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Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Poker After Dark-The Cash Game

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

The second best poker show on TV.

The first you ask?

High Stakes Poker of course.

But this is a pretty close second and with the line  up pretty stacked now with Phil Ivey, Patrick Antonious, Tom Dwan, Eli Elizra, Ilari Sahamies and Howard Lederer its good to watch.

The game has moved from $300/$600 all the way up to $500/$1000 with a $200 ante and more than that there is a huge amount of prop bets going on.

Ivey and Ziggy are playing $50,000 a hand red-black and there are numerous other bets going on with a bunch of the players, tens and fifties of thousands are changing hand all over the place and it is really strating to affect the way the guys play the hands too.

Example:

Ivey has taken Red in the props with Ziggy and looks down at two Diamonds, now with the blinds $500-$1000 there is $2,700 in the pot to start, however the prop with Ziggy is for $50,000 a flop, almost 20 times that and with Phil holding 2 red cards he knows there is less of a chance that the flop will be red, which means he doesn’t want anyone to see a flop and potentially save himself $50k in props.

Ziggy also knows this, and so do all the other players at the table, so now they are not only potentially rasing people with good and or bad hands, but with two red or two black cards just to keep people away from flops.

Makes for an interesting dynamic.

Book Review: Super System

Monday, June 15th, 2009

 super-system

 

Written by Doyle Brunson and published in 1979, it was at the time one of the only books out there that thoroughly examined poker strategy. With contributions by some of the top players and minds in the game it touched on all the bases, and as Doyle said, while it does not cover everything about poker, it does cover the “White Meat” and acts as a very solid base upon which to build.

I will admit to reading a lot of poker books before this one so I found much of what Doyle wrote about the game has been covered, recycled and arguably improved on. However, the first few pages of the book are what always stay with me and the reason I read it over and over again. It is as much a book on poker as the “Art of War” is a book on business. Take some life lessons from Doyle and apply them to the rest of your life, no matter what your job is. Play hard, really hard, but play with honor.

If someone was looking for a book to read and was new to Poker, I think that Super System is a great foundation, that and Sklansky’s “Theory of Poker” are really all you need to start your poker career and take you from novice to a pretty accomplished player as long as you put in the reps. Many of today’s pros when asked would say that Doyle’s book was their start in poker, and provided them with the foundation they used to make a go of the game. With very little modification and the right work ethic, you can take it to the highest level following his game plan.

A couple of funny observations about the book, it was written when Doyle was 44 I believe; one is that he mentions he doesn’t think any of his kids will follow him into the poker world, as you know, his son Todd is one of the top players in the world today. The second is that because I have seen Doyle on TV playing the game so much, when I read the book it is his voice that I read it in, comforting, like the narration by Morgan Freeman in the Shawshank Redemption

Poker Movies: Rounders

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

rounders

Listen, here’s the thing. If you can’t spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.
~Rounders

Well if there is a better poker movie I sure as hell haven’t seen it. This may be some source of argument down the line, maybe there is some movie I haven’t heard of yet, or some old movie that I am yet to discover. I’m open for suggestions if someone has a good one, but for now Rounders is the gold standard.

Rounders has it all:

Matt Damon-check

Ed Norton-check

Voice-overs-check

Famke Jannsen-check (hey, I just thought of another poker babe)

Cheesy accents-check

Johnny Fucking Chan-check

Check, check , check!!!! He trap me!

So many good quotes come from this movie you can practically play an entire night using nothing but sound bites. The starting scene, the final scene, man, I’ve seen this movie over and over and I’ll still watch it on a lazy hangover Saturday when it comes on the TV.

If you are a poker fan and haven’t seen the movie yet, go out and buy it, I say “buy” and not “rent” because like me you are going to have it on loop for a while.

Beyond just good entertainment, Rounders is a metaphor for life. Don’t give up what you were meant to do, and what makes you happy just to try and please someone else, because in the end neither of you will be happy.

For the sake of the one poker fan out there that hasn’t seen the movie yet I’m not going to spoil it by giving away the ending. Nor will I by going into it too much, but I will link the trailer and maybe that piques your interest.