BluffEurope.com: Interviews

Nik Persaud meets… Phil Galfond

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:51:31 GMT

Phil Galfond is the greatest poker theorist of his generation. To Nik Persaud he’s a personal hero: Phil’s strategy articles and training videos on BluefirePoker.com helped to reinvigorate Nik’s game when he felt he needed it most. Bluff took Nik to meet his saviour.

The next big thing: Jeff Sarwer by Stephen Bartley

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:27:24 GMT

The poker forums begin to buzz; something about a chess prodigy with a strange childhood; one of foster homes and dramatic escapes into anonymity before he disappears, emerging 20 years later to make a revolutionary impression on the poker hierarchy. Stephen Bartley investigates...

Phil Laak gets real…

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:17:47 GMT

“I used to think I was just a character in a comic strip drawn by some guy in Utah. It’s not my choice – the guy who draws the comics makes the choices.”

Joe Cada WSOP Champ: Not-so-average Joe

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:17:25 GMT

What’s left to say about the 2009 WSOP final table? Ivey failed to pick up the momentum we were all praying for; Akenhead ran kings into aces and broke our hearts; Buchman imploded; Shulman folded himself out of contention; Saout ran out of luck, and Darvin Moon continued on his searing heater, his erratic plays adding a charging rhinoceros of unpredictability to the dynamics of play.

Barry Shulman: Confessions of a Card Player

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:02:45 GMT

There was a time when the very mention of his name would make us shudder, but these days, Bluff lives in harmony with Barry Shulman of Card Player Magazine.

Marc Goodwin: Chilling with Mr Cool

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:42:09 GMT

When he was younger, Marc Goodwin played a lot of blackjack, employing sophisticated systems to beat the casinos. He won a lot of money on the tables of Europe, which he promptly lost playing some game he’d just discovered called Omaha.

Phil Ivey

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:49:57 GMT

It’s 3.30am at Bluff Towers. The phone rings, jogging a sleep-deprived journalist out of his catatonic slump. “Phil’s ready to do the interview now,” says the nice PR lady at FullTilt. “Make sure it’s ten minutes, though. OK?”
Oh, thank God!

Roland de Wolfe

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:11:37 GMT

Fresh from winning his first WSOP bracelet, Roland de Wolfe gives us the low down from this years World Series in Vegas.

James Akenhead: Best of British…

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:50:52 GMT

James Akenhead was a whisker away from winning a bracelet at last year’s World Series. We caught up with him on the way to Vegas to chat about his obsessive personality, the healthy state of British poker and why Mickey Wernick thinks he’s the new Stu Ungar.

John Tabatabai

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:28:57 GMT

By his own admission, John Tabatabai had a torrid time of it at the World Series last year. We caught up with him to see how he’s preparing to do things differently this year.

FullFlush1: Luke Schwartz lets rip!

Wed, 06 May 2009 14:51:40 GMT

When a foul-mouthed force of nature called __FullFlush1__ began ripping into the highest stakes on the net in February, the chatter on the forums went crazy. He must be on a massive heater, they reasoned. He’s bound to go broke soon. But __FullFlush1__ did not go broke. He continued to tear into the best players in the world with impeccable reads and fearsome bluffs.

The Redemption of Jamie Gold

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:46:19 GMT

August 11th 2006. The Pallazzo Suites, The RIO, Las Vegas. Bluff is attempting to conduct an interview with a newly crowned world champion, who bounds animatedly around the room in an attempt to explain exactly what had happened to him during the previous ten days of poker, his eyes wide with incredulity. His enthusiasm is charming, his laughter infectious. This guy will be good for poker, we think.

Ziigmund: Mad, Bad and Dangerous

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:30:13 GMT

“Who is Ziigmund on FTP?” The inevitable post flashed up on the 2+2 forums sometime around the middle of 2007 in response to the curious emergence of a wildly aggressive player tearing into the highest stakes on the net. “He is rumoured to be a Finnish player called Ilari Sahamies,” came a tentative response.

Tom "Durrrr" Dwan

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:07:18 GMT

Since the early 1990s when future Vice President Al Gore emerged from his secret bunker in the hills of Kentucky and dropped the Internet in the laps of the American youth there seems to be two constants; first, it’s now ridiculously easy to ruin the life of your ex-girlfriend, and second, really fucking smart kids are dropping out of college to get crazy rich.

JC Tran: Strength in Numbers

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

JC Tran has been steering an unstoppable hurricane across the green baize over the past year, picking up a WSOP bracelet and (finally) a WPT title in the process.

The Italian Job - Pagano and Minieri

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:50:45 GMT

Vespa bikes, leather jackets and cool looks... Bluff Europe meets up with two Italians keen to take on the world. Ladies and gentlemen, let us introduce you to Dario and Luca.

Peter Eastgate - WSOP Champion

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:13:02 GMT

Only moments after he'd disposed of Ivan Demidov and collected a nice little bracelet and a few million dollars, Bluff Europe interrupted the 2008 WSOP Champion to ask if he'd spent it all yet.

John Juanda - Interview with the Champion

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:53:04 GMT

The day after surviving a crucible of pain and the most brutal World Series final table in poker history, we find John Juanda relaxing in the tearoom of the Soho Hotel, sipping a restorative cocktail and looking his usual dapper, unflappable self.

Marty Smyth: The Skill of the Irish

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Marty Smyth never really played a lot of poker tournaments; he always preferred to battle it out at the highest online cash games he could find, back in his bedroom in Belfast. Every year, however, he’d go on a beano to Dublin – just for a laugh – and would usually end up on the final table of the Irish Open. In 2007 he won the whole thing. Then on a trip to Vegas in summer, he in inadvertently became the Pot Limit Omaha World Champion and the only Irishman to collect a bracelet in 2008.

Just how unlucky is Mike “The Mouth” Matusow?

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Is luck just “probability taken personally”, as someone once said, or can one be innately unfortunate? Cursed from birth, if you will. Mike Matusow could certainly argue (and he often does) that The Creator has singled him out for repeated catastrophic misfortune at the poker table, but just how unlucky is he? We decided to find out.