Our Monday home game started off auspiciously. Everybody’s favorite player, the house calling station who we’ll call ‘Blind Squirrel’, was back from 3 weeks of vacation and ready to call everyone down to the river with ace high. However, when the calling station flops the nuts on three consecutive hands, the rest of the table rebuys frequently. I was the victim of Blind Squirrel, raising with 88, flopping a set and losing to the straight that he flopped with 74. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last year two cheating scandals have shaken up the online poker community. Back in the fall, news emerged that employees from Ultimate Bet had been using super accounts to steal money from people playing on their sites. More recently, the same thing surfaced in regards to Absolute Poker.

Why anyone would continue to put their money into a company that has admitted to stealing from its customers is beyond me. Both companies were extremely hesitant to come forth with the details concerning the scams, and it was only after players themselves investigated that they admitted to cheating.

It only makes sense that they merge, right?

“Miami, FL (PRWeb) July 24, 2008 – Today, the management of both Absolute Poker and UltimateBet announced the upcoming launch of CEREUS: a NEW POKER PLATFORM that will integrate the customers and features from both poker rooms, instantly making CEREUS the third largest online poker network.

CEREUS is the result of more than 12 months innovation and development. Absolute Poker and UltimateBet will retain their unique assets yet share more players, more action, more tournaments, incredible new features and massive promotions.

Paul Leggett, Chief Operations Officer of both Absolute Poker and UltimateBet, said:

“I am so excited to announce the launch of our new poker network CEREUS. This is a huge landmark for our company and online poker. I’m confident that Absolute Poker and UltimateBet customers will be thrilled by the new platform and we look forward to welcoming many new players from around the world.

“CEREUS not only delivers the best online poker experience; it enables our company to improve our operations and deliver significantly better value and service to our customers.

“Our company’s goal is to provide poker players with the ultimate online experience. The launch of CEREUS is a major step for us in achieving our goal and we look forward to making many more exciting announcements very soon.””

The run-up to the WSOP Main Event starts tonight as ESPN begins their weekly coverage of the WSOP. While the first days of the Main Event won’t be shown for some time, you can expect a few great episodes in the meantime as there were a number of tournaments with notable pros at the final table.

While we don’t get ESPN in Canada, and TSN only picks up coverage much later on, try heading over to thepokerbay.org where you can download episodes a day after they’ve been aired (along with nearly every other poker show).

Last night I made my first trip to a weekly home game that a friend of mine regularly plays. It’s a pretty casual game, and fun one in which to shoot the shit and play some cards. We started off with $10 tournament, with seven people and followed it with a cash game where the buy-in was $20 and the blinds were $.25/.25. I was looking especially forward to the cash game since it can easily turn into a rather deep-stacked game. I came out of the night with a few noteworthy hands, the first of which was my bust hand in the tournament.

Read the rest of this entry »

Unfortunately, due to my laziness, I have not posted a ‘Home Game Report’ in almost 7 weeks, even though I have been playing religiously every Monday night. I’ve been running quite well and am averaging a win of around 300 blinds per session. That works out to a ridiculous 20 big bets/hour. I’m certainly not complaining about the quality of the game…

I picked three interesting hands to talk about this week and would greatly appreciate any comments/critiques. A note about the game before I get to the hands. The table plays a maximum of 8 and a minimum of 4. The blinds are $1/$2 and although the game is no limit hold’em postflop, there is a 3 bet maximum preflop with limits of $20/bet. A standard preflop betting sequence between KK and AA might look something like: (1) raise to $10; (2) re-raise to $30; (3) re-raise to $50 andthe preflop betting would be capped.

Initially I wasn’t a huge fan of the weird capped preflop betting, but with super deep stacks (averaging around $600 by 2 am, but getting as deep as $2k) the opportunity for outmaneuvering or outflopping someone postflop and getting PAID increases. With loose players and deep stacks the game is as good as it gets for low limit hold’em.

Hand 1 - An Easy ‘Hard’ Fold Read the rest of this entry »

Owen “OCrowe” Crowe, a Halifax resident placed 15th place at the World Series of Poker Main Event, making him the deepest running Atlantic Canadian and netting him over 450K. Not bad! Crowe has had some success in tournament poker in the past, including final tabling Event 36 in the WSOP and regular deep runs in the $100 rebuy on Stars. Back in May he came on 5th on the Sunday Million on Poker Stars and cashed the $50,000+ cheque that came with it.

Crowe used to work at the Halifax casino. We imagine he’s having more fun on the other side of the felt.

We were rooting on you from Fredericton, Crowe, good going!

-Ben

While we reported last week that Ultimate Bet had been cheating players more often and for a longer period of time, it seems as though even more details of the scandal have emerged in the last few days.

As it turns out, Russ Hamilton, who used to own Ultimate Bet, owns several pieces of property that were also registered as the addresses for some of these superuser accounts. While nothing has been proven, it seems pretty clear that a former owner of UB is directly linked to the scandal. At what level he was involved is anyone’s guess, but a connection is there.

Furthermore, UB has what was known as a “clearing account,” which was used to send UB pros and “friends” large sums of money. This account had transactions between itself and pros, Hamilton and superusers.

I can’t begin to explain the details as well as others have, but please head on over to Two Plus Two’s News, Views and Gossip thread and read up on all of it.

This leaves the casual reader with two questions. Most importantly, why would anyone continue playing on Ultimate Bet? This is a company that has not only stolen from its customers, but has also repeatedly covered up and refused to admit anything until they have been backed up against a wall and forced to do so. Stop playing there.

Secondly, why would pros such as Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke continue to associate themselves with UB. Besides the huge amount of money they must be receiving (and possible contractual obligations), it can’t be pleasant flying the UB flag these days.

-Ben

Last night we reached the final nine players for the WSOP Main Event. Unfortunately, it’s a pretty lackluster crew with no big names making their way into the final nine. Of course, fair is fair, and if you don’t make the final table, you don’t make the final table, but with 50 players left, some of us had our hopes up for a star-studded final table with both Phil Hellmuth and Mike Matusow still alive and kicking.

Nevertheless, here are the players who will be coming back together for the final table in November for the Main Event. While you may not know who they are now, we bet you’ll be hearing their names once or twice in the next three months.

Seat 1: Dennis Phillips - 26,295,000
Seat 2: Craig Marquis - 10,210,000
Seat 3: Ylon Schwartz - 12,525,000
Seat 4: Scott Montgomery - 19,690,000
Seat 5: Darus Suharto - 12,520,000
Seat 6: David ‘Chino’ Rheem - 10,230,000
Seat 7: Ivan Demidov - 24,400,000
Seat 8: Kelly Kim - 2,620,000
Seat 9: Peter Eastgate - 18,375,000

-Ben

The 2008 World Series of Poker has been referred to as “The Year of the Pro.” Whether this is something to do with the Chinese calendar or the disproportionate number of name pros who have won WSOP events is anyone’s guess, but it’s the truth.

With 189 (of 6844) people left in the Main Event, there are a number of well-known pros positioning themselves to make a deep run as we near the final table. Will a pro beat the odds and take down the Main Event for the first time in a few years? That’s hard to say, but it’s looking more likely as each elimination occurs. The final 189 will come together this afternoon to play through five more tables with a final table set to be established by Monday.

Here’s a look at some big names who we’ll be watching as the race to the final table comes to a close along with their chip stacks:

Mark Vos - 1,373,000
David Benefield -1,372,000
Gus Hansen - 1,367,000
Victor Ramdin - 1,322,000
Allen Cunningham - 1,141,000
Jeff Madsen - 690,300
Phil Hellmuth - 581,000
Mike Matusow - 458,000
Chip Jett - 386,000
Hoyt Corkins - 305,000

Our WSOP Fantasy Pool has actually come down to the wire and will be decided by the Main Event. If Ben does well, he will likely win, but he has to finish ahead of me as I currently have a slight lead.

Current Chip Counts

Ben has:

Phil Hellmuth: 475,000

Mike Matusow: 438,500

Brendan has:

Allen Cunningham: 386,500

Gus Hansen: 735,000 (Up from 380,000 20 minutes ago!)

Jon Turner: 960,000 (!!)

The current situation favours me, this much is true. However, look beneath the surface and it is a good bet that Phil Hellmuth and Mike Matusow and Allen Cunningham will sit back and wait for perceived ‘perfect’ situations. Conversely, I’m sure Gus acts on any situation in which he feels his edge is a wee bit over 50%. That might be long term positive EV and great for Gus, but it is a volatile strategy and will see Gus at a final table or more likely busto in 45 minutes. Jon “PearlJammer” Turner has really been playing well the last few days and picking up huge pots along the way despite having some hard luck situations crop up. Definitely looking forward to watching his path through the coming days (fingers crossed).

- Brendan