Bluff by Sonio Onios

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EDITORIAL STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF • Michael Caselli FEATURES EDITOR • Phillip Conneller MANAGING EDITOR • Matthew Parvis COPY EDITOR • Gale Mitchell

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editor’s letter

am at peace. I’ve just gone through this issue for the final time, and I’ve found harmony. We’ve achieved a yogi’s balance this issue, meaning that it’s only taken us two years to get things right. For the rest of the month, the Bluff editorial team is going to meditate over editorial Zen. That’s the good news; the bad news is that, since we have things running smoothly, we have to start throwing wrenches in the works to keep life interesting. That’s where you come in. Now that we have a harmonious magazine, we need our readers to start throwing razor’s-edge ideas to contribute@bluffmagazine.com. Come on; help us mix things up. I’m not trying to say that balance is a bad thing, or that we have lost our edge, just that I like cacophony rather than harmony, and to prove it, listen to some of the screaming articles that have been added to this month’s opus. In the percussion section is the new Andy Beal story. If you remember last month’s issue, our favorite high-stakes poker playing billionaire, Andy Beal, was down a few mil to The Corporation. You’ll remember that The Corporation is a conglomerate of the world’s best poker players, including Todd Brunson, Jen Harmon and Ted Forrest. Todd, Harmon and Forrest didn’t do very well last issue, and with Beal on fire and holding millions of The Corporation’s dosh, Beal was keen to keep the action going. The follow up story is that the game moved from the Wynn Las Vegas to LA and that Beal agreed to go heads up to against any member of The Corporation that wanted to step into the ring. Who was that masked man? Mr. Phil Ivey, arguably the best player in the world! How did Ivey do against the billionaire mathematician? This time I’m not letting on – so have a read inside and find out who was able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But no one section of this orchestra can play louder than another. So this month, we turned up the volume across the entirety of the magazine, starting with a surprise visit to the home of Erick “E-Dog” Lindgren. Erick may be the coolest guy on the circuit, and to prove it, you can find out how the E-Dog single-handedly saved Las Vegas. You’ll also want to pay attention to an exclusive interview with Amir Vahedi, tune your trade with the Professor, and take a tip from our resident Mad Genius – all before you even consider putting this issue down and sending in your ideas.

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For Advertising Rates please call (404) 250-1798 or visit us online at www.bluffmagazine.com PUBLISHED BY BLUFF MEDIA © Bluff Media 2005. All material is strictly copyrighted, and all rights are reserved. Reproduction without permission is forbidden. Every care has been taken in compiling the contents of this magazine, but we assume no responsibility for the effects arising there from. The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the publisher. Printed in USA.

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> > > BLUFF MAGAZINE MAY 2006

CONTRIBUTORS

STARRING

JOSH ARIEH [ PAGE 76 ]

MIKE CARO [ PAGE 96 ]

ANNIE DUKE [ PAGE 64 ]

MICHAEL CRAIG [ PAGE 86 ]

KENNA JAMES [ PAGE 66 ]

PHIL LAAK [ PAGE 100 ]

ANTONIO ESFANDIARI [ PAGE 60 ]

CLONIE GOWEN [ PAGE 98 ]

EDWARD MONCADA [ PAGE 26 ]

JENNIFER TILLY [ PAGE 68]

SPECIAL GUESTS ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

HOWARD LEDERER

ERICK LINDGREN

[ PAGE 117 ]

[ PAGE 44 ]

LIZ LIEU

MICHAEL MIZRACHI

AMIR VAHEDI

[ PAGE 114 ]

[ PAGE 73 ]

[ PAGE 56 ]

www.bluffmagazine.com

Jay Busbee Jennifer Leo Jay Greenspan James Ernst Rich Ferguson Rob Huxley Mark Napolitano Carl Sampson Angel Largay Adam Small Mike Selinker Gary Wise Richard Taylor Nick Geber Dirty Wally

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c ntents MAY 2006

VOL 2 ISSUE 5

By Amy Calistri

www.bluffmagazine.com

[ THRILLS ] 14

Snapshot – The LA Poker Classic

Bird on the Rail – All the hot goss

[ FEATURES ] > > > COVER STORY

from the poker world

ESPN/Bluff Power Rankings – Who’s on fire?

Calendar – Upcoming tourneys you should know about

Bluff Poker Radio – The greatest

Erick Lindgren – Hot Diggit-

E-Dog: Meet the man who made Vegas fun again

show on earth

Dealer’s Choice – Time to put the poker on ice

Rising Star – Ed Moncada brings us the low down on Gabe Thaler and Chris McCormack

Part-time Poker Player – Meet Rich Ferguson, the man who reads minds at the table

Wise Hand of the Month – Nobody does it quite like Johnny Chan

Jay Greenspan – Jay receives

80 Hats off to Heads Up

abuse online. But what does it mean? Decoding the hapless web-heads.

– Our favorite moments from the NBC National Heads Up Championship

[ VIRTUAL FELT ] 34

Online Report – Keep up with the online scene

Gank – Manage your bankroll or face the consequences

KrazyKunuck – Even Jim Worth was a losing player once upon a time

Pokergate – Read all about it: Online poker scene rocked by scandal!y

52 Poker in the Clubhouse

– Can the ballplayers really cut it on the felt?

Beal vs. Ivey – The Endgame: Michael Craig witnesses the downfall of a Texas Banker. Can this really be the end? >>

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c ntents

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[ WISDOM ] 96

Mike Caro – The Mad Genius explodes a sacred cow, flops the second nuts against six billion opponents, and still manages to make perfect sense

Ask Clonie – Clonie Gowen soothes your poker ills

100

Being Phil Laak – The Unabomber becomes embroiled in the shadowy world of the sinister Giax Xianthoau.

66 [ PRO-SPECTIVE ] 56

PRO-file – Bluff smokes Cubans with Amir Vahedi

Poker like a Rock Star – Antonio gets drenched by a World Champion

Poker Girl – Annie tightens up

Kenna’s Korner – The Kenna James Weight Loss Program will help you lose pounds – and dollars!

Jennifer Tilly – The “trades”

104

Angel Largay – The Biggest Game in the House Principle

106

Fish Food – A crash course in Omaha Hi/Lo

111

Fish Quiz – Your monthly poker exam

112

Strange Games – Learn to play freaky poker

114

Liz Lieu – Poker’s hottest new property tests your limits

117

Full Tilt: Straight from the Pros – Lederer exposes the dangers of slowplaying

118

Chip Tricks and Card Stunts – Bamboozle your opponents with Rich Ferguson

120

Love Poker – This one ain’t for the Ladies!

114

are piling up as poker takes over

Grinding Back at the Borgata Can anyone stop Michael Mizrachi?

Thoughts from the Button – Josh Arieh scares off the blinds

Mark My Words – Mark Napolitano gives his two cents

SPECIAL CREDIT: Cover and cover story photography by Troy Plota Ivey/Beal story illustrations by Scott Padgett

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the thrill of poker > > > > > >

2006

LA Poker No-Limit Hold'em Championship

BUY-IN: $9,900

Classic

TOTAL PRIZE POOL: $6,643,200

NUMBER OF ENTRIES: 692

NUMBER OF REBUYS/AD

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Photo Courtesy of WPT

THE WINNER This is Alan Goehringâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second WPT title. Alan is now fourth on the all-time WPT money list with $3,756,593.

THE FINAL TABLE

DD-ONS: 0

PLAYER

PRIZE

1.Alan Goehring

$2,391,550

2.Daniel Quach

$1,162,560

3.Michael Woo

$571,315

4.Steve Simmons

$338,803

5.Justin Cuong Van (JC) Tran

$265,728

6.Per Ummer

$199,296

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poker skinny

Bird on the Rail

BY JEN LEO

Introducing the nosiest little bird in Sin City. Here’s all the best babble from the poker world. Just keep it to yourselves…

MansionPoker.net Pokerdome Series ansionPoker.net and Fox Sports Net have teamed up to create a “poker dome” for their 43-week series. The MansionPoker.net Pokerdome Series will feature the biggest televised poker event ever. The $60 million winner-take-all single table event will take place in Australia on July 12, 2006. But for 43 weeks, beginning May 14, all the action will be on Fremont Street at the Neonopolis. Every Saturday at 11pm to 1am (local time), a table of poker players, most of whom will have qualified on MansionPoker.net, will play to a 150-seat audience. The game will air the following night across 22 FSN owned-and-affiliated regional sports networks. What sets this series apart from all others is the technology. The poker table has an integrated automatic card-tracking system, chip-counting capabilities, and robotic cameras on each of the players’ faces. The Pokerdome will be open to members of the public who can watch the event from behind soundproof glass. Whether watching the game live or at home, all viewers will get to see the burn cards before the active cards, as well as watch the rabbit hunting cam to see how the hand would have played out. Many of the games will be played speed poker style, with themed tables to keep the series interesting.

Online Pros give the X Factor To most casual poker fans, the names “Johnny Bax” and “Sheets” don’t mean a whole lot. But in the booming subculture of online poker, these men are held in the highest esteem. Bax and Sheets (real names Cliff Josephy and Eric Haber, respectively) have decided to share the secrets that made them legends in the online poker world. Their new business, Pokerxfactor.com, launched in April. For the low, low price of $149.99, plus $25 per month, you can learn how to improve your online game with two of the industry’s best players. Disciples can submit hands for analysis, and then watch an animated sequence of how the hand played out, complete with commentary from Sheets and Bax. Free videos can be viewed on the website before you sign up.

Father’s Day Alert on’t bother with a new tie: what poker-playing dads want this year is

a day all to themselves so that they can go play poker. But if you are pressed to hand over a present, try one of these gems. The Hot Dog

Express by Emson is a rotisserie grill for indoor cooking. Perfect for any home game, it’s easy to use, and even easier to clean (www.hotdogexpress.com). You might also want to check out Highroller Fashions; they have the most stylish poker shirts on the market. Imagine Tommy Bahama mating with a deck of cards, and you’ve got the quality men’s shirts at Highroller (www.highrollerfashionsstore.com). Alternatively, get your dad ready for summer grilling with designer WPT Barbeque GrillCovers™. These waterproof barbeque covers are made of heavyweight polyester and come in three sizes to fit any grill (www.twodogdesigns.com).

BLUFF

MAY 2006

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DEAL

“BATTLESHIP POKER”

HIM IN ESPN fans will be happy to know that columnist Bill Simmons is headed for the 2006 World Series of Poker. Before you start thinking that any Tom, Dick, or Harry with an ESPN pass and $10k can just waltz into the WSOP and take over, think again. Simmons has been playing poker for six years and is humble when talking about his beginnings. His humor will be a fresh gust of air conditioning this summer, and we're currently engrossed in his new book Now I Can Die in Peace so we can become accustomed to his work.

THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE?

CINDY AND CINDY WSOP bracelet winner Cyndy Violette has taken on the task of mentoring the bold and beautiful Cindy Margolis. Recognized by Guinness Book of World Records as the “World’s Most Downloaded Woman,” Margolis is taking the poker world by storm. First she signed on as a spokesperson for the WPT social networking site, Chipleaders.com, then she started her own online poker room, Cindyspoker.com; and now she’s in development with Cyndy on a TV series called House Rules. Cindy and Cyndy plan to scour America for the best poker home game. Contestants will play for cash prizes and the chance to bring their home game to the World Series of Poker main event.

IN THE MONEY WITH THE MAGICIAN Antonio Esfandiari has a new book out. World Poker Tour: In the Money offers up strategies for winning Texas Hold’em cash games. This is the latest title in a series of books branded by the WPT, including Making the Final Table with Erick Lindgren and Shuffle Up and Deal by Mike Sexton. In other Antonio news, the Magician is the new spokesperson for Kickbutt Amped Energy Ballz. Now there’s no excuse for falling asleep at the table.

YOU SAY TOMATO, I SAY TOMAHTO

oker players who prefer to

play against live human opponents often express

disdain for the online game, complaining that the lack of opportunity to stare into their opponents’ souls reduces their edge. Fans of online poker like the pace of the game and the ability to play in multiple tables at the same time. Online site PokerStars.com may have found a way to merge both worlds. At the recent European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monte Carlo, about two dozen of poker’s finest lined up their laptops facing each other, and played the

latest

“Battleship

Poker”

Championship. Battleship Poker is a series of heads-up matches, so called because

the

players,

hunched

For anyone keeping track, the North American Poker Tour has changed its name to the International Poker Association Tour. The first event, to be called The Hollywood Park Open, will take place May 8-19 at

behind their laptops, look like they’re playing the naval warfare game. At the end of the day, it was Dutch poker sensation Noah Boeken who took the Battleship Poker Championship.

Hollywood Park Casino in Los Angeles.

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bluff power rankings

THRILLS

Having a Good 90 Days 12/18 - 3/18

Kenna James rank 7TH current Not only did Kenna cash again, but he cashed in style, placing in second the Party Poker Million for a cool $700,000.

total winnings of $762,566

RK 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

PLAYER

POINTS

John Juanda Phil Ivey Gavin Smith Michael Mizrachi Allen Cunningham Chris Ferguson Kenna James Kathy Liebert Lee Watkinson Scotty Nguyen Men ‘The Master’ Nguyen Justin Cuong Van ‘JC’ Tran Erick Lindgren Hieu Ngoc ‘Tony’ Ma Eric Seidel Lee Markholt Alan Goehring Thomas Schreiver Ted Forrest John Gale Chris Bell James Van Alstyne Young Phan Abraham Gray Barry Greenstein

845.11 730.50 672.83 610.48 607.16 578.98 573.32 561.28 504.78 493.68 487.52 467.06 462.61 453.67 452.01 445.81 443.33 423.29 410.48 399.32 397.59 390.53 388.59 386.22 373.97

26 Hung La RK PLAYER 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

311.7 POINTS

Maciek (Michael) Gracz Darrell Dicken Doyle Brunson David Singer David Williams Antonio Esfandiari Jennifer Harman-Traniello Karlo Lopez Steve Brecher Mark Cole Hasan Habib Daniel Negranu Mike ‘The Mouth’ Matusow Minh Ly Dan Harrington ‘Captain’ Tom Franklin Jeff Shulman Chip Jett Chad Brown John D’Agostino David ‘Dragon’ Pham Joe Sebok Eugene Todd Todd Brunson Amnon Filippi

363.86 362.56 353.11 350.62 350.41 344.62 341.63 335.30 335.30 335.11 325.98 324.42 314.96 314.70 311.11 310.22 307.30 301.91 300.22 298.48 296.84 296.30 294.85 288.13 284.43

*Bluff Player Rankings are based on the results of major tournaments over a trailing 24-month period. Qualifying tournaments must have a minimum $5,000 buy-in, at least 100 participants, and be a US-based tournament or non-US based WPT tournament. Tournaments occurring in the trailing 12-month period are given additional weighting. Players must finish in the money to earn points.

For Complete Power Rankings Go To www.bluffmagazine.com

www.bluffmagazine.com

michael mizrachi rank 4TH current With two big cashes in Borgata and Tunica, ‘The Grinder’ remains Bluff’s hottest player on the circuit.

total winnings of $1,739,725

Chad Brown

44TH current rank Chad has had an impressive start to 2006 with a ninth place finish in the WSOP circuit event in Tunica and a sixth place finish at the Bay 101.

total winnings of $261,522

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upcoming events

2006 WSOP Tournament Circuit Caesars Dates: April 27 - May 10, 2006 Location: Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV Information: 702-731-7110 Day

Date

Type of Event/Results

Buy-in/Entry

Fri. Fri. Sat. Sat. Sun. Sun. Sun. Mon. Mon. Tue.-Wed. Tue.

4/28 4/28 4/29 4/29 4/30 4/30 4/30 5/1 5/1 5/2-5/3 5/2

No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em Seniors H.O.S.E.

$500+$50 $200+$25 $1,000+$60 $200+$25 $200+$30 $1,500+$70 $200+$25 $1,000+$60 $200+$25 $500+$50 $5,000+$100

2006 Mirage Poker Showdown Dates: May 4 - May 17, 2006 Location: Mirage Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, NV Information: 702-791-7111

Day

Date

Type of Event/Results

Buy-in/Entry

Thurs.-Fri. Fri.-Sat. Sat.-Sun. Sun.-Mon. Sun. Mon.-Tue Tue.-Wed. Wed.-Fri. Wed. Thurs.-Fri. Sun.-Wed.

5/4-5/5 5/5-5/6 5/6-5/7 5/7-5/8 5/7 5/8-5/9 5/9-5/10 5/10-5/12 5/10 5/11-5/12 5/14-5/17

No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em Ladies No-Limit Hold’em LIPS Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em Heads-Up Day 1 Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em Championship

$500+$50 $1,000+$60 $1,500+$70 $2,000+$80 $500+$50 $500+$50 $2,500+$100 $7,500+$200 $1,000+$60 $1,500+$70 $10,000+$200

Day

Date

Type of Event/Results

Buy-in/Entry

Tue. Wed. Wed. Thurs. Thurs. Fri. Fri. Sat. Sat. Sun. Mon.-Thurs. Mon. Tue.-Wed. Tue. Wed.-Thurs. Wed. Thurs.-Fri.

5/2 5/3 5/3 5/4 5/4 5/5 5/5 5/6 5/6 5/7 5/8-5/11 5/8 5/9-5/10 5/9 5/10-5/11 5/10 5/11-5/12

No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em Pot-Limit Omaha. No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em Championship No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em No-Limit Hold’em

$200+$25 $1,000+$60 $200+$25 $1,000+$60 $200+$25 $2,000+$70 $200+$25 $2,500+$80 $200+$25 $200+$25 $10,000+$0 $200+$25 $500+$50 $200+$25 $1,000+$60 $200+$25 $1,000+$60

Harrah’s New Orleans Bayou Poker Challenge Dates: May 18 - May 28, 2006 Location: Harrah’s Hotel & Casino, New Orleans, LA Information: 504-533-6578 Day

Date

Type of Event/Results

Buy-in/Entry

Thurs. Fri. Sat. Sun. Mon. Tue. Thurs. Fri. Sat. Sun.

5/18 5/19 5/20 5/21 5/22 5/23 5/25 5/26 5/27 5/28

No-Limit Hold’em $500+$50 No-Limit Hold’em $500+$50 No-Limit Hold’em $1,000+$80 Ladies No-Limit Hold’em LIPS $200+$30 No-Limit Hold’em $500+$50 No-Limit Hold’em $500+$50 Day 1 - World Series of Poker $10,000 Day 2 - Circuit Championship Event Day 3 Day 4 - 2 p.m. ESPN Final Table Coverage

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THRILLS

bluff update BLUFF POKER RADIO NOW 2 HOURS!!

BLUFF POKER

RADIO

www.bluffmagazine.com/radio

they said it on the radio

JOSH ARIEH

GAVIN SMITH “Confidence is really important in tournaments, because it shows through to your opponents. If your opponents see that you are confident, they are going to be less willing to make moves on you, and less willing to steal your blinds. Confidence will also allow you to be the aggressor at the table and take a little bit more control of the action.”

“Right now, I'm caught between a couple of different strategies. I base my strategy on my table. If I find myself at a table of mediocre, inexperienced players, I tend to gamble a lot more in the early rounds. I try to utilize my edge over them to obtain a lot of chips so I can play a big stack. On the flip side of that, if I have a very tough opening table, I play a tight game and try to survive, so that when the table breaks, I am still in there with chips, and hopefully moving to a more profitable table. You need to be able to adjust your tournament strategy based on what your table is allowing you to do.”

GOT AN OPINION? We’d love to hear it! Tune into Bluff Poker Radio every Wednesday night from 8-10pm ET on Sirius Sports 122 or online at www.bluffmagazine.com. Email us at radio@bluffmagazine.com

DIRTY WALLY SEZ…

Yes… I’m sorry to say that I’m still alive. I was recovering from a black widow spider bite and missed last month’s deadline for Bluff Magazine, the only magazine that really tells poker like it is. Maybe a plug will get me a raise! It should have been a white widow bite, though. So Slick Nick my co-host said, ”Wally, why not talk about tells”. Well, this would take 20 pages, so instead I’m going to tell you about Dirty Wally, who, for 30 years, has been a fictitious character in various books and magazines. For the benefit of the new players, readers and listeners, I’m a real person and you’re stuck with me. I’m alive and horny and I love people, and the old time players know I’m just a character who loves to entertain and has been doing so for 60 years. I love giving bad beats in poker and life. When you’re off the table, come and say hello. Want to know about life and health? I will help. After all, I’m 86-years-old. I ran out of things to do, but I’m never told to learn. Dirty Wally. Special Note: Still looking for wife number six. Women players, I will help in your poker and your life. If I can’t, then it’s FREE!

A WORD FROM THE WISE NICK GEBER SEZ...

ST: NICK E HO GE TH B

Join Bluff Magazine’s Nick Geber and Dirty Wally for the nation’s ONLY syndicated Poker radio show! Tune in every Wednesday evening (8PM EST/5PM PDT). Bluff Poker Radio can be heard on Sports Byline USA affiliates, Sirius Satellite Radio (channel 122), the American Forces Radio Network, and via the web at: www.bluffmagazine.com/radio

We’ve been having a lot of fun on the radio show, and your calls have been the best part. We’ve focused some attention on online players and have been lucky enough to interview some of the best online talent in the game. I love playing online, but recognize that distractions and my lack of concentration cost me in the long run. The sad truth is that, online, I’m basically a fish. In the cardrooms, though, I fair slightly better and have managed to rack up a nice earnings rate at $2/$5 and $5/$10 no limit. Playing across from a real human being requires a completely different set of skills; ones that I seem better suited for. I have noticed many youthful online players finding their way to the local card rooms. They’re dressed for a WPT final table but have less skill than the octogenarians at Great Aunt Martha’s home game. Poker is about learning, observing, processing information and making informed decisions. And at a pace four to five times slower than the online tables, it’s a game of patience and observation. These aren’t exactly the core skills of your average 21-year-old player. So, my advice is twofold. First, SLOW DOWN. Look around, take it in! Analyze your opponent and play the person, not the cards. And lastly, leave your bad online chat room manners in cyberworld – you can’t hide behind screenames here! Cheers! Nick www.bluffmagazine.com

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THRILLS

a word from the Hux

Minnesota Style

itting at a bar in Central Minnesota, discussing poker with a few friends, it didn’t feel any different than a Friday at home in Vegas, except for the three feet of snow on the ground. The usual topics of big tournaments, internet accomplishments, and bad beats all surfaced over a few brewskis, but one of our subjects just couldn’t be forgotten. Jason could not get over an article he had just read in the latest Bluff: Phil Laak’s story about playing poker underwater in the Caribbean. Before we left the bar that night, Jason had decided we were going to play a little extreme poker tournament of our own. Without divulging too much of his plan, he made sure to tell us to leave Sunday afternoon open for a little EXTREME POKER, MINNESOTA STYLE. He thought it sounded like fun; I thought it sounded like the Captain and Cokes talking. Fast forward to Saturday afternoon. We ventured to a couple of the Minnesota Hold’em Tour events, which take place in bars and establishments throughout the state. The tour is a series of weekly free-to-play tournaments that awards prizes, including seats to the World Series of Poker’s $10,000 buy-in event. Even though the league’s events are free, the level of competition is about as fierce as I’ve seen. I never made it past the first table in either of the tournaments I played in, and it wasn’t for lack of trying! You would think these players are playing in the WSOP Main Event, not just qualifying to win a seat. The poker bug has sure bitten a lot people round here. After both of my early exits, I found a way to pass the time by playing with other patrons who had been knocked out of the tournament but still wanted to play. Kudos go out to Jason Bruun and Paul Trieglaff for setting up and running the Minnesota Hold’em Tour, and for giving the residents of Minnesota a place to get their poker on. Sunday rolled around, and I got a reminder call from Jason at 10:00am. Doesn’t he know in Vegas that 10:00am is my bedtime?

BLUFF

Hello once again, avid readers. This month, I have several great stories to share with you; none, however, are better than the one you are about to read. Kyle Morris has worked with me on several projects over the past few years and I asked him to share a story in this issue that I guarantee will make you laugh. Having made several cameo appearances in previous Bluff articles, Kyle will attempt to entertain you all with this tale from a place they call “L’Etoile du Nord,” or “The Star of North,” Minnesota. Until next month, may the flop be with you…always! Rob Huxley

Finally, Jason let the cat out of the bag – our extreme poker tournament, he explained, would be taking place in the middle of a frozen lake! He figured that playing poker on water had to be better than playing poker underwater. Half an hour later, wrapped in all the warm clothes we could find, we prepared to find out. As we prepped to play our “freeze out,” we loaded up the van with ice fishing buckets to sit on, a full-size poker table, cards, chips, and a sizable load of beer. (Note the absence of ice and a cooler; you don’t bring sand to the beach and you don’t bring ice to a poker game on a frozen lake!) Before we could set up our table, we had to get out to the middle of the lake, and that proved to be problematic. Our van got caught in a snow pile on the lake’s edge, and all the manpower we had couldn’t get it to budge. Getting out of our predicament didn’t take long, however; in true Minnesota style, help arrived in the form of a Jeep Cherokee and a full-size Chevy truck, both with tow ropes and hitches to get us out of hot... er… frozen water. A couple of snowmobilers also stopped to offer us advice and even more manpower. A couple tugs later, we were back on land and now we had a full game! (By the way, you wouldn’t believe the conversation we had with Onstar when we showed up on the operator’s computer screen in the middle of a lake! That show alone was worth the price of admission.) The tournament lasted a little over an hour and the boys from MN proved they can play a little poker. I got “cold decked” and was the first one out, so I was stuck playing photographer (and keeping myself warm in the car). If you are ever in the state of Minnesota and get the itch to play some poker, check out www.mnholdemtour.com and see if the league has a place to play near you. Has poker become the pastime of the State of Minnesota? You betcha! -Kyle Morris www.bluffmagazine.com

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THRILLS

Check

rising star

BY ED “BOLIVIA” MONCADA

GABRIEL THALER

n a Saturday night, about four years ago, I remember playing $100 four-handed freezeouts at Gabe Thaler’s apartment in San Jose, CA. The “crew” that night consisted of Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari, Gabe, and myself, with much of the table talk revolving around how big poker would become as a result of the recently launched WPT. Phil and Antonio went on to become WPT stars; I managed to get lucky once at the WSOP, but what happened to Gabe? You might assume that Gabe just didn’t have the talent to make the cut. If so, you’re dead wrong. Gabe chose a different route. While Phil and Antonio made a point of playing all the large tournaments for the next couple years, Gabe focused on the cash games, claiming the value just wasn’t there to solely focus on tournaments. With the help of his original mentor, a Bay Area pro named Alex Roberts (my mentor, as well), and later through the tutelage of the legendary Bobby Hoff, Gabe became one of the fiercest players in the big no-limit cash games in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. When I asked my previous “Check” profile Danny Alaei (also a recent High Stakes Poker player on GSN) which player he respected most at the tables, he didn’t mention any of the typical big names. In fact, he answered with only one name, Gabe Thaler. Recently, as result of the encouragement of Erik Seidel, Gabe has become a regular player in big buy-in tournaments, and unsurprisingly, has cashed in his last four main events. And Gabe has no plans of stopping there – he appears to be committed to playing most major events through the remainder of the year. Given his quick ascent within the world of cash game poker, I wouldn’t be surprised if his star rises even higher than any of the players from back in the $100 freezeouts.

AGE: 31 HOMETOWN: Cupertino, CA YEARS PLAYING POKER: 6 FAVORITE FORM OF POKER? NL Hold’em cash games

CHRIS MCCORMACK

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t the poker table, Chris is fearless and ultra-focused. He has the skills, and an arsenal of moves, to accumulate chips in any environment. If he gets up and leaves the table, however, you’re never too sure when you’ll see him again. This sometimes happens when young guys score big early in their poker career – they often wait until their funds get low before seriously focusing on the game again. In Chris’s case, he bubbled the Foxwood’s WPT Main Event final table in November in 2004, picking up a cool $235k in one of his first major tournament showings. This isn’t to say he didn’t play many events in the following year. Chris, in fact, played a number of events; he just didn’t play the extremely large number that your typical circuit pro plays. Even so, Chris narrowly missed a breakthrough at the 2005 WSOP, in the $1,500 No Limit Shootout. He took a bad beat for the chip lead with A-A (all in preflop), only to bubble the final table. A student in the JC Tran School of Poker, Chris has recently gotten back into the swing of things with an impressively consistent record for the events he’s played. Chris will attest that his close

MAY 2006

AGE: 26 HOMETOWN/CURRENT RESIDENCE: Long Island, NY YEARS PLAYING POKER: 3 FAVORITE FORM OF POKER? NL Hold’em tournaments friendship with JC has influenced and improved his game more than any other player. I have no doubt he will prove that in 2006. One recent and memorable conversation that I had with Chris (which, in a way, sums up his personality) was back in December during the Bellagio Five-Diamond tournaments. Me: “Hey, Chris what’s up? Have you been playing many of the tournaments?” Chris: “Nah, I need to play more… still slacking. I played two of the prelim events, though.” Me: “Oh, yeah? How’d you do?” Chris: “Oh, I got fourth in the $1,500 No Limit, and fifth in the $2,000 No Limit.” If only it were that easy…. www.bluffmagazine.com

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THRILLS

part-time player

Bluff’s chip tricks genius Rich Ferguson has led a weird and wonderful life. He’s also a pretty mean poker player. Not surprising really, as he can read people’s minds. Let’s find out about the man behind the flashy tricks.

Part Time Poker Player…

Full Time Magician Rich, tell us about your strange upbringing… My upbringing was bizarre. I grew up in Salinas, California, in a very violent situation, with drugs and police raids and things like that. I grew up living with a drug lord. It was a really unhealthy environment, and I never had any guidance whatsoever. My mom was murdered when I was about five and my dad was in jail my entire life. So I had no one. I was basically this little kid – this little street rat – who lived in a house with all this crazy violence. In a way, I was lucky to be so neglected by those people, because it meant that I wasn’t drawn into their world; I was just an observer. Luckily, the Protector Service came along when I was about twelve and put me into emergency foster care, changed my name, and relocated me to LA. And then I was lucky enough to be adopted. It’s because of my crazy upbringing that I’m a spokesperson for the children’s charity Dream for Kids. They heard about my story and asked me to get involved.

How’d you get into magic? If you ask any serious magician how he got into magic, he’ll tell you he watched an

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uncle do an amazing trick or was influenced by a great magician. But in my case, because of my upbringing, I never had a magic set; I was never bought a magic trick. In fact, I had never even seen anyone perform magic. It just happens that I’m a freakishly observant person. I’ve actually been tested and I’m completely off the chart when it comes to observational skills. They’ve never tested a person that came anywhere near my level. You see, I didn’t learn to read until I was twelve – and I think the way your mind develops as a kid – that sets up a base for everything else. From day one, all I did was sit back and watch and observe. I was always able to do things that other people couldn’t do. But I didn’t think about magic at the time. I was doing things just to amuse myself – setting up traps or taking things out of people’s pockets and saying, “Hey, here’s your wallet back.” For me it was just very easy. I saw how people worked, how they ticked; and I found it easy to manipulate that. When I was in high school, I would have a lot of people come up to me and say, “Hey, you’re that magician guy. Do a trick for me.” And I never knew why they said that, because I had never said I was magician, and

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THRILLS

RICH FERGUSON I never had any interest in magic, per se. I always thought that magic was silly and cheesy. And “magic” is such a vague word. I do interactive magic: it’s very psychological, with a lot of sleight of hand, reading people, and planting suggestions. It’s very subtle. There are no colored handkerchiefs in sight. But at school I began to accept that people saw what I was doing as “magic.” When I was about 19, my best friend got married and asked if I would walk around the tables and entertain the guests at the reception. That’s when I fell in love with entertaining and began to call myself a magician. It’s hard for some other magicians to understand. They’re like, “Well, someone must have taught you something.” I’m like, “No… I made it all up.” But now I’m very involved in the magic community. I’m a prop designer for The Pendragons and they do big stage illusions. So I’m into those big illusions, but it’s not what I like to do when I perform.

How do you apply these skills to the poker table? When I first started playing poker, I had no idea about pot odds and stuff like that, but I’m very good at estimation, and gut instinct. And I’m very good at reading people, of course, through years of studying neuro-linguistic programming, body language, hypnosis, and mentalism. I find it very easy to see through it whenever an opponent is trying to pull one over on me. So I make more decisions based on what I think my opponents are doing than on my cards or the odds. It’s a subtle gift, but I think it’s also a skill that other people can develop. If you watch the pros on TV, they have it. The performance aspect helps, too. In poker, you’re on the spot; people are watching you and they expect big things, so the pressure’s high and you learn fast. But just handling the cards with so much skill and flair is intimidating to opponents (amateurs, at least; I don’t think the pros could care less!). I’m also very good at portraying hands that I haven’t got – suggesting things to

sleight of hand is totally out of bounds. I mean, I’d trust playing with those guys far more than any frat boy (laughs). There’s a lot of honor in what we do, but I’d recognize immediately if they were trying something. To me, poker’s about the fun and camaraderie and the excitement; it’s no fun if I know I’m going to win.

What about when you’re in a casino and you get a miraculous run of cards – I mean, it does happen sometimes – do people get suspicious? That has happened on the rare occasion. I’ll hit quads and get funny looks. But I’m pretty personable and I’m also one of the most honest guys you’ll ever meet. So I think people see that. I mean, I’m like anyone: most of the time I get dealt junk. Generally, the reaction I get at the table is that they love all the chip tricks and they want to play with me because they find them entertaining. people – that’s what half my magic is about, after all. I don’t think I’m the best poker player there is, but there are certain skills I have that help me out a lot. At times, during amateur games, people muck their cards and I get a glimpse of them as they fly onto the table. I just can’t help it; I see everything. Sometimes I see the cards flying off the deck when someone’s dealing. It’s hard for me; I feel guilty and try to look away, but it’s difficult.

Tell us about these famous home games you have? We have Jonathan and Charlotte Pendragon, David Copperfield, Siegfried and Roy, Jonathan England… all these magicians stop by – it’s kind of funny.

How the hell can you trust anyone? You guys can make cards appear from nowhere. At least one of you can make the Statue of Liberty disappear…

Give our readers a tip on how to read minds at the poker table. That’s hard because it comes so naturally to me, but I would say to just trust your first gut instinct. I mean, your first instinct might be wrong if you don’t have a natural ability, so it’s hard to step out of my shoes here. I would say, trust your first feeling and then sit there and contemplate stuff, but don’t forget that first feeling. I think a lot of amateurs get thrown off by the pressure and end up doing things that they didn’t really want to do. You can also get yourself a book on the fundamentals of things like facial recognition, left brain/right brain conflict, neurolinguistic programming… There are some basic guidelines and techniques out there that help you understand how people behave and why; and once you open your mind to them, it’s a revelation.

Well, that’s the thing. We can all recognize technique. And all that manipulation and

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wise hand of the month

Johnny Chan, the Master BY GARY WISE

efore the poker boom – before the world finally clued into how great the game really is – there was Rounders. The film, starring Matt Damon and Ed Norton, introduced an element of glamour in poker to the outside world. Rounders showed poker as more than a game of luck. It spawned the internet’s early generation of online players and taught the world about the passion it didn’t yet know it had. On top of that, it taught us about Johnny Chan. When Mike McDermott watches Chan on TV, he’s watching the epitome of everything he wants to be: the true pro, the center of every poker room, the immovable object. In fact, the one time Mike actually sits with Chan, the one hand he wins becomes his driving vision, his reason for believing in his own ability. To beat Chan, even once, you just have to be that good. In total, Chan has managed to win ten WSOP bracelets in six different poker variants. His WSOP win this year over Phil Laak made him the first to achieve double digits, and he’s now tied atop the list with Doyle Brunson, who won his tenth a few days later. By Chan’s own estimates, he should actually have more. If he’d known how important bracelets were over the years, he’d have probably shown up for more World Series events, instead of chasing the side action. To call Chan a master may be an understatement. Born in Hong Kong, he moved to the States with his family in 1968. He won the World Series in 1987 and ’88, and then followed his consecutive victories with a second place finish to Phil Hellmuth in ’89. No player, before or since, has had as strong a stretch. Most notable among those who’ve been run over by the Orient Express is Erik Seidel. A graduate of New York’s now legendary Mayfair Club, Seidel’s name will be, unfortunately for him, forever associated with losing what may be the most famous hand in poker history, at the conclusion of the ’88 Series. It’s a fact that will always affect our view of one of the true greats of the game. When the ’88 final table started, Seidel was the one unknown quantity. Along with Chan, TJ Cloutier, Humberto Brenes, Ron Graham, and Jim Bechtel were all established players, making Erik a virtual afterthought. But Seidel’s aggressive approach, combined with the other players’ wariness of one another, worked to his advantage. Soon it was down to just Erik and the defending champion. With Chan holding a slight chip lead on the small blind, he limped in with J 9 to Erik’s Q 7 . The flop was perfection: Q-T-8 rainbow, giving Chan the nuts with minimal chance of an opposing flush, while Seidel had caught enough of a hand to pay him off. Looking to trap, Johnny made a nice $40k bet after Erik checked. Seidel immediately replied with a $50k check-raise. Chan just called, happy to have Erik take control of the betting. When the turn brought the brick both players were looking for, Seidel checked to see where Chan was at. Chan’s call on the checkraise suggested he had more than two cards and a dream, so Seidel

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needed to proceed with caution. Chan checked also, hoping to instill in Seidel a sense of security. When the river was another brick, Seidel was ready to make his move. With his eyes obscured by that now-famous, slightly skewed orange visor, Erik barely paused before using both hands to move his stack into the pot. Chan exploded from his chair and slapped his hand on the table before Erik’s chips had finished moving. Tournament Director Jim Albrecht watched in the background as the shell-shocked Seidel weakly raised himself from his seat and shook the champion’s hand, admitting to cameras afterwards he’d been outplayed. Did Seidel make a mistake? His raise on the flop didn’t get him all of the information he’d have liked. Chan’s call suggested he had something, but if Erik had bet more, the call would have been more meaningful. Chan’s call probably read as a lesser pair and a gutshot to Seidel, which would explain his decision to go all-in after the bricks hit the turn and river. One thing’s for sure, Chan played his man perfectly. At that moment, he was, without doubt, the best poker player in the world. While the hand's a remarkable one, it wouldn't be quite so notorious if not for the Rounders re-cap. It's interesting that protagonist Mike McDermott himself a young New Yorker recovering from a massive poker beat identifies so well with Seidel, who has become something of a Bill Buckner figure. A lesser player would have been crushed by the defeat, not to mention its cultural renaissance a decade later. That Seidel survived and thrived through those circumstances speaks volumes about him as a man. Of course, to know about Chan, you just need to look at his wrists.

Check out Gary’s website at www.wisehandpoker.com

MAY 2006

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THRILLS

greenspan

Keep Talking, Slick

ecently, I had a run of several weeks during which I was happy with neither my profit nor my play. I talked with some friends and all had the same advice: drop down, play a lower limit, and tweak your game. I agreed it was a good idea. Prior to dropping down, I had been playing in short-handed high-stakes games (high-stakes for me, anyway) and some of the players were quite good. I found that, in order to beat those games, I had to really mix up my play. I had to be willing to play the top, middle, and bottom of the deck and make some tough calls. Successful bluffs often required large bets on multiple streets. When I dropped down, reads were far, far easier, as the players were wonderfully predictable. I was destroying the weaker competition. The most interesting part of the experience was seeing how these decent, intermediate players reacted to me. In chat windows they wrote all kinds of amazing things. They called me a donkey or a fish – usually after I took their money. At times, though, their insults got more specific. As they enumerated my shortcomings in chat windows, they provided me with detailed blueprints of their games. They told me how I could beat them. What follows are some of the quips opponents typed in chat windows of various mid-stakes games I played in. I’ve also included my interpretation of their laments.

HE SAID

I HEARD

"You are horrible."

"I have no idea what you're doing. I have a limited imagination and a meager intellect. These deficits keep me from analyzing your play in a critical and thorough manner."

"Keep playing that crap and

"I'll keep treating ace-king like it's the immor-

I will bust you."

tal nuts, even after you make your straight. I really don't know what else to do."

"Go read a book."

"I religiously apply my book learnin'."

"I will bust you."

"I am tilting."

"How could you call that bet?" [rev.1]

"My bluffs are ridiculously obvious."

"How could you call that bet?" [rev. 2]

"I will continue to pay off like a slot machine when you hit."

"How could you call that bet? [rev. 3] "You raise with that?"

"I'm tilting my head off." "Stop confusing me. I'm very confused and am developing a headache."

"I will wait you out."

"Keep whittling away at my stack. I'll fight back when I have the nuts. When I move in, you'll call me… right? I mean… please?"

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"I can't find a hand."

"I can't play without a hand."

"You suck." [rev 1.]

"I'm gonna cry."

"You suck." [rev 2.]

"Please leave."

"You suck." [rev. 3]

"Now I'm crying. Are you proud of yourself?"

"Let's play heads up!"

"I'd like to give you my money!"

"F*** you"

"F*** you."

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online report

OnlineReport The PocketFives.com player rankings are compiled based on a number of criteria, the most important of which being that the top ranked players must be consistently playing and succeeding in the biggest online tournaments. Top players’ opinions are regularly sought on who the best players are, but the main source of information is the rigorous observation of tournaments on a daily basis by the PocketFives staff. Rankings are updated weekly to reflect recent results, but the players at or near the top have all been proving their abilities over a longer period of time.

Barely Legal!

wo of the hottest players online right now are Ozzy 87 (Aurangzeb Sheikh) and ActionJeff (Jeff Garza), both ranked in the top 20 of PocketFives.com’s tournament player rankings. The significance of these two players is that they are both just 18 years old. Ozzy already has a WPT final table under his belt (Bahamas), and Jeff just made $10k for fifth place in the main event at Turning Stone, and these guys can barely play any live events until they turn 21! In addition to his initial live success, Ozzy has made hundreds of thousands of dollars online in the past year. He recently won the Grand ($1,000 buy in) Tournament on PokerRoom, which had a first prize of more than $160k! He’s also had a lot of success in the biggest cash games, including the $50/$100 No Limit game. Jeff has had nearly as much success, including a winning record in $5k heads-up matches and the $50/$100 No Limit. He has twice won tournaments for a first prize of at least $50k, and he makes a five-figure score about once a week. These guys are the future of poker, so keep an eye on them! We’ve talked about him a lot in recent issues, but it’s worthy of

mention that Ari (also known as BodogAri) has made his way up to the top five in the PocketFives.com tournament player rankings. He won the Bodog Tournament Leaderboard in 2005, but his true ability showed when he started playing on all of the sites. Hardly a week goes by in which he doesn’t win at least a couple tournaments. Some other big movers in the rankings have been Rizen, B_O_K_E, and mattg1983. The first two have been flat out dominant in the Sunday major tournaments, each winning big prizes on a regular basis. Just two weeks ago, Rizen won over $40k on Empire Poker. Meanwhile, mattg1983 has been terrorizing opponents in just about every tournament he can find. He recently had a big score in a major, taking eighth in the PokerStars Million Dollar Guaranteed, out of nearly 6,000 entrants. And while on the subject of that tournament, I think it’s important to note that PokerStars is now offering this guarantee every week in its $200 Sunday tournament. PokerStars is the first online site to have a weekly tournament this big, and we hope more follow suit! Good luck, everyone. Adam Small

ONLINE PLAYERS TO WATCH AcesFull23 – Bryan Bevis in real life, he has had quite a few impressive results in live tournaments, but he truly excels online. Twice in the past month he has finished in the top two of a “Super” Weekday tournament on PartyPoker, each of which had a prize pool of more than $100k. G6Dragon – Jon Lane, a dominant online tournament player, who finished in the top 100 of the 2005 WSOP Main Event. He is one of the best at getting through the toughest fields on PokerStars.

Green Plastic – Taylor Caby is a senior at the University of Illinois, who plays the biggest NL cash game online ($50/$100 blinds). He is one of the most feared and successful players in this game, which many consider to be one of the toughest in the world.

HighRoller48 – William Hill won the Ultimate Bet Ultimate Poker Challenge in 2005, taking $200k. He’s also known online as madhattter, and he has won many large tournaments in the past. His primary focus now is cash games.

Haligon – Josh Ewing, known as a player with the ability to amass a huge stack of chips in a tournament, often jumping way out in front of the field. He’s putting up some impressive live results as well.

Hoss_TBF – Matt Hawrilenko has taken down some huge prizes in the Sunday online tournaments, the biggest of the week. Many consider his play to be “crazy,” but he has a style that works and often gets him a very large stack of chips. www.bluffmagazine.com

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Increase Your Net Worth

BY TAYLOR CABBY

ver the past few years, we have become fascinated by highly successful poker players. Until recently, this fascination was strictly held for players competing in televised poker events. Last year, however, with the launch of Pocketfives.com, a forum was created to rank and discuss the top multi-table tournament players on the internet. But what about online cash games? As a player who has built my bankroll almost exclusively from cash games, I’m happy to share with you a little about my poker experience playing the biggest no-limit cash games on the internet. Over the past three years, I have worked hard to become one of the best cash game players online. When I was moving up in stakes, I was always more focused on becoming a better player than I was on winning money. I knew that with a strong focus to detail and smart play, the money would eventually follow. Within a year and a half of my first deposit ($35) to an online poker room, I was playing against some of the toughest players in the world for buy-ins as much as $10,000. People ask me all the time, “What’s it like playing for tens of thousands of dollars every day?” The answer that comes to mind right away is that it isn’t easy. I know of many players who just could not deal with swings (which can be up or down $100k in a month) and had to quit the game. When I’m playing, I don’t really keep track of how I’m doing, although I usually have a pretty good idea of where I stand. At the end of the day, I will assess my play and record my results. During the good times, things are extremely easy. It’s an indescribable feeling to sit down and play poker for a few hours on my computer and make $30,000. After the bad days, however, I’ll focus on doing non-poker related things to keep my mind off the game. If need be, I will take an extended period of time away from poker. Today I’d like to give a few pointers to the aspiring cash game

player. To some, these may seem like basic tips, but they are necessary for anyone trying to build his or her way up to the top. Don’t play over your bankroll. This is the number one mistake most online players make. You should have at least twenty buy-ins for No Limit cash games and twenty-five buy-ins for tournaments. Never underestimate the importance of position at the poker table, especially in a cash game. It is much more advantageous to act last in a hand because you can see what plays your opponents are making. You should play a bit more aggressively on the button and in late position, but should not worry about defending your blinds with hands such as A-6 or K-10. In cash games, players can play a wider variety of hands because the blinds to stack size ratio is small. You can play small to medium pairs and suited connectors aggressively from late position if there is no one else in the pot. If you flop three of a kind or a very strong draw (a flush and straight draw, for example) you should bet your hand very strongly. Even if you miss your draw, your opponents will take notice, and the next time you have a big pair you are much more likely to get action if you use the same betting pattern. To close, I’d like to encourage new internet poker players to try their hand at the cash games. Although tournament poker is extremely popular, most experienced poker players know there is much more money to be made in the cash games. So unless you plan on winning the 2006 WSOP (good luck), I recommend you think about practicing your cash game play in order to maximize your poker profit. Taylor Caby is a 22-year-old student at the University of Illinois. He is co-founder of the instructional poker school CardRunners.com. Visit CardRunners.com for poker videos, articles, and instruction from some of the best young internet poker players in the world.

BE SURE TO CHECK KrazyKanuck – Jim Worth is a professional poker player, the player ambassador for Ultimate Bet, and a columnist for Bluff Magazine. He’s one of the most successful long time online players. Mahatma – Prahlad Friedman’s live reputation is starting to catch up with the one he has online. He’s perhaps the most feared player in the biggest No Limit cash games, and often attracts hundreds of observers when he plays. His other online aliases include Prefontaine and Spirit Rock.

Spencerman – One of the most consistent players on Paradise Poker, and the net in general. He only plays a few tournaments a week, but he makes them count. At one point in 2005, he won the $100k guaranteed and the $50k guaranteed in the same 24-hour period.

This month’s Mike Caro column, The Flawed Concept of Thinning the Field, on page 96.

YngmanN4Quiki – Mike Postle hails from Tunica Mississippi and has been a winner online for more than five years. These days he can mainly be found in cash games on Bodog and Ultimate Bet, and is one of the most popular players in the online community.

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gank

Managing a

l l r k n a B BY GANK

oker is about money, and money is the tool that we use to play this game. The more money we have to play poker with, the more options we have to approach the game. As with any skill, practice and commitment will make you better, but a deeper understanding of the game is needed to appreciate proper bankroll management. Every time you sit down to play a game, you are either managing your bankroll correctly, or mismanaging it and leaving yourself open to some unforeseen results. The main focus on bankroll management is that you should never risk a significant portion (5 to 10%) of your current bankroll in any one game. This means that if I have a bankroll of about 50k, it would be foolish of me to risk any more then $2,500 to $5,000 in one session. This is also a good way of dealing with the emotional swings of poker: if you lose your 10%, it’s time to call it a night. For you No Limit and Pot Limit Hold’em or Omaha players out there, here’s something else to consider: You sit down at a No Limit game with the proper 5% of your bankroll – say it’s $100, with your full bankroll being $2,000. You go on a nice run, and end up taking down a $600

pot after a few hours of play. Now you are feeling great about your play, and since you are only in the game for $100, it’s hard to find a reason to leave, but I will give you one. If you realize that the $600 pot you took down now represents 24% of your bankroll ($600/ $2,500), then you must also realize you are risking too much on what could potentially be one hand of play. There’s nothing wrong with getting up from a game and sitting back down in another one with your initial $100; but it would be a very big mistake to continue playing on your $600 stack. So that’s what bankroll management’s about, but how do you go about building a bankroll in the first place? Slowly! One mistake I see from players of all ages is that they try to make poker a faster game than it is. They want to be the best, rifling through different limits as their bankroll fluctuates, but almost always, they end back at square $0. Poker is a game of variance, and to be able to deal with these normal swings we must focus on our management of our money; one thing we have complete control of. Another thing I want to point out is that if you have an income outside of poker, you may approach bankroll management in a different way, as you are able to add to your bankroll if variance goes south, in contrast with a fulltime poker player, who will only recoup lost money through winning sessions. So take it slow; enjoy this wonderful game of logic, math, and psychology, and it will be easier to avoid the negative effects of losing all of your poker money! Brett “gank” Jungblut

Check out Gank at propokerschool.com

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VIRTUAL FELT

krazykanuck

Fast Tracking The Learning Curve BY KRAZYKANUCK

’ve played poker now for approximately 13 years. I started playing online poker roughly six years ago, after I walked into a business client’s office and noticed he was playing a poker game on his computer. Being someone who loved the game and played it live regularly, I was naturally interested, and asked him about the software he was using. I thought at the time that he was just playing an online game of poker against the computer, like Hoyle’s Texas Hold’em. I had no idea that he was playing interactively with other players from around the world, let alone for real money. If you are going When he explained it wasn’t just a “video game,” I was so excited about the prospect of to play online, you had you know are of a certain value and making a playing online from home, rather than in the bet in live play carries weight to it. Clicking a better take what you are smoke-filled poker rooms in Calgary, that I mouse button can become all too easy, and ended my day early and rushed home to you can easily forget the importance of each doing seriously, because download the poker site. I promptly deposited bet you make. It’s scary how you can be sit$500 into my real money account and proyou can bleed through ting at your computer and it feels just like a ceeded to turn that into roughly $2,500 within video game: Call, call, call, raise, chase, chase your bankroll so fast a short period of time. I thought I had died and again, and you keep on doing it. gone to poker heaven. So if you are going to play online, you had it will make your Within a couple of weeks, however, I was down better take what you are doing seriously, because over $10,000 and realized that, obviously, internet head spin. you can bleed through your bankroll so fast it will poker was rigged. I mean, what else could be the reamake your head spin. You need to learn discipline. son for my sudden loss? I continued to play, despite knowMinimize distractions and get yourself into an environing in my heart that it was fixed, figuring I was good enough to ment that helps you to concentrate on the game. It’s all too easy beat the game anyway. After losing and losing and complaining about to play from home with the TV on, stereo blaring, kids running around, “the cash out curse” and all the other things that players choose to and your spouse yelling at you to take out the garbage. If you are playblame for their losses online, I finally went back to complain to the ing to win, you need to isolate yourself from as many distractions as guy who had originally introduced me to the site. you can. I’m not saying you should shut out your life completely to play After he stopped laughing at me, he showed me his track record online poker. It’s just that trying to play your A-game and balancing over the previous few months. Then he made a comment that really other distractions around you is damn near impossible. Little distracstuck with me: “Jim,” he said, “maybe you aren’t as good a player as tions affect your decisions and that costs you money. The accumulative you think you are.” effect of many bad decisions over time can be very expensive. Maybe, he suggested, the tilt factor, the speed of play, the number The reality is that online poker can make you a better player much of hands seen, and all the other reasons that make internet poker difquicker than playing live can. The simple speed of internet play will ferent from brick and mortar poker were making me lose. After realeither force you to get better faster or blow through your bankroll at izing that almost all of the blame rested on my own shoulders, I went lightning speed. If you realize early that the key to improving your home with the knowledge that I had to learn how to play better and results rests fully on your own shoulders, rather than believing that adjust. Lesson number one was learned. Internet poker is not rigged; the sites rig the flops, then you are on your way to much better play it just forces you to evaluate your own game, make adjustments and and greater financial reward. become a better player. Knock ’em dead, There are so many factors that can turn a winning live player into a James “KrazyKanuck” Worth losing online player. The simple fact that you are betting with your mouse button can make it all seem less real. Picking up real chips that You can play with Krazy Kanuck at Ulitmate.com

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“

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VIRTUAL FELT

cheating

Pokergate Inside look at the recent online

BY ADAM SMALL

n February 12th, 2006, a player known online as JJProdigy, ranked at the time on PocketFives.com as one of the top five players on the internet, won the $500k Guaranteed tournament on PartyPoker. He won it playing on a different account than usual, an account called “ABlackCar.” This wouldn’t normally be a big deal, as players often switch names online to maintain anonymity. The problem was that the JJProdigy account was also entered in the tournament, and it had finished around 2,000th place. Since the very beginning, the same concerns about online poker have constantly resurfaced and they can generally be summed up with a simple question: Is this safe? While the old myth that online poker is “rigged” will never quite disappear for good, many of the safety concerns people have are legitimate issues that constantly need to be addressed by the gaming sites. Various forms of cheating have surfaced from time to time in online poker. In order to stop any unfair activity by a player, a site must, first, become aware of it, then devise a solution to the problem and follow through on it. Recently, PartyPoker became the first site to take action against perpetrators of a form of cheating that had previously not been addressed, at least publicly: multiaccounting. The idea of multi-accounting is simple. A player enters a multitable tournament with more than one account (either on the same computer or multiple computers), and thereby has multiple chances to win that tournament. It seems that a number of top players had been doing this in the biggest tournaments, although evidence shows that multi-accounting was occasionally seen in some of the smaller fields as well. The intention of the multi-account player is, obviously, to have more chances to win the big prize, but the threat exists that two accounts, operated by the same player, could be seated at the same table. In this instance, one player would be aware of two different sets of hole cards at that table and could potentially dump chips from one of their accounts to another. JJProdigy was “outed” by a friend of his on the PocketFives.com forum. The exposure was unintentional – he and his friend did not realize what an enormous storm this would cause in the world of online poker. The friend simply wanted to congratulate him on winning the tournament,

cheating scandal

which paid a first prize of $140k. It was, in fact, known and accepted among many of the top players that multi-accounting was common; and many of them had no problem with it. Others had a big problem with it, however, and many made their voices heard. David Cossio and Brett Jungblut were two who stood out. Jungblut, known online as “Gank,” is a World Series of Poker bracelet winner, former member of “The Crew,” and a Bluff columnist. As a highly respected voice in the online poker community, he made his feelings clear on this issue – that these players were ruining the game. They were selfishly giving themselves a higher chance of a big score, while hurting the chances of the many low limit players and their dreams of winning a big tournament. Cossio, known online as “sirio11,” is another highly regarded player in both online and live tournaments. His was, perhaps, the loudest voice of dissent. He warned that multi-accounting had the potential to completely ruin online tournament poker. The likelihood that a player could be seated at one table with two or more accounts was too great. The practice, he said, had to stop. A few days after JJProdigy’s win, PartyPoker announced that they were seizing all funds in both of his accounts. The $140k was to be redistributed to the players that had competed in the tournament, moving each player up one spot in the money. His other money on PartyPoker was seized, too – about $40k. Both accounts, JJProdigy and ABlackCar, were terminated. The other poker sites did not waste any time, and soon, JJProdigy’s accounts on Full Tilt, UltimateBet, and PokerStars had also been closed. He had gone, in one week’s time, from being one of the biggest stars in the game to being banished from the online community. It was clear that the gaming sites were making a point: If you give yourself any sort of unfair advantage in our game, you will be punished severely. Just as the controversy was dying down, it was pushed back into the spotlight on February 24th. Another player had

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cheating

been caught, and this time, he was not carelessly exposed in a forum; he had been tracked down by a PartyPoker audit. And it was an even bigger name than JJProdigy. Justin Bonomo, known online as “ZeeJustin,” posted an email he had received from PartyPoker, along with his own statement about what was going on. The email stated that PartyPoker had discovered that Bonomo was using six different accounts in the same tournament on a regular basis. They had seized all of his funds from the six accounts, which totaled nearly $100k. PokerStars also closed his account. Bonomo, a popular blogger and the fourth place finisher in a European Poker Tour event in 2005, admitted in his statement that he had done some unethical things. He confessed that he had been at the same table as himself, and implied that it had happened on several occasions. He wanted to make it clear that he never chip-dumped between his accounts, and the evidence seemed to corroborate this. He also said that he had attempted to negate his edge by opening several more sit-n-go tournaments in the instances where he had multiple accounts at the same table, so that he would not be able to focus as much on the table where he had the two accounts. Despite his efforts to “negate his edge,” it’s hard to argue against the fact that some edge will still exist. If nothing else, there is the situation where both accounts have a legitimate hand, and end up playing their hands against each other. If the action is any different than it would be between two players who don’t know each other’s cards (and I don’t see how it couldn’t be), then the integrity of the game has been compromised. It’s clear that while Justin may have been attempting to be as ethical as he could in these situations, entering a tournament under two or more accounts is a problem in itself, and a player having two different accounts at the same table is just one of the problems it leads to. Both JJProdigy and ZeeJustin have more or less been ousted from the online community, and their support bases have diminished significantly since the start of the controversy. Early on, there were a lot of people who spoke out in their defense, using a number of justifications, such as the ones below, for what had been done: A lot of players do this – This is an easy one to put down. The fact that a practice is prevalent does not make it ethical. In fact, this case just showed that it was an even bigger problem than people initially thought. Players were only doing it in huge tournaments (with thousands of players), where it was very unlikely that they’d end up with two

accounts at the same table – First off, this wasn’t true. ZeeJustin claimed to only multi-account in tournaments with over 1,000 players, but JJProdigy was shown to have done it in smaller tournaments, too. It is yet to be determined how often this was happening and in what size tournaments. Also, ZeeJustin admitted to being at the same table with another of his accounts. Multi-accounting does not give players an edge – This is technically true as long as they aren’t at the same table with multiple accounts. A player is simply paying twice to have two chances to win a tournament. The player still has to be a winning player to make this a profitable thing to do. However, this doesn’t make the practice any more ethical, and while it doesn’t usually give the player a huge edge, it does make it even harder for the smaller players to have a chance to win. As I’m sure you can imagine, having six accounts in play for every superstar would make the field drastically tougher for everyone else. Both players have now been removed from their listing as top players on PocketFives.com, which we hope makes the point that there is an ethical component to “greatness.” While there is little doubt that JJProdigy and ZeeJustin possess extreme talent at the poker table, their actions posed a major threat to the game we all love, and they needed to be stopped. The poker sites made a big stride in February towards assuring their customers of the “safe and secure” environment that they often tout in commercials. Multi-accounting has likely been completely stopped, or at least slowed to the point where its effects are negligible; and players are now aware that PartyPoker and other sites are continually hunting out and punishing those who break the rules. When other forms of cheating arise, we can all count on the sites’ dedication to weeding them out, thus maintaining a level playing field where we can all enjoy a fair game from the comfort of our homes.

Justin Bonomo, known online as “ZeeJustin <<

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Erick “E-Dog” Lindgren is one of the most prolific tournament players on the circuit. Bluff recently managed to pry him away from the poker table long enough to get the low-down on poker’s most likeable man.

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rick, tell us about your life before you were a professional player?

I was just a small town guy that played sports his whole life – basketball, football, baseball – every game possible. I went on to college to try to play basketball seriously, but I wasn’t good enough; there were physical limitations, so I… er… wound up in a casino. I started playing the $3/$6 Hold’em game right away and was winning pretty good, so obviously I was intrigued and I took it very seriously from the beginning.

were some incredible players that propped there; they took my game to the next level. And then moving to Las Vegas and becoming friends with guys like Daniel Negreanu (Laughs) – that helps a lot.

Was it the frustration at not making it in basketball that fired your ambition on the felt?

And previously to that, you hadn’t played poker seriously?

To become very good at poker – or anything – you have to become borderline obsessed with it. I’d played basketball every day from the age of four to eighteen, but when it didn’t work out, I had to move on, and poker filled the gap. I’m the same about poker as I was about basketball. I play it all the time.

I’d played games around the house, growing up with friends, but age-nineteen was the first time I played Hold’em.

What was it about the life of a gambler that particularly attracted you?

In a game that values experience so highly, you became pretty damn good pretty quickly… Well, I always had a close circle of friends around me that took the game seriously, so they helped me out. Then I took a prop job in the Casino San Pablo and there

I think it was about using my head to make money. I liked that idea a lot. My dad owned some tire shops, and he worked really hard and had a really bad back. He worked so hard and I always knew that I’d rather use my head to make money.

So what’s the crappest job you

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ever had? The crappest job I ever had was dealing blackjack when I was nineteen. (Laughs) Come to think of it, that’s about all I’ve done apart from playing poker. I shovelled snow off rooftops in high school. That sucked.

Where does your nickname, E-Dog, come from? Back when I was propping in San Pablo, this guy would said to me, “You got me this time, you dog!” And it became E-Dog and that’s what people would call me. Then when online poker got going I used that name…

You’ve had a lot of success online haven’t you? I certainly used to. That’s where I started earning a ton of money, back in 1998. Once I’d discovered internet poker, pretty soon I had three computers going and was playing up to eight games at once.

What was the online poker scene like back then? Those were the real early days…

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I was playing every $15/$20 and $30$40 I could at Paradise, I was playing a $20/$40 game at Planet Poker, and also at Poker.com, which is defunct now.

the game better because information is so easy to come by. Even sitting on your couch watching ESPN and seeing the graphic with the percentages on a draw – it all sinks in.

Were there enough players? Did you have to wait aeons for a game?

What makes a good online player?

You could always get a game. Paradise actually got pretty busy and created a critical mass very quickly. Their software was so much better than everyone else’s. But you could always get a good game at Planet and Poker.com, too. The games back then were just silly. The public’s knowledge of poker has grown so much since then because of the TV and internet and all the books available. Back then, nobody new anything and they were just terrible. I saw a guy lose $10,000 at $20/$40 in a couple of hours! It was laughable.

People say that the poker boom has created a lot of soft competition. Are you telling us they were even worse in ’98? Well, there are a lot of beginners around now, but they’re smarter, better-informed beginners than they were back then. Average players today are better than the average players of the past, and so on. Everyone’s playing

A good online player has got to be superaggressive, because there are fewer tells on whether you’re bluffing or not. So it’s an opportunity to be borderline wild. It’s a different game, but if you’re super-aggressive you can win some money.

You’ve had a lot of tournament success. Which one meant the most? I think the first one in Aruba was the most important, just because it was a breakthrough. It got my name out there, and that allowed me to get involved with FullTiltPoker.com and to start building a career.

What’s your goal for this year? It’s hard to say. The landscape is changing so quickly. Who knows what new tours are going to start… but I just want to be recognized as one of the top tournament players. I’m also looking to throw my hat in the ring and play the Big Game at the Bellagio later this year.

Will it be your first time? I’ve played up to $1,500/3,000, but I’ve yet to play the $4,000/$8,000 game.

Who, if anyone, do you fear at the table? I wouldn’t say that I fear anyone. I certainly respect guys like Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, John Juanda, Doyle Brunson… You’re rarely going to gain an edge against them. It just comes down to who has position on whom. There’s not a lot you can do to outplay them. But it’s certainly a challenge.

How would you describe your style of play? I play with a tempo that just keeps changing. I try to play fast for a while and then maybe I’ll reverse it. I just try to get on the next level – try to see what my opponents are thinking. So it’s an aggressive style that’s always adaptable.

What personal qualities do you have that make you a good player? I’m just a people-person. I’m good at talking with people and I’m a good judge of character. Even if I’ve never met a guy before, I believe I can tell a lot about him

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before he’s even opened his mouth.

What kind of movies do you like to watch on the big screen?

Wow. You’ve got us worried now… So you play a psychological game more than a purely mathematical one?

My favorite movie of all time is Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I love the British sense of humor. The best movie I saw this year was Wedding Crashers – man, that was funny.

Yeah. I mean the math is important, but it’s pretty basic. Being a brilliant mathematician won’t give you much of an edge…

Were you good at math at school?

What’s your biggest extravagance?

I was excellent at…er… basic math (laughs). I don’t like to do problems that take a whole page…

Probably the money I spend on my friends when we go out and have fun. I don’t go to crazy with money. I need that money to gamble with.

What do you do when you’re not playing poker?

Protect your bankroll. Very wise.

Anything to get me off my butt, basically… basketball, golf… There are so many good places to eat in Vegas, so I eat out a lot. I like the Shintaro at the Bellagio, but there are tons of options.

We hear you have the ultimate bachelor pad… It’s pretty sweet – if you’re a guy and a sports fan! I’ve got six 42” plasmas on the walls and a 65” big screen up front, and I’ve got my dual monitors there. So there’s a lot of entertainment value.

That depends on what you’re gambling on (laughs).

OK, so what’s the stupidest bet you’ve ever made? The dumbest one I’ve made in a while is that I’ll be able to slam-dunk a basketball in the next four months. I bet $50,000 on that and right now I’m in a lot of trouble.

What’s the longest period you’ve played poker for without a break? I think I played for 30 hours once. You start seeing things after a while (laughs).

What’s the most amusing thing you’ve ever seen happen at the poker table? I saw a guy lean back out of his chair, fall, do a backward somersault and pop up like a shadow boxer. That was quite special. But I haven’t seen anything too funny lately, believe me (laughs).

What’s the greatest bluff you ever made in life? Telling my parents I was still at school for the first year I was playing poker. They didn’t find out that I had quit for a whole year. They weren’t too happy when they figured out I’d been running that bluff.

Are they happy now? Yup, they’re pretty happy now (laughs).

Any advice for these young pups starting off in poker? Try to maintain an even keel; that’s so important. Whether you’re winning or losing, don’t get too high or too low. That way you’re going to be a lot better off. You can play poker against Erick at FullTiltPoker.com.

LUCKY LINDY ... • BEST OF FRIENDS: DANIEL NEGREANU, ON ERICK “This story highlights Erick’s positive energy: When he told me that he was moving to Las Vegas, I mentioned that nobody does anything together in Vegas. There is no community vibe; everybody does their own thing and no one gets together. He just wouldn't believe it. Miraculously, when Erick moved here he changed all that. He loves to have fun and he has the kind of personality that people flock to. He's the guy that never says no to a good time. Within days of Erick moving to town, people were getting together every night. He added almost a college atmosphere to a town that felt as though it was dying – at least from a local’s perspective.”

ERICK, ON PHIL HELLMUTH “So, both Phil and I busted out of an event in Atlantic City, and Phil says to me ‘Hey E-Dog, why don’t we rent a limo and drive into New York City for the night?’ I like Phil a lot; we get along

pretty well, so I say, sure. So we are in the limo, drinking Phil’s drink of choice, Dom Perignon, and Phil says ‘You know E-Dog, that’s what I like about you: you are spontaneous and don’t mind just doing something on a whim.’ He then sits and thinks for a while, and finally says, ‘EDog, YOU are in a limo with Phil Hellmuth!’ He was so serious; I couldn’t help but double over in laughter.”

• ERICK, ON HIS HOUSE: “You think this is cool? Wait till you see the house I’m building. It’ll have an indoor basketball court overlooking the city. It will have more TVs, which will be bigger and better. And the seats! If I could, I would have them pop their own popcorn.”

• The Burning Question: COURTNEY FRIEL OR SHANA HIATT? “Don’t get me wrong, I like Courtney, but definitely Shana Hiatt.” www.bluffmagazine.com

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BY JAY BUSBEE

Pity the poor baseball players. When theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not basking in the cheers of thousands, making selections from the sports groupie buffet, strolling the grounds of their mansions, or cashing seven-figure checks, what do they get to do? Play cards. Sometimes, life just ainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fair.

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or as long as there’s been baseball, there have been card games in the clubhouse. Ballplayers live lives of peaks and valleys, the exhilaration of the game bookended by hours of stupefying boredom. And since ballplayers thrive on competition, there’s always somebody willing to throw some paint and aces and take a bite out of someone else’s salary. Every clubhouse in baseball has a house game or two. The Braves, for instance, play bourree; the Red Sox favor cribbage, spades, and hearts. The Philadelphia Phillies – most notably pitcher Cory Lidle and catcher Mike Lieberthal – drill Hold‘em into the skulls of their teammates with the speed and velocity of a Randy Johnson heater. “When I was with the Phillies, we’d play games all the time,” says catcher Shawn Wooten, now with the Minnesota Twins. “On the road, during rain delays – whenever we could – somebody’d have the cards out. The Phillies had more card players than any team I’ve ever seen.” And when the teams hit the road, they take their cards with them. In the days of Ruth and Gehrig, ballplayers would travel by train, sharing drinks and smokes with sportswriters; these days, it’s charter planes all the way, which presents some interesting challenges for the dedicated card player: “Playing Hold’em on a plane is hard, so we’d have to rig up this whole system,” says the Red Sox’ Gabe Kapler. “We’d keep our chips in cups, and use a blanket for a pot. It’s tough to explain, but it works fine.” The road also offers ballplayers a chance to hit the casinos popping up all around the country. Players’ favored casinos include The Borgata in Atlantic City, Canterbury Park outside Minneapolis, and the Commerce and Hustler casinos in LA. But unless they’ve got a rehab assignment in – or a demotion to – the Pacific Coast League, home of the triple-A Las Vegas 51s, they’re not getting within two hundred miles of Sin City. But hey, that’s why there’s an offseason, right? Baseball players aren’t any more immune to trends than the rest of us; in the clubhouse before games, they’re more likely to have WSOP reruns on the tube than tapes of that night’s opponent. And as poker soars in popularity, more and more ballplayers are pulling up seats at the table – which is starting to raise some concern around Major League front offices. “No games after BP [batting practice]; that’s the rule,” says the Atlanta Braves’ Jeff Francoeur. “We’ll play anything before then, but we’ve got to put the cards away before game time.” “We tried to play [Hold’em tournaments] in the

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clubhouse, but the team nixed that,” says the Phillies’ Randy Wolf. The team brass isn’t just playing the role of your stick-in-the-mud wife or girlfriend, wondering why you never have money to take her out but always have coin for the weekly game. As anyone who’s ever scarfed up some chump’s rent in a single hand knows, some players just can’t walk away from the table. If you’re an account exec showing up late to work after a Thursday night house game, that’s one thing; but if you’re an outfielder pulling down ten mil a year, well – it’s no surprise that some clubs take a dim view of the “casual” clubhouse game. The Cincinnati Reds wouldn’t even permit their players to comment for this story – something about the lingering stink from a guy named Rose, and all that. In recent years, card players have given the game its share of black eyes. When the Braves were eliminating the New York Mets in the sixth game of the 1999 National League Championship Series, Mets’ Rickey Henderson and Bobby Bonilla allegedly counted down the moments to the offseason by playing poker in the visitors’ clubhouse. And Alex Rodriguez got a stern talking-to from the Yankees last year when he was caught channeling his inner Matt Damon, trolling underground poker tournaments in New York City with Phil Hellmuth. “As long as it’s casual, most teams aren’t going to have a problem with [cardplaying],” Wooten says. “There’s always a lot going on in the clubhouse during downtime. As long as it doesn’t get too serious, the teams are cool with it.” Stakes vary depending on the game and the players involved. The Phillies set up $100 buy-ins; Red Sox games run about $200. And while there’s always rookie hazing, it doesn’t necessarily translate to the table: “Everybody’s money’s good in the clubhouse,” Wooten laughs. “You may not be able to put as many chips on the table in a cash game, but we’ll welcome anybody.” Still, there is protocol. “In most games, you’ve got to be invited in,” Kapler says. “You can’t just show up and expect to sit down and play.” The Yankees’ Jason Giambi remembers taking baby steps into the higher-stakes games of his former A’s teammates. “Me and a couple other younger guys would buy in together, and we’d play together,” he laughs. “We didn’t have that kind of glue back then to play with those guys.” And if they did get into the game, they generally didn’t hang around for long. “Rickey Henderson was one of best poker players I’d ever met,” recalls Giambi of his days with the Oakland A’s. “He used to take Ruben Sierra’s money all the time. That was fun to watch, all those guys all pissed off leaving the plane.” >

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So now you’re thinking, sure, these guys can hit balls over buildings, but can they really play poker? These days, you’ve got the chance to find out, thanks to the ever-growing number of tournaments frequented by – and, in some cases, sponsored by – ballplayers. Since these aren’t cash games, you don’t have to worry about getting shortstacked, even with your annual paycheck on the table. Then it’s just you against a guy who gets hundred-mph fastballs thrown at him for a living. Every January, the Phillies’ Cory Lidle hosts the best-known baseball-centric tourney, aptly named the Cory Lidle Official Celebrity Poker Tournament, at the Palms in Vegas. This year, for a $1,200 buyin, you could have sat down at a table with Lidle; fellow ballplayers like Lieberthal, Giambi, Wolf, Wooten; or celebs like Thunder Keller and Lisa Guerrero. (Wooten was so impressed with Lidle’s event that he’s planning his own tourney to serve as a prequalifier for Lidle’s, possibly at the Canterbury in Minnesota.) After breaking even in 2005, this year’s event raised $15,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Get prepared for next year’s tourney by checking out www.corylidlecelebritypoker.com. This past December, Kapler hosted a successful tournament in Boston for his Gabe Kapler Foundation (www.kaplerfoundation.org), a charitable organization dedicated to stopping domestic abuse. More than 300 players dropped a $250 buy-in for a shot at the tourney’s top prize, a $10,000 seat at the Borgata’s Winter Poker Open. Although the tournament got served a seriously bad beat when a promoter reneged on a promise to donate the seat, the Borgata itself stepped in and opened its doors to the Kapler tournament’s winner, David Zaff. Promoter fiascos aside, the Boston tourney was so successful that Kapler is planning a Los Angeles invitation-only event, featuring other current and former major leaguers. For sheer marquee value, though, you can’t beat A-Rod’s celebrity tourney. In January, Rodriguez hosted the Dewar’s 12 Texas Hold ‘Em Charity Poker Tournament in Miami. Celebs in attendance included Hellmuth, Jay-Z, Sammy Sosa, Beyoncé, Tom Brady, and Evander Holyfield. The winner, Marc Hambroff, left the private island of Indian Creek Village with a one-year lease on a Mercedes-Benz C230WZ, and the event raised more than $100,000 for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Miami. So let’s say you’re intrigued enough to pony up the dough for one of these tournaments, and you find yourself sitting at a table with a major leaguer. Which ones are going to knock you out of the box? Start with Lidle, obviously. “If you sit and watch Cory Lidle, he can be a great teacher,” Jimmy Rollins says. “He definitely knows a thing or two about poker.” The Dodgers’ Jeff Weaver, the Nationals’ Robert

Fick, and the Reds’ Adam Dunn, all tournament regulars, also have some game. Giambi notes that in the Yankees’ clubhouse, “There’s some guys missing a lot of meal money” because they tried to take on high rollers like Randy Johnson and Tanyon Sturtze. Other strong players include the Red Sox’ Jason Varitek (“He won a tournament and it was, like, the second time he’d ever played Hold’em,” laughs Kapler) and the Braves’ John Smoltz (“There’s nothing that guy isn’t good at,” says teammate Chipper Jones of Smoltz, who’s also a scratch golfer.) On the other hand, every clubhouse has its share of fish. Several Phillies remark that current Ranger and former Phillie Vicente Padilla could always be counted on to sweeten the pot. Kapler laughs at the question, declining to answer but saying only that the Red Sox’ easiest mark is a pitcher. And Francoeur points to Braves All-Star centerfielder Andruw Jones. “Andruw gives up the most money,” he says. “He’s always the most aggressive, even when he probably shouldn’t be.” Jones, the best centerfielder since Willie Mays, has built a career on deceiving hitters; he’s always streaking across two zip codes to snag otherwise certain hits out of midair. When told that Francoeur has dubbed him Turner Field’s minnow, he just nods and smiles in a way that makes you feel sorry for Francoeur’s bank account. “I’ve given away a few pots, sure,” Jones says. “But it’s usually to the rookies, the guys who can use it a little more than me.” The biggest hand he’s ever lost? “Probably about $4,000,” Jones says. The tall dollars also give the pros license to bluff their way right over the top of other players. “I love to [bluff] to my brother (former major leaguer Jeremy Giambi), because he knows I’ve got the money to back it,” Giambi laughs. “I like to put him on full tilt early because he doesn’t want to walk away from the game that soon. So sometimes you can walk away with some good hands from him.” Still, most ballplayers – unlike, say, certain celebrities (paging Scott Stapp) – know enough about the game to realize that skills on the diamond don’t necessarily mean they can master the other three suits. “You can bluff your way through some fun games at home, but when you start playing with those guys, it’s a different level,” Giambi says. “It’s just like when you play ball. You know where you’re at, you know what you need to do, you know what everybody else is doing – [the pros can do that] right when you sit down at the table.” “Poker’s a game, like baseball, where you have to be very patient,” Wooten says. “In baseball, you have to get used to the fact that you’re going to fail seven out of ten times. You’ll never learn it to a T, but you can always learn more. Every time you grab a bat, you’re looking at a different situation; just like every time you sit down at a table.” www.bluffmagazine.com

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PRO-spective

straight from the pros > > > > > >

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uess what, kids? There’s more to life than poker. Just ask Amir Vahedi. Here’s everyone’s favorite cigar-chomping poker genius on bluffing, ripping up rulebooks, and why we should all just chill out a little bit.

Amir, you led an interesting life before you discovered poker… (Laughs) Yes, I sure did. I’ll keep it short. I was born in Iran and, after the revolution, I went to fight in the Iran/Iraq war. I later left the country, skipping over the border to Afghanistan and through to Pakistan. I eventually ended up in East Berlin and made it through to West Berlin, then on to France and London. It took me all of two-and-a-half years before I reached the United States. When I got here, I became involved in business and opened up a little Italian restaurant in San Francisco. Then I moved to LA. I used to go and play the casino games in Las Vegas. In 1997 I sold my businesses because I wanted to retire, but I knew I’d go broke playing the casino games, so that’s when I decided to play poker for a living. I took a shot at a small tournament, and won – the very first tournament I’d played. So I got hooked on tournaments, and then I began traveling around, playing bigger tournaments. In 2002, I played my first ever $10,000 event, and the very next year, I was on the final table of the World Series Main Event. So that’s it. Poker’s my only source of income, so I guess that makes me a professional (laughs).

Did you have a mentor? No. To this day, I haven’t read a single book about poker. What really helped me was that I’m a very good observer. Back when I was learning the game, no one would talk to you or give you any tips. It was a very closeted community. So you just had to watch people closely. I paid attention to the guys who were winning a lot. I spent hours watching the final tables, and while I was getting limited information, it still helped me to see how they attacked, how they defended, and so on. I could get upset when

I was losing money, but I just kept my eyes open and realized that every loss was a valuable lesson. What you have to realize is that, with poker, there is no book; each situation is different, and you have to respond to each situation by being open-minded. You can’t follow a formula.

That explains why you have a very aggressive style that’s very much of your own making… A lot of people think I’m aggressive, but really, I’m an opportunist. I take advantage of opportunities that arise during the game. I don’t call that aggression because there are times when I’ll sit on my stack for hours and hours. You have to know when to change gears. But I’ll exploit any opportunity I see, and that takes a lot of hard work. You have to be so aware of what’s going on at the table in order to recognize those opportunities. And of course you need that killer instinct (laughs).

As a great tournament specialist, what advice can you give all these new young players on the scene? Well, to be honest with you, I think they’re doing better than a lot of the old timers. In fact, some of these kids are taking my breath away, the way they’re playing. But the advice I would give is that you’ve got be open-minded and able to change your strategy at any time. I’ve seen players come along, and they may win one or two tournaments, but they’re using the same strategy. They can only do well for so long, because, once the pros have figured them out, they just become a readable pattern. In poker, you have to keep changing your game because the pros are always watching you and recording what you do. That’s our job. Retain that element of surprise at all times. My second piece of advice is about the lifestyle. When some of these kids win big money so young – well, they have no concept of what money is and of what it can do for their young lives. They haven’t been through the graft and the ups and downs that you get in life – and in this business especially. Some of them win millions and, a year later, they go broke, because they think

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that money is easy to come by and that it always will be. They don’t realize that they may not win another tournament for a long time. You have to cherish that money and use it for your future; invest it. You also have to have a life away from poker. Poker’s nice, but it’s not life; it’s work. Because these kids are so young, when they go broke they can’t go to any other job. Once you’ve been a millionaire, you can’t go back to work for a salary – it’s hard. Why work for $100,000 a year when you know you can make a million overnight?

What’s the greatest bluff you’ve ever pulled? I’ve made a lot of good bluffs; in fact, that’s the main part of my game. I wouldn’t call them bluffs, though. It’s more about making calculated hand reads and being able to act on those reads. On the 2003 WSOP final table, everyone says that I made a bad bluff against Sammy Farha, but it wasn’t a bluff; it was a very simple case of misreading the situation. But that’s the price you pay: You make a read and you know what the chances are that your opponent cannot call you because of the hand that you’re representing. Sometimes you’re wrong, but you have to do it, because if you’re right nine out of ten times, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have faith in your judgment. Some people make reads on their opponents, but they don’t act on them; they prefer to be cautious in case they’re wrong. But I’ll put my money in there if I think I can win the pot – that’s just the kind of player I am.

You talk about the importance of seeing poker as a job, so what do you do when you’re not at work? Anything to get away from the poker table (laughs). I’ll be honest with you: I don’t really enjoy poker anymore. I kid you not: it’s nothing but a job to me now. I like the sense of competition, and I like to win tournaments – besides the money, I like to know that everything I’ve worked for has come to fruition; that I have the discipline to make the right decisions. But I also try to stay away from cards as much as possible (I try

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pro-file: vahedi

to… I’m not saying I’m very successful…). I take vacations in places where there are no casinos and just sit back and enjoy life. What use is all this money if you don’t enjoy yourself? Some players – they make so much money, and the only thing they change about their lives is the limit of the game they are playing. That sucks (laughs). Life is short. You wanna spend it all at the poker table? Be my guest… Not me! I like to go watch movies. Every movie you see, it’s a two-hour experience in totally different personalities, and that helps you as a poker player. Don’t forget, you have to be a good people-reader. It’s not like you study people like they’re laboratory mice, it’s just you have to have an interest in humanity. The more interest you have, the more accurate you

same stuff all the time. French wine and Cuban cigars; that’s me happy…

You’re a popular figure at the poker table because you like to joke around and entertain people. What’s your favorite table joke? There’s so many. When I joke around with my American colleagues, and I’m getting the better of them, I always hear the last resort tactic: “Hey, why don’t you learn to speak English?” I always say, “Listen buddy, if I could speak English as well as you do, I wouldn’t be making a living playing poker. I’d probably have a job!” (laughs) It doesn’t take English to play poker! That usually quiets them down a bit. But I like to have fun at the table. I like to

all come together, put everything aside, and all that matters is the game of poker. That’s why it’s unique and that’s why I love it. I’ve been playing so many years and I’ve met so many people: strange people, nice people, nasty people… so many characters,

What has been the proudest moment of your career? I’ve been in this business for almost ten years, and I’ve kept my head up. I have a good name and a good reputation. It’s hard to maintain that with the ups and downs you have in this business. That’s what makes me proud – that I have the respect of the poker community. And because of the poker boom, I’m proud in front of my kids. They’re proud of me, too. They brag about me in school, and that’s the

“Some players – they make so much money, and the only thing they change about their lives is the limit of the game they are playing. That sucks! Life is too short.”

will be about people’s personalities. To me, there is no such thing as a bad person; there’s only your expectation of that person. Even if a guy robs your house; well, he’s still a hero to his father, or to his kids, because he brings the bread home. Everybody has a good side; it’s just up to you to look into it. As a poker player, it will help you do your job better if you look deeper into people. So get away from the table, watch movies, read books, meet as many people as you can in life, and that will help your game. So to relax, I like to dine out – I love to have good food in a good restaurant. I love to go fishing, although I don’t get a chance to do that very often. Eating, though – I do quite a lot of that (laughs). Oh, and smoking cigars, obviously…

What’s your favorite cigar? Definitely Cuban. Once you go Cuban, you can’t go back (laughs). I have a variety of Cubans that I smoke. I keep changing them. It’s like wine: you don’t want to drink the

make people laugh. There are some miserable people out there, but I always say: “What? Are we all going to die during this tournament? We’re all going to get knocked out at some point; we may as well have fun.” We all get our fair share of bad beats; we’ve got to lighten up. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just a day at the office and there are bad days and good days, like there are at any office. Some guy might say to me, “I’m going to knock you of this tournament.” I’ll say, “Well, you might, but it’s going to cost you a lot of money to try.” And maybe he does, but I just go home, watch a movie, have nice food, and come back again the next day to try again.

What’s the strangest thing you ever saw happen at the poker table? I once saw a guy ask a woman to marry him at the table. I thought, “God help you both!” (Laughs). There are so many funny things that happen at the table; it’s the greatest place in the world. You see all these people of different ages and different backgrounds and cultures – it’s the only place in the world where they

best feeling any dad can have. For years I used to hide my job from people, and I didn’t know how to explain to my kids that I made a living on the poker table. In other people’s eyes I was a gambler, and that was a very irresponsible thing to be for someone bringing up children. The poker boom is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and it’s not about the prize money, it’s about making my job legit to my family. I can go home and be a proud father.

Finally, is there any thing you want to promote? The only thing I want to promote is this: To all you poker players out there, try to get together to form some kind of union or association. Trust me, you guys deserve to make more than what you’re getting. All the corporations are making millions off you and some of that should go into your pockets. By standing together you can help each other. Don’t just be happy with the very short-term individual profit. In the long run, it’s better for everybody, from the top guys to the little guys. We all need to work together. www.bluffmagazine.com

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PRO-SPECTIVE

poker like a rock star

The new generation

BY ANTONIO ESFANDIARI

t is March 15th, 2006. Two thousand and six! Are you kidding me? My, oh my, where did the time go? Do you remember when you were a little kid and all the adults always told you to enjoy life while you could because it goes by so fast? It’s gone before you know it, they said. Just the other day, I caught myself telling my little cousin that very same thing and I realized that when she is my age, I will be nearly half a century old. I don’t really know where I was going with that, I just thought it sounded good and, at the moment, I am in one of my weird philosophical think-about-life moods. You ever just think about what we are REALLY doing here? How it wouldn’t change the course of life on earth one bit if we were to disappear? That we really don’t make a difference? Nothing can stop the earth from turning. It’s so sick to think that one day we ALL will go. I don’t want to go anywhere! And I certainly don’t want to get any older. I am, for sure, the happiest 27-year-old on the planet! Ever since I got back from Australia, all I can think about is when I’m going back. I miss it dearly. I miss the people. I miss the food. I miss the weather. I miss Sydney. And most of all, I miss the action! The Aussie Millions at Crown in January was the BESTstructured tournament I have ever played in. It was NEVER more than eight-handed and, once we got in the money, it was six-handed the rest of the way. What else can an action junkie like me ask for? It’s all about more hands! The more hands, the more fun, the more DINERO! Speaking of playing more hands, after a long day of golf (btw, thanks to Danny McDonagh Tournament Director and Jim Preston Poker Room Manager at Crown for the golf), we returned to the Crown Casino in Melbourne. I was a wee bit tipsy; I think I only played a total of 3 of the 18 holes! On the bus back, there was some talk about this new fully-automated live poker table thing. The poker room guys at the Crown had set up a single table tournament on this new poker table. Mike Sexton, Kenna James, Clonie Gowen, and Scott Fischman were gonna play, so I decided to climb aboard. Let me also add that when internet poker first came out, I was very skeptical of the whole idea; not so much about the possibility of people sitting at home cheating, but about the idea of technology taking over poker. I did not like the idea of people playing on their computers. I thought it detracted from the actual game. It took me almost a year to try it, but once I did, I fell in love with it! I mean, what’s better than playing poker in your underwear? When I heard there was a new table out with no dealer and computer screens instead of cards, I was hesitant. But it didn’t take long before that thought went right out the window. Let me cut right to the chase. This table, which is called PokerPro™, IS THE FUTURE OF POKER. In my humble (or not so humble) opinion, these tables will soon become part

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poker like a rock star of every poker room on earth. You WILL play on them. And you will experience great pleasure and satisfaction. With the PokerPro table there will never be another dealer error. And I mean NEVER. No misread hands, accidentally flipped cards, and so on. That’s because the table is the dealer. It splits the pots – even the side pots – accurately and instantly. And you don’t have to tip anyone! This feature alone saves the average pro, playing 50 hours a week, roughly $1,600 a month! (I know this sounds crazy, but if you add up an average tip of $2 a hand after a 10-hour session, and you’re winning one out of every nine hands, playing five days a week, your tips run up to $1,600 a month and $19,200 a year!) And the PokerPro table keeps the game moving. So you get to play 50% to 60% more hands per hour. How sweet would it be to play one-and-a-half times as many hands an hour! After all, you are there to play as much as you can, right? Another cool feature is that you actually squeeze your cards to look at them! Let me explain. When you want to look at your hand, you just place your hands over the bottom right hand side of the screen and your two cards actually squeeze up at you! It’s really cool. I urge everyone to try it. Overall, I was very impressed with this revolutionary new technology. I never felt like I was playing on a computer. PokerPro is the real deal, baby! Experiencing the PokerPro table and being a part of the future was just one of the many perks of my visit to Australia. I already went into detail about all the good things that happened to me in Australia last month, so I will spare you the repeat. But before I go, I would like to tell you all what a sick man I am. I was in LA with Victoria for the Commerce Tournament. Joe Hachem kept begging me to take a day off and go to lunch with him and his family. I said no to EVERYBODY. But saying no to Joe is not easy. Those Middle Easterners can be rather pushy! We had lunch at the Galleria Mall at a fancy Italian joint. Afterwards, we started wandering around and came upon this fountain. This was an outside mall and tourists were all over the place. Victoria slapped my ass out of nowhere and, to retaliate, I picked her up and threatened to throw her ass in the fountain. All the tourists started chanting me on: “Throw her in! Throw her in!” Joe said, “I’ll give you $500 to throw her in!” I told him for $500 he could throw my ass in! Right away, he pulls out $1,000 and says, “If you both get in, the money is yours.” Only requirement is that we go in with our clothes ON! Thank God we were at a mall and finding dry clothes afterwards wasn’t going to be a difficult task. And so in we went. Right in the middle of the mall, in front of a hundred tourists taking pictures, Victoria and I dived into the fountain! It truly was a sight to see. The things that people do for money! I really need to get a life. In any case, thank you for the dime ball, Joe Hachem.

When I heard there was a new table out with no dealer and computer screens instead of cards, I was hesitant. But it didn’t take long before that thought went right out the window.

I happened to win the single table satellite and in doing so I beat Scott Fischman and David Wells out of a $5K last -long bet!!! Life is good! www.bluffmagazine.com

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PRO-SPECTIVE

poker girl

Play tight

’m often asked in interviews what is the biggest tip I can give new players. Well, my number one tip is always to play tight. From my experience, most new players play about 80% of the hands they are dealt in Texas Hold’em. In fact, the reverse should be the case; they should only play about 20% of the hands they are dealt. This probably isn’t earth-shattering news to anyone who has played a reasonable amount of poker. But it remains a deep concept that is worth deeply understanding. The concept of playing tight actually only applies to the overall percentage of hands you play. When you are first to act or under the gun, you should play so tight that you only play around 5% of the hands you are dealt; while in other positions, like the button or the big blind, you can drastically expand that percentage. It is only the average that should be around 20%. Up front, almost no hand should look good to you unless it is A-Q or better or at least 6-6 or better. But why so tight? There are many reasons to play super tight up front, but the one I want to focus on has to do with a decision-making disadvantage. When we play poker, we never want to lose sight of the fact that is a game of decisionmaking. If you are better at making those decisions than your opponents, you will win lots of money. The road to becoming the better decision-maker is to bring to bear the maximum amount of information available to you. In poker, this means using the information

BY ANNIE DUKE

available to you to narrow down the holdings of your opponents. And therein lies the problem with playing loose up front. You will always be acting with the least information available because you don’t know what your opponents are going to do after you. They, however, will always know what your action is when they have to act. They will have been able to watch you look at your cards. They will have been able to study your face, your body posture, the way you threw the chips in the pot when you acted. But you? You will have none of that information. Consider an example from the business world. In a business negotiation it is a huge disadvantage to go first. You have no idea what the other person’s range might be, so you run the risk of negotiating against yourself. It is a disaster when you offer an amount in a negotiation that is higher than the amount the other negotiator would have accepted. It follows that it is better to act from a position of strength. You need to have done the maximum research on the topic so that you have acquired information that will enable you to offer the most reasonable price – one that is lower than what your opponent wants, but close enough to his range. What about the guy who is second to act in the negotiation? Well, he doesn’t have to work quite as hard because he’s at a huge advantage. He already knows the other person’s range. He can negotiate from that. This not to

say that he doesn’t need to know his stuff; he does, because he needs to know if the first guy has lowballed him. But he doesn’t need to be quite as strong acting second. Poker is just like this: If you’re second to act, you can really loosen up. You can call raises with hands you would never raise with in first position, because you know you will be acting second throughout the rest of the decision-making process – acting with the maximum amount of information. You will be able to limp in with a much wider range of hands when people have limped in front of you, because the dangers of getting raised behind you are smaller when only the blinds are left to act. And when the action gets to the button and everyone has folded in front of you, you can raise with 70% to 80% of the hands you are dealt; because everyone knows you will act last for the rest of the hand. The poor guy under the gun? Well, for him the opposite is always true. He can’t limp in because the danger of being raised is too high – he has no idea what the nine people left to act are going to do. For the rest of the hand, he knows he will have to act early in the decisionmaking process. Having no idea of the quality of his nine opponents’ holdings, he has to be much more choosy about the hands he raises with, since the chances of someone waking up with a much better hand are so high. Being the first to act in poker is like being handcuffed to the decision-making process. So play tight up front!

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kenna’s korner

A true weight loss bet BY KENNA JAMES

How does someone win a bet and lose more money than he bet in the first place? ometimes I do some dumb things. On my way home from Florida and the Party Poker Million Cruise, I got out of the taxi at the airport and watched it drive away with one of my bags, which I suddenly realized had over $10,000 in it! Not being from New York, I didn’t think of hailing another taxi right away, hopping in and screaming, “Follow that cab!” like they do in the movies. Instead, I stood there in disbelief. I did eventually manage to retrieve it and make my flight with two minutes to spare, but still. Duh! Sometimes it’s just the stupid little things that make me realize that I’m not the sharpest knife in the kitchen. Lately, I feel more like a spoon. Like last week when I drove all the way down to the casino, without realizing I hadn’t brought any money to play with. But nothing compares with this recent travesty and the money I left behind by making what has to be dumbest settlement of a proposition bet I hope I will ever make. Let me take you back to the beginning and tell you a story, that I’ll call The Dummy and the Feast. With all the reverse hourglass figures wobbling around the poker world, it’s common for many of us to enter into weight loss bets.

Needing motivation to get to the gym, I entered into such a bet with two friends, who I will call Tim and Dan. The goal was for each of us to lose 10% of our weight in three months. The penalty if we didn’t: $50,000. www.bluffmagazine.com

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Now that’s a motivator! Just before Christmas, we would have a weighin, in which we had to be halfway towards our goals or pay a $20,000 penalty if we missed. The second weigh-in would be at the LA Poker Classic in February, where we would have to be at our goal weights or pay another $20,000. The final weigh-in will be at this year’s WSOP; and if we haven’t maintained the weight, we have to shell out $10,000. When you make a bet, you always want to have the best of it and, after the first month, I’m sure we all knew it was fair because each of us had gained weight! This called for a crash diet and a lot of sitting around in saunas, trying to sweat off the last few pounds at the end. In fact, having made the goal at the first weighin, I met one of my friends at the gym in the middle of the night and watched him suffer in the sauna. The deadline was at hand and he had no gym clothes, so he sat in there in his underwear, trying to drip off the last few pounds. Now, you think we would have learned from the first time around, but in fact we found ourselves in worse shape as the second deadline approached. Tim was seven pounds over with two days to go, and “Sauna Dan,” well, forget it; he wasn’t going to make it if he fell asleep in the sauna for the week. Now, Tim would rather have his left arm amputated than lose the $20,000, so I was pretty sure he was going to starve and sweat his way in, which meant he and I would split Dan’s money for a net win of $10,000 for the second segment. The problem was that I had been on a liquid diet for 12 days, hadn’t eaten a bite of solid food, and must not have been thinking clearly. This became painfully clear when I found myself making very big golf bets and didn’t even have the strength to swing the club. But

when you are in a dark tunnel, it’s sometimes hard to see the light at the other end, and I just kept making worse bets. But this one takes the cake. I got the desperation call from Dan, looking for mercy once again, to settle two days before the weighin. I don’t need to settle, I’m there! Then a new proposition arose. “Well, let me put someone in the Party Poker Million tournament, and you can have 1/3 and maybe you’ll make 300,000 instead of 10,000.” I told Dan that I didn’t like the guy’s chances, to which he replied: “Okay, well how about you then? If you lose, you owe me nothing, and I’ll even kick in a couple thousand for expenses.” Wanting that cheeseburger right away, I said, “Okay, you got it.” Four words I will live to regret. Let’s look at this: I go from a free $10,000 and having 100% of myself in the tournament, to getting $12,000 and playing for 33%. Hmm, good deal? NOT! You see, I’m on a hot streak on the tournament trail right now and cashed for $700,000. That means this little weight bet, in which I made my weight and the others didn’t, just cost me $420,000! Now, that is a weight LOSS program – to the tune of almost $2,000 a pound! I was so disgusted that the first thing I did was to reach for a slice of pizza and a beer. Now, I’m right back to where I started, except with a lot less cash than I would have had if I hadn’t made the bet. The moral of the story: I guess if I had started earlier, I wouldn’t have been starving myself at the end and may have thought more clearly. So maybe it’s: Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today. You might end up in a steam room in your underwear, or making ridiculous bets that leave you a lot lighter because your pockets will be empty. Good Flops and Happy Days, Kenna

Let’s look at this: I go from a free $10,000 and having 100% of myself in the tournament, to getting $12,000 and playing for 33%.

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j. tilly

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In transition I BY JENNIFER TILLY

The switch between television and tournaments is getting harder to make

wrap the final episode of Out of Practice. Tears all around. Who knows if we will be back. If the show gets picked up, I have a secret plan. I will hand the producers my tournament schedule: all the WPT and NAPT dates, and hopefully they can work around them. The next morning the phone rings. A producer in London is calling. His movie has suddenly got financing. Can I be in London next Tuesday to begin filming? There is a pause, as I mentally scroll through my mind. “Sorry,” I say reluctantly. “I’m not available.” I can hear his distress crackling through the overseas connection. “Your manager said you wrapped your show!” “Yes,” I say defensively, “But he only has my acting schedule. He doesn’t know my poker schedule. Next week is Bay 101!” After I convince the producer of the importance of Bay 101, and gently urge him to find another actress, I hang up and wonder if Chuck will strike me from his roster. I already passed on the lead in a major NBC pilot last week, because it shot in New York. The reason seemed perfectly logical to me, not so much to my manager. There are no casinos in New York. That night, I have a dream. I am trying to get Entertainment Tonight on the TV, but it’s coming in all fuzzy. As the images fade to snow, I flip around and find the only channels coming in clearly are ESPN and the Travel Channel. Poker. When I wake up, I don’t need to reach for the dream dictionary to find out what it meant. The trades are piling up unread in the corner. I don’t bother to return my agent’s phone calls. For the first time in ten years, I will not be going to any Oscar parties. I will be in Las Vegas instead, filming the NBC National Heads Up Championship. I find myself on The View explaining my transmogrification to a puzzled Barbara Walters. “I know how to act,” I pontificate. “I’ve been doing that for 20 years. But I don’t know how to play poker. It’s more of a challenge.” I win the Celebrity Player of the Year Award, a new category that has been hastily cobbled together to accommodate the legions of actors attracted by the burgeoning popularity of the game. I accept the award in a skintight low-cut dress, still uncertain whether to be a starlet or a pro. “Next year, “ I announce, “I hope to come back as The Most Feared Player!” It gets a big laugh, but deep down that’s what I aspire to. I don’t want people to perk up as I approach the table; I want them to be horrified. I don’t like the implied caveat that comes with being a “celebrity player.” It’s like being a “model/actress.” But how long does the moniker stick? Gabe Kaplan has been a poker player forever, and while respected, to most people he is still Mr Kotter. LA Poker Classic. I am sweating profusely. I feel like I have a big target on my forehead. The table is full of sharks. The dead money has been dispatched, and I’m next. Every time I enter the pot, people practically knock each other over trying to get involved. “I’m a terrible player,” I say mournfully to anyone who will listen, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Finally I get an A-K. I raise; one caller: Ted Forrest. The flop comes ace, rag, rag; all hearts. Ted stares at the flop, quickly checks his hole cards again and throws 1,500 in the pot. I recognize this tell. Last weekend I was playing with Joe Graziano’s kid. There were four clubs on board, he checked his hole cards and went all in. I folded to the obvious flush. In this case I’m thinking Ted has top pair, and the nut flush draw. I have to shut him down before he gets there. I raise to 5,000. “How many chips do you have left?” asks Ted.

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j. tilly “Not much,” I say blithely, trying to act unconcerned. I push them out. It looks like 3,600. He puts me all in. Now, I know something has gone horribly wrong. He obviously has me beat. There is something going on that is not apparent to the naked eye. The odds of flopping a flush are 118 to 1. Even with my current run of bad luck, I don’t think that’s happened. If he has two pair, I can maybe catch up. I’ve seen him make huge bets with nothing before; that’s probably what

from Portland. Do you think for an instant he didn’t have his hole cards memorized?” Of course. I feel stupid. It was a fake tell. Once I was playing with Mike Matusow; he had just gone all in, and while his opponent was deciding whether to call, Mike nervously adjusted his glasses. It was an odd, vulnerable gesture. Later on (being Mike) he was crowing to the guy whose stack he’d decimated. “Do you think I didn’t know you had aces? Everything I did was calculated to crack you, even down to pushing my glasses up on my nose!” And I realized, in retrospect, why the gesture had struck me as odd. Because his glasses were not sliding down his nose at all. They

“To me, poker is not a game anymore; it’s a metaphysical journey, a chance to prove the existence of God in a barren landscape.”

he’s doing now. He’s just targeting the small stack! He thinks I’ll fold. “I call,” I say. Ted has a set of sixes. I trudge over to Phil’s table, and grimly recount the hand to him. “The flop came ace, and two small rags…” I say. Bill Gazes is getting a massage and listening in. “That’s redundant,” he interrupts. “Rags are always small.” “Oh, right,” I say, laughing a little. I can’t even get my poker vernacular right. I describe how Ted checked his hole cards before he bet, and how I thought that was a tell. Phil laughs. “Honey, Ted is not some kid

did not need to be adjusted. Someone not wanting a call would remain motionless. The subconscious is a powerful weapon. It notices things all the time that our conscious mind is too busy to pick up. With Ted, I knew I was beat. And I chose not to believe it. I go to the Celebrity Invitational determined to have fun. The greatest party I ever attended was The Invitational two years ago, where I met Phil. I busted out in twenty minutes, but I hung around until 1:30 in the morning, doing shots, meeting people, and table-hopping. Every time I saw an empty seat, I would sit down and pretend I was still playing. Mimi Rogers and I ended up sitting behind a very drunk Dave Foley, peeking at his hand and giving him advice. A spectator in the crowd plucked at my sleeve, appalled at the level of play he was witnessing. “If you’re a friend of Dave’s, tell him to stop calling,” he urged. “Tell him to either raise or fold.”

I relayed this information to Dave, and he just laughed. We were all still laughing when a burly man drew a red velvet rope around the table, effectively cutting Mimi and me out of the inner circle. We took this as a hint to leave. I went home and wrote in my journal “How much fun was that?!” and underlined the entry. My pocket was full of phone numbers. I couldn’t remember who any of these people were, and threw them all away. This year it’s the same faces, but I feel like the other celebrities are tourists. I wear my gold bracelet and the girls ooh and ah over it, like it’s a bauble I picked up from Van Cleef and Arpels. I’m not wearing it to show off. I feel like it might be good for my self-esteem to have a visual reminder of my prowess. The game starts genially enough, although I am a little perturbed to see there are no celebrities at my table. The only recognizable faces are pros: Mark Seif, Phil Hellmuth Jr, and Arnold Spee. In less than ten minutes, Mark and Phil have felted two unfortunate souls, and doubled up. Now they are the only ones laughing. Jollily they toss huge bets in the pot, while the rest of us mutter under our breath, and grimly try to retain our chips. There is a picture of me online, holding my aching head, my mouth turned down, sadly fingering my tiny stack. “Jennifer, looking very serious, at the Invitational,” reads the caption. Among all the pictures of the happy schmoozing celebrities, I stand out like a sore thumb. I guess I should have had more fun. I just didn’t. To me, poker is not a game anymore; it’s a metaphysical journey, a chance to prove the existence of God in a barren landscape. Phil and I both bust out early. Unlike years past, watching other players continue to play a tournament that I am no longer involved with holds no charm for me. At this juncture we are forced to endure a small vacation. We are very peeved about having to leave the bustle and juiciness of the Commerce Casino to go float on a boat. We argue about who agreed to the trip. But we promised our friends, so off we go to Mexico for three days. While everybody else snorkels, and rides the wave runners, I lie below in the gently rocking boat, and read. I read Mike Sexton’s Shuffle Up and Deal, I read Erik Lindgren’s Getting to the Final Table, and I read a book called The Psychology of Winning. And suddenly I have an epiphany. My attitude is all wrong! Instead of focusing on winning, I worry about losing. I constantly write about what a bad player I am, and complain that I don’t know what I’m doing. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I’m not going to put myself down any more. I do know what I’m doing! And I’m going to start doing it. As soon as I get off this damn boat… www.bluffmagazine.com

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the grinder

Grinding back at the Borgata BY MICHAEL ‘THE GRINDER’ MIZRACHI

ay 1

The Borgata event started like most other events I play. I went through my normal routine, which is playing many hands during the first few levels. I use this to gauge my table image, and see how people will play against me. Are they aggressive? Passive? Will they let me take control of the table? I saw that I could control the table early, which I did. I played a lot of pots, and made a lot of moves throughout Day 1. I was fortunate enough to flop a few sets, the chips started flowing my way, and I was first in the tournament to break the 100k mark. I found myself sitting as the chip leader during most the first

part of Day 1. I then ran into a bit of trouble with a pretty tight, solid player named Jeff King. Jeff raised, and I smooth-called on the button with Q-10. The flop came A-J-K. Now because I know how Jeff plays, I knew he had a big hand; I put him on a set of kings or maybe A-K. He bet the flop, and I raised him with my straight, knowing he would most likely push. Sure enough, he moved in, and I called. Unfortunately, the board paired on the river, and he filled up. Losing that pot brought my stack down to about 20k. I didn’t give up, though. I kept my head up and went back to work. It’s very easy to tilt off the rest of your chips in this situation, but I controlled my stack, tightened up, and was very disciplined. I eventually doubled up when I moved in with pocket kings, and was called by jacks. Despite this, at the end of Day 1, my chip stack was nowhere near where I wanted it to be. I had an average stack going into Day 2, and my work was cut out for me.

Day 2 I drew a pretty tough table on the next day, which included Ted Forrest. It felt like I battled Ted all day. There was one key pot, when I raised with J-J, and Ted smooth-called me. The flop came jack-high, with two clubs, and I led out. Ted smooth-called me again. The turn was the 9♥, and I checked. Forrest bet about 20k, and I moved in for about 14k more. Ted called with pocket kings, and I’m pretty sure he knew he was beat when he called. That pot brought me back above the 100k mark, and things started going my way. I won two more huge pots when I was all in with two queens versus two jacks, and the queens held both times. That evening we were in the money, and I think I ended the day with about 400k.

Day 3 The very first hand of Day 3, I raised on the button with 8♣2♣. The big blind called me with 6-6. The flop came 2-2-8. He checked the flop, I bet about half the pot, and he called. The turn was the last deuce, giving me quads. I bet both the turn and the river and was called down all the way. He ended up giving me more than half of his chips on that pot. I had plenty of ammunition at this point, and I began playing a lot of pots, trying to build a huge stack for the final table. When you get to this stage in a tournament, most players are just trying to get to the final six, but I always want to get to the final six with a huge stack. You

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the grinder

need to have a number of lifelines when you make the final table. There are so many players that get to the final table with just one lifeline, and only get to play one hand when they get there. In order to play your game, you need chips to maneuver with. So Day 3 was my day to really accumulate. I don’t remember too many key pots, but I do remember eliminating a number of players and building my stack to over 1 million in chips. One pot that I do recall was against Don Mullis. I raised to about 100k with two queens, and Mullis moved in for about 900k. I knew there was no way he had two kings or two aces. Don likes to slow-play his monster hands. I put him on A-K, pocket tens, or pocket jacks. I was right: I called, and he flipped over pocket jacks. The queens held up again, and I took over the chip lead, with over 2 million.

Final Table I entered the final table second in chip position, behind E-Dog (Erick Lindgren). The funny thing about the final six was that we were all pretty good friends. Lindgren, Amnon Filippi, Stuart Patterson, and J-Dags (D’Agostino) are all buddies of mine. I started off making a lot of flat calls with position to keep everyone at the table guessing

at what I had. I was playing a lot of pots, keeping my chips in good shape. We were down to four-handed when the biggest pot of the tournament occurred between Lindgren and me. Erick raised with A-Q, and I looked down to see my favorite hand, 4-4. Blinds were pretty high at this point, and I moved in my stack. Erick called and the flop came Q-5-2. The turn was another five, and I needed a four to survive. I honestly felt the four coming, and everyone started screaming when it landed on the river. It was amazing! From that point on, I just battled through. Lindgren made his standard raise, and I smooth-called with the K♠3♠. The board came down with two spades, and we both checked. The turn brought another spade, and

I had made the second nuts. Erick led out for about 200k. I raised, making it about 725k. Edog went into the tank for about a minute before pushing all in. I called; he held the dry ace of spades and needed to catch a spade to survive, which he missed. That left E-Dog crippled, and a few hands later he was out third. When we got heads-up, everything went right for me. I was mixing up my raises with smooth calls, and winning most of the pots in heads-up play. I honestly don’t think I ever lost more than a big blind during the 15 or so hands we played. It wasn’t the WPT record for the shortest heads-up battle – that goes to the one heads-up hand that Scotty Nguyen and I played in Tunica; but I have to say I was a little happier with the results this time around. www.bluffmagazine.com

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josh arieh

Thoughts from the button

re you a sucker for hands on the button? Does 8-9 off-suit look like aces when everyone has folded and there is dead money dying to make its way to your stack? The button is a very tricky place to play hands, and if played correctly, you can pick up lots of money throughout a session. The bad news about this is that if you play the button incorrectly, you can easily be sent home with a story that starts with “Oh man, I had the 6-4 of clubs and...” You get the picture. Hopefully at the end of this read (if you have gotten this far – thanks, guys), you will be able to think more clearly when you are on the button, and you will learn to milk this very profitable situation. You will also be able to avoid the treacherousness of this danger spot. One of the first things I do when I sit at a table is check out the tendencies of the two players directly to my left. Knowing what you can get away with when you are on the button is a huge key to your success. I will usually ask myself, “Are these guys tight? Will they play back at me?” I use A-10 as my borderline hand. It’s the one hand that sits on the fence between being a good hand or a bad hand. I ask myself whether these players are likely to reraise me with this hand? If the answer is yes, then I will take more of a conservative approach to attacking their blinds. If my answer is no, then I will usually raise their blinds with any

BY JOSH ARIEH

hand that I can draw to a straight or a flush. Before you take this balls-to-the-wall approach to stealing blinds, you have to have a feel for the game and know when to put on the brakes. I don’t care if it’s your baby sister in the big blind; if they think you are stealing with nothing, most poker players just aren’t going to let it happen. You have to think about the last ten minutes of the game and try to get into the “minds of the blinds.” It’s not a good time to raise players that have just lost chips. I’m not saying leave them alone; I’m simply saying don’t raise them. Players that have recently lost chips are probably a little hot-blooded, and through my experience of dealing with hot-blooded people, I’ve learned that an aggressive action is usually answered by an aggressive reaction; in this case, a reraise. You definitely want to play pots against this kind of player, but you want to keep your fluctuations down, and a perfect way of doing so is limping. If the player in the blind raises, don’t be afraid to call the raise with a lessthan-premium hand. Like most of you know, when a steamed player raises, he usually fires after the flop, as well. Unfortunately, we aren’t blessed with tilted players in the blinds too often, so we are forced to learn to play the button against all kinds of opponents. The one thing that you have to remember when you are playing aggressively on the button is that experienced players often automatically put you on a “steal.” Use that against players: Mix your

raises up and show them different sized raises as often as possible. Even the tightest of players will sometimes reraise you with nothing if they think they can pick up the pot right there. Always, always manage the pot size. When you have “ace-cracking” hands, keep the pot small and make it manageable for you to take cards off. My last bit of advice for playing the button and playing “power positional poker,” is don’t get out of hand too early. When playing mediocre hands, you have to ask yourself one simple question: Is this really worth it? What I mean by this is simple. Don’t get too creative too early in a tournament. I mean, how important is it to pick up the blinds when the blinds are 50/100 and you have 10,000 in chips? This isn’t the time to use deep thinking, nor is it the time to get in there and raise with 7-9 offsuit and expose your stack. It’s a risk/reward thing – the deeper you get in a tournament, the more important it is to pick up blinds. So be careful whose blinds you are stealing. Attack the weak and let the egomaniacs go. There are players out there who take their blinds seriously, and sometimes even personally. Don’t get into an ego war with these people. Lastly, and probably most importantly, everyone has a breaking point: the point at which they will no longer tolerate you pushing them around (yes, I have one too!). Know your opponents’ breaking points and you can translate that into knowing what your opponents’ actions will most likely be, before it’s their turn to act.

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mark my words

The tour wars BY MARK NAPOLITANO

ust how many poker players are there out there who are Many would say that poker players have no right to complain, but prepared to come up with $10,000 for one of these main why shouldn’t they when golf players who dedicate their lives to stayevents on yet another tour? Surely, with the World Poker ing at the top of their profession can command higher dollars from Tour and the WSOP Circuit events overlapping each other’s sponsorship deals than they do from winning events. The life of a proschedules, and both offering $10,000 main events, the fessional poker player is a dedicated one, and one that relies heavily on players have to decide which tour to back. financial support through good and bad. So surely it would make sense So what are the players looking for? Well, a fair deal of for the players who are consistently in the top 100 to boost their income course. The players want corporate sponsorships so they through sponsorship deals and merchandise branding – just like other don’t have to fund the $10,000 events themselves and allow the tours sports personalities. to reap the rewards of the television deals. The players want those Let’s wait and see who’ll win this battle of the tours. Will it be the deals, too, but they are restricted by logo wear – or lack of, as the case WPT with the help of the well-known casinos, Harrah’s with their own may be. huge network of casinos in the USA – or will it be the online poker sites Now, we all know that the online poker sites offer amazing promo- by themselves? I know where my money is… tions that allow us to win some of these $10,000 seats to these main events, but how are the sites going to feel if no logos are allowed on the televised shows at all? There may be a possibility that they will just have to give their online players the money and hope they show up at the event, with the knowledge that they will probably not be wearing their T-shirts or caps. So are the online promotions for these events So lets take a peek at what has happened about to come to an abrupt end? And if this is the over the past three months with the two case, what will happen to the large fields we have tours now going head-to-head. seen at these live events? Will they decline or will they continue to grow? Sure, poker players have egos and want to see themselves on the television, but surely there is only so many $10,000 buy-ins they can stand. Maybe the tours themselves will have to make more seats available via all-year-round Month international satellites to compensate the Diamond World Poker Classic; •Showboat Atlantic City; lack of online qualifiers being sent their December •Five $931,200; 96 entries $8,075,250; 555 entries way. 2005 ($15,000 buy-in) ($10,000 buy-in) We have already seen some of the players joining together to boycott Caribbean Adventure; certain events in order to make their •Grand Casino Tunica; January •PokerStars’ $5,647,200; 724 entries voices heard, but where would these $2,289,500; 241 entries 2006 ($8,000 buy-in) players be today if it were not for the ($10,000 buy-in) vision of Steve Lipscombe and Lyle •World Poker Open; Berman? Would they be earning big $3,171,900; 327 entries dollars for television commercials or ($10,000 buy-in) stopped in the street for autographs? •Borgata Winter Poker Open; I don’t think so. $3,695,700; 381 entries I agree that the time is now right for ($10,000 buy-in) another tour to come along and change •Harrah’s, Atlantic City; the way things are done, as the existing •LA Poker Classic; February $6,676,416; 692 entries $1,202,800; 124 entries tours are limited in their television deals 2006 ($10,000 buy-in) ($10,000 buy-in) and logo restrictions. If another tour can take the lessons of the existing ones and open •Bay 101 Shooting Star; themselves up to allow corporate sponsorship to $4,677,300; 502 entries sponsor the players, then I feel that primetime tel($10,000 buy-in) evision would be delighted to take a tour sponsored by a household brand and not a dot net or a dot com. Over the coming months, I will be making comparisons between the various tours that are currently operating (and the people behind them). The facts will clearly show which tour, or tours, the players are backing, and I will try to identify why.

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The NBC National Heads-Up Championship is where poker’s showmen come out to play. Here are some of our favorite moments from the 2006 tournament, including some of the bits that you won’t see on TV. Photography provided by Troy Plota Stephanie Moore and Jason Kirk

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THE DRAW When Mike Matusow’s name is called, he’s asked whom he would like to draw. He points down at Shawn Sheikan. “Sheiky,” he says excitedly, “I definitely want to play Sheiky.” When asked if this is so they can resume the epic battle of words from last year’s World Series, he replies, “No, it’s because he stinks!”

’s (middle) Mike Matusow

JAMES WOODS VS. SCOTT FISCHMAN: THE ANECDOTE James Woods is the king of the showbiz anecdote. While regaling the crowd with one such tale during his first round match-up with Scott Fischman, he looks down at his cards, stops short, and hurriedly hands the mike back to the emcee, promising to finish the story later. He raises and Fischman calls. Woods then bets into the flop and Fischman folds. To the delight of the crowd, Woods turns over 7-3 offsuit. Despite such cunning ploys, Woods is the first player eliminated when his Q-Q fails to hold up against Fischman’s A-K.

PHIL LAAK VS. GAVIN SMITH: PROBABALISTICITY

L-R James Woods and Scott Fischman

Phil Laak

Phil is resplendent in his new Bluff hoody. The match is full of table talk, with Phil holding the chip lead most of the way. At one point, Phil drops the term “probabilistic” into the conversation. Gavin immediately complains that Phil is trying to confuse him by inventing words, and appeals to the audience to back him up. Much discussion ensues about whether probabilistic really is a word. Bluff’s editorial team is skeptical, knowing that, like many great writers before him – from Shakespeare to William Burroughs – The Unabomber likes to take license with the English language: I mean, the man invented the word “felted.” A quick search on Dictionary.com vindicates Phil and supplies us with a definition: “Probabilistic: Of, based on, or affected by probability, randomness, or chance.” At one point in the match, Phil makes a large river bet and Gavin goes into the tank. Phil flashes his cards to the camera. What he doesn’t realize is that the entire audience is watching a feed of the camera on the giant plasma screens located all around the room. Everyone that is, except Gavin. What are the chances that everyone in the room but his opponent saw Phil’s hole cards? Pretty slim, we’d say – probabilistically speaking, of course. Gavin is eliminated shortly after, and comes over to complain that he lost only because he didn’t have full Bluff Support. He then offers to challenge Phil to a game of Scrabble.

TONY G VS. MIKE CARO: THE VALUE CHECK L-R Mike Caro and Tony G

Halfway through the match-up, Mike Caro, last to act,

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NBC National Heads Up Championship makes a straight flush on the river. After Tony G checks, Mike checks behind him, while holding the stone cold nuts. The moment the hands are shown, Tony G explodes. “That is the worst play I have ever seen in poker!” he shrieks. We can only imagine that Mike is setting up an elaborate psychological play. Tony can’t seem to get over it and continues to rant. “I’ve never put anyone on tilt by showing him the best hand before,” Mike remarks wryly. This may be the first documented “value-check” move. It seems to pay off for the Mad Genius, as he increases his chip lead and eventually defeats the excitable Australian.

PAUL PHILLIPS VS. JENNIFER TILLY: IMPERSONATING THE UNABOMBER

Paul Philips

On the day of the tournament, Paul Philips writes in his blog: “I drew Jennifer Tilly in the first round. That means I’m guaranteed TV time and ‘supposed’ to win […] She’s very sweet, but please everyone, pray on my behalf.” “Honey,” Jennifer Tilly calls out to Phil Laak, leaning over the back of her chair. “He’s beating me, but I made a good lay down!” “I’m doubling up on you,” she says, turning to Paul. “You’re going down!” In response, Phillips pulls out a grey hooded sweatshirt and begins doing his best Unabomber impression, shadowboxing and doing push-ups. Jennifer is eliminated shortly after…

JOSH ARIEH VS. ELI ELEZRA – THE NUTS On a 7-6-5 board, Eli Elezra moves all-in and Josh Arieh quickly calls. Arieh turned over 9 8 for the nut straight, leaving Elezra’s Q Q in big trouble. The J seals the deal, and pushes Arieh up to a stack of 77k. When we ask Josh how he feels about the intimidating prospect of his next match-up, in which he will face either Chip Reese or Jesus Ferguson, he says, “Well, if I flop the nuts on one of those guys, I’ll fuckin’ bust them, too.” We love a straight-talker.

Josh Arieh Eli Elezra

SUCKOUTS FROM HELL: There’s nothing like heads-up play for those toe-curling miracle outdraws. Here are a few of our favorites: On an 8-high board, Annie Duke moves all-in, and is called by Mike Sexton. Annie holds 8-7, while Sexton holds J-6 for middle pair, leaving him in need of some help. The 6 hits the turn, and the case 6 hits the river, to give Sexton quads and send a disbelieving Annie to the rail. Dee Luong gets all-in before the flop, and Scott Fischman, who has her covered, makes a quick call. Fischman turns over 7 7 , and Luong shows A T . The flop comes A J 5 to put Luong ahead. The turn is the 6 , and Fishman only has two outs left. The river is the miracle 7 , eliminating Dee Luong from the competition.

Scott Fischman and

Dee Luong

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NBC National Heads Up Championship Ted Forrest needs a miracle when he goes all-in before the flop with Ay Tz, and Ernie Durack turns over Aw Az – again! The flop comes Qy 4z 3y, giving Forrest a backdoor flush draw. The turn is the 2x, giving Forrest the chance to split the pot with a 5. The river is the miracle 5w, and Ted Forrest is still alive.

d Phil Hellmuth Chip Reese an

CHAMP GOES DOWN IN FLAMES: Defending champion Phil Hellmuth has a tough first round match-up against Chip Reese, but fights tooth and claw in one of the longest match-ups of the round. Finally Hellmuth is all-in before the flop with Q-9, against Chip Reese’s T-T. The flop brings a set for Reese and Hellmuth is in big trouble. The turn card is the 5w, and Hellmuth heads to the rail; unfortunately for the cameras, there’s no tantrum in sight.

MASTER VS. PUPIL Tuan Lee and Barry Greenstein

Sean Sheikhan

Sammy Farha

Day 2 saw a match-up with Star Wars-like overtones – the much-anticipated battle between master and pupil, Barry Greenstein and Tuan Lee. “I think he's the best heads-up player in the field,” Tuan tells us. “So if I win, that's great; but if I lose, there's no shame." The match is over in a few hands. Greenstein raises to 1,200, Le re-raises to 3,200, and Greenstein calls. The flop is 10-7-5 with two diamonds, Le bets 4k, Greenstein moves all-in, and Le makes the call. Le shows 7x 6x, Greenstein shows Jx 8x. The turn card brings the 9x, sending the Master through to the third round.

SHEIKY'S BIG BLUFF With a board reading A-7-6-5-3 with three clubs, Sean Sheikhan has moved all-in. Daniel Negreanu stands up and walks around the table, obviously frustrated, before returning to his seat to make a decision. He finally exposes his cards, 7-4 for a straight, and says he thinks he's beaten. Sheikhan shows the Kx and mucks his second card as he scoops in the pot. It's enough to bring Sheikhan back even with Negreanu.

MARATHON MATCH On the final day, Ted Forrest and Sammy Farha go at it for over three hours. Both players survive multiple all-ins. Forrest finally emerges victorious. This is going to be great on TV.

FERGUSON VS. FORREST - THE FINALE Chris Ferguson and Ted Forrest

You guys will to have to wait for this one. Coverage begins April 16th and culminates with Ferguson vs. Forrest on Sunday, May 21st, at 12pm EST. www.bluffmagazine.com

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ednesday, February 15, 2006 I Know What I Know

At 12:32pm, Andy Beal won the last of his opponents’ $10 million. By 12:45, I knew he was destined to lose it back. If Andy had been trying to “get poker out of his system” or “prove to himself” that he could play with the best in the world, this convincing four-day win gave him the opportunity for closure. But when he offered to follow the pros to LA, where they had a World Poker Tour event starting the next day, I knew the game had to go on until he lost enough money to become disgusted with poker. There were, of course, two other possible outcomes. First, he could continue winning until they ran out of money to play. Andy Beal was theoretically good enough to accomplish that at these stakes, but he would have to win at least $10 to $20 million more to do that. A much smaller loss would drive him from the game and the chances of such a loss increased with time. The longer Beal plays, the worse he plays. The worse he plays, the more he loses. The more he loses, the worse he plays. The other possibility was that negotiations over the next game would break down. Even though Beal reconsidered his offer to go to Los Angeles, the message had been sent: He would do anything to continue playing. It did not take a world-class expert at reading human behavior – and his opponents were twenty world-class experts – to know they had him right where they wanted him. All Andy Beal had was their money, and that was about to change.

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What Came Before I first wrote about the heads-up games of high-stakes Texas Hold’em between billionaire banker Andy Beal and a coalition of world-class poker pros in The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time (Warner Books, 2005). I described Beal’s return to high-stakes poker after a 619-day hiatus in The Banker, the Boss, the Junkman, and the Warrior Queen, in the April issue of this magazine. Beal lost $3.2 million during the five days of $50,000/$100,000 matches at the beginning of February and returned on February 12-15 to win $10 million, the entire bankroll the pros brought to the table.

Interregnum “Nothing is Non-negotiable” Over the next three days, the pros let Andy know that they would play him again, but it had to be on their terms: stakes would be reduced to $30,000/$60,000, and they would use any players they wanted. (During his first nine February games, Beal had refused to play anyone he had never played before.) Beal essentially conceded. His only reservation about the lower stakes was that he wanted to somehow continue the match as a one-denomination/two-chip/four-chip game. His movements at the table were so choreographed and precise that he was afraid any awkwardness could be analyzed by the pros for tells. He was more concerned about unfamiliar players. Although there was no formal agreement, Andy made it clear that he would refuse to play anyone new if he was losing, and wanted a list of the new players the group might use. The pros complied by naming three: David Oppenheim, David Benyamine, and Erik Sagstrom. They also said Phil Ivey would begin play for the group on Tuesday afternoon, February 21.

and have the winner rebate the loser 40% at the end of each session, Ivey instantly agreed to exactly that. Phil sat in Seat Two, draped his legs across Seat Three, and the cards were in the air.

Test of Wills 7:02 PM There was no subtlety to Phil Ivey’s approach to playing Andy Beal. He would raise every hand on his button. At the beginning of the match, Ivey raised 21 of 24 hands on his button and folded the other 3. At the end, he raised 16 of 17 hands on his button and called once. Every time he raised, he would lead out on the next bet. It was nothing less than a battle of wills. Who would impose his style on the other? I had expected Andy to engage Phil Ivey in a war of attrition. After all, he had his opponents’ money and could better afford a bigger, wilder game. He also had experience with ultra-aggressive play and erased a $7 million deficit the week before by playing that style against Ted Forrest. But Andy Beal instead decided to wage guerilla war, picking his spots to combat Ivey’s aggressiveness. At the start, he succeeded, keeping the pots smaller and picking the right times to bet Phil out. Just 25 hands into the match, Phil raised on his button and Andy called. After a flop of K-K-3, Beal check-raised Ivey’s bet but Ivey responded by reraising. Andy again check-raised after a four

Tuesday, February 21 A Gambler and a Gentleman Phil Ivey was one of the few high-stakes pros with whom I had no relationship. I knew he was a great player, but he hadn’t overwhelmed Beal during the two days they played in May 2004. Why hadn’t he surfaced while Andy was winning $10 million the previous week? Despite my initial skepticism, Phil Ivey blew me away on every possible level. There was his demeanor, his commitment to fairness and openness in gambling, his style, and, of course, his skill. These games between Andy Beal and the pros are the most interesting story in the history of poker. Phil Ivey completely hijacked that story, establishing himself, in this unique non-public but ultra-conspicuous game, as the best poker player alive and maybe the best of all-time. Objectively, three days of poker can’t do that. But legends grow from moments. In fifty years, no matter what happens to Phil Ivey, people will talk about what he did in these three days.

A Chip and Two Chairs 4:15 PM Phil Ivey arrived and took less than a minute to resolve Beal’s objection to using different-denomination chips. Even though the pros had already let Andy know that it was not acceptable to play with the $25,000 chips as if it were a $50,000/$100,000 game

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appeared on the turn. This time, Ivey folded. Beal succeeded with this move several times during the first half of the session. But the game started getting away from him. With Ivey raising so much, he got paid on his good hands, or when the board hit him just right. With K-7, Ivey got action after a flop of 7-7-3. Beal even checkraised that flop and bet the turn. Ivey won a $540,000 pot a few hands later with A-Q, after he caught a queen on the turn. Suddenly, Ivey had the lead, and it looked like his aggressiveness was getting him exactly what he wanted. But Andy hung in, betting Ivey out of a pot when he absolutely needed it. Four hands from the end of the day, with Phil widening his lead, Andy did it again. Ivey raised on his button. Beal check-raised after a flop of J-8-4. Ivey reraised. After a ten turned, Beal check-raised again. Ivey folded, conceding the $420,000 pot. Phil Ivey finished the day ahead by $1.96 million. Because Andy had succeeded with several of his pick-off attempts, however, he planned to stick with this strategy.

Wednesday, February 22 Andy Beal Hangs On For four hours, Andy Beal kept within hailing distance of Phil Ivey. With T♥-7♥, he picked up a $480,000 pot when he flopped a flush. Ivey kept the betting lead with 6♣-3♥, picking up the lowest possible flush when he rivered a fourth heart. Beal made the most money possible from the hand, calling all the way. Several hands later, after neither side had raised on Andy’s button – a rarity – Ivey led the betting after a flop of J-8-2 with two hearts. After another two turned, Ivey bet again. This time, Beal raised, and Ivey reraised. The river card was the jack of clubs. Phil bet and Andy, after thinking for a long time, raised. Ivey, too, took a long time to think about it, riffling eight chips – the amount of a reraise – and looking at Beal, hard, before conceding the $600,000 pot. But Beal needed to be perfect to play this way and win. As well as he was capable of playing, he wasn’t perfect. He called Ivey all the way on a board of T-T-2-T-7. Ivey turned over T-3. Quads? It’s an uphill battle when you have to pick your spots to stay close and the guy has quads when you look him up. Two hours into the match, Ivey won a pair of big pots and it looked like he was ready to start pushing Beal around. He bet and raised all the way with a board of 7-7-4-A-8. But Andy raised Phil’s bet on the river, building the pot to $600,000. Phil took a long time, again riffling the chips, trying to stare through his opponent to divine whether Beal wanted him to bet. Finally, he folded. At 1:25pm, after being behind for more than four hours, Andy Beal evened the match. It seemed every pot was big and, after betting Phil Ivey out of several in a row, he took the lead.

when Beal would tire and everyone around would wonder how much longer the game would go, Ivey alone sunk into the moment and accelerated. Ivey’s most interesting move was what I called “Riffle Thinking.” He combined his deadly stare and casual coordination with the chips to study Beal while considering an important decision. Contemplating a raise on the turn or river, Ivey would suddenly become very deliberate. Without moving, it looked like he was about to fold. But he wouldn’t. Then he would take eight chips in his hand, like he was an instant from betting. But he didn’t. He wasn’t trying to fake action. Instead, he seemed to freeze time and consider what would happen in his world if he bet, and what would happen in that same world if he folded. All the while, he would stare at Beal, contemplating these two opposing futures while silently asking, “What are you really afraid I’ll do?” Consequently, Phil Ivey was oblivious to the idea that Andy Beal had somehow seized the momentum. He went back to work, regaining the lead. Not only did he refuse to relinquish it again, but he rapaciously extended it over the final three hours. Beal’s attempts to take over the betting lead were turning into expensive failures. By the end of the day, big pots were becoming common and Ivey was winning most of them. As if he needed it, he also started getting lucky. I realized how far Andy had fallen when, just after 4pm, Phil asked how long he wanted to play. “About another hour,” he replied, “unless you clean me out.” Beal was joking, but it was gallows humor. Just two-and-a-half hours earlier, the match had been tied. When they quit for the day at 4:20pm, Phil had won $4.6 million. As they parted, Phil Ivey offered a gift, albeit a barbed one: he said he would talk to his fellow pros about restoring the stakes to $50,000/$100,000.

Thursday, February 23 Last Day in Paradise Nobody will say it, but today is destined to be the last day. Andy Beal has played for 11 days of the last 22 and, except for one night, has been confined to the property for nearly two weeks. Having lost back in the

The Ice Man Cometh Today, I got to know Phil Ivey, which isn’t easy. To start with, Ivey is uncomfortable to watch. (He is also uncomfortable being watched, which is ironic considering how intensely he watches others.) His stare is penetrating, and he does not focus it only on opponents. On a few occasions, he watched me take notes with concern. “These notes you’re taking,” he once asked. “You’re not showing them to Andy, are you?” No, of course not, I quickly said. That was absurd. His eyes bored into me. “No, I’m asking you. Are. You. Showing. These. Notes. To. Andy?” Despite some friendly banter later – Phil asked me what I thought he could get for a book and I looked into it – I moved from Seat Seven to Seat Nine the next morning. I wanted some visual distance between me and Phil Ivey. Still, it was fascinating studying Phil at the table. While barely moving, he still conveyed athletic grace and coordination. His fingers seemed uncommonly long, bending around cards and chips like spiders. Whatever his posture, he always appeared relaxed. Every day, www.bluffmagazine.com

High Finance As the game broke on Tuesday, Phil and Andy had to settle up on the rebate. Ivey had actually won $3.125 million of Beal’s chips, but had to rebate 40%. Before making the calculation, they flipped a coin for the “odd” $.025 million – that’s $25,000 – which Ivey won. The rebate amounted to $1.26 million. Ivey handed over $1.25 million and Beal took a verbal IOU for $10,000. Neither player had chips that small. The next day, after it seemed Phil Ivey caught every possible break in the last two hours, there was a spare $50,000, for which they again flipped a coin. Andy called heads, and when it came up tails, he said, “Who didn’t know how that would go?”

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last two days what he won during the first nine, I know Andy is going to press for a resolution. Phil Ivey arrived with what Beal considered to be good news. They can play $50,000/$100,000 today. Phil explained, “I believe in giving a guy a chance to get even.”

Andy Beal’s Final Stand

The Storm

For the first four hours, Andy Beal slapped Phil Ivey around. Ivey continued to control the game, but Andy got the cards to make Phil pay for his nonstop aggression and took over the betting often enough to keep Ivey off-balance. Key to this was keeping the pots small. He could get away from hands easier when the pots were smaller, and also push Phil out when he needed to assert himself. Beal built a lead while winning, at most, half the hands. During the first half hour, he won 17 hands to Ivey’s 16, yet won $1.8 million. Of Phil’s 16 winning hands, Andy folded ten of those before the flop. During another early sequence of 29 hands, Andy won just 13 of them but still added $400,000 to his lead. Again, 11 of Ivey’s 16 winning hands gained him only the blinds. Andy Beal’s control of this match was so precise that it took little for Phil Ivey to upset his equilibrium. At 11:30, he won the biggest pot of the morning, $1.5 million, with K-5 on a board of K-6-5-8-5. The pot grew gigantic because Beal three-bet on Ivey’s button, Phil four-bet the flop, Andy check-raised the turn, and Phil ended by raising on the river. Two hands later, he won another big pot with 5-5 on a board of 9-4-4-24. Ivey put in a fourth bet before the flop and was called by Beal all the way to the river. Five hands later, the match was even for the day.

Phil Ivey’s Next Career “If I lose today,” Phil Ivey told Andy Beal on Thursday morning, “I’ll go to school and work for you.” “You can actually make more money on Wall Street than playing poker.” “I know,” Phil admitted. “I just never got into that.” “We could always use smart people on our team. But now I have to stop talking. Otherwise, I’ll lose millions of dollars.” The headphones went back on. “That was my plan,” Phil said, flashing a smile.

The Music in Phil Ivey’s Ears A titanic struggle deserves a titanic turning point. The turning point for this game was when Phil Ivey threw my iPod at me. The Wynn poker room was so busy that the noise – especially with no one to talk to – began to bother Phil. He took me up on the offer I made Wednesday to bring him my iPod. He folded hand after hand while fiddling with the controls. After Beal rivered a straight to beat Ivey’s trip queens and win a $1.1 million pot, Phil yanked off the headphones and tossed the jumble aside. “You can

have your iPod back. I should throw it in the garbage.” Then he smiled. In the tension of the moment, it was like a light bulb popping. Then he made quads three hands later and, because Beal made a full house, picked up a $1.1 million pot.

Phil Ivey started to roll and Andy Beal helped, repeatedly collaborating to build giant pots. At 1:12pm, Ivey won with 8-5 on a board of 8-73-7-J. Beal took the betting lead with A-K, check-raised the turn, and bet the river. Phil hung on and picked up the $1.1 million pot. Ten minutes later, he won a $900,000 pot with 7♥-7♠, making a flush on the end when the board came up Q♥-T♥-8♥-3♣-5♥. Beal made it three bets before the flop (and Phil made it four) and called all the way to the end. On the next hand, Ivey raised with 5-4 and bet following a flop of 74-3. Andy check-raised, then called his opponent to the river. Ivey had made trips with another four on the turn. Andy stared in disbelief for a moment when Ivey showed the hand, then mucked, conceding the $800,000 pot. Beal occasionally won some of these big pots, taking down $700,000 with third pair. A few hands later, with J-J, he picked up an $800,000 pot after a board of 4-5-A-A-A. Andy Beal went from extreme care at noon to extreme recklessness by 1:30pm, though the match was still close. Ivey raked in a $1.1 million pot with A-6 on a board of Q-2-Q-2-K. What kind of hand could Beal have to build a big pot with that kind of board, much less call at the end? He would have won with an ace, king, queen, pocket pair, or deuce. At 1:50pm, Beal got within one big hand of catching up, winning $1.3 million with Q-J after a board of Q-T-Q. A jack on the turn made a straight for Phil (who held A-K), but a full house for Andy. The backbreaker came at 1:51pm, however, when it looked like Beal had the best of it with K-K against Ivey’s Q-3 and a board of Q-5-2-6. But a three on the river made Phil two pair. The expression Andy Beal’s face was either pain or resignation; both were appropriate. After this, it seemed every other hand ended in a million-dollar showdown. At 2:04pm, when they changed the decks and dealers, Phil Ivey was leading by $1.7 million. In less than a half-hour, he won $2.5 million more, expanding his lead to $4.2 million. Beal four-bet with Q♠-J♠ and bet after a flop of 94-2 with two spades. Ivey raised and called Andy’s reraise. Beal bet both the turn and river, and Phil just called, winning the $1 million pot with 7-7. Ivey was moving in for the kill. He emptied all his racks and stacked the chips in front of him in irregular multi-tiered towers. When he sat upright and faced Beal, they looked like a giant womb, nearly $15 million, growing taller, fuller, and wider. Andy got his share of luck, winning a $1.4 million hand with Q-Q against Ivey’s K-K when he rivered a queen. As 3pm approached, he won a million-dollar pot when he caught a king on the river to go with his K-6 on a previously hopeless board of 7-2-2-3. A few hands later, Beal won a $1.3 million pot without even showing a hand. After trading raises on every street, Phil simply folded to Andy’s raise on the river. At 3:30pm, the game actually slowed down. For the next 25 minutes, they played in Andy Beal’s style. So great was Phil Ivey’s mastery today that he let Andy have his way and still increased his lead. No pot approached $1 million during this time, and each player won 14 pots. Even so, the outcome was no longer in doubt. Ivey had enough left in his tank to pick off two bluffs by Beal, letting him bet all the way to the end, and taking pots totaling $1.3 million. Phil Ivey knew exactly where he was on these hands, which was why he added $600,000 to his lead during this 28-hand sequence; not bad for a half-hour of work. The game had gone on too long, and Andy Beal was behind by too much, for this slow pace to continue. www.bluffmagazine.com

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The Beal Watch Whenever Andy Beal tells me he is through with poker, I ask for his pocket watch, the one I described in Suicide King, that he keeps in front of him, attached to a binder clip. It has been modified to suit his use as a random-number generator. In his rush to exit the poker room at the end of the match with Phil Ivey, he left it behind. As much as I coveted it, I couldn’t just take it like this. I called him after he returned to his room at the Wynn and told him he left it behind. He actually apologized for leaving so abruptly. “You can have the watch as a souvenir, Mike. I don’t need it any more.”

<< actual watch

This was what it looked like: • Ivey (A-3) v. Beal (K-K) on a board of 8-6-4-A-3; $1.2 million pot. • On the next hand, Beal (T-6) won a $1.2 million pot following a board of T-9-9-7-T. • Ivey (8-5) won with a board of K-8-4-2-5; $900,000 pot. • Ivey (A-4) v. Beal (8♣-7♣) on a board of 9♥-5♣-4♣-3♦-5♥; $900,000 pot. • Ivey (T-8) on a board of A-T-9-T-8; $1.1 million pot. • On the next hand, Beal won $800,000 with A♣-6♣ when he made the nut flush on the turn. • Ivey won $1 million with 9-5. Beal raised on his button, then both players checked the flop of T-9-8. After another nine turned, Ivey bet and made it three bets when Beal raised him. Beal called after a king came on the river. • On the next hand, Ivey won $1 million with Q-3, making bottom pair on the flop, but catching a queen on the river. That queen on the river, at 4:20pm, hit Andy Beal like a punch in the stomach, increasing Phil’s lead for the day to $9 million. Andy held Ivey off for another half-hour, but even he knew how this was going to end. At 4:56pm, Phil raised Andy’s bet on the river after a board of Q-5-3Q-6. Beal paused for a moment, shrugged, and threw in his last four chips. Ivey showed his A-6 to take the $800,000 pot, the last of 5,000 hands played over the 12 days of the matches. Andy stood, reached out to shake Ivey’s hand, and said, “Good job, Phil. I’m heading back to Dallas.” Then he quickly exited the room.

Never Never Means Never Now Comes the Hard Part Andy got buried in the last hour. At 3:53pm, he was behind by $5 million for the day. In the next 27 minutes, he lost another $4 million. During that period, they showed down at least eight hands worth $800,000 or more. With so many big-pot showdowns, the river card was going to decide a lot of hands, and Ivey got a majority of the luck. He was sure to win this kind of game when the breaks evened out, though not this decisively.

By Saturday, I heard from Andy Beal. “I really feel like I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. I just feel embarrassed that I stayed too long and got stupid on the last afternoon. My biggest mistake was coming to Vegas in the first place. When I was ahead, I should have made them come to Dallas. I could play for four hours a day and not put myself in that position. Do you think Phil Ivey would come to Dallas in the next few days…?”

<< Andy Beal photo by Amy Calistri

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WISDOM

improve your game > > > > > >

here exists a favorite poker concept shared only at the highest levels. It’s hush-hush. It’s a guiding force. It’s believed to be fully understood only by poker masters. It’s clever. It’s mysterious. It’s fascinating. It’s intuitive. It’s wrong. I’m talking about thinning the field – the notion that driving opponents out of pots reduces your chances of being beaten. Makes sense so far, right?

They claim some big hands make more profit when a whole herd of opponents aren’t chasing them to the river. They’re right. When too many players try to draw out, the profit expectation can be reduced. Many hands earn more money on average when targeted by a few opponents than when targeted by a lot of them. But such arguments for thinning the field are illusion. Let me tell you how it really is…

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REALITY More than 30 years ago, I started explaining that any hand, except an unbeatable one, loses value when the number of opponents passes a certain point. I used a five-card poker example. Suppose you’re dealt a king-high straight flush from an infinite deck of cards. We’re playing showdown for the antes and there is no draw. Whatever you’re dealt at first is what you end up with, except duplicate cards are exchanged. (Remember, we’re imagining an infinite deck.) The best hand is a traditional royal flush. Well, you have a hand that’s second best to a royal, and the chances against any specific player having you beat are almost 650,000 to 1. Obviously, against just one opponent, you’re in a profitable situation. Do you want two opponents? Of course! Twenty? Sure. A thousand? Yes, again. Each added opponent adds to your profit expectation – up to a point. Strangely, each additional opponent is a little less valuable than the one added before. Now it gets weirder. If you played against six billion people, your king-high straight flush would be unprofitable. In fact, it would be almost worthless. You’d be an enormous favorite against each opponent independently. But put six billion opponents together and you’re likely to face at least 9,000 royal flushes superior to your hand. Because poker is played so that there can only be one winner, your king-high flush would have to encounter no royals to win. What are the chances that there are no royals when you’re predicting over 9,000 of them? Effectively (though not mathematically) impossible.

BEST NUMBER OF OPPONENTS That shows that there can be a cap on the number of opponents a hand can face and still be profitable. There is also a range within the possible number of opponents for which a hand remains profitable, but the profit is reduced. Does this have real-world application in poker, where practicality limits the number of players at a table to ten or fewer? Yes. And you should remember that many hands have a best number of opponents. Too many or too few, and the expectation of profit is reduced. Let’s take aces before the flop in Hold’em as an example. The most profitable number of opponents for a pair of aces in a Limit Hold’em game is four or five, depending on conditions. (I could argue for six, in some cases, but I won’t.) The most profitable number of opponents for a starting pair of kings or queens is even fewer. This is why many pros recommend

thinning the field with big pairs. They hate the thought of letting opponents draw out, when an extra raise could have saved the day. Now, it seems as if everything I’ve said adds weight to the argument in favor of thinning the field doesn’t it? Well, here’s why the concept is wrong. Indeed, it would benefit you to right-size the number of your poker customers and discourage too many calls. But there’s a problem. When you make an extra raise (typically a reraise) to thin the field and keep players out, you’re more likely to scare away the weaker hands that would have been the most profitable to you had they called. Stronger hands are apt to play anyway. Often, the unwanted effect is that acting to thin the field backfires. You have a better chance of facing the right number of opponents, but they’re frequently the wrong opponents. And that’s why making extra raises to thin the field frequently fails.

WHEN TO THIN But sometimes you may want to thin the field, anyway. You should try it when players acting behind you are strong and players already committed to the pot are weak. That way, you often end up chasing away sophisticated opponents and playing a strong hand only against weak ones. Conversely, if strong players are already committed and weak players remain to act behind you, it’s often better to call and invite these usually looser opponents in. Raising just chases away the weak action and leaves you stranded with stronger foes. Get it now? Thinning the field is a noble ambition, but it often backfires. If you try it, choose situations in which weak players are already in the pot and strong players can be chased out – not the reverse.

-MC Mike Caro, “The Mad Genius of Poker,” is today’s foremost authority on poker strategy, psychology and statistics. A world-class player, he is founder of the Mike Caro University of Poker, Gaming, and Life Strategy (MCU – with online campuses at Poker1.com). His research and accomplishments have been cited in over 100 poker books other than his own. Email: mike@caro.com. Play poker with the mad genius at DoylesRoom.com.

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WISDOM

ask clonie straight flush beats the hell out of a regular flush, so your wife should have won the pot. My main goal with this column is to give good advice to Bluff readers. So, here is my advice to you: a dozen roses, a nice card, a sincere apology, and a romantic evening at home. These are the things you need to do to make this up to your wife. And next time remember, even if she’s wrong, she’s your wife; so she’s actually right!

Clonie Dear Clonie, I’ve been playing poker online since October, and I’m very happy with my progress thus far in tournament and sit-n-go play, but my problem is that I’m the deadest money at the table anytime I try to play in a ring game. My question for you has two parts: first of all, is there any advice you can give me about the kind of adjustments I should make when playing a cash game as opposed to a tournament; and secondly, can you recommend any books or DVDs that focus primarily on cash games? Thank you for your time and effort in teaching us the little things that help us to become the players we want to be.

Dear Clonie,

We ran into a very sticky situation during a short-handed poker game at my house recently, and we need your help to settle a dispute. My wife and good friend were playing heads up. I was permanent dealer, as I had been felted a few hands before. Then came the most interesting hand I have ever witnessed, and I had to make a judgment call. Please tell me if I made the right call. My wife held 5♦4♣; my friend held A♦J♠. The betting and position are not really important. Let’s just say they bet and called all the way to the river and had to show down their hands. Here was the board when the hand was over: 6♦7♦8♦9♦K♦. My wife smiled as she reached out to rake in the huge pot that she thought her straight flush had just won her. “Not so fast,” I said. “Your 5♦ doesn’t play. The ace wins the pot.” I tried to explain that since there was a flush on the board, the five community cards took precedence. The only way for a card to play is if it is of a higher denomination than the lowest card on the board. Since the 6♦ was the lowest card, her 5♦ did not play, but her opponent’s A♦ was higher than the lowest card, so it played. Of course the argument erupted right away that if the community cards took precedence, neither of their cards should play and it should be a chopped pot. I stuck to my guns and awarded the pot to my friend. I leave it up to you to tell me whether I was right or wrong. Sincerely,

Mark B. Mark, Mark, Mark… What you must do right now is pack up your decks of cards and mail them to me – you are not allowed to play poker anymore. Not because of your line of thinking here, although it’s very much wrong, but because you actually ruled in favor of your friend and against your wife. Do you have a good divorce attorney on retainer yet? I can only guess that you are thinking of a situation in which the board makes a flush and one player has a card of the same suit that is lower than any of the board cards, while the other player does not have a card of that suit. For instance, if your wife had held the 4♦ instead of the 5♦, and your friend didn’t have any diamonds, the board would play and they would split the pot. Remember that poker is a five-card game. The five community cards, plus the two cards in your hand, are combined to make the best possible five-card hand. In this case, the best possible hand your friend could make was an ace high flush, A♦K♦9♦8♦7♦. The best hand your wife could make was a straight flush, 9♦8♦7♦6♦5♦. As we all know, a

GOT A QUESTION FOR CLONIE? DROP HER A LINE AT CLONIE@BLUFFMAGAZINE.COM. YOU CAN ALSO PLAY POKER AGAINST HER AT WWW.FULLTILTPOKER.COM.

Will Holloway, Fergus, ON, Canada Dear Will,

There are three main differences to think about when you switch to a cash game from a tournament. The first is that all of the chips in front of you are now real money instead of just tournament chips. The second is that if you put all of those chips in the pot and lose, you can continue to play by just buying back into the game. The third difference is that the blinds and antes never increase in a cash game. When all of the chips in front of you represent real cash, it means you have a lot more at risk. When you bet 5,000 in a $20 tournament, you are never risking more than your $20 buy-in. When you bet $5,000 in a cash game, you are risking all of that, and possibly everything else you have in front of you. This means that making a big bluff in a cash game can have huge consequences if you are caught. On the other hand, if you do get caught putting all of your chips into the pot with the worst hand, as long as you are not broke, you can re-buy and continue playing; whereas in a tournament, you would be done playing for that event. In a cash game, you need to assess the benefits and consequences of both of these factors and put them together to make the decisions that are going to work best for you. In a tournament, the blinds and antes go up continuously, sometimes very quickly. As they increase, the relative value and power of your chips decreases, and you are often forced to take chances and gamble. This is especially true in tournaments in which the blinds increase rapidly. In a cash game, you can play very tight poker, wait for premium hands preflop, rarely make any bluffs or fancy moves, and you will be a winning player in most games. One last thing to keep in mind about playing cash games is this: sometimes in a tournament, even though you are getting the proper odds to try to catch a card for a drawing hand, the amount of chips you have to put at risk may make drawing at a hand a bad decision. If you don’t hit your hand, you may be crippled to the point where it is difficult to recover. In a cash game though, if you are getting the proper mathematical odds to draw to the hand, then it is almost always correct to draw. Playing a much more mathematical game, instead of playing by instinct, will be an overall winning style in a cash game. A couple of good books to read for playing in cash games are Winning Low Limit Hold’em by Lee Jones, and Killer Poker by Jon Vorhaus. Jones’ book should give you some good basics of the game, while Vorhaus’ book will give you some more advanced theories and thoughts about the value of aggressive play. Best of luck,

Clonie. www.bluffmagazine.com

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WISDOM

being phil laak

NBC Heads Up BY PHIL LAAK

he event starts even before it starts... if that is possible. Caesars has opened their new poker room and they never slow down. They are at the forefront when it comes to hosting some of the coolest poker stuff going. And this event was nothing less than spectacular. Having PURE, an excellent nightclub, right next door always helps, as well. That way, when you stumble on out, you are smack dab at the doors to the poker room... always a good thing. The poker tourney is two days away. Day one: Acclimate. Day two: Draw Party. ACCLIMATION. God, I love Vegas... Don’t get me wrong. I love LA as well... but the air in Vegas. It crushes the field. Good clean air. But it’s the cool breezes that get me. Cool breezes... Vegas.... Huh? Well, this is the point of view of a true degenerate. I am not hanging out at the pool. I am playing poker. And the only time I am outside is some time after midnight. The only reason to leave a casino is for going out... and the time for going out is at night. Acclimating to the hotel room was a funny story. When we arrived, Caesars put us in another pimped-out suite. But this time there were two reasons why I thought they might have put us in the wrong room. First off, we had this cool ass room that was about as spacious as a house. And when I saw that the remote not only turned the TV on and off, but also made it slink back into the cabinet... well, I thought we might be in the wrong room. Disappearing TV sets? Does it get any better than that? What’s going on here? They must have the wrong guy, I don’t have issues with self worth... but isn’t this going too far? A disappearing TV set. Wow! Amazing. That wasn’t the only thing. There was also a gift basket for Giax Xianthoau (or something similar... the essence is that it was a crazy hard name to pronounce...). Not just any old gift basket... but one filled

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being phil laak

with exotic fruits from far away lands. Fruits and things that would make Giax happy, I presume. I was not able to identify any of the “delectables.” And I humbly submit that I am not completely ignorant when it comes to weird fruit. Anyway, it was clear that we were in Giax’s room. The people at the desk had never heard of Giax. They couldn’t figure it out either. Who was Giax? Jennifer had a theory... She suggested that Giax was part of some intense crime syndicate, had arranged for a high roller suite, and was planning on a few days at the baccarat tables before heading off to Macau to meet his contact. But on the way to the hotel, he noticed that the driver had a tattoo with the markings from the Heng Chau clan, and realized he was being set up for assassination. Giax makes his detour to Macau, but not before buying time first. So he hacks the Caesars hotel computers and arranges for someone else to take his room. And we are the hapless lackeys that are going to take the fall. The fruit is obviously poisoned, Jennifer reasons. How else were they planning on ending Giax? Obviously, in James Bond style: high roller suite, disappearing TVs, and poisoned exotic fruit. That is how they do it, she explains.... Well, Jennifer... maybe in the movies that is how it goes. In the real world, they just shoot people when they’re planning on killing them. This is probably just a simple hotel mix up. But I add, “Let’s not eat the fruit, just in case.” Hey, I was born in the dark, but not last night! Back to the poker... DRAW PARTY. NBC threw a party and, towards the end, the draw selections were made at random. I was sitting in the vicinity of Fishman, Lindgren, Gavin S., Antonio, Lyle, Gus, and a few others.

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Someone decided this was the time to make bets on who was to get picked next. And prisoner bets. (That is where you and a buddy agree on a price, and after you are called up... every time someone else is picked, he has to pay that amount until he is picked himself.) The highlights of all this side action went as follows: Fishman beat me for 1,000. I beat Antonio for 2,500 (nice). And Lyle whacked Gus in a prisoner bet for about 20,000 before he was finally picked. I played Gavin Smith in the first round. I was never more entertained. From his singing Joe Jackson’s Is She Really Going Out With Him? to telling me (in full deadpan) how he wished he had more chips when he was crippled, and endless other comedic moments. At one point in the match, I made a big raise, and while Gavin was pondering a call, I showed one of my cards to the camera. Not being the sharpest tack in the box, I didn’t realize that the card was now being flashed on three massive overhead wide screen monitors. Gavin luckily wasn’t looking in that direction, so it didn’t cost me. Hmm. Playing for a half a million, and flashing a card to the audience unknowingly. Probably not the best idea. After I advanced, I played TJ. And just like our match at The Bike two years ago, I was dispatched while holding a pair of sevens. Sometimes win… sometimes lose. Off to the cash game I went. And luckily the Frenchman was there and I was able to recoup my buy-in. Ultimately, the nature of poker is that losing is woven into the fabric of the game. And even if you are able to dodge poisonous fruits, inadvertent hole card flashing to hundreds of people, and downticking with the prisoner bets... it does not guarantee that you will win. But it does guarantee that you are still in the game.

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WISDOM

pro tips

The Biggest Game in the House BY ANGEL LARGAY

n twenty years of playing poker, I have never heard this idea introduced by anyone, anywhere. Go figure you’d have to go to Bluff Magazine to find it. I call it The Biggest Game in the House Principle. It states, in short, don’t play in it. Let’s say that Johnny starts out playing $2/$4 Hold’em and, like everyone else who is new to the game, begins by donating. Eventually, by studying the game, Johnny’s skills improve until he is regularly beating the game. What does he do then? He moves up, of course, into a $4/$8 game. Usually, he finds himself the fish in this game for a while, but if he continues to improve, he will eventually start beating this game; until he starts looking for a bigger game, where the process will repeat itself. If Johnny continues to

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improve, he will keep moving up until he reaches the biggest game in the house. Then what? Let’s go back a bit and take a look at the $2/$4 game in which he started. The range of skill levels you’ll find in this game is narrow. Generally, you’ll find you have rank beginners who have no clue, right up to people who might win more than they lose, but whose skills are not quite good enough yet to move up. If you take a look at the $4/$8 game, you’ll find just about the same thing; in general, the players here can beat the $2/$4 with some regularity, but can’t seem to beat the $4/$8 often enough to move up to $8/$16 or $10/$20. In other words, the range of talent is rather limited and the texture, from the point of view of skill level, is fairly consistent. www.bluffmagazine.com

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pro tips

This pattern remains more or less constant as you move up the ranks until you reach the biggest game in the house. Let’s say the biggest game in your casino is the $20/$40 Hold’em game. As we have seen, the range of talent in other games generally begins with folks who can’t quite beat the game and continues to the players who can, but not often enough to move up. But wait! In the $20/$40, there’s nowhere to move up to. It’s the biggest in the house, and so you also have players who can beat the game often enough to move up – they just have nowhere else to go. Beyond that, you have players who are talented and skilled enough to beat a $40/$80 or $75/$150 game – but they’re stuck in the biggest game in the house, too. And then there’s the guy who consistently beats the $200/$400 game when he travels, but at home he plays in the $20/$40 game. The game has everything from $8/$16 players to $200/$400 players in it. By contrast, I can assure you there are no $100/$200 players sitting in the $3/$6 game. Therefore, the range of talent in the biggest game in the house is by far the largest – from the player with absolutely no clue, to the player who is skilled enough to play in a much larger game. The texture in such a game can be particularly challenging, as issues arise that you would rarely, if ever, see at that limit if larger games were available. To

TEACHING FOR WPT BOOT CAMP As an instructor for WPT Boot Camps, I must have one of the best teaching jobs in the world. Instead of screaming kids, we have an ultra-focused group of 60 people, all desperate to learn. It’s a credit to the attendees that they are investing in improving their game, and there’s nothing more satisfying than the follow-up e-mails from students who have paid back that investment many times over, often within the first week of leaving the camp. But perhaps the best part of the job is the opportunity to share the platform with some of the best poker players in the world. I get to be teacher and student all at the same time. As TJ Cloutier said at a recent class, “The day I stop learning something at the poker table is the day I stop playing poker.”

help you better visualize this, consider preparing an offense in football for a defensive line that included everything from a first grader to an NFL superstar. Or you could prepare an offense for a team consisting entirely of high school students. Even if the skill level of the two teams averaged out to exactly the same, it’s easier to prepare for a tighter range of skills. And in poker, it’s not just easier; it’s more profitable. For instance, a few years back I was living in Los Angeles and I played in two casinos there. Both casinos, at the time, regularly spread a $40/$80 Hold’em game. Casino A also regularly spread games up to $400/$800, while $40/$80 was Casino B’s largest game. I played over 2,000 hours at Casino A and over 1,000 hours at Casino B over a yearand-a-half period. My average hourly win rate was three times higher in Casino A, despite the fact that the limits were the same. Upon determining that this wasn’t just a short term aberration, I moved down in limits when I played in Casino B, choosing instead to play $20/$40. I gave it another 1,000 hours and found that my average hourly win-rate actually increased over 50%, despite playing a game half the size. If your goal in poker is to win the most money, don’t let your ego drag you down by dragging you over to the biggest game in the house, just so you can brag that that’s where you play. Consider stepping down to step up the profit.

one.” Or this ingenious idea from Clonie Gowen on how add an unpredictable element to your game: “Before playing, deal out two random cards and whatever they are must become a starting hand you mix into your game that day.” And my own personal favorite on aggression at the table from Mark Seif: “When faced with your opponents, I want you to eat their children.” -Crispin Leyser- Instructor WPT Boot Camp

To receive your exclusive $100 BLUFF discount call: 866.WPT.BOOT or login onto www.wptbootcamp.com_BLUFF Coupon Code: D9NEZ

With that in mind, I thought I’d share just a handful of other invaluable poker nuggets from some of our lead instructors, such as these words of wisdom about pocket aces from Mike Sexton: “They are good for winning a small pot or losing a big

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WISDOM

fish food

HUTCHISON’S POINT COUNT SYSTEM

FOR OMAHA HIGH-LOW POKER BY EDWARD HUTCHINSON

O YOU’RE INTERESTED IN PLAYING THE BIG GAME SOMEDAY, HUH? UNFORTUNATELY, YOUR HOLD’EM SKILLS WILL ONLY GET YOU SO FAR. IN ORDER TO SIT DOWN WITH THE BIG BOYS, YOU’LL NEED TO BE SKILLED AT A NUMBER OF GAMES. WE HERE AT BLUFF HAVE FOUND THE PERFECT SYSTEM FOR LEARNING OMAHA HI-LO, AND, BEING THE CHARITABLE PEOPLE WE ARE, WE THOUGHT WE WOULD SHARE IT WITH YOU.

ASSUMPTIONS: A ten-handed game at the lower levels, with a mix of good and poor players. OBJECTIVE: To identify those hands that have at least a 50% or above expectation of winning. That is, while any random hand should win about 10% of the pots in a ten-handed game, the hands identified as “playable” by this system have at least a 15% probability of winning.

EDWAR

HUTCH I have INSON but only played poker s ince I w began p as a kid laying s years ag , erio o. ing 30 o I have probab usly about 12 ly avera r more ge hours a period. week du d playI ring this at casin play online at va os MS. My in Vicksburg a rious sites and nd Phila favorite d Omaha/ 8, altho game is – wh elphia, at else ugh I a HORSE – lso e and About te Stud/8 tourna njoy online m n years year ap ago, I a ents. po of psych intment as a v ccepted a oneis olo I had a gy at Jackson iting professor ccess to State Un iversity there, a a high-s . nd p opportu some free tim eed computer nity to e, so I to Omaha/ d o 8 starti o some rese k this ng arch o system n was the hands. The resultin n lamente g d Can published in the late adian Magazin , Po e bit and . Later I revis ker Monthly ed the publish ed it on sy my own stem a web site .

METHOD:

In any split pot game, the best hands are those that have a chance to win both high and low. Most of the hands without this potential should be discarded. However, there are a few hands that are profitable even though they have no potential to win low. The first step in evaluating your hand is to see if it is one of these high-only hands. To qualify, all four of your cards must be ten or above and include (1) two pair, or (2) a pair and two suited cards, or (3) two double suits. Eliminate any high hand containing three of the same rank. If your hand does not qualify as a high hand, then the next step is to see if your hand can be played as a low or two-way hand. This determination is made by adding the number of points obtained in these four simple steps: FIRST, look at your two lowest cards and award points as follows:

A-2 equals 20 points A-3 equals 17 points A-4 equals 13 points A-5 equals 10 points 2-3 equals 15 points 2-4 equals 12 points 3-4 equals 11 points 4-5 equals 8 points Anything else equals 0 points

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SECOND, look at your two remaining cards (“kickers”) and award points as follows:

3 equals 9 points 4 equals 6 points 5 equals 4 points Jack, queen, or king equals 2 points 6 or 10 equals 1 point Do not award any “kicker” points for a card that duplicates a card used in step one, and if the kicker is paired, it is counted only once under this step.

THIRD, if you have any pairs, add points as follows:

Aces equal 8 points Kings equal 6 points Queens equal 5 points Jacks equal 2 points Tens equal 1 point Fours equal 1 point Threes equal 1 point Deuces equal 3 points Deduct half of the points awarded under this step if you have three cards of the same rank.

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fish food

EXAMPLES FOR CLARIFICATION

ion of i-Lo vers is the H eans the pot m nd me. That Omah lit pot” ga and at the table a p “s a ’s It h in st w e h to ig n Omaha. h e you happ tween the is split be ualifying hand.” If of the hand, you “q s the lowest h and low portion ig h e s. They both th whole pot. h four hole card facee th ” p o o it w alt “sc ach start ich are de Players e munity cards (wh UST use two of m M co ou share five ter of the table). Y ” cards to three “up on the cen e h it th w in s p u ard qualifying “down” c your four and. There is no nd automatically h ha r form you – the best high of the pot, e ow” side id “l “high” s e pot. To win the th lify. l wins half must qua numerica your hand and with different e being r, e v e w o h ith the ac five-card h It takes a e through eight (w of the pot. The c a h m e e low alf values fro lify for th (also known as th a u q to ) st s e -5 o g -4 d -3 n the lowe -2 A w ha hand is winning lo . The sime h T . best low ”) le r “bicyc high card e cards “wheel” o r with the lowest e th e y to arrang la is p to the same, the ine this e rm th te e re d a s to rd ay a c w h st hig ple ber. If the ared. into a num est cards are comp h ig h d secon

E: er THE GaAM 8 or Bett

You are dealt A♠3♠5♥K♦. Since all four cards are not above ten, the hand is evaluated as a low or two-way hand by following the four steps outlined above. Step one awards 17 points for the A-3; step two grants six points for the 5 and king kickers, step three does not apply, and step four gives four points for the two suited cards (spades) headed by the ace. The total equals 27 points, making this a playable hand. You are dealt A♠A♣2♠3♣. The hand does not qualify for high. Step one awards 20 points for the A-2; step two gives nine points foify for high. Step one awards 20 points for the A-2; step two gives nine points for the 3 kicker; step three grants eight points for the pair of aces; and step four means that each double-suited combination headed by an ace is worth four points each, or a total of eight points for the two combinations. The grand total for this hand is 45 points. Incidentally, this is the most powerful hand in high-low Omaha. You are dealt A♠10♠A♣Q♦. This hand qualifies for high because it satisfies the condition that 1) all four cards are ten or above, and 2) two of the cards are paired and two are of the same suit. You are dealt A♠10♠K♦Q♦. This hand qualifies for high because 1) all four cards are ten or above, and 2) it contains two double suits.

NOTES A very high correlation (but not a one-to-one correspondence) exists between a hand’s point count and its winning percentage. Thus, a hand that earns 25 points is quite likely to have a higher win percentage than a hand with 24 points, and it’s almost certain to have a higher percentage than a hand with 23 or fewer points. It should be noted that initial card selection, while crucial to success, is not the only skill necessary to maximize Omaha profits. These other skills, however, do not lend themselves to easy quantification and are beyond the scope of this simple mathematical approach. Recall, too, the basic assumption that this system is being used at the lower limits. I hope that these limitations will not detract from the main purpose of this approach, which is to provide a simple aid to the beginner. This system was devised by Edward Hutchison who invites your comments and opinions. www.pokerprofessor.homestead.com/links.html.

FOURTH, if you hold two suited cards and the highest of them is: an ace, add 4 points; a king, add 3 points; a queen or jack, add 2 points; an 8, 9, or 10, add one point. Deduct half of the points awarded in this step if your hand contains three cards of the same suit, and award no points if all of the cards are ofthe same suit. EACH HAND WILL EARN A TOTAL FROM 0 TO 45 POINTS. PLAY THOSE HANDS WITH 20 POINTS OR MORE AND CONSIDER RAISING WITH 30 POINTS OR MORE.

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WISDOM

fish quiz

There’s nothing in a name, as my old teacher Mr Jellyballs used to tell me. Well he was WRONG! Poker’s all about colorful nicknames. But how good are you at identifying players and their aliases? Let’s find out...

PLAYERS’ NICKNAMES THE MATADOR NEVERWIN E-DOG PHIL LAAK

MARCEL LUSKE

GUS HANSEN

DUSTIN WOLF

TEXAS DOLLY DEVILFISH THE ORIENT EXPRESS THE RAZOR

DOYLE BRUNSON

DANIEL NEGREANU

ANTONIO ESFANDIARI

ERICK LINDGREN

THE UNABOMBER THE PROFESSOR FOSSILMAN THE GRINDER

HOWARD LEDERER

CARLOS MORTENSON

DAVID PHAM

DAVID ULLIOT

THE MATADOR THE FLYING DUTCHMAN KID POKER THE GREAT DANE

GREG RAYMER

JOHNNY CHAN

MICHAEL MIZRACHI

JOHN PHAN

THE MAGICIAN

Phil Laak/The Unabomber, Marcel Luske/The Flying Dutchman, Gus Hansen/The Great Dane, Doyle Brunson/Texas Dolly, Daniel Negreanu/Kid Poker, Antonio Esfandiari/The Magician, Howard Lederer/The Professor, Carlos Mortenson/The Matador, Dustin Wolf/Neverwin, Erick Lindgren/E-Dog, David Pham/The Dragon, David Ulliot/Devilfish, Greg Raymer/Fossilman, Johnny Chan/The Orient Express, Michael Mizrachi/The Grinder, John Phan/The Razor www.bluffmagazine.com

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WISDOM

strange games

All Hands On Deck! BY JAMES ERNEST AND MIKE SELINKER

his month, instead of running down a few crazy poker games, we’ve decided to show off our list of twenty nonstandard poker hands. If you’re a casual player who can never remember whether a straight beats a flush, you have no business reading this article. If, on the other hand, you’re convinced that poker would be a hundred times better if every possible combination of cards somehow outranked “high card,” this article may be your first step into a better world. Here’s all the hands we found, from worst to best.

HIGH CARD

Little bobtail straight: Three cards to a straight, like 7-8-9. The little bobtail is two cards shy of a legitimate hand… it’s so easy, we dare you not to get one. Little bobtail flush: Three cards to a flush. ONE PAIR

Bobtail straight: Four cards to a straight, such as 5-6-7-8. This hand is found, along with the bobtail flush, in a game called Canadian Poker. It’s also called a busted straight, though not typically when you’re pretending that it outranks a pair of aces. Flush house: Three cards of one suit and two of another. Bobtail flush: Four cards to a flush, such as four spades. You know, that hand you keep losing with in real poker. Russ: Five cards of the same color (all red or all black). We have no idea why it’s called a russ, but we’re not making this stuff up. Topher Grace proudly displays a russ (“all reds!”) in Ocean’s Eleven, so we prefer to call it a Topher. TWO PAIR

Blaze: Five face cards (jack, queen, king). This hand is always two pair or better, but if it makes you feel better, now it’s also a blaze. Flash: One card of each suit, plus a joker; if you play with a joker. Little bobtail straight flush: Three cards to a straight flush, such as the 4♠5♠6♠. Some people call this the “little bobtail,” so you can set them straight by hauling out this list. THREE OF A KIND

Bracket: Okay, get this: The bracket contains a deuce; a trey or a four; a five; a six, a seven, or an eight; and a nine. We swear we’re not making this up. We can’t think of any possible explanation for this assortment of cards. But, not only did somebody come up with this hand, at least two other people did, too; they called it a skeet or a pelter.

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Five and dime: Five cards between five and ten, with no pairs. Not to be confused with the wild card game of the same name. Skip straight: Five consecutive odd cards (A-3-5-7-9), or five consecutive even cards (6-8-10-Q-A). Wrap-around straight: A straight that uses an ace in the middle, such as K-A-2-3-4. This is lower than a straight by definition, because the highest card is below that of the smallest straight. STRAIGHT

Little dog: Five unpaired cards between two and seven. This is the first of four commonly known “cats and dogs” hands. The dogs are lower because they “chase” the cats. Nothing about these hands makes any sense, but we can’t argue with common knowledge. The rest are: Big dog: Five unpaired cards between nine and ace. Little cat: Five unpaired cards between three and eight. Big cat: Five unpaired cards between eight and king. See, now, we warned you that would make no sense. FLUSH FULL HOUSE

Bobtail straight flush: Four cards to a straight flush, such as the 4♦5♦6♦7♦. In real poker, this hand is the cruelest mistress of all. But now it beats a big cat! FOUR OF A KIND

Bracket flush: A suited bracket (see above). Hey, if you’re gonna play with the bracket, you might as well play with the bracket flush. STRAIGHT FLUSH ROYAL FLUSH FIVE OF A KIND

Gimpsey-doodle: Five specific cards chosen by the dealer before the hand, such as “the red twos, the black sevens, and the Suicide King.” Okay, we made this one up for the book, but if you can call your shots like that, we figure you deserve to beat five of a kind. And to be stripped of shuffling privileges. James and Mike are “professional” game designers, and they can play nickel-ante poker with twenty hands tied behind their backs. You can learn about more traditional and not-so-traditional poker in their book (with Phil Foglio): Dealer’s Choice: The Complete Handbook of Saturday Night Poker.

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WISDOM

pro tips

BY LIZ LIEU

imit tournaments are different from no limit tournaments. In limit, most of the action takes place after the flop. It’s also more common to find players who stay in a hand longer with weaker/drawing hands. In limit tournaments, the aggressive player can make only one bet of a predetermined amount. In no limit tournaments, the aggressive player can bet his entire stack, thus creating a situation in which the player with a weaker or drawing hand would risk too many chips to see if he can hit his cards. In limit tournaments, as in every poker tournament, the starting limits are usually very low and this makes it hard to bluff. Therefore, it is important to limit your aggression in the opening phase of a tournament. I tend to use the first couple of levels to gauge my opponents and analyze their playing styles. Even though people will call you down with draws and less than stellar hands, it is important to bet when you feel you have the best hand. At these starting limits, there is no value in trapping your opponent, as opposed to later in the tournament, when the blinds and limits are more significant compared to the chips in play. It is important for your opponents to know that they will get no free cards when you have a good hand. This sets the tone for the rest of the tournament – they now know that it will be costly chasing their draws against you. As the tournament progresses and the limits increase, it is important to shift gears and become more aggressive. At this point, you should have a better understanding of your opponents’ playing styles and you must use this to your advantage. If you have only been making raises with good hands during the first couple of levels, you will be able to capitalize on the respect you have garnered. Be very attentive to your position, and benefit from your solid reputation at the table, while always keeping in mind that over-aggression can lead opponents to trap you. It is important to note that, when you are the aggressor and nobody makes a hand on the flop, you will almost always take down the pot. Mixing up your play can be ever effective in limit tournaments; there is more room to be creative, due to the fact that your opponent can’t put you all-in. It’s important, however, to have a strategy if you decide to change your playing style. This strategy should be based on how your opponents have been reacting to your previous playing style. For instance, if no one has been calling your raises, then start to flat call with good starting hands, and raise with suited connectors and suited A X. This will change the perception your opponents have of your play. You must feel confident playing different styles of poker before you decide to mix it up. If you are not sure of yourself playing a certain style, don’t do it – stay with the approach you’re comfortable with. In short, since the action in limit tournaments mostly takes place after the flop, it leaves more room to be creative. Selective aggression and an ability to keep your opponents off balance are the keys to success in limit tournaments.

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Liz Lieu is a very successful high limit cash game player. She has recently begun to play tournaments on Team Martinspoker.com, where she has enjoyed tremendous success, including winning the $1000 Limit Hold’em Event at the Los Angeles Poker Classic.

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SHUFFLE UP AND DEAL! FOLLOWING YOUR FAVORITE POKER PROS HAS JUST GOTTEN A LITTLE MORE INTERESTING. Welcome to the NEW ESPN/Bluff Magazine Fantasy Poker Challenge-your chance to sit down with your favorite players and not go broke! Choose the players that will do the best over the course of 13 tournaments (spread throughout six months) and you could be heading to

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full tilt poker lessons from the pros

WISDOM

The Other Danger in Slow Playing

BY HOWARD LEDERER

ou’ve probably heard the standard reason to avoid slow playing: It’s dangerous, because when you slow play, you give an opponent a chance to make a bigger hand at a minimal cost. This is absolutely true. But there’s another reason to play your big hands fast, and this one isn’t talked about as frequently. A slow play can give an opponent a chance to get away from a hand more cheaply than he would have had you played it fast from the start. Consider the following example. You’re in late position in a No-Limit Hold’em ring game. A player raises in early position. You look at your cards, see pocket eights, and decide to call. The flop is absolutely perfect: Q♥ 8♥ 2♦. You’ve hit your set and, with the queen out there, chances are your opponent has something – maybe A-Q, maybe pocket kings or aces. He bets the flop. Many players will just call in this spot, hoping to get their opponent to bet on the turn. But a raise is usually the better play. If you just call, you risk seeing a heart on the turn. I don’t think you need to be especially worried about the flush beating your set; you might get your set beat by a flush draw even if you raise. However, you do need to be concerned about the effect the third heart will have on your opponent. He very well might suspect that you were on the flush draw and he’ll no longer be willing to commit a lot of money to the hand, even if he has aces. In fact, any king, jack, ten, nine or a card that pairs the board is likely to give your opponent pause. If he bets on the turn and you raise, you’re signaling that the turn card helped you. In effect, you’re saying that you liked the flop enough to call and the turn improved your hand in some way. You’re announcing that you can beat one pair. So the flop very well may be the only time when your opponent is willing to make a stand with a single pair. If he bets the flop of Qh 8♥ 2♦ and you raise, he’s likely to think that you’re semi-bluffing – raising on a flush draw. At that point, he might feel compelled to protect his hand with large re-raise or perhaps an all in. When this happens, you’ll take down a monster pot. It’s OK when a flop raise doesn’t get you the result you want. You might scare off someone holding pocket jacks or A-K, but you wouldn’t make a lot of money off these hands anyway. And, if you’re up against A♥-J♥, you may lose a big pot to a flush. But that’s OK, because you’ll have gotten your money in with the best hand. Of course, there are some occasions where slow playing is the best choice. If you flop quads or something like queens full, you’ll want to give an opponent a chance to make some kind of hand on the turn or river. But frequently, the best option is to play fast on the flop. It may be your only chance to win a big pot with a big hand. www.bluffmagazine.com

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WISDOM

chip tricks

The Pivot BY RICH FERGUSON EFFECT: Tilt your cards up to face you, then flick them so they pop around toward the rest of the table and fly forward to land perfectly face up. This is an awesome way of presenting one or both of your cards. PROCEDURE: Tilt your cards up by the left corner nearest you, as if looking at the value of the cards (Figure 1). Square the cards and place your first finger onto the corner’s edge. At the same time, angle the cards up a little more, so that they can be held between your first finger and the table. One important key is to make sure the cards are slightly bowed toward you (Figure 2). Bring your right hand toward the face of the cards and, with the first or middle finger of your right hand, flick the right corner of the cards (Figure 3). The goal is to get the cards to pivot around exactly 180 degrees to face the rest of the table. This part of the effect does not look good if the cards do not quickly face the opposite direction. Practice this part carefully to get it exactly right, since the force with which you flick the cards, the surface you are learning on, and the coordination of balancing the cards can all vary. Once the cards have flipped face out, you will notice they are now bowed outwards (Figure 4). Similar to the beginning of the trick, you will now need to bow the cards towards yourself again. Simply reach over the cards with the middle finger of the left hand and pop them back into the shape needed to continue (Figure 5). Here is the hidden gem of this trick. If you have not been called and you want to show only one card as a tease to the table, stop here. Of course, the card your opponents will see will be the bottom card of your original face-down cards. If it’s time to show both of your cards, press down on the corner of the cards still held by the first finger. This will easily cause the cards to slip free and shoot out onto the table (Figure 6). I dig that part! TIPS: Without using a felt table, the cards will initially slide away from you too easily when attempting this effect. You can try to do this on any surface by lifting the cards much higher than in Figure 2. When finally pushing through the cards to get them to shoot out onto the table, as in Figure 6, don’t push too hard or you may find your cards flipping completely over, face down. That’s a whole different trick! Play a little with the pressure and you’ll be looking like a pro at this in minutes. Lastly, this effect isn’t a “slowroll” type of an effect. It is done quickly to show your cards with style.

COMMENTS: This is another Bluff Magazine and Official Poker DVD Series exclusive effect. Do it well and you’ll definitely raise some eyebrows at your next game. With a little practice, you’ll be the show-off at the table. It is not difficult to get both cards to fly out a couple feet and land perfectly next to each other, face up. It doesn’t get more James Bond than that! As always, there is a time and place for these tricks. Respect house and casino rules and have fun playing with style! Previews at www.officialpokerinc.com Official Poker, Inc., teaching you how to look cool, impress friends and intimidate opponents! Visit http://www.officialpokerinc.com and start looking like a pro today! Visit http://www.richferguson.com to inquire about poker, magic and mentalist demonstrations. Multiple award-winning magician Rich Ferguson can bring jaw-dropping sleight of hand magic to your next special event!

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his article is for men only. There is nothing contained herein that is of any interest to women. So lady, if you have found your man’s copy of Bluff in the bathroom and happened to turn to this page, you might as well stop reading. Really, stop now. There is nothing here for you. Okay, guys. Within this article, I promise to provide you with the best and most updated advice about keeping your poker and your marriage in good shape. Where do these two subjects meet? You know already. They meet when your wife is upset at you for spending all your free time playing poker, reading about poker, talking about poker, and otherwise putting poker on a higher pedestal than her. They meet when your wife has planned a nice Sunday afternoon going antique shopping with you, and you tell her you can’t go because the $500,000 Sunday Tourney is starting at four, and you don’t want to start late. They meet when you don’t know how to answer the question, “Would you rather play poker with the guys or stay at home and get nasty with me?” What qualifies me to give advice on this subject? First, I play a lot of poker, and second, I am on my third wife right now. Basically, I’m a poker player that gets married all the time, so I know plenty about both subjects. Here goes:

♥ SPEAK NO EVIL: Do not talk about poker with your wife. She doesn’t want to hear about poker. Especially do not tell her bad beat stories. If she is not a player, she doesn’t understand anyway, and these stories just reinforce the idea that poker is all about luck. If she is a player, none of this advice is applicable anyway.

♥ SEE NO EVIL: Do not watch poker live on television when your wife is home. Record poker shows and watch them when she is away or asleep. Nearly half of the program is com-

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BY RICHARD TAYLOR mercials, so you can fast forward and watch two hours of programming in just over an hour.

♥ DO SOME EVIL: Just don’t talk about it so much! When you win, share the wealth. Buy her some stuff. When you lose, you keep that info to yourself. ♥ FLOWER POWER: It is no secret that we use flowers as a magical way of calming irritated women. Why not use this as an opportunity to hide your poker losses? Go ahead and buy the flowers for $40, but you tell the wife they cost $90. Now you don’t have to explain what happened to the $50 you lost to those donkeys you play every Tuesday. The same method works with cars and jewelry if you need to hide higher losses. ♥ CANCELLATION REVERSAL: Let’s say your weekly game is cancelled for one reason or another. Maybe some people got sick, or they are so whipped that they can’t get a kitchen pass from the wife to attend the game. Do you tell your wife your game was cancelled? Hell no! You wait until the day of the game and then tell her you decided to stay home and spend time with her. She will think you actually wanted to be home more than you wanted to play poker. You get big points for this one. ♥ WATCH THE CLOCK: Let’s assume you have arrived at the point in your relationship where you have used up all your good excuses for arriving home late. The “I had to take my buddy home cause he drank too much” excuse is no longer the gem it once was. When you say you will be home from your weekly game at 11 pm, just do it. However, we know occasionally you’re going to blow that off and stay out late anyway. Tip: If you are going to get bitch slapped for being late anyway, maximize your time. Stay out until 2:30 am, but no later! Why? Because after 3 am, the “bitching penalty” goes up substantially. In marriage speak, any-

thing past 2:30 am is “practically three in the morning” and will be treated as such. I am not responsible for your clothes on the lawn if you don’t follow this advice.

♥ GOOD COMEBACK: Has your wife ever accused you of loving poker more than you love her? Well, next time respond with, “Honey, don’t you know I love you more than I love blackjack.” It will fulfill her to know that you place her above one of the most popular card games in the world. This fact will help her selfesteem. ♥ BANKING TIP: Never mix your poker money with any bank account to which your wife has access. Many banks have free checking accounts with online statements. That way you don’t get any statement in the mail. ♥ FAKE EMAIL: This one is not for the faint of heart or the short of cash. Next time you win a tourney online, save the email notification. Use the copy/paste functions in your email and create a realistic facsimile of an email to yourself. The email should say that you won a trip to Vegas to play in a major tournament. It is much easier to get away on a poker trip if she thinks you won the trip. Important: Make sure you “win” this trip at the last minute, so it is impossible for your wife to arrange to go with you. Otherwise, you will have to make another email to say the tournament was cancelled, and that story is harder to pull off. Be sure to bring home a nice gift from the casino shops for your wife, and don’t buy any “stripper bucks” on your credit card! Follow my tips, and you will be in good shape. Matrimony is a good thing if you can keep it. Good luck with your game, and I’ll see you at the tables! Richard Taylor remains married in Marietta, Georgia, and his wife hates this article. www.bluffmagazine.com

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