainty about the strength of your game in the short term. When your confidence is stable, minor fluctuations actually help to improve your game. You won’t get too down or critical of how you played. And, in equal measure, you won’t delude yourself into thinking you’ve mastered poker. With stable confidence, negative emotions such as tilt or fear are easily handled without feeling robotic or numb. You have the right amount of emotion to be focused, objective, calm, and level-headed. You feel solid about your skills relative to the games you’re playing. You can think clearly through all of the pieces of

Warm-up and cool-down In every major sport, professionals have some form of a structured warm-up and cool-down immediately before and after they play. In general, poker players aren’t convinced yet of why this is so important to them, nor is there much information available on how best to do it The greatest predictor of long-term success is learning and improving every day. Your job is to continue to stay a step ahead of your opponents. You can do that by making sure you’re ready to play better (even if just slightly) each day. Doing proper warm-up and cool-down routines help you identify what to improve, and help you keep a close eye on your progress. Warming up what you’re currently in the process of learning makes these skills more likely to show up while you’re playing. Cooling down helps you to put poker down and relax. Playing poker can be intense, so think of cooling down as the equivalent of icing your muscles after a particularly tough game.

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Warm-Up If the concept of warming up before you play is new, start with a basic three-minute version. As you get used to doing a warm-up, add additional

strategies so you’re ready to play at a high level when you first start playing. There is a limit to how much time you should spend warming up. In general, anything around 15 minutes is about right. Of course, if more time works well for you, do it.

Basic three-minute warm-up 1 Review what you are working on. Remind yourself of a few things in your game that you’re trying to improve. Do this by briefly reviewing some specific technical improvements in your poker skill, such as value betting more, tightening up your opening range, or three-betting less. Also review the strategy you’re using to improve mental game problems.

2 Take a few deep breaths to focus and go play.

Additional warm-up strategies ecide how long you’re going D to play. Having a set time makes poker more structured and for many players that makes their mental game stronger. Obviously you can adjust depending on the quality of the games. Remove any non-poker related distractions, including your phone, chat, TV, other people, and random internet browsers. Review your long-term goals. Take notes on anything that’s weighing on your mind from your personal life. That way you can focus entirely on

information in a hand, and you can make a good decision. When you make a mistake, you’re objective enough to take note of it and move on.

You’re often in the zone.

In a sense, you can consider stable confidence as the middle ground between overconfidence and under-confidence. That doesn’t mean you feel neutral, robotic or numb. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. You are full of emotion, but that emotion is no longer tied to short-term results, and is instead tied to elements of the game that you control. As a result, you’re:

Each player experiences stable confidence in slightly different ways, so a good exercise is to write down a short description of your poker and mental game when your confidence is ideal. That means it’s not neutral or too high, and certainly not low; so what is it? This is important because the way to create stable confidence is by removing mental game flaws and by improving the poker skill deficits that force you out of it. By clearly defining what stable confidence means to you, identifying when you’re under- or overconfident is easier. Then you can take action to re-stabilise confidence in the moment. n

laying at a high level P Able to make objective decisions Aware of your strengths and weaknesses Aware of your opponents’ strengths and weaknesses Clearheaded Trusting of your instincts Not overly emotional, but motivated and energetic Challenged Interested Learning from each session Prepared to work on your game

playing and easily pick these things back up afterward. Review hand histories that fit with what you are currently improving. You can do the same for a mental game problem by reviewing hand histories, or anything else you’ve written about that seems problematic. Many players watch poker training videos before they play. That’s best only if you already watched the video and it fits with the parts of your game you’re trying to improve. In this way, the video refreshes your memory, rather than teaching you something entirely new. Before you start playing is not the time to learn, it’s the time to reinforce what you are learning so you’re more likely to execute it while playing. Exercise or go for a walk. Try meditating, visualising, or breathing exercises. Play 30% to 50% of your usual number of tables for 30 minutes. Consider this to be an extended warm-up that’s

designed to create a bridge between warming up and playing. Playing a fraction of the tables allows you to think more about the concepts you’re trying to improve, steadily get into the flow of the action, and get in the best frame of mind before really grinding.

Cool-down As with the warm-up, if cooling down is new to you, consider starting with this three-minute version. Then as you get used to doing it more, incorporate additional strategies to make it even more effective.

Basic three-minute cool-down 1 Estimate variance. Since you can’t rely entirely on results in the short term, you need a more objective way of identifying how you played. That starts by estimating the effect variance had on your results. 2 Evaluate how you played. Get a sense of how you did in the areas of your game, technical or mental,

Exclusive Stacked offer Too many people focus on their game or the cards, and ignore other aspects of poker. To learn more about confidence and other crucial concepts such as motivation, tilt, emotion and motivation, you can buy The Mental Game of Poker from www. mentalgameofpoker.com. We’ve managed to secure 10% off the price – just use the code ‘1010’ when placing your order.

10% OFF

that you are trying to improve. Were you able to stop yourself from tilting or spot the signs of tilt sooner? If not, what happened? Did you rectify previous technical mistakes? If not, what happened?

Additional cool-down strategies arking hands during the M session makes it easier to review your play afterwards. Unsure what hands to mark during your sessions? Choose non-standard hands where your decision was tough, where you thought you may have made a mistake, where tilt started to show up, where you made a creative move, or other spots that can help you learn and determine how you played. Then after the session, review those hands. That doesn’t mean you need to get into a hardcore analysis, but at least take some game flow notes so you can analyse those hands in context when working on them later. Take notes about any new

details of your mental game problems and add them to your profile. Take a note of anything new that you did well. This can indicate ways to improve your game even more in the future. Look closely at how the regulars played and make notes for the future. Productively vent by writing about whatever is weighing on your mind. Refine your next warm-up based on what you found in this session.

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knowledge | column

I just won!

mrjuglas If you’re a losing player it could be time to take stock and make a fundamental change to the way you play your game

I decided I’d better make some changes and start winning more the final table of the HMS Deep Stack a couple of days later and managed to get my opponent to push all-in with 9-9 on a low flop, having disguised the strength of my pair of Tens. Of course, he hit his two-outer on the river and his slightly larger stack sent me to the rail, but I was happy with the moral victory of having outplayed him and it was another good cash.

Onwards and upwards

mrjuglas turned his game around and won his first MTTs on PKR

’ve just had the most incredible month on PKR. I haven’t won the Masters, the Open or any of the big events, but I have made a real breakthrough. I’ve been playing on PKR for four years now and while I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, I haven’t been a winning player. With my girlfriend asking me if I’d won anything and how much I’d spent on PKR, I decided I’d better make some changes and start winning more and quickly, if that was possible – before she asked me to go over my accounts with her! I had a three-pronged strategy. Firstly, with our languages school being shut in the afternoons in August, I would have a lot more time to dedicate to poker. I also decided to move up in stakes to the $11 and $22 58

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tournament buy-ins, rather than the average $3 to $5 tourneys I’d been playing. I figured smaller fields and higher skill-levels would suit my game. So far, so much like a recipe for disaster: a losing player decides to play more and spend more at a more difficult level in an effort to get his money back! I also made another sacrifice though – drink. I never used to get blottoed on PKR, but I did enjoy a couple of beers while playing, even though I recognised that, unlike for Beyne, it was detrimental to my game. I honestly didn’t drink that much, but I figured that if I were to take this challenge seriously I would be better giving it up entirely.

Moral Victory

I made a good start: a fourth place in the PKR Open meant that

I wouldn’t need to keep reloading to afford those $22 buy-ins. But while the $551 was my biggest cash to-date, I was kicking myself for not winning the entire tournament – something I’d yet to do in the years I’d been playing on PKR. The next time I got myself to a final table I was determined to hold out, play well and take down the whole thing. And that’s nearly what happened. I got heads-up in

I felt like I was building momentum and sure enough, a couple of days later I took down two tournaments in a row! The Steep Stack on the Sunday night, followed by the Double Deuce Deep Stack the next afternoon. And now I could finally say that I was a winning player overall, I took my girlfriend out to celebrate and withdrew enough to get myself the new laptop I needed. Since then I’ve had another victory in the Orient Express and I was planning to finish this article with a win in the Masters, but I guess I haven’t reached that level yet. I turned 13,500 PKR Points into a Masters ticket, but ended up running a bit low and decided to play A-9, only for my top pair, top kicker to run into a slowplayed pair of Tens. I’ll just have to try again next month! From a ranking of 2,997 at the end of July, I’m now number 86 though and am looking forward to trying my luck with a bigger stack in the Rankings Freeroll! n

Man on a heater mrjuglas had only recorded two three-figure wins before August – after these seven final tables he’s setting his sights a little higher 4th PKR Open 2nd H.M.S. Deep Stack 1st Steep Stack 1st Double Deuce Deep Stack 7th Welllbet’s Home Game 1st Orient Express 7th H.M.S Deep Stack

$551 $356 $733 $548 $221 $596 $105

Aug 9 August 12 August 14 August 15 August 20 August 23 August 30

knowledge | top 10

Ivey sues himself

Phil ‘the greatest player in the world’™ Ivey announces his second controversial legal action by suing himself on behalf of all the other players, for all of the money he’s relieved them of over the years. This momentous event is greeted with unconfined joy by poker forums across the world, who again acclaim Ivey as the ‘Tiger Woods of poker and the people’s champion’.

Top ten WSOP moments

The 2011 WSOP might have been a record-breaking celebration of poker but, says Nick Wealthall, there’s still a lot to look forward to

Bust for a buy-in

and hold a card on your forehead’ the WSOP bows to pressure and introduces strip poker. Unfortunately, the final table line-up of Greg Raymer, Tony G, Erick Seidel, Robert Williamson III, Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott and the one that looks like Jabba the Hut off High Stakes Poker isn’t the ratings hit the WSOP was hoping for.

There’s something exceptionally brutal about playing the biggest tournament of the year and being the player that just misses out on the money. The WSOP has cleverly ameliorated this pain by giving the bubble boy a free seat for the following year. This worked brilliantly until a campaign began to give the guy who busts before the bubble boy, and therefore the new actual bubble boy, a prize. This reaches ridiculous levels as the dude who busts before the dude, who busts before the dude, who busts before the dude… You get the picture. The only player not to cash is the first player out who receives a polite round of applause.

Five-star service

After years of waiting and paying $14.50 for a mineral water, a poker player finally succeeds in getting a delicious meal for a fair price from The Rio. In a statement an apologetic spokesman explains, ‘We can only conclude that this was a big, but honest mistake. We think he picked up an employee’s packed lunch by mistake. It didn’t have a price attached and the cashier guessed and got it horribly wrong. We will work extra hard to ensure this never happens again, and as in the past we remain committed to delivering horrible value for a terrible product.’

Lol donkaments

We’re all familiar with the ‘inflation doesn’t exist’ argument. It’s used by elderly relatives to justify the fact that they gave you a £10 gift voucher when you were 10 and still do now you’re 31. Unfortunately, the WSOP’s insistence on following the same

PKR ships the big one

Vladimir ‘Beyne’ Geshkenbein got our hearts in a flutter in his first deep run in the WSOP Main Event this year. This merely set the scene for the most momentous PKR moment of all time, when we finally ship the big one. See p30 for the best of the rest. policy leads to the Main Event coming under fire. When it started in 1970 the $10k buy in was enough to buy a private jet, a harem and half of Arkansas. Now it doesn’t even cover a bag of beef jerky (or a bottle of mineral water from The Rio’s various eateries).

Iron Man World Championship

There’s a new tournament in town, and the rules are that there are no rules. Okay, there are some, but in this king-of-the-old-school event competitors do not get breaks of any kind, at any time. If they want to eat, they can do it at the table; if they want to sleep, they can do it at the table; if they want to urinate… they should make a quick trip to the restrooms. Pitched by Barry Greenstein, this tournament is for real men of both genders. The around-the-clock ten-day deep-stacked format is a test of poker playing ability, endurance and personal hygiene standards.

Humble Hellmuth

Phil Hellmuth wins his 12th bracelet and the frail old pro gives his best victory speech to date. ‘Wow – I mean this is amazing – I can’t believe how well I ran. I have to thank the dealers who were professional and super lucky for me. And I’d like to say bad luck to my opponents, most of whom flat outplayed me. I was the best tournament player many years ago but the game has passed me by, and I just can’t compete with these kids who actually work on their games – sometimes they make me feel like I can’t even spell P.O.K.E.R. Thank God for variance – if it wasn’t for luck I’d never have won another event.’

Strip Poker World Championship

The pressure to reach a wider audience leads to bracelet events with a more widespread appeal. After ‘rock, paper scissors’, and ‘that one where you drink shots

Ladies event

Poker massacre

After years of waiting, a female player finally takes down the Main Event and it catapults poker back into the mainstream. The concept of a mum and average working woman taking down millions at a skill game is a marketing man’s dream, and the fact that it’s not Tiffany Michelle only boosts the game’s popularity.

It is the year 2064 and the World Series is dealt by ‘dealerbots’, cyborgs with the ability to deal 4,000 hands per hour. A virus causes one to misdeal a Badugi pot leading to an internal systems conflict and the dealer bot becoming self-aware. The virus spreads and the entire dealing crew run amok smashing everything in their path. Top pros escape on their personal jet packs, however some qualifiers waiting to cash their roast dinner pill food vouchers aren’t so fortunate. n stacked♠

knowledge | tactics

The art of poker

The Art of War is one of the world’s most respected treatise on combat. And, according to Mark Bonington, this brilliantly written ode to ruthlessness, cunning and crushing your enemies also has a place at the poker table...

ave a look through the profiles of rising young pros and you’re almost guaranteed to see the words ‘…thanks to their hyper-aggressive playing style.’ If there has been a playing style of choice recently, it is aggressive. If there is a player of choice, it is the hyper-aggressive chip-stealing demon. Perhaps the old veterans may once have thought the rise of internet sensations such as Tom Dwan and Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom were something of a fluke – young players who increased their stacks with raw attack power; who seemed to climb to dizzying heights, crash down, and then ascend back into the realms of multi-millionairedom all in the space of an evening. Yet the fever spread, causing even traditionally tight players to open up and feel the thrill of playing more hands – even if it was just to try and take on the ‘internet kids’. But there is method in the madness, and it would be very wrong for traditionalists to assume the hyper-aggressive player to be a purely Dionysian construct. In fact, many of the techniques required for well-balanced aggressive poker play can be found in the infamous strategy book, The Art of War.

What is The Art of War?

The exact composition date of the work remains uncertain, but its creator, Sun Tzu, is believed to have lived around 500 BC. Tzu was a celebrated military commander in his time, known for his intelligence as well as his ruthlessness. Before hiring him as a military leader, the King of Wu decided to test Tzu’s skills by ordering him to train his harem

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of 180 female concubines into soldiers. The story goes that Tzu ordered the women to divide into two companies, and appointed as company commanders two of the King’s favourite concubines. He twice ordered them all to face right, and twice they fell about giggling. Tzu promptly ordered the beheading of both commanders. Naturally the King objected to the executions, but Tzu stated that officers are responsible for the discipline of troops.

she’s an avid fan of Tzu’s teachings. But don’t take her word for it… Join us as we show you a smattering of Sun Tzu’s infamous ‘poker’ strategies.

When five times his strength, attack him. If double his strength, divide him. If equally matched, you may engage him

Anciently the skilful warriors first made themselves invincible and then awaited the enemy’s moment of vulnerability.

The two chief concubines were replaced and from then on, they all obeyed orders without question. The Art of War is the fruits of Tzu’s tried and tested methods as a commander – some say it’s the definitive work of military strategies. As you might expect The Art of War has been adapted to work with businesses but, believe it or not, it also makes the perfect modern poker guide. American beauty Vanessa Rousso might not approve of his methods of dealing with the fairer sex, but as a student of game theory

Controlled aggression

Poker is a game of ruthlessness. In order to win, your opponents must lose. To win big, they must be crushed and bankrupted. Or, as the Chinese military commander Sun Tzu said almost 2,500 years ago...

Poker invincibility is gained through the long hours of graft and many thousands of hands played. Train hard, then attack your enemy’s weak point for an easy win – a good aggressive strategy. Players can even apply Tzu’s theories about army numbers with stack sizes. When five times his strength, attack him. If double his strength, divide him. If equally matched, you may engage him.

Adapt to stay at the top

In poker, like the battlefield, specific circumstances are ever-changing. Adapting to these fluctuations, says Sun Tzu, is essential for any kind of consistent success. Just as we, as poker players, adapt to different kinds of opponent (be they loose, tight, passive or aggressive), generals adapted to circumstances such as morale, terrain and enemy strategy.

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious. He who understands how to use both large and small forces will be victorious. Not every fight can be won through sheer force of attack. Even the most hyperaggressive player must know when to fold. Knowing when to let go of your ego and admit defeat is a skill cited by many leading poker experts, and by Sun Tzu. Equally, in regards to his second point, players must know how much to bet and when. In the war of poker your chips are your army. Using your entire stack is foolish if you can achieve the same with a smaller amount. This brings us to Tzu’s thoughts on bluffing. When capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity...All warfare is based on deception.

Grand deception

Sound advice, not to mention a perfect description of how to beat those hardcore aggressive online grinders. Feign stupidity and act tight passive until the gods send you that winning hand. Limp in and let them raise you to the sky, then satisfyingly imagine them crying into their laptops as you sweep their stacks out from under them. But what about going on tilt? He’s got that one covered too…

Therefore the enlightened ruler is prudent and the good general is warned against rash action.

Keep calm and carry on

Keeping your cool at the poker table is one of the toughest challenges for players, and as general of your own game it is imperative that you’re in control of your emotions. Just as the ancient commanders tried to dissect the thinking of the opposition, so you must try and unravel the train of thought of your opponent. If he beats you, stay calm, and learn from his moves. Retreat (walking away from the table) is sometimes preferable to blindly attacking (going on tilt and throwing your chips in). And when you’re short stacked? In a hopeless situation, fight with all strength says Tzu. Poker, like war, is also a game of mental prowess and psychology, something emphasised by Sun Tzu in one of his most famous quotes: Know the enemy, know yourself; your victory will never be endangered.

War is an ever-evolving entity, and a general must be flexible and open to creativity, adept at getting inside the head of an opponent. All of these are skills required of a poker player. Attacking every enemy in exactly the same manner will never make you consistently successful, and this brings us back to the opening theme of aggressive play. Much of Sun Tzu’s advice is not about blindly attacking, but knowing how to use circumstances to your advantage. With chapters entitled – The Calculations, The Challenge, The Plan of Attack, Illusion and Reality, The Fiery Attack and The Use of Intelligence, a daily dose of The Art of War could be just what your game needs to take it to the next level. It’s not the easiest book in the world to digest – especially in its native form – but you can buy a translated version on Amazon for less than the price of a $10 buy-in. As Sun Tzu didn’t say in The Art of War: Know that this could be the best $10 that was ever spent by you. n

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knowledge | Pot-Limit Omaha

Change your game Consider yourself a good hold’em player? Then there’s no reason you can’t bash up other games like PLO too by using tried-and-trusted strategies. Ross ‘MrStarch’ Jarvis shows you how

he UK’s Matt Perrins won a WSOP bracelet this summer playing 2-7 no-limit lowball. Usually yet another WSOP win by a young online pro would pass under the radar but Perrins made headlines when he admitted after the tournament that he’d never played a single hand of the variant before that day!  It wasn’t just luck that allowed Perrins to win though – instead, he found a way to adapt his finely honed hold’em skills to an entirely new game and beat much more experienced 2-7 lowball pros along the way. As long as you have a good grounding in one poker variant – for the vast majority that will be hold’em – there’s no reason why your skills shouldn’t transfer over into another with ease. Using pot-limit Omaha (PLO) as an example I’m going to explain how you can follow in Perrins’ footsteps and beat a new game, even if you’ve never played it before.

Revising the basics

To succeed instantly at PLO you don’t need to have a ton of knowledge but it is essential to at least know the rules. Thankfully the hand rankings – a flush beats a straight and so on – are identical to hold’em. The main

difference is that you get four hole cards instead of two. You also must use two and only two cards from your hand. For example if you hold A♣-K♠ in hold’em and the flop is 2♣-5♣8♣-K♥-J♣ you would have the nut flush, whereas in PLO holding A♣-K♠-Q♠-3♥ on that same board would leave you with just a pair of Kings with an Ace kicker. The betting

Matt Perrins won a bracelet playing 2-7 no-limit lowball and admitted he’d never played a hand of it before that day! 62

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structure remains identical to a standard pot-limit hold’em game. For a more detailed introduction to PLO check out issue 8 of Stacked online here: www.tinyurl.com/stacked8.

Softly, softly

Think back to when you were first taught to play hold’em. Likely the first advice that stuck in your head was to play super tight. The exact same strategy applies when you’re new to PLO. Focus completely on strong hands that will likely make the nuts or huge draws. These will usually be in one of two categories: high pair hands such as A♣-A♠-5♥-4♣ or ‘rundown’ double suited hands like 7♥-8♥-9♠-T♠. With the high pair hands you’re looking to either hit (top) set or a nut flush

draw, in which case you should put as much money into the pot as possible. With rundowns you’re looking to either flop a straight, a flush or huge ‘wrap’ straight draws (that can have so many outs they will sometimes be ahead of a set in terms of equity). Note that we are absolutely not looking to play passively, make hero calls or even thin value bets. If you don’t hit the flop huge it’s fine to fold and avoid tough decisions on later streets where more experienced PLO players can have an edge.  All other marginal hands that may look pretty – A♣-K♣-7♠-8♠ or Q♥-Q♣-2♥-3♦ for example – should just be folded right away. Play as tight as you possibly can, multiply that by two and you’ll find your

Three-betting light is rare in the low-to-mid stakes PLO games. There’s no reason why it should be

decisions are easy and you’ll always have the nuts whenever you play a big pot.

Be the pit bull!

Aggression is one of the key skills you need to win in hold’em – and PLO is just the same. By now, it’s common knowledge that opening pots with a raise (instead of limping) should be your default play in a hold’em cash game or tournament. Make sure you do the same in PLO as it gives you the opportunity to pick up the blinds uncontested, which can quickly add up, and also gives you momentum going into the flop.   Continuation betting is still a valuable tactic in PLO too. When you raise preflop your opponents will usually put you on high cards so you should almost always c-bet flops with an Ace or King on them, whether you’ve hit or not. However, there is one key difference here from hold’em. In PLO people will generally call preflop raises lighter, meaning there will often be 3 to 4 players seeing a flop unlike in hold’em where most pots are played heads-up. If this is the case tighten up again and only c-bet when you actually hit a hand. When the pot is heads-up it is profitable to c-bet almost every flop – you’ll be surprised how often you take it down.

Easy does it

already been opened it will be much more profitable to three-bet – especially with position – than it will be just to call. One great element of playing PLO against average players is that their three-betting range will be almost exclusively A-A-x-x hands and, as that’s the only hand they themselves three-bet with, it’s automatically the hand they will put you on when you reraise. You can use this to your advantage by always c-betting Ace-high flops and getting folds almost every time, whether you have it or not. Remember to always keep it simple. If you get called on the flop in a three-bet pot and you’re bluffing it’s best just to give up as there are many more possibilities for your opponent to have a hand than there are in hold’em.   All the aspects of PLO play we have discussed here – tight starting hand selection, aggression, c-betting and three-betting – should be unconscious tactics you are using in your regular game already. Apply these correctly and they will instantly get you off on the right foot in PLO. As you get more experience you can then open up your game, play looser and embrace tough decisions.  For now – keep it simple, stupid. n

W I N!

One area that you can quickly exploit when switching to PLO Oma standa ha is a lot of is three-betting light. While a fun rd but ca of play is ge and the common (perhaps overused) n you nerall your g y lowe s u cce ssfully ame? P r, play in hold’em, three-betting chang o s t your b in the e light is still rare among many thread ‘Stacked Ch est attemp ts ange G on players at the low-to-mid a m e’ hand h the PKR For u is m t o (i stakes PLO games. There’s no play. T ries), and ex ncluding he be plain y reason why it should be. If you our PKR ch st entry wil l win ip s et. Goo have a good hand like we d luck a ! discussed earlier and the pot has

MAKING AGGRESSION PAY Ross ‘MrStarch’ Jarvis describes a recent hand where he used some basic aggression to take down a mid-sized pot

PLO six-max cash Blinds $1/$2 Seat 1 scoopthepot $200 Seat 2 MrStarch $200  Seat 3 Cserah $103  Seat 4 goobedoo $426 Seat 5 play2winSerbia $835 Seat 6 FishingKing $200

everyone apart from the original raiser, and makes the hand much easier to play heads-up.

Flop Pot size $51

Dealt to MrStarch scoopthepot checks MrStarch bets $26 scoopthepot folds MrStarch wins $51   The action folds round to scoopthepot in the cutoff, who raises to $7. I’m on the button with a very good playable double-suited hand. Some players would just call a raise with this hand but it is usually better to take the aggressive line and three-bet, so I make it $24 to go. I am ideally looking to hit a set of nines or a big draw on the flop, but there will also be a lot of high card, dry flops that I can bluff at too. Threebetting also folds out

Aside from an easily dominated flush draw I miss the flop completely. That’s somewhat irrelevant here however as this Ace-high board smacks my perceived range in the face. In my opponent’s eyes I could have top set here so I must c-bet. Just over half the pot is sufficient enough to find out if he has a strong hand – he folds and I take a decent pot thanks to some basic aggression.

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knowledge | poker clinic

Poker Clinic It’s hard to find an edge in today’s cash games – can Team PKR Pro’s resident doctor successfully diagnose, treat and cure today’s patient?

The patient: WecukiEl AKA: Vesa Partanen Plays: Cash $50nl - $200nl Problem: Losing!

I need your help because I’m a HUGE FISH and I need to learn how to play against reg UBER NITS. Recently I’ve been playing more $1/$2 no-limit hold’em and I’ve found more nits there than I’ve seen anywhere else in my poker career! I have never read a book about poker, only watched a handful of videos and read a few strategy articles, so I’m pretty much self-taught. The trouble is I think I’ve gone as far as I can and I’m not scared to admit I need help. If you don’t believe me ask any of the nits on the $1/$2 tables – they’ll vouch that I’m one of the biggest fish in the games.’

I’ve watched you play a number of sessions and overall I think you play pretty well. For someone who is selftaught you’ve got a pretty good grasp of the game. If you’re playing more for fun than anything else, I wouldn’t bother studying too hard. If you want to play for profit though you need to brush up on some basic cash game fundamentals. The first thing I noticed is that you don’t seem to play either a short stack or full stack strategy. These are two very different strategies that work successfully in different situations. Unfortunately, when you start with a 60 big blind stack, you’re not deep enough to be able to make successful multi-street bluffs or moves, or to set mine properly/ call with speculative preflop hands. At the same time, you’re not short enough to play a successful TAG ‘all-in or fold’ strategy. Pick either a short- or full-stack strategy and use auto-reload so you don’t have to worry about your stack getting too low. 64

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You also don’t play at ‘cards down’ tables over ‘cards up’ tables. Usually ‘cards down’ games are filled with more recreational players – grinders find it hard to play nine tables of ‘cards down’. My advice would be to choose between multi-tabling six or more ‘cards up’ tables or four or less ‘cards down’ tables. You have a bad habit of limping cards that are pretty weak (without improving on the flop) like low pocket pairs and suited A-x. You might think you’re saving money by seeing a cheap flop, but in most cases someone will isolate you with a 4x or 5x raise. Limp-calling then actually costs you more than if you’d just made a

Limping is a huge leak in everyone’s game unless there are very specific circumstances

3x raise. This also gives you the chance to win the pot there and then as well. Limping is a huge leak in everyone’s game unless there are very specific circumstances.

Keeping notes

You tend to fold to standard open-raises when you are in the blinds. You shouldn’t be calling with marginal hands like J-8 or K-6 from the blinds, but you should definitely be defending hands like K-T, A-5 suited, 7-8 suited. You should also be three-betting these hands if you are against a button raiser. Most of the regulars that you call nits, are fairly tight but usually only tight out of position. Playing back also balances your range, so that when you do have a premium hand they are less likely to think you have a monster. I’d seriously suggest making notes on players. Although you may think you know how players play (in your head), you’ll be surprised how differently they actually play, what types of hands they will three-bet with out of position or in position, what sort of hands they

half-stack syndrome Playing with a half stack can make your decisions much harder

Six-max cash

Blinds $1/$2 Flop

Wecukiel acesagain1 raises to $6 Wecukiel (sb) calls GorgeousGeorgie (bb) calls

Our resident agony uncle, James ‘james666’ Sudworth studied Wecukial’s game and found that he needed to switch to either a short- or full-stack strategy

float with, what sort of hands they fold out of the blinds and what ones they defend, how they play draws on the flop, whether they like to go to showdown cheaply or make lots of small value bets on the river. There is an awful lot of information that can help you make decisions which you cannot possibly store inside your brain. So, start making notes on your opponents. You don’t use Hold’em Manager (HEM) but occasionally use Poker Officer. I hate Poker Officer, but love HEM and although you cannot run a HUD on PKR, you can run the ‘active player window’ which lists all the players you are currently playing against, and their stats so that you can take advantage of their weaknesses. HEM also gives you the opportunity to look over your playing style to see what moves are working and what ones aren’t.

Isolate the fish

A lot of the time you three-bet 3x (from $6 to $18) with premium hands such as A-A, Q-Q, etc, and 3.7x ($6 to $22) when you have hands like A-J. After

Wecukiel checks GorgeousGeorgie checks acesagain1 bets $12 Wecukiel raises to $35 GorgeousGeorgie folds acesagain1 raises to $323.71 Wecukiel folds

A lot of the trouble in this hand stems from you starting the hand with a half stack. If you were playing a short-stack strategy you could three-bet all-in with a 20-25bb stack profitably preflop. If you had a 25-35bb stack you could call and stack off on any hit flop. Playing a half stack of 50-60bbs makes the hand a lot tougher because none of these options are available to you. By check-raising this flop, you commit 1/3 of your stack, yet

a while, good opponents will pick up on this, and will start four-betting you whenever you make it $22, and folding whenever you make it $18. Therefore, you should try to raise by the same amount, depending on your position, not your cards. When in position, you should be continuation betting a high percentage of the time, especially on dry boards as it will be very hard for your opponent to continue for three streets with less than top pair. You’ll win a lot of pots simply by double barrelling the turn and river on dry boards. Ensure you identify and target the fish at the table. Usually limpers are the fish, so use isolation raises to get yourself heads-up with them. As a general rule of thumb, make your isolation raise the same size as you would if making a standard open raise, but add on the amount of limpers in the pot – if you normally make it 3x, and there’s one limper make it 4x, etc. By doing this you will price out the other players, and keep the fish all to yourself! n

when your opponent jams you are nearly always in bad shape. If you PokerStove all realistic combinations of hands that our villain can have (3-3/J-J/Q-Q/KK/A-A/J-Q/A-Qs/A-Q/Q-K/Q-Ks/9-Ts), you find out your equity with K-Q is just under 25%. Calling $67 to win a $228 pot is not quite giving you correct odds to call, making a fold correct. But, you lose $41 in the process and all because of your starting stack size.

Is your game in need of a lift? Team PKR Pro james666 is here to help you. If you’d like to be considered for the Poker Clinic send an outline of your problems to stacked@pkr. com, with Poker Clinic in the subject line. Tell us what games you normally play, what your problems are and why you should be selected. If you’re successful james666 will monitor a number of your poker sessions and come back with a detailed analysis of your game. We’ll print the best bits in the magazine. stacked♠

competition | big-time giveaway

WIN!

Big-time giveaway Forget about the WSOP – the real poker action can be found on PKR and we’ve got free seats to give away to prove it

hil Hellmuth has spent so many years proving himself at the WSOP that he’s forgotten about the grassroots game. He might have 11 bracelets but how many PKR Masters titles has he won? The proving ground for any reputable online player, the PKR Masters is the tourney that sorts the online wheat from the poker chaff. If you fancy a shot at the estimated $25k first prize for free, all you have to do is answer the simple question below and hope your run-good extends to your entry being picked at random ahead of the rest. If you don’t bag the big prize then don’t panic – we’ve also got a seat at the $77 Monte Carlo tournament, along with five runners-up seats to the daily $7k guaranteed PKR Open. Good luck – and if you see Hellmuth at the tables, lick your lips!

Where was this year’s PKR Vegas Experience pool party held? a) Tao Beach b) Wet Republic c) The River Thames The first seven correct answers we pick after the closing date will get the tournament tickets. n

competition Rules 1 Email your answer to the question above to stacked@pkr.com, and include your PKR username and contact number. The closing date is November 30, 2011. 2 The editor’s decision is final, and no cash alternatives are available. 3 You must be 18 or over to enter the competition, and you must be a registered PKR player to claim your prize. All the winning entries will be printed in the next issue of stacked♠. 66

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Previous winners Congratulations to the following players who won our Big-Time Giveaway last issue: 1st prize (PKR Masters seat) henchie1 2nd prize (Monte Carlo seat) KingBoom Runners-up (PKR Open seats) Hitmankiller, Queball5, SideyBurns, ciaran211, BOBSCOUSE

pr 1st iz e

$270 pkr masters ticket

The Masters is PKR’s biggest and most prestigious tournament. The $100k guaranteed prize pool means you’ll be playing for a minimum first prize of $25k and the title of PKR Masters Champion. Previous Masters winners include PKR Hall of Famer PatIvey and PirateNation – there’s no better way to fame and fortune.

pr2n iz d e

$77 Monte carlo ticket

5 n x

Second prize is a $77 ticket for the Monte Carlo eight-seater MTT. This tourney is the place where you can show off all your MTT skills, with a super-deep 10k starting stack. You’ll find some of PKR’s finest tournament players at the Monte Carlo tables, all battling for the bankroll-boosting first prize. With eight-seater tables, expect more action on your way to the final table.

$22 PKR open tickets

Five lucky runners-up will each receive $22 seats for the $7k guaranteed PKR Open. This runs Monday to Saturday and gives you a great chance to bag a big score for a relatively small outlay. For added excitement look out for the Wednesday night specials when PKR bounties join the fray. Knock them out to claim extra prize money.

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the river | profile

Heroes of poker

JC Tran in action – a sight to strike fear into the heart of any player

#10: JC Tran After years of dominating the cash and tournament tables, Michael Kaplan finds that while JC Tran’s priorities may have changed, his game is as spectacular as ever

photography Greasiewheels, impdi

how-off poker players are a dime a dozen these days. We see them hanging around the corners of tournaments and flipping chips for $5,000 a throw, playing credit card roulette for dinner tabs, and making outré prop bets for five-figure sums. Then you get a guy like JC Tran, a Vietnamese immigrant, raised in modest circumstances, viewing poker as a livelihood rather than a lifestyle and leaving scenery chewing antics for his opponents. Along the way, Tran, 34-years-old, has already managed to snag WPT Player of the Year, won first place in the World Championship of Online Poker, and took down two World Series of Poker bracelets. He’s circumspect about his cash game success, but it’s easy to imagine that Tran has enjoyed plenty of that as well. After all, it’s where his roots lie. ‘I had been messing around a little bit with poker, when, on my 21st birthday, back in 1998, my older brother took me to a little card room called the Sundowner, near our home in Sacramento, California,’ recounts Tran of his first exposure to casino poker. ‘I had played a little bit of seven-card stud at that point, but I had not yet played Texas hold’em.’ Clearly a quick learner, he bought into a $1/$2 limit 68

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hold’em game for $40 and cashed out for $100. ‘Obviously, I liked my results. Following that first experience, I went there every chance I got. I slipped out to the Sundowner on weekends, after school [he was attending Sacramento State University in pursuit of a business degree], whenever I had a spare few hours.’ He graduated university a couple of years later, and Tran could have gone for an MBA or

gambled in the casinos and bet sports back then. It all added up to cost me a lot of money.’ But his poker skills were rock solid. In September 2003, a few years after scuffling around the low-to-medium stakes games and tournaments, Tran says, ‘I went to LA and played a couple of $300 tournaments with rebuys at the Commerce. On a Friday I finished fifth in one of them. Then I came back a week later and won the same

I never bought a single book. I learned everything by being at the tables else put his education to traditionally good use. Instead he kept his eyes on the California card rooms. The move was riskier than it might sound. There were no games online, no poker on television, nothing in the way of an active scene that attracted loads of amateurs and fish. It made it much more difficult to make a living from the game. Nevertheless, though, armed with the $5,000 bankroll that he managed to accrue through his off-hours at university, Tran chose to take a shot. ‘I had a lot of leaks at the time,’ remembers Tran. ‘I

tournament. It was the biggest thing for me at that point. I cashed for a total of $90,000. Suddenly I had a real bankroll.’

Rising star

This was before the era of the overt baller. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, most successful poker pros were middle-aged men with furtive eyes who kept their own counsel. They saw no upside to advertising their profession or their profits. Tran followed the prevailing modus operandi. ‘I’d never had that kind of money before, but I still had the

stackedâ&#x2122;

the river | profile

leaks, and I went through a lot of it,’ he says, sounding frank and not all that happy with himself. ‘I lost a lot of my winnings through various forms of gambling and then I would have to go back out to the card rooms and just grind. I played $20/$40 no-limit and $40/$80 limit, which was my bread and butter game, since I started out as a limit hold’em player. My reading skills were really good. My instincts were really good. I never bought a single book. I learned everything by being in action at the tables.’ Considering his locale, his stakes, his frequent presence in the Southern California poker rooms and the fact that he is Vietnamese, it’s hard not to wonder how Tran kept himself from getting mixed up with Men ‘The Master’ Nguyen. After all, The Master has long maintained a stable full of young Vietnamese players and makes a handsome profit out of elevating them to stakes they could not normally afford. ‘I hung out with local poker buddies and that was it,’ says Tran, sounding a little testy. ‘As far as Men the Master

J.C. Tran Born: January 20, 1977 Live tournament winnings: $8,074,777 Biggest win: $1,177,010 (2nd, 2007 WPT LA Poker Classic) WSOP bracelets: 2

Want more? Justin Cuong Van Tran was born to Vietnamese parents in Hong Kong and moved to the US when he was two-years-old. Following a degree in Business Management he quickly developed a knack for poker and has since become one of the most feared and respected tournament and cash game players. He’s won over $8m in tournaments alone – watch his biggest cash at the 2007 LA Poker Classic here: tinyurl.com/jctran.

taking down a total of $175,000 for his trouble. He final-tabled a couple of WSOP hold’em tournaments. And, as the year came to a close, he finished fifth at the WPT World Poker Finals at Foxwoods, for another $353,800. Bracelets eluded him that year, but the money did not.

photography impdi for the wsop

I grew up with no money. So my nature wasn’t to spend a lot of it. I never bought the flashiest stuff goes, I never had anything to do with him. I was better than Men when I came onto the scene. I wasn’t too impressed with him, and I wouldn’t play for somebody who was less skilled than me.’ If 2003 represented lift-off for Tran as a professional poker player, then 2004 was undoubtedly blast-off time. Without winning a single tournament that year, he ground out nearly $1m in prize money. He finished fourth and second in two LA Poker Classic events, 70

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It was enough cash to totally transform a player and turn him into the kind of guy who would be living and playing way above his means. Not Tran. ‘Nothing really changed,’ he says. ‘I still lived with my parents; I had considered moving to my own place, but I figured I had more to learn and that the money I’d be spending on rent or a mortgage was more important liquid. I wanted to use the money for playing poker. Yes, I drove a BMW, I wore nice clothing, and if I liked something, I looked into

buying it. But I lived pretty modestly for a guy who made the money I did. I grew up with no money. So my nature wasn’t to spend a lot of it. I never bought the flashiest stuff you could buy.’

In the zone

And what about Tran’s proclivities for gambling in the pit and at the sportsbook window? ‘I still had the itch,’ he admits. ‘Every time I walked past a gaming table, I had to play.’ Over time, though that resolved itself as well. While he won’t get into specific details about how much he dropped in the casinos, he acknowledges, ‘It ended when I was losing too much. I lost more than I should have and it stopped.’ But his winning ways at the poker table only increased. The stars aligned for him at World Poker Tour events in 2007 when he had a first place, a second place, and a sixth place, all in close succession. Tran puts a lot of credence in being in the zone for poker, and that run clearly shows him residing squarely where he needed to be. He took home nearly $2m in 2007 and WPT Player of the Year. In 2006, he won the

World Championship of Online Poker event for another big payday of $670,000. This particular achievement is even more impressive when you consider that, at that time, Tran was a newbie to online poker. ‘The tournaments were easy then because people were not so aggressive; I was considered aggressive and it definitely helped me to win the WCOOP,’ he says. ‘But I had swapped money with all kinds of friends’ – in part because he thought his likelihood of winning it was fairly remote – ‘and I wound up walking away with not as much money as you would think. Personally, I won maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars. But that’s okay. It worked out well for a lot of people, not just me.’ These days, Tran’s life has gone through a significant transformation. He’s married and the father of a young child. He insists that his priorities are in a different place than they once were. Though he’s a member of the Poker Pack and has worked as an ambassador for the Asian Poker Tour, generally speaking, the idea of logging long periods of time on the other side of the globe, or even the other side of North America, just doesn’t have very much appeal. ‘I could be gone three weeks a month and travel the circuit,’ he says, complaining that Black Friday put a crimp in his desire to be a stay-at-home poker pro. ‘But that’s not what I’m looking to do at the moment. I want to be around and spend time with my wife and child. Right now, it’s not about being rich. It’s about being able to provide for my family.’ Of course, though, that still means winning at poker, even if he’s doing it closer to home these days. With that in mind, there is little doubt that habitués of the California card rooms will carry on feeling the heat of JC Tran and his game-crushing ways for some time to come. n

After years of pit and sportsbook degeneracy Tran is a committed family man

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the river | Stacked court

stacked court

#4: Phil Hellmuth vs Jean Robert Bellande Some of the finer points of etiquette are beyond even the most hardened of pros as witnessed when Hellmuth and Bellande clash on Poker After Dark. Which one deserves the short sharp shock? You decide…

The charge T

he hand starts off innocently enough. Bellande raises with 8♦-9♦ and Hellmuth calls with 7♣-8♣. Bellande pairs his Nine and Hellmuth picks up an open-ended straight draw, which bricks on the river. Hellmuth bluffs

Bellande won the pot but didn’t want to reveal his hand

at the pot and when Bellande calls, concedes saying, ‘You got it. Good call.’ But Bellande refuses to show his hand unless Hellmuth flips his too, saying that he doesn’t want to give the table unnecessary information. Thus begins the stand-off with Hellmuth stating he’s not arguing poker rules but poker etiquette: ‘This is a good example for the American public. When someone bluffs on the end and says “you got it”, you’re supposed to flip your hand and win.’

Bellande disagrees saying that he doesn’t want to see Hellmuth’s cards – he wants him to muck so he can pick up the pot without showing his own hand. Eventually Hellmuth flips his cards forcing Bellande to follow suit. Members of the jury, we admit this is a complicated case but coming up with a correct ruling is of huge importance to the reputations of the two players who are sat before you.

Phil Hellmuth conceded the pot but still had a point to prove

The evi

ence: tinyurl.d stackedcom/ 14a

The case for Hellmuth I disagree with the assertion that this is a complicated case. As my client has said himself, we are not arguing about the rules of poker here but the underlying etiquette that has kept this a gentleman’s

game for the past 40 years. Speaking on a pure technicality if a person is called on the river he must show his cards or muck. However, in this case Hellmuth acknowledged his bluff, as the rest of the table agreed – does it matter what he was bluffing with? This is a matter of

principle. Hellmuth acted correctly and Bellande should have flipped his cards, taken the pot and carried on the game with a touch of grace. All that Bellande is trying to do here is to stop the table from getting the information that is rightfully theirs.

The case for Bellande To repeat my learned colleague: we are not arguing poker rules but poker etiquette. Etiquette is a woolly term used to justify or criticise actions at the table. Unfortunately,

Hellmuth appears to think it’s something he can use to gain an advantage. The rules clearly state that if you make a bet and are called on the river, you have to show your cards. If Hellmuth doesn’t want to show a bluff then he

the stacked♠ jury VERDICT Hellmuth: GUILTY bellande: NOT GUILTY hicko715 Hellmuth

slimline111 Bellande

Littlewood Hellmuth

cultofcargo Hellmuth

james666 Hellmuth

MRBUSTOP Bellande

Miragedrum Hellmuth

IStacKz Bellande

KKowboy Hellmuth

Snomad Bellande

arichmond64 Hellmuth

Razorheart Hellmuth

It might not have been unanimous but it was a convincing victory for Bellande, although the consensus is that both players acted like kids and need to grow up. Razorheart summed it up nicely with a spot of juvenile humour: ‘Phil Hellmuth is like a little boy that has the smallest d***. “Show me yours, but I wont show you mine.”’ Indeed.

shouldn’t make one. Jean-Robert Bellande has the right to see Hellmuth’s cards but actually states he doesn’t want to! He just wants to stop the table from getting information when Hellmuth won’t give it up himself.

Next issue Get yourself on the jury and win a PKR chipset! The ladies vs Jonathan Epstein There has been a lot of debate about ladies-only poker tournaments and this was reignited at the 2011 WSOP as 15 men were permitted to play the Ladies Event because of Nevada’s discrimination laws. Jonathan Epstein made the final table before finally succumbing in 9th place, but he was widely derided during play by his opponents, fans and more worryingly, the WSOP floor staff. Did he deserve such public vilification after the WSOP accepted his money? If you want to be selected for jury service go to tinyurl.com/ stackedcourt15. The best response wins a PKR chipset.

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the river | insta index

stacked♠ condensed

50 TILT!

According to top poker mind coach Jared Tendler, 95% of his customers want help with tilt issues. They’re not alone – everyone suffers from it, and that includes you (even if you don’t know it yet!).

Too busy playing poker to read STACKED♠? Don’t worry – we’ve condensed the magazine into handy bitesized chunks just for you

24 All Vegas-d out

Still no bracelet, but 2011 was the best Vegas Experience ever thanks to an utterly fabulous F*** Me I’m Famous pool party and the 24 PKR qualifiers who rocked Sin City to its very foundations. Viva Las Vegas once more!

30 Best of the best!

40 Like father, like son

Since its launch in 2006 PKR has revolutionised online poker, but more importantly we’ve had a ball along the way. In fact, thanks to you, we’ve had so many good times we thought the time was right to document them all in one massive top 50. Top of the list? PKR Live, which brought us all together under one roof for the very first time.

When Eoghan O’Dea made it into the 2011 November Nine, he became part of the first father and son team to final table the WSOP Main Event. Donnacha came 6th in 1983 – can Eoghan win it in November?

60 Tactics, evolved

‘All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.’ Translated: read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and get much better at poker.

72 Tool!

No surprises in the STACKED♠ court as Phil Hellmuth is found guilty of acting like a tool at the poker table in his etiquette standoff with Jean-Robert Bellande.

STACKED♠ Editorial Director Dave Woods Art Director Richard Davis Managing Editor Scott Skinner Head of Dennis Communications Tim Farthing Creative Producer Liz Moores Snr Production Controller Kerry Lambird Production Manager Ebony Besagni Reproduction by Mullis Morgan Imaging Chief Executive James Tye Chairman Felix Dennis pkr people Colin Morris Media Manager Antoine Pingon Fronk Manager Dan Grant Community Manager James Bach Poker Operations Executive Neil Wright Cardroom Manager Simon Prodger Marketing Director Dmitriy Shlyuger CRM Manager Malcolm Graham Chief Executive Officer Dennis Communications Published by Dennis Publishing Ltd, 30 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4JD, a company registered in England number 1138891 / Entire contents ©PKR ltd. Millennium House, Ollivier Street, St Anne, Alderney

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