Poker Sites having more Payment Processo...

Posted in Uncategorized on 06 7th, 2009 | No Comments

Believe it or not, there are still plenty of people who are so scared of making online financial transactions that they avoid doing anything that might involve transferring money over the Internet.  They even let this fear keep them from doing things that they might otherwise enjoy very much such as playing online poker.  But with some of the payment processor problems that poker sites are having these days, I can’t say I blame these people for being scared lately.

Full Tilt Poker is one site that is really having problems as of late with one of the payment processors they use in Instant eCheck.  The problems all started at the world’s second largest online poker room when players complained that their checks were bouncing.  Seeing as how Full Tilt has a variety of payment options at their disposal, they decided to yank eCheck from their list of options.

It’s really surprising that in this day and age we are still seeing problems such as this from online payment processors.  This isn’t even Full Tilt’s fault and they did a great job of getting rid of Instant eCheck as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately, whether it’s Full Tilt’s fault or not their name and reputation still suffers from the bad press they receive in this matter.

Any time a matter such as this arises it also hurts online poker as a whole since people start to wonder if they’ll get scammed when trying to take out their money.  And it especially sucks if you need that check to pay the bills and it’s bouncing.  Hopefully, problems such as these won’t arise in the future, but I’m sure it will happen again.

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Doyle Brunson - A Link to the Past...

Posted in Poker Pros on 06 5th, 2009 | No Comments

With all of the young, Internet players and foreigners who’ve been crushing poker lately, we sometimes tend to forget about the old timers.  Of course nobody tends to forget Doyle Brunson since he has been able to keep his name in the news for years now through his poker exploits.  But Brunson is more than just an attention whore seeking press clippings as he provides a distinct link to poker’s past.

Born in the dusty plains of Texas, Brunson began his poker days by hustling small town bar games across Texas.  This was far from the glitz and glamour he sees in Las Vegas today, but it was a way for Doyle to make a living back then.  What was really tough back in those days was avoiding the law as poker was illegal even in the one-horse towns of Texas.  Brunson was arrested on numerous occasions and would get out of trouble by giving police a fake name and paying his $25 fine.  He was also robbed 5 different times during poker games which is even more scary than being arrested.

Eventually, Brunson’s legend would grow to the point where he was invited to participate in the World Series of Poker in 1970.  Perhaps even more amazing than Doyle’s humble poker beginnings was that he played against just 9 players in the 1970 WSOP at Binion’s Horseshoe Casino.

Now Brunson is tied for second all-time with 10 WSOP bracelets, and is still one of the stars of the game despite most of the other marquee players being over 30 years younger.  And many of these players got their start by sitting at home in their comfy home playing on the Internet which is a far cry from the dangerous and illegal games where Brunson honed his skills.  There’s no doubt that Doyle Brunson serves as a reminder to everyone where poker came from.

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WSOP is Off once Again...

Posted in tournaments on 06 4th, 2009 | No Comments

Those who are true poker fans are no doubt excited since the World Series of Poker is off and running once again.  And already there are some great stories with just a couple of events being in the books right now.  The much-hyped $40,000 event is now over and definitely has to be considered a success since over 200 people decided to pay the $40k buy-in to create a prize pool of over $7.7 million.

Vitaly Lunkin proved that his WSOP win last year was no fluke as he came back to win the first World Series of Poker tournament this year (unless you count the casino employees tourney as the first).  But the real feel-good story may be the return of 2004 WSOP Main Event champion Greg Raymer.  Raymer, who has not had a win of any significance in the last few years, was able to take third place in the $40k tourney and cash for almost $775k.  Even if he does nothing during the rest of the WSOP, he’ll still have had a good WSOP after this finish.

The only other event to be completed is the $1,500 Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better where 918 people bought into.  Thang Luu performed a near impossible feat after defending his title from last year in the same event and taking the $263,190 that came along with the victory.  Freddy Deeb was the only big-time notable in this tournament to score a high finish as he placed 8th.

With just two events down and a great story already in Greg Raymer I can’t wait to see what else will happen this year at the WSOP.  The thing I’m most interested in is whether or not Phil Hellmuth can win his 12th bracelet.

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The Reality of Online Poker Tells...

Posted in Poker Tips & Strategies on 06 4th, 2009 | No Comments

Study online poker strategy for enough time and you’re bound to come across the old logic that there is a universal way to determine online poker tells.  Perhaps you’ve already seen how nearly every website seems to have an online tells article explaining how you can figure out exactly what someone is doing based on the amount of time they take to make a decision. 

This little line of logic basically states that people with good hands will take a while to make their decision because they want to appear to have a weak hand.  The other side of the coin is that people who are bluffing will make decisions as quickly as possible in order to act as if they have an awesome hand.  Looking at both pieces of advice, one can supposedly figure out their opponent just by paying attention to how much time is taken on each play.

Unfortunately, this is one of the most misguided pieces of advice out there since you can’t just look at the amount of time people are taking in between plays to figure out what’s going on.  A lot of poker players are playing multiple tables at once so the whole time constraint logic is absolutely irrelevant at this point.  Plus most players already know about this bit of poker strategy so they are fully aware that people could be trying to read them based on the amount of time they take to make a play.

The truth is that the only way to spot an online tell is by looking at each individual player and what they do.  This is a lot more difficult than just blindly following the aforementioned universal strategy, but it’s a lot more accurate than anything else.

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