So I had a great day on the felt on saturday. Not only did I grind my way to a win at Red Hot Poker Tour (7th of the season). I also won a fundraising tournament for the Wilmot Wild Lacrosse team.
The tournament was small (for what I'm used to) but it was a good turn out, and a very hard field. The format was No-Limit Hold'em, $40 buy-in with unlimited $20 re-buys for the first hour. The final 4 guys left were John, Bruno (the teams GM), myself, and the New Hamburg legend Smelly Doug. Wow did he ever live up to his name. I was lucky to have a cold and not have to smell him. The final 4 of us went 90mins and after a few close calls, bad beats and a couple hero calls Bruno went out in 4th. After reclaiming a bunch of chips that I had lost to Smelly Doug i was able to eliminate him from the tournament for good (i had also caused him to re-buy twice in the first hour), and then we were down to just me and John. After about 35 back and forth hands, I had a slight chip lead, and then finally we both shipped all the chips in the middle and I was able to come up with the win.
I look forward to the next one in May. The tournament is held at Bellzy's Sports Grill every 4th Saturday of the month in New Hamburg, ON. If you can make it out it is a lot of fun. Plus i have a title to defend.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Updates and stuff
Ok, so it's been awhile since I have taken fingers to keys and wrote out about what I need to in the poker world. But A LOT has happened. If you pay attention to the news you know what i am talking about.
First I wanna go over a couple personal and close to home poker things.
First, my buddy Matt (theplat) had a good night at a cash game at a friends place last weekend. He only saw pockets 3 times, but flopped a set each time, and had a boat by the river each time, and at the end of the night came out ahead in money! GG Matt.
Second, I have had some pretty good results lately on the Red Hot Poker Tour. I have two win recently (including last night) and am surely guarenteed ToC now. i have 13235 in CQ points and currently sit 54th in the league and 4th in the region with 2 weeks to go. ToC 20 is May 14th, and I plan on going deep.
Ok, lets get to the biggest poker news since Duhamel winning the WSOP.
The US Dept Of Justice had shutdown and laid down indictments against a couple major poker sites. Full Tilt, Poker Stars being the biggest. Now, as someone who plays very little online poker such as myself (i also live in Canada where we can still play), I see this as everyone else does. A VERY BAD THING. There is NOTHING good about this outcome. Mid-level pros, and online-pros are gonna be hurt the hardest. The first big winfall out of this aside from the actual shutting down is that cash accounts in the US are suspended and players (whether your name is Tom Dwan or Joe blow next door) can not get their money out. Last I had heard is that players will be ble to access their money soon and that is a positive at least.
Now, as someone that knows a thing or two about computers I can surely say If I was a pro in the US I would be looking for ways around it ASAP, which of course there are a couple ways. The cheap way, and the expensive way. The expensive way is move to a country that allows it. The cheap way being downloading software from a europeon based site, like fulltilt.co.uk or everest poker and play ont their software using a VPN from the US giving you a eurpeon or other countrys IP so it looks like your not playing in the US. Now I am not sure if logging into someone computer via "The Cloud" overseas would work. But i don't see why it wouldn't.
Now, I follow several pro's and a couple of the big poker sites on twitter, and have seen some re-tweets pointing to other articles and pro's personal opinons. There are many theories as to what kind of backlash/endgame this cause and there are some interesting ones for sure.
A have read several times that many feel this will hurt the WSOP and are predicting a drop to pre-2004 numbers. This would actually shock me if this happened. Such a prostegious tournament like this I don't see this hurting much more than the number of people that win their seats free online. I think if anything this will up attendance at satelitte qualifiers at casinos with people trying to win more spots that way.
Another major thing I read is mid-level pro's losing sponsorships from the big guys based on the fact that the sites won't have as much money to pay for the sponsorships. Unfortunately I see this as a true outcome. Hopefully with europeon sites becoming bigger while all the US players not being able to play online in the US, a few sites make more money to sponsor some of these up and comers.
So, there you have it. Now to steal from Jerry Springer, here is my final thought on the matter. I believe the DOJ did this on behalf of other goverenment parties that want online poker to be more regulated and want to collect more tax money from the billion dollar industry online poker has become. I just don't understand why the US government couldn't work nicely with pro's and the site the ways the pro's have been suggesting for a while. All in all, it is a sad time for online poker and poker in general. There will be some significant results coming out of this is the coming weeks and months and I am going to keep on top of it the best I can.
Until next time keep the cards in the air.
First I wanna go over a couple personal and close to home poker things.
First, my buddy Matt (theplat) had a good night at a cash game at a friends place last weekend. He only saw pockets 3 times, but flopped a set each time, and had a boat by the river each time, and at the end of the night came out ahead in money! GG Matt.
Second, I have had some pretty good results lately on the Red Hot Poker Tour. I have two win recently (including last night) and am surely guarenteed ToC now. i have 13235 in CQ points and currently sit 54th in the league and 4th in the region with 2 weeks to go. ToC 20 is May 14th, and I plan on going deep.
Ok, lets get to the biggest poker news since Duhamel winning the WSOP.
The US Dept Of Justice had shutdown and laid down indictments against a couple major poker sites. Full Tilt, Poker Stars being the biggest. Now, as someone who plays very little online poker such as myself (i also live in Canada where we can still play), I see this as everyone else does. A VERY BAD THING. There is NOTHING good about this outcome. Mid-level pros, and online-pros are gonna be hurt the hardest. The first big winfall out of this aside from the actual shutting down is that cash accounts in the US are suspended and players (whether your name is Tom Dwan or Joe blow next door) can not get their money out. Last I had heard is that players will be ble to access their money soon and that is a positive at least.
Now, as someone that knows a thing or two about computers I can surely say If I was a pro in the US I would be looking for ways around it ASAP, which of course there are a couple ways. The cheap way, and the expensive way. The expensive way is move to a country that allows it. The cheap way being downloading software from a europeon based site, like fulltilt.co.uk or everest poker and play ont their software using a VPN from the US giving you a eurpeon or other countrys IP so it looks like your not playing in the US. Now I am not sure if logging into someone computer via "The Cloud" overseas would work. But i don't see why it wouldn't.
Now, I follow several pro's and a couple of the big poker sites on twitter, and have seen some re-tweets pointing to other articles and pro's personal opinons. There are many theories as to what kind of backlash/endgame this cause and there are some interesting ones for sure.
A have read several times that many feel this will hurt the WSOP and are predicting a drop to pre-2004 numbers. This would actually shock me if this happened. Such a prostegious tournament like this I don't see this hurting much more than the number of people that win their seats free online. I think if anything this will up attendance at satelitte qualifiers at casinos with people trying to win more spots that way.
Another major thing I read is mid-level pro's losing sponsorships from the big guys based on the fact that the sites won't have as much money to pay for the sponsorships. Unfortunately I see this as a true outcome. Hopefully with europeon sites becoming bigger while all the US players not being able to play online in the US, a few sites make more money to sponsor some of these up and comers.
So, there you have it. Now to steal from Jerry Springer, here is my final thought on the matter. I believe the DOJ did this on behalf of other goverenment parties that want online poker to be more regulated and want to collect more tax money from the billion dollar industry online poker has become. I just don't understand why the US government couldn't work nicely with pro's and the site the ways the pro's have been suggesting for a while. All in all, it is a sad time for online poker and poker in general. There will be some significant results coming out of this is the coming weeks and months and I am going to keep on top of it the best I can.
Until next time keep the cards in the air.
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