Tag: tournaments

Andrew Hinrichsen Wins WSOPE Event #2

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The World Series of Poker Europe’s second event was a massive hit to say the least.  An incredible  771 players bought in to the €1,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em event; which made it the largest number of entrants to an WSOPE event in history, surpassing the old record of 608 by more than 150 players.  The winner of the event got a nice pay day too, and took home €148,030 for winning it all.  All in all, the event drew a total prize pool of €740,160.

That beautiful first place prize was taken down by a player who may not be incredibly well known in the live poker circuit; but he has brought in some nice results in this past year.  Andrew Hinrichsen played in the World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas this year, and while he wasn’t able to win a gold bracelet then, he still finished in 23rd place and won $302,005 for his strong run.  It only took a few months after that for him to win that gold bracelet though, as he is now the winner of the second event at the WSOPE.  His recent cashes don’t stop there though, as he also finished sixth in a preliminary event at the Aussie Millions, and finished second in the Australia-New Zealand Poker Tour as well.  All of this puts him at a total of just over $750k in live poker tournament winnings in his career.

Poker Sites for Players from Europe

When Hinrichsen made it to the final table he was sitting in second place with 434k in chips, and even got that total up to 800k in chips.  He couldn’t hold his big chip stack though, as he actually entered heads up play as a three to one underdog in terms of his stack.  He rallied back though, and it only took about fifteen minutes for him to get it all in against his opponent, Gianluca Speranza.  This of course ended up with a nice double up to give him the chip lead, and the rest was history from there.

Speranza got a nice pay out for his second place finish as well, taking home €91,262.  The World Series of Poker Europe continued on with event #3 on Wednesday, and will continue to host events through the rest of the month.

Guaranteed Tournaments All Week Long At Party Poker

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All week long at Party Poker you can find guaranteed tournaments with prize pools at nosebleed heights. And if you’re successful at any of these tournaments, Party Poker will even reward you with placement on a tournament leaderboard running all month long.

For starters, Party Poker players can enjoy $30K Guaranteed Super Weekdays, Monday through Thursday at 3 pm ET with $99 buy-ins, no fee, and huge payouts. These tournaments also have satellite qualifiers aplenty leading into them, so you don’t have to pay the $99 buy-in to play. There are even points qualifiers you can enter with no cash whatsoever, only Party Poker Points.

The big guarantee of every week at Party Poker of course is its $200K Guaranteed Sunday event. This costs $215 to enter directly (again with no fee) and features, as promised in the title, a $200,000 guaranteed prize pool each time. As with the Party Poker $30K Guaranteed Super Weekdays, players can enter the $200K Guaranteed Sunday without paying the $215 buy-in by winning their way in through a series of satellite qualifiers running daily at the site. What’s more, there are actually a pair of $200K Guaranteed Sunday events: a multi-table event and a sit and go event, with separate qualifiers leading into each of them.

Players excelling in these or any tournaments at Party Poker will find themselves ranked on a monthly tournament leaderboard. There are separate MTT and Sit & Go leaderboards, each with weekly prizes up to $600 and monthly prizes that vary from month to month.

Party Poker Abolishes MTT Fees

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In what many are saying is a historic first, a poker site has abolished its multi-table tournament fees. That site is Party Poker and this change – what they’re calling Rake Free Summer – is valid for the remainder of the summer.

Here’s how it will work. During the Party Poker Rake Free Summer, the fees for all MTTs will be added to the tournament’s normal buy-in. So a $100 + $10 event will become a $110 event. While this may seem on the surface not to be a big savings at all, it actually boosts the pot that tournament players will be vying for. Sticking with the above example, instead of paying $100 into the prize pool and $10 into Party Poker’s pocket, you would pay the full $110 into the prize pool, meaning all that money goes right back to the players – to you, if you play your cards right.

Also running this July, 2011 at Party Poker is a $100K freeroll taking place August 7. To earn your ticket, just make a reload deposit using the bonus code 200JULY. That code will also give you a 100% reload bonus on that deposit, up to a maximum bonus of $200.

Don’t forget the Summer Million coming up at Party Poker fast. All this month Party Poker will be running daily Summer Million freeroll qualifiers with $1,000 guaranteed prize pools to boot. And speaking of qualifiers, during the Party Poker Rake Free Summer promotion, any qualifier tournaments that ordinarily have a rake or fee will also no longer have it for the duration of the summer.

Poker Stars Launches New Brasil Poker Tour

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Poker Stars is renowned for its live poker tours visiting exotic locales across the globe to stir up some high-stakes poker tournament action. The recent addition to the barrage of PokerStars sponsored live poker tours takes players down to South America – Brazil, specificially. It’s called the Brasil Poker Tour and it currently features three stops, all taking place in Brazil.

The inaugural Brazilian poker tour event takes place in less than a month in Sao Paulo. BPT Sao Paul runs July 21 – 25, 2011 and features a buy-in of approximately $1,400 US (or R $2,000 + $300).

The second event of the new Brasil Poker Tour is BPT Florianopolis, taking place October 6 – 10, 2011 for the same buy-in as the BPT Sao Paulo main event.

The third event on the BPT Brasil schedule is the season one grand finale. The location, dates and buy-ins have yet to be announced.

The Brasil Poker Tour will not compete directly with the Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT), also a PokerStars enterprise. In much the same way that the relatively new Eureka Poker Tour is not a competitor to the European Poker Tour (EPT), but an offshoot of it, the BPT is an offshoot of the LAPT.

As is typical with PokerStars live poker tours, players can qualify for Brasil Poker Tour through satellite qualifier tournaments at the Poker Stars site. Prize packages include the main event buy-in, accommodations and some travel and expense funds. Even players in the United States can try to qualify for the Brasil Poker Tour at PokerStars.net, the free, play money sister site to PokerStars.com, which will be holding freeroll tournaments into the series’ events.

Poker Stars Beefs Up Saturday Line-up

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Poker Stars has just beefed up its Saturday Line-up, and as of this Saturday, June 25, 2011 will be offering 7 new tournaments with low buy-ins and high prize pools. The low buy-ins for these new Saturday tournaments at Poker Stars vary from $2.22 to $55. The high buy-ins range from $20K to $50K.

The 7 new tournaments in the PokerStars Saturday Line-Up are as follows:
•    Saturday 6-max at 7 am ET, a NL Hold’em 6-max event with a $22 buy-in and a $30K prize pool
•    Saturday Micro at 8 am ET, a NL Hold’em event with a $3.30 buy-in and a $30K prize pool
•    Saturday Omaha at 9 am ET, a Pot Limit Omaha event with a $55 buy-in and a $30K prize pool
•    Saturday Eliminator at 10 am ET, a NL Hold’em event with a $27 buy-in and a $40K prize pool
•    Saturday Splash at 11 am ET, a NL Hold’em, 3x Turbo rebuy event with a $2.22 buy-in and rebuy and a $50K prize pool
•    Saturday Duel at 3:30 pm ET, a heads up NL Hold’em event with an $11 buy-in and a $20K prize pool
•    Saturday Speedway at 7 pm ET, a NL Hold’em Turbo event with a $33 buy-in and a $50K prize pool

In honor of this inaugural running of the new Saturday Line-up, Poker Stars is holding a special No Lose offer in which all players who bust out of the event before making the money will get a free entry to that same tournament any future Saturday Line-up event by July 16. Players can only get 1 No Lose ticket, so if you play in more than one event this Saturday and don’t cash in at more than one, you’ll get a No Lose ticket worth the value of the highest buy-in you paid for a single event.

Short Stack Poker Tournament Tips

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During most poker tournaments you are going to find yourself short on chips from time to time. That is not to say that you will not gain some traction and get back into the mix but it does happen. If you play tournament poker you are going to be short stacked no matter how well you play. True, some of us are short stacked a lot less times than others but it does happen. There are many poker players that are tremendous short stacked players and understand how to use the situation to their advantage. On the other hand there are players that have no understanding of how to play a short stack and might as well just give away the rest of their chips instead. We are going to examine short stack play and how to survive.

Situational Awareness
Obviously when you are short stacked you need to be extremely sensitive to not only your own situation but also that of other players at the table. If I am short I do not want to pick on another player that is in the same desperate situation as I am in. Why? The reason is because he is more likely to call than someone that has an average stack. Remember, just because you are short stacked does not mean that you don’t pose a danger to other players at your table as long as you do not allow your chips to dwindle down to nothing. Usually 10x’s the BB is as small a short stack as you want to get before getting all your chips in. This means you can still sting most of the players that are at your table enough to make them think before getting involved in a pot with you.

Even if you pick up the blinds you are increasing your stack by another 10% and allowed another orbit to pick up a big hand and double up. You need to stay away from calling raises or getting involved with speculative hands like flush draws or small pairs unless you are in the blinds or on the button and confident you will not see a raise behind you. But remember that there is no such thing as always. You must have a good feel for your table and how your opponents perceive your game in order to carry this out. Small raises and getting involved in hands out of position as a short stack do you absolutely no good. The reason is that you are likely to be put all-in after the flop hit so you need to be prepared for that no matter what hits the board. The same thing is possible pre-flop when you see a raise in front of you. It’s very likely that player wants you to get all your chips in the middle and is trapping.

Hand Ranges

Too many times I see short stacked players getting involved with minimum raises and then folding. The rule of thumb when you are short stacked is that you are going to get the rest of your chips in the middle after the flop at the very least. You should never call a minimum raise or flat call a limper when short stacked and then fold your hand. The bottom line is that you do not have enough chips to call and then fold. It’s true that we would love to get our chips in the middle with a premium pair before the blinds come around again. However, that is not always an option and we need to open up our range of hands considerably when short stacked. Just about any pocket pair from [5][5] or higher will be enough to justify getting your chips in the middle even with a raiser in front of you. You also want to consider hands like [Js]Ts], {Q][T], [K][T], [Ks][9s], [J][T], [Q][9], [A][5]-[A][9],[7][6], [Js][9s]. None of these hands are premium hands but they do allow you outs with straight draws and flush draws alike.

Summary
The objective of the short stack is very simple, you are on a mission to either double your stack or you are going home. So, even though your hand range must expand considerably you also can take advantage of those that are afraid to get involved and target them when you are not picking up cards so you can steal their blinds. Every time you are able to get away with stealing the blinds is another opportunity for you to pick up a real hand and double-up. It is another opportunity for survival. Anything can happen after you gain a little traction through a double up. I have seen players go on to make many final tables after starting off extremely slow. So give yourself the best shot you can and play your short stack aggressively and see what happens.

Multi-Tabling Texas Holdem

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Do you multi-table when you are online? It doesn’t matter whether you are playing a Texas Holdem poker tournament or cash game multi-tabling is as popular as ever. With so many technological advances I with the new monitors and video cards playing multiple tables is a way to potentially increase your profit margin if you are a cash game player. Tom Dwan is probably one of the most popular multi-table poker players around today. Hevad Khan was banned for multi-tabling 64 tables at once until he sent them film of him actually doing it. Initially the poker room he was playing in thought he was a bot. In any event if you play online poker then you will undoubtedly have the opportunity to play as many tables as you care to.

Why Multi-Table?

The main argument for multi-tabling is that it increases your profit margin by increasing the number of hands you see per hour. So, assuming that you are an above average poker player, the more hands you see and play correctly the better your chances of increasing your hourly profit by adding additional tables. Of course none of that changes how variance affects the game or table you are playing at that point in time. In other words there is no guarantee that you are going to rake in huge profits just because you are playing several tables at once. If you keep track of the online poker pros you will notice that they can have some very radical swings. This is particularly true in Omaha.

Another reason strikes me as a bit strange in that many poker players seem to be bored played one table. Professional poker players and amateur poker players alike have admitted to being bored when they play poker. How that is possible is beyond my understanding but perhaps it is just the makeup of some player’s personality. I tend to have the patience of Job in most any endeavor I take on. I don’t live my life at 100 miles per hour intentionally so that I can enjoy the experiences that come my way daily. However, the game of poker, particularly online poker attracts a player type that can be very impatient even when playing live poker tournaments.

Fighting off boredom is not very difficult to do when you think about it. Considering that we all must constantly profile our opponents, track showdowns, monitor betting patterns and the like there is no reason for any poker player to be bored. Online poker moves even faster and makes it easier to monitor these things. Ultimately, it all depends on what kind of makeup you have I suppose.

The Down Side

The down side to multi-tabling is the fact that most of us cannot keep track of and focused on more than 3 to 4 tables at a time. Why? Because once you have more tables open than you can see at one time on your monitor you do not have the time to watch the action at those tables. Now you are reduced to simply playing the hands you are deal. There is a caveat to this scenario and that is if you happen to be a Limit Hold’em player. Limit Hold’em tends to lend itself to multi-tabling because the betting patterns are fixed so the risk factor is minimized considerably even when you have only seconds to make you bet or fold the hand.

Another problem with multi-tabling is that you cut down your reaction time. Imagine having 20 to 30 tables opened with 60 seconds to respond to each hand. By the time you should be acting in the hand you very likely will be down to only a few seconds. That is not nearly enough time to even quickly think through the action and where you fit in.

Clearly multi-tabling can and is done successfully every single day of the week. You just need to be smart about how you go about doing it. If you want to try multi-table don’t try to fire up 10 tables at once. Start out with two or three tables and get a feel for what is comfortable for you. Some players may be OK playing 10 tables at a time while others may be more comfortable with no more than 6. Only you know when you skill level begins to deteriorate. Once this begins to happen you need to acknowledge it and cut down the number of tables you play. It seems simple but I know players that consistently lose multi-tabling but continue to do so.

Be smart and know your own limitations.

Curtis Mayfield III