Party Poker Blog

Phil Gordon & Sam Farha Celebrity Poker Blogs

"Nobody is always a winner, and anybody who says he is, is either a liar or doesn't play poker."
Amarillo Slim

Yup, even good players lose often.
Accepting that truism as a student of poker is one thing. Using it as an excuse for poor play is another. Discerning the difference is what separates the long-term good players from the bad.

Especially when playing at Party Poker.

Russ Gorgiev listed Amarillo Slim on his list of top 100 poker cheats. To be fair, he listed every damn 'name' in poker, including David Sklansky & Howard Lederer, on that list. Apparently Mike Caro is the only guy who never cheated the games.

Poker mafia, my ass.

My humble apologies for missing a few days of posting. I try to be diligent about posting EVERY day but I keep doing well in these damn tournaments and become too drunk tired to blog.

It's been a whirlwind couple of days, I've been busy drinking working on several projects, including my no-limit tournament this weekend. Now I see why event planners make good coin. Because of my altrusitic bent towards promoting poker, I will be taking a financial bath on the running of said tourney. I'm not charging an entry fee and all money is being redistributed back to the players in prize money. Stupid? Probably. But my crack legal team advised me to run things in this manner to avoid legal problems.

But regardless, I'm not putting the tourney on for anything but to simply have fun and let newbies get a taste of sheer terror/joy playing WSOP-style no-limit poker. I truly enjoy mixing an eclectic cast of characters at the poker table. Our home game host doesn't call me "Julie the Cruise Director" for no reason (Love Boat reference for all you youngins).

Allrighty then, ready for some poker links?

For all of us WSOP folks here's good stuff:

Vegas Keeps World Series of Poker
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As Harrah's executives finalize the deal to buy Binion's and employees wait to hear whether they will be hired back on, the fate of the world famous World Series of Poker has been decided, and it's good news for Las Vegas. The World Series of Poker is going to stay right here in it's birthplace, in the casino where it all began -- Binion's Horseshoe.
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Harrah's expected to sell Horseshoe
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There's an element of sadness that this is something my parents worked so hard to build, and I was unable to make it succeed," Becky Behnen said.
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Where is Jack Binion?
Oh yeah, he's off being successful.

World Poker Tour Launches Licensing Program; Brandgenuity Selected as its Exclusive Trademark Licensing Agency to Capitalize on Demand for World Poker Tour Products.
Business Wire (press release)
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With the enormous popularity of the World Poker Tour (WPT) on The Travel Channel, licensees have been pursuing WPT with requests to license the brand. In this highly favorable climate, the World Poker Tour is turning to Brandgenuity, LLC, an independent boutique trademark licensing agency, to launch a strategic World Poker Tour brand licensing program.
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Online gambling site tangled in Korean politics
Article posted by siliconvalley.com: Complicated issues made doubly so by the antagonism between South and North Korea.

Huge numbers for "Celebrity Poker"
TV Barn
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INAUGURAL SEASON FINALE OF BRAVO'S 'CELEBRITY POKER SHOWDOWN' DRAWS RECORD AUDIENCE WITH MORE THAN 1.7 MILLION TOTAL VIEWERS
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Here's the newest blogger on the block, Ed. He's made several solid, lengthy posts so please take the time to check it out.
Openers: A Poker Blog
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I don't remember who suggested signing up as a female character, but I did that too--we'll see if I can take advantage of any gender bias out there. I like this idea--it's cross-dressing without having to buy a whole new wardrobe.
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And thanks to Vagaries of an online poker player who found this new blog,
Poker & Devotion, What I'm learning about life as a grinder.

BoyGenius waxes poetic about hot women he'd like to pork sleep with for the second day, along with copious poker content. Great stuff per usual.

Stick and Move has won the Hammer Challenge!! Funny, funny stuff.

For the record, I tried it in a NL tourney and after I typed in "HAMMER" and raised, everyone folded to me.

Good news from Pokergrub:
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After politely hounding Lee Jones at PokerStars again, he responded quickly and said they'll be implementing private tourney capability sometime after the WPT cruise. And when they do, they'll make a big splash about it. So: patience, bloggers!
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Doh, TheFatGuy nearly cut his finger off cutting up some evil veggies. I hope this doesnt hinder his mousing ability on Party Poker no-limit to SLIDE THE BAR ALL THE WAY TO THE RIGHT.

I'm very happy to see Pauly back in the saddle and posting. Go check out his poker trip reports. Lord, Pauly can post.

Poker Penguin continues his fine posting. I especially enjoyed this observation:
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Don't let your past expectations rule your play. Poker is like sword-fighting, if you aren't basing your actions on the most up to date information, you're in trouble.
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And finally, my man Royal is still documenting his foray into the low limits. Royal, a formidable big-bet poker player, is taking the time to tweak his game by playing 10,000 hands at 50.1 limit poker. He can easily play higher but is choosing to start at the bottom and work his way up. I truly admire this and he is gonna emerge with one scary game. Kudos.

Moving to a 2+2 post, here is a David Ross reply to a guy who just got laid off and is looking at online poker for income ala David Ross.
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Good Luck buddy, sorry to hear about the job. I'm sure you'll do fine. THere are over 30,000 people playing Party/Empire each night now, there are some good games. My advice would be to monitor your play always. I find after running real well for a while I get loose and chase too much. Then when the cards go cold you have a problem. Don't panic at a 200 BB loss, it's happened to me several times now. You know you can beat these games so play as many hours as you can handle without letting your play deteriorate.
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Pivotal advice: 'My advice would be to monitor your play always.'

Good luck to anyone not using PokerTracker who "thinks" they are monitoring their play. You are delusional. And quite possibly a fishie.

I've been pleasantly surprised at my no-limit tourney play after grinding in limit for so long. Thanks to Hdouble for the encouragement.

A no-limit tournament truism I'm trying to stick deep on my brain:
Don't get involved where you are either a small favorite or a big dog.

Put Phil Helmuth to this test. Phil doesn't like coin flips. But even more, this principle can be extended well beyond poker. The Lloyd's of London names are the final underwriters of insurance policies. Their profits come from the premiums paid to insure against risks. Their losses arise when disaster strikes. The liability is unlimited and their profit a set sum. Everything went well for 300 years, and the "players" sat back and made their profits with virtually no work. Then an unusually number of high claims in succession bankrupted some very rich people.

Selling short in the stock market suffers from the same problem. The price of a stock cannot sink below zero, but it can rise to undefined heights. If you can't get out in time, sooner or later you are going to go bankrupt.

But I'm certain all fifteen of my readers know this.

Speaking of my favorite poker player, Phil Helmuth was knocked out of Aussie Millions.
Key Hand:
Phil Helmuth is out, after getting involved in a pot that cost him dearly. Phil raised pre-flop and was called by Perth ex-dealer Han Luu. It was always going to be action with two diamonds on the flop and an eight. Han had flopped a set and Phil was on a big flush draw. Han set it up, betting 12K on the flop. Phil went all-in for the rest of his 64K stack. Han called, and with no diamond coming, took most of Phil’s stack, leaving him with only $100 left. He was eliminated in a three-way all-in hand two hands later. Bye Bye Mister Phil Helmuth!

Search traffic weirdness: Someone came here on a Google search for
"fuck my wife poker prize"

Oh the humanity.

Alrighty, I'm happy I was able to post today. Now I'm off to run assorted errands for my tournament tomorrow evening. We're expecting terrible weather tomorrow so that will likely cut into attendance, which is probably a good thing.

And because it's Friday, I'll share one of my all-time favorite web sites with you. Bookmark this sucker for whenever you need a chuckle. Click on the pages on the left side to start digging through the photo's and commentary.

Link of the Day:
Cliff Yablonski Hates You
Cliff Yablonski is making a name for himself in the field of ill-advised personal photographs, observing the physical condition, lifestyle choices and fashion sense of modern humans with anthropological precision. "If you look closely, you can guess its age by counting the fat rings," he writes of one subject.