Party Poker Blog

Phil Helmuth Poker Journal

"I think that we are all in the right place at the right time almost every day. It's the people who are prepared to be lucky who can take advantage of being there. How do these people position themselves to be lucky? It was Goethe who said, 'Anytime that you take the first step toward trying to achieve something in life, all manner of good things will mysteriously fall into your path to help speed you along your way.' Amen to that!"
Phil Hellmuth, 1989 WSOP Champion

Please consider supporting this humble poker blog by signing up on Party Poker with Bonus Code IGGY. Take some time and read my posts - I work my ass off for you. :)

Arrrg, Blogger was down all day. This inspired me to search for a domain name. Sadly, pokerblogs.com and pokerblog.com are already taken, even though they are collecting dust. Then I started thinking how one of my poker buddies stated he 'comes here for my commentary but stays for the links' and how this is kinda like a DrudgeReport of poker with all my linking (his words, not mine). So I checked pokerreport.com. Gone. Pokernews.com. Gone. Actually, the Pokernews site really pissed me off. It's one of those Godawful "review" sites disguising itself as poker content. I really wanted to send him a rude email but figured I would just rail about the site here. Here's what this jackass "expert" had to say about cheating & online poker:

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There is very little that cheaters can do online. No one can mark the cards, no one can peek at your hole cards, and no one can stack the deck or put a cold deck on the table. Playing poker online is very safe. I know this is a concern for many players but it is easy to put your mind at rest. Most card rooms should have information available about secure play on their websites. Look out for anti-collusion prevention and information on random card generators. This should be monitored by an external source for extra piece of mind.
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Oh the humanity. Mitigating points for the photo of Cincinnati poker maestro, Jim Lester, on his home page. You can read a great article about Mr. Lester in the Cincinnati Enquirer. But anyway, that's what makes me appreciate a site like PokerSavvy so much. They not only post quality content, unlike the faux content on 98% of the crap out there, but they get bonus points for Sklansky bashing.

So anyway, one of my fine readers alerted me to the fact that pokerandguinness.com is available so perhaps that will suffice.

I feel a long post coming on. Plenty of links (I can't keep up with all the media coverage) and my standard rambling. Enjoy and thanks a ton for reading.

Great column from the St. Petersburg Times - I worried about this in a prior post:
Adding celebrities could hurt TV poker
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Why I question the marriage lasting is, well, this celebrity thing. Poker on television is too young a beast to die such a quick death, but celebrity poker has the potential for a Jump the Shark moment.
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Yet another Sunday column, sports page of the Philadelphia Inquirer:
WPT = PGA of Poker.
Dealing Into The Mainstream
Poker finds its place as a staple on cable TV
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Filmmaker Steve Lipscomb is the individual most responsible for the poker boom. A few years ago, he shot a poker documentary for the Discovery Channel and noticed that the audience grew every time it was shown. So he signed up a bunch of existing events, most of them in California and Nevada, and created the World Poker Tour.

"We set out to transform poker into a mainstream television sports sensation, and we've done it," Lipscomb said. "We've created a PGA of poker."
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Ditto for Sunday's sports page in St. Pete.
This poker thing is catching on, so deal me in

Damn. Maybe Phil Helmuth was right about being in the right place at the right time.

I mean, I received a snail mail flier last week about Charity Poker Tournaments going on every weekend in Dayton, Ohio. What's up with that?

Couple of comments regarding the current state of poker content on the web. To be succinct, it sucks. As Mister Decker rightly pointed out, 2+2 may have some solid content but it gets lost in the freaking horrific software. Would someone please email Mat Sklansky and point him in the direction of message board software? Or perhaps hit Amazon and buy him a book on PHP for Christmas?

Seriously, it's almost 2004, Mat. Learn the medium.

And for my faithful readers who have managed to read this far, I give you these two interesting posts on table image:

Post #1:
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I've recently watched a WPT show where Dutch Boyd was talking about the importance of chip tricks in a poker players arsenal as a means of intimidating other players. When I think about this, it makes sense to me that players may be less inclined to bluff or go into a pot against someone who looks like they've been around a poker table before and can handle themselves, but I've never had any experience with it. What does everyone think?
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Response:
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"The last I checked, manual dexterity had precisely zero to do with the ability to play poker."
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Post #2, from pro Tommy Angelo, a final word in a long thread about wearing sunglasses at the tables:

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As to sunglasses, I can see how they might be helpful to any player under bright lights in high-stress games, but at a regular casino, at mid-limit, sunglass-wearers smell like fear.
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Amen. Personally, I am 100% in the Mike Caro camp here. A laughing, fun table is much more profitable than a silent, serious table. Ditto for online play - I prefer a chatty, fun table. It's common sense, imho.

If I had my druthers, I'd rather learn how to slice a banana in half with a thrown playing card, ala Chris Ferguson, than any chip trick.

Oh my, David Ross Playing Online for a Living, Week 32 is up. Shitty framed site compliments of Mat Sklansky. God forbid anyone wants to link to the site. Nepotism, anyone??

RGP sucks. It's worthless to read right now.

Cards Speak blog cracked me up tonight when he had this to say:

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There was also more drinking and smoking in this movie than in Iggy's home games
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Pffft. That's just not possible, trust me. :D

But more importantly, Cards Speak remarked that he saw a Party Poker commercial on Saturday Night Live! I'm getting tingly all over just thinking about it.

Again, sorry for the length of this post. I'll leave you with this Mason Malmuth post about playing AQ, and raising pre-flop or not. Solid stuff.

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As for calling or raising with a hand like AQ in late position in multiway pots, that is discussed in our books and has been addressed many times on these forums. What you need to understand is that when the pot is multiway but not raised, you will (in general) show a profit by raising with AQ. However, the question is can you show a greater profit by not raising with it?

Not raising will give you some strategic advantages, and you save a bet the times the flop comes bad for your hand. So our advice is to consider how well your opponents (in the pot) play. If they are awful and come with lots of weak hands, you lose too much by not raising before the flop. On the other hand, if several of them play reasonably well and require legitimate hands to be in there, what you give up before the flop can now probably be made up for plus a little by only calling.
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Link of the day:
How Madame Got Her Butterfly
The prosthetic female vaginas being sold on this site aren't nearly as disturbing as the voice describing the merchandise. It's like hearing dirty talk from an airport's "white zone is for loading and unloading" woman.