29 July 2010

» Combating the LAGfish

In the good old days, categorising players was quite easy. The dimensions of “tight or loose” and “passive or aggressive” gave us a two by two matrix with four rough categories of player (such as TAG, for tight and aggressive, or LAG for loose and aggressive). This provided a template for pigeonholing players. Granted, reality is never so easy, but for everyday grinding, this was a remarkably simple and useful approach.

01 July 2010

» Five ways to pretend to be good at poker

At the WSOP you can really play some poker. Without the distractions of everyday life back home, for the last four days I’ve basically done nothing but wake up, shuffle around for a couple of hours, head to the Rio, play poker for 12 hours, come back to my hotel and fail to get to sleep because I’ve been playing too much poker.

11 June 2010

» I’d rather be lucky than good, part II

By the time you read this, the WSOP 2010 will have started. Thousands of players will have flown in to Las Vegas from all continents in an attempt to immortalise themselves in the poker world. Around 50 of them will leave with a 2010 WSOP bracelet on their wrists. How many arrive thinking they will leave with one?

10 May 2010

» Deeper Stacks, Shallower Pockets

For the vast majority of poker players, going to Vegas to play in the World Series of Poker is unrealistic. Sure, Harrah’s may have dropped the price of the smallest buy-in to $1,000 last year, but when you’re a pub player, used to spending a tenner a night on poker, that’s a little out of your price range.

01 April 2010

» Structural Dynamics

Over the past few years, live tournament structures have definitely got better. However, it’s not always obvious what the benefits are.

08 March 2010

» Horses for courses

When JJ Hazan bravely stood up in the Dragon’s Den last year to try to get funding for a series of tournaments, we saw a glimpse of a rare phenomenon: what the world outside our little niche really thinks about whether poker is a “good bet” or not.

03 February 2010

» Human donkey wins poker tournament

After a final table which lasted a marathon 26 hours, the champion of the inaugural Global Poker Tour was crowned in London yesterday afternoon. Unknown player Mark Shetland from Surrey, UK survived a veritably terrifying final table which included Daniel Negreanu, Vitaly Lunkin, Dario Minieri and Jason Mercier.

12 January 2010

» Pickleman at the Unibet Open Warsaw

About six months ago I wrote an article about the Unibet Open, London. I talked about wild parties, rock stars, and a feel to proceedings that was somewhere between the Olympics and the Oscars. This weekend I had my second drink from the cup, and I loved it. But whereas my first taste of the Unibet Open left me feeling hedonistic and carefree, my second has left me with a serious conviction: this is how a poker tour should be.

27 November 2009

» String-bet Nazis must die!!

What a wonderful word “jobsy” is. It’s a peculiarly British word. Not because being jobsy is a peculiarly British thing to be, but because only the British would actually come up with a word to slag someone off who was being so.

28 October 2009

» Is poker a young man’s game?

There’s an experience in poker which I want to put a name to. Let’s call it the Grinder’s Lament. It runs something like this: when you win, it feels like just another day at the office; you make money playing poker, that’s what you do for a living; Plan A worked – it’s nothing special. But when you lose it feels like the world’s caved in.