Party Poker Blog

"Neddy doesn't believe in insurance. He considers it a form of gambling."
Maude Flanders

Howdy all, thanks for visiting. I've got all the usual kickass poker content for you - latest on the online poker world, great poker articles, more public flames from one poker pro to another (Howard to Daniel), some poker WSOP history, and best of all, new poker blogs.

Hopefully I can bang all this out tonight - I'm leaving for a Lost Poker Weekend and won't be back until Sunday evening. I'm really looking forward to this - a little birthday present to myself. I'm not concerned with how I do at the tables, I'll simply settle for a safe trip with zero arrests.

This post brought to you by the biggest online poker aquarium on the internet: Party Poker. Beleive me, all of us poker bloggers can't be wrong. Try it and write me.

Alrighty then - let's get to business, shall we? The World Poker Blogger Tour on May 16th. Readers are allowed to play and I'll be announcing some kickass prizes (outside of the cold, hard cash, of course) next week.

But sadly, the fine folks at
Pacific Poker have requested that I sent them a list of players on Tuesday, May 11th. This pre-registration thing is gonna truly be a bitch. I emailed them back, begging to let the deadline slide till Friday or Saturday, at the latest, and they said they will try. Ugh. I know most everyone is waiting till the last moment to sign up (as I would, too) but please, if you can please sign up and then email me, letting me know your screen name on Pacific, things will run more smoothly. Please help me out here.

If you don't have an account on Pacific, please click on my
Pacific Poker links to sign up. It's a small gesture for the hassle I'm going to undertake and hopefully you will support this humble yet hardworking poker blog.

Again, the tournament is on Sunday the 16th, 9pm EST. Come talk trash and knock out your favorite poker bloggers. It's gonna be a hoot, I promise. Only $20 to play.

The second big piece of poker blogger news is that my consigliere, Hank, has completed a fine article on the poker blogging world. Go hit his site for the sordid details. I was originally tasked with writing this, and started to, but due to circumstances beyond my control could not complete it. So Hank stepped up and hit the ball out of the park for us! A huge tip of the Guinness to you, my man.

I've got a bunch of interesting poker threads and such to link up. I hope you're in the mood to read, damnit, cause there's some good stuff here.

Alrighty then, here we go:

From the Poker As Cultural Juggarnaut Department, it appears that season Two of Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo has been extended to 2 hours per episode. Yikes, I think one hour was enough, but hell, poker on TV is never a bad thing. Starting Thursday nights at 9pm.
Celebrity Poker Showdown
Players for the next show include Jerome Bettis, Travis Tritt, Mena Suvari, Rosario Dawson, & Wanda Sykes.

Do me a favor. Go read this VERY negative article about poker. Go, now. I'll wait.....
The life of a Professional Poker Player

If you refused to read it (you really ought to for the follow up flames), here is a taste:
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This one idiot sits down and plays every single hand. Doesn’t fold once. He manages to lose about $200 in less than an hour before he gets up with his tail tucked between his legs. It’s okay though because his company has a great dental plan for its employees. He can afford to pay for his kid’s braces. Your kids are going to have fucked up teeth.

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I'll admit, I was entertained by that anti-poker rant when the link was posted to RGP. But the follow-up flames on this kid were even better. It turns out he was a poker newbie, posting under the same email address less than six months ago, asking for advice. His original post:

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Hi guys I am new to the board and I was wondering if some of you could
offer some advice.

I just learned to play the week before last I guess. I read the archived
articles on cardplayer for a good 20-25 hours to figure out how to gain
edges. I mean I already knew how to play tight and everything but only
made minimal profits in the past.

I'm up $400 in just over 21 hours this week playing $2/$4. Now I realize
that isn't a realistic long term hourly... I just think that it's obvious
that my game has improved vastly.

The thing I've noticed though by playing this more aggressive style is
that the fluctuations in bankroll are much larger... I've won as much as
$220 in an hour and lost as much as $120.

Herein lies the problem...

I'm a temporary college drop-out and also unemployed. I'm playing poker
in order to maintain the lifestyle I've grown accustomed to (sorry cheap
rip-off on the movie)...

I've got a decent bankroll I guess, but I really don't feel like going
through some of those huge downswings you guys talk about...

So my question is, is there a way to maintain a certain level of
profitability without as much risk potential... a system of selective
aggressiveness maybe?

Thanks in advance...

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Wow. In six months, he's a jaded veteran after renting Rounders and flipping through some poker books at Barnes and Nobles. These are the guys I'm raping, night after night, on Party Poker. Amazing.

Anyway: there were some wonderful bitchslaps of this guy, but my favorite retort was:

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Maybe your website should be about not being a fucktard. I stopped
reading when it said,

"You couldn't figure out why once a month you inevitably felt
compelled to dump $1,000 to the house at the blackjack table. You
didn't understand why some mornings you woke up in your car shivering
and barely able to talk because you did so much coke the night before
while pounding beer for hours. You see the cocaine numbed your senses
to the alcohol so you didn't know it was time to quit drinking. "

Jesus, you're a moron.

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Yes, yes he is. Grade A moron.

Good grief, I'm sitting here drinking blogging, listening to the Cincinnati Reds on the radio and a commercial for the Ohio Lottery just came on, touting their newest lottery game, Texas Hold Em Poker. I shit you not.

Geesh, I also found a rumor about Chris Moneymaker writing a book but lost the link and can't verify it anywhere so it's probably not true. If I find anything, I'll be sure to post it.

Continuing the Moneymaker theme, some folks are bitching about having to wear PokerStars clothing after winning a seat through the site this year. Implying it's "unethical" that Stars mandates the shirt and hat.

Steve Badger responds:

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Did someone turn up the dingaling knob today?

The WSOP tournament room is simply awash with logos of every kind from
online poker rooms. Everybody signs a release form with Harrahs, that says Harrahs can dictate
clothing worn in the event. At final tables you can wear a demure logo on
your chest.

This is what has been known and expected for quite some time.

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Here is a wonderful big slice of poker WSOP history: the number of entries into the WSOP Championship Events since it's inception:

Can someone create a graphic/chart of this? I'd do it, but I'm too drunk tired.

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70 - Voted- Johnny Moss (7 entrants)
71 - $30,000 - Johnny Moss (6 entrants, $5,000ea)
72 - $80,000 - Amarillo Slim Preston (8 entrants, $10,000ea)
73 - $130,000 - Puggy Pearson (13 entrants)
74 - $160,000 - Johnny Moss (16 entrants)
75 - $210,000 - Sailor Roberts (21 entrants)
76 - $220,000 - Doyle Brunson (22 entrants)
77 - $340,000 - Doyle Brunson (34 entrants, last winner-take-all)
78 - $210,000 - Bobby Baldwin (31 entrants, winner takes 2/3rds)
79 - $270,000 - Hal Fowler (54 entrants, winner takes 50%)
80 - $385,000 - Stu Ungar (73 entrants)
81 - $375,000 - Stu Ungar (75 entrants)
82 - $520,000 - Jack Strauss (104 entrants)
83 - $580,000 - Tom McEvoy (108 entrants)
84 - $660,000 - Jack Keller (132 entrants)
85 - $700,000 - Bill Smith (140 entrants)
86 - $570,000 - Berry Johnston (141 entrants, winner takes 40%)
87 - $625,000 - Johnny Chan (156 entrants)
88 - $700,000 - Johnny Chan (167 entrants)
89 - $755,000 - Phil Hellmuth Jr (178 entrants)
90 - $895,000 - Mansour Matloubi (194 entrants)
91 - $1,000,000 - Brad Daugherty (prize bumped to $1mil) (215 entrants)
92 - $1,000,000 - Hamid Dastmalchi (201 entrants)
93 - $1,000,000 - Jim Bechtel (220 entrants)
94 - $1,000,000* - Russ Hamilton (268 entrants)
95 - $1,000,000 - Dan Harrington (273 entrants)
96 - $1,000,000 - Huck Seed (295 entrants)
97 - $1,000,000 - Stu Ungar (312 entrants)
98 - $1,000,000 - Scotty Nguyen (350 entrants)
99 - $1,000,000 - J J "Noel" Furlong (393 entrants)
00 - $1,500,000 - Chris Ferguson (512 entrants)
01 - $1,500,000 - Carlos Mortenson (612 entrants)
02 - $2,000,000 - Robert Varkonyi (631 entrants)
03 - $2,500,000 - Chris Moneymaker (839 entrants)

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We aren't in Kansas, anymore. Keep studying, folks.

Moving on, noted poker author and resident RGP crank, Gary Carson, posted about his impending poker book:

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Complete Book of Casino Poker
I just noticed that Amazon.com is taking advance orders for my new book. They
have the publication date listed as November, but the publisher tells me it
will be June.

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Yup, I ordered it.

Venerable poker blogger, Alan Bostick, is writing tons of great stuff about his sojourn to the WSOP. This is the only time of the year that Alan posts, so you owe it yourself to check out a veteran's perspective:
Alan Bostick

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At the Nugget, there were already a couple of names on an interest list for $50-$100 stud/8. Andrew and I put our names down, and we hung out in the poker area.

The Golden Nugget poker room is actually a tented-over portion of the hotel's swimming pool and sunbathing area, with ventilation for piped-in air conditioning. It is light and spacious, and there is plenty of space between the room's twenty tables. Ten of the tables are low-limit, nine are high-limit, and one, railed off from all the rest, had a $3000-$6000 limit mixed game, where Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, and others were playing. It's a comfortable environment to play, although the air conditioning only imperfectly overcomes the ambient outside temperature.

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I've posted about the Yahoo and Google ban of online gambling advertising in past posts. The deadline was May 1st but I'll be damned if I don't see poker ads still, too.
Web Gambling Advertisers Sidestep Google Censors

For the record, PartyPoker.net is still going strong.
Aw, heck, it's been awhile, I gotta say it:

I LOVE PARTY POKER!!

WPT Champion and resident poker blogger extraordinaire, Paul Phillips, has a new post up and even sat next to Toby Maguire (Spiderman) in the 5k WSOP event. Paul needs to play in our poker blogger tournament. Damn, I'll put a huge bounty on his head...

Here's an interesting poker article from the Las Vegas Review-Journal business section:
World Series Of Poker: Showing their Cards

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But 1,500 to 2,000 people playing to a global audience?

"Who could have imagined?" he said, grinning.

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Even more WSOP nuggets of gold, this time from Andy Glazer per the 5k buy-in NL tournament event.

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This kind of play is why I’m convinced pot-limit hold’em is a much tougher game than no-limit. A lot of new players have come into the game the last couple of years, and have accumulated experience on the Internet and watching edited televised final tables, where because of the editing process, it seems like someone is moving in every other hand. I think many members of this Next Generation are not comfortable making the complex post flop decisions necessary in pot-limit, and are turning no-limit into a “shove it in and pray” game.

Experts who are unwilling to gamble with the New Breed yield too many pots, giving up their edge, and that’s why – along with the far greater numbers of new players entering the events – we are seeing more and more relatively unknown players succeeding in no-limit events. The Old Guard will probably adapt and grudgingly gamble more than they had previously liked doing, but they have no choice: they can either give up some of their edge by folding too many hands, or they can give it up by gambling more. That they will have to get used to somewhat less of an edge either way, I think, is inevitable, although the experts who also play high-limit side games will probably adjust more easily than the pure tournament specialists.

If the poker legends of the last 10 or 20 years are going to contend with them, they may have to change with the times. I’d love to cover a no-limit final table here where all nine starters have a bracelet to their credit, but unless the Old Guard comes up with a new way to battle the New Breed, or the New Breed stops breeding, I think the chances of seeing that final table here have passed into history. That’s neither good nor bad; it’s just reality. Whether you like it or not depends, I guess, on which group to which you belong.

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Great stuff.

I think I need to wrap this post up. I'll even leave the thread about the "The psychology/EV of drinking in live games?" for next time, even though it's a topic near and dear to my heart.

I rarely post about anything non-poker related, that's a given. But I know that many of the poker bloggers love NFL football - hell, go read MeneGene's latest treatise about traveling to NYC for the NFL draft. In deference to Gene's uber-post, allow me to post this fascinating football marketing link:

NFL Prepares For Billion Dollar Poker Game With Broadcasters

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The National Football League continually shows the rest of the sports world- and the business world for that matter- why they are the ultimate King of all they survey. The embarrassment of Janet Jackson’s boob aside, the NFL plans on feasting upon it’s next broadcast contract which will be the richest TV rights deal in history.

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Finally, I noticed yesterday an anonymous Steve in my comments yesterday, who left *several* rude comments, culminating in calling me a "fucking retard" several times.
Oh the humanity.

I actually pity you, Steve. Perhaps you should do some reading and research before resorting to name calling because you (freaking pinhead) are flat out wrong.

You see, Steve, repeating something several times does not make it true.
Life is not like Beetlejuice.

Moving on, I still have three brand-spanking-new poker blogs to link up, but I wanna wrap this up.

So damn, another long post. I am clearly insane. Please consider supporting this humble poker blog with bonus code IGGY on Party Poker and please sign up for the
Pacific Poker poker blogger tournament with one of my links.

./end shill

Thanks for reading. I'm going to leave you with a brutal public flame from Howard Lederer to Daniel Negraneau.

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Open Letter to Daniel Negreanu

Daniel,

I would first like to say that, in the past, I have always rooted for you.
I thought you had the kind of engaging personality and charisma that the
game of poker needs. Sadly, however, you have allowed your desperate need
for public recognition, both for you and your close friends, to turn you
into a mean and vindictive person. You try your best to keep this from you
adoring fans, but tourney regulars know better.

My motivations for making this post are many, and I think I should detail
them now. As most RGPers know, your post from a couple of days ago was
about my sister Annie Duke. You claim you wanted to keep her name out of
it. This is a complete lie. First, you knew I would figure out who the
post was about. You also knew that a lot of other high limit players would
be able to figure it out. You thought it would be cute to continue your
smear campaign against my sister just under the radar. Then in one of your
follow up posts to my "Grow up" thread, you wrote, "The same person that
will tell a player NOT to educate the other players, then five minutes later
ask the player she told not to say anything a poker question?" The use of
the female pronoun seems intentional. I can only conclude that you really
did want to publicly embarrass her. But this post is only a culmination of
a summer full of public attacks on my sister, a campaign that has hurt her
deeply. My sister has been inclined to not fight back. But I can not sit
idly by any longer.

You have also made it clear that you are willing to damage your own
reputation to bring Annie down. I will get into your reasons for this
later. I know that if I can diminish you in any way in the eyes of the
public, you will feel personally diminished. Sad but true.

For me, violence is not an option, so the only thing I can do to make you
pay something for the pain you have caused my sister is to make the public
aware of your true nature. I spoke to you privately about this issue, but
the smear campaign has only intensified. Also, though I admit that I was
extremely steamed when I made my post two days ago, the last couple of days
have only brought me down to a simmer. I need to make this post to feel
better. I don't like feeling angry all the time.

Your reasons for going after my sister's reputation as a poker player are
obvious to anyone who knows you and many others who don't. First, you
simply feel that the only female poker player who deserves any media
attention is Jennifer Harman. Second, you just don't like my sister. There
is something about her personality that rubs you the wrong way. I can't
blame you for this and would never hold that against you. We all have those
people we just can't get along with.

Your obsession with the public's perception of Jennifer's place among the
top women players combined with your general dislike of Annie has caused you
to lose all objectivity where she is concerned. If we only look for the bad
in people, whether it be their conduct or their play, there will always be
something to find. Nobody is perfect. But this obsession is causing great
harm to Annie, and it needs to stop.

I could almost stomach the attacks on her play if that was all you had been
doing. But you have gotten really nasty and personal. You have been heard
at tournaments, where Annie is not present, referring to her as "Annie
Puke." You have also complained that she doesn't have any nice clothes and
she looks disgusting. I am sure your wardrobe would be just amazing after
going through four pregnancies in six years. This is grade school stuff on
your part, but it still hurts. When I ask your friends about why you have
gone berserk on this Annie thing, they just shake their heads and can't
really explain it. I would be surprised if any of your friends think this
has been a good thing for you to do.

I would not have had to make this post if you had been even a little
contrite in response to my post of two days ago. But, instead you showed
your true colors. Your first response to me, at 5:42 P.M., went like this:

"I just thought the post was funny. I didn't name any names did I? All
that stuff REALLY happened. If anything, it's a good advertisement for the
Bellagio game."

We now know this wasn't the real reason for your post. You didn't want your
adoring public to think that your post might have been mean spirited. But
you couldn't stand it and 16 minutes later you posted:

"One more thing 'the self proclaimed 'expert' deserves all the criticism the
expert gets. The expert, is the same person that routinely takes part in
all of the stupid conversation that goes on in those games. All of the,
'how bad does he play' talk. The expert deserves to hear some of that same
criticism. If the expert were a gentle, nice person who wasn't so rude and
obnoxious at the table, I never would have posted any of this stuff. The
expert, is the same person that will look at your hole cards when out of a
hand, but won't let you look at theirs. The same person that will tell a
player NOT to educate the other players, then five minutes later ask the
player she told not to say anything a poker question? The expert is a stuck
up bully, that deserves everything the expert dishes out, ten fold."

It was nice of you to call yourself on your own lie so quickly.

I have also noticed a pattern where outrageous behavior is OK if it is you
who does it. While drunk in a medium stakes poker game, you tried to snatch
a player's toupee off his head. You then told him that he should get it
washed. You now fondly recall this incident as funny, funny perhaps to you.
Your repeated comments calling Henry Nowakowski an idiot during your final
table WSOP web cast where uncalled for and colored by personal issues.
These are just two events, but they show that personal attacks aren't just
reserved for my sister. You seem to be able to justify any action toward
someone if you personally dislike that person. I find this part of your
personality quite distasteful.

I also find it amusing to see how creative you have gotten at trying to call
attention to your poker skills. You couldn't just come out and say, "Look
at me! I have won 7 tournaments this year in only 13 final tables." So you
did the next best thing. You wrote an analysis of the other top players,
with special attention to their finishing skills, hoping that your adoring
fans might look up your finishing record and drool. That these capsules
about your colleagues might upset some of them was of little consequence.
You'll do anything to further the Daniel legend.

I am not trying to change you with this post, as I will never again have
anything to do with you. I will, from now on, ignore you entire existence,
unless, of course I am trying to bust you at the poker table. You have
crossed the line, and I don't really care if you ever come back.

Howard Lederer

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Friday night addendum: Up For Poker has a superb post up:
Dr. Strangeflush
Or, How I gave up eBay and started to love online poker

Link of the Day:
Swarthy Declaration of Love
Dharmrao Baba Atram: "Darling, just looking into your beautiful brown eyes each morning is worth more than four goats. Even as I flogged you, I had affection in my heart."