Bodog at the Irish Open Final Table!
March 27, 2008
Once again, a Team Bodog Qualifier has cashed in huge at a live tournament. His name is Kai Danilo Paulsen of Norway, and he finished in fifth place at the Irish Open, cashing for 175,000 pounds!
Paulsen started at the final table in fourth place in chips. He was running strong and was third of the five remaining players when he got into a hand with Neil Channing who called his all-in push after making the nut straight on the turn. Channing then went on to flatten the rest of the entire table and walked away with 801,400 pounds!
Think you have the brass to take Team Bodog to the next big final table with Bodog’s $12,000 Player’s Choice prize packages? Let’s say you did win a Player’s Choice Prize Package, well, then you’d be set to choose almost any big live tournament in the world to play in. Some upcoming options include the EPT San Remo at the Casino San Remo in San Remo, Italy on April 1-5 or the Foxwoods Poker Classic at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Conn on April 1-9.
Find out more here about Bodog Player’s Choice Qualifiers.
Ramble On
March 26, 2008
Howdy there internets. How’s it going?Nothing too exciting going on in the land of the PokerFool. I haven’t played many tournaments lately, and I am pretty much break even in the cash games since my last post. Actually, I am still right around even for…
Small Field vs Big Field Mtts
March 26, 2008
As we approach another Mookie Wednesday, I am left to ponder the topic I have returned to the most over the past several weeks concerning my poker play: why am I once again completely invisible in terms of my performances during the BBT3? I mean, I a…
“Professional” Poker?
March 26, 2008
The word “professional” usually comes up in poker when we talk about the players. There are “professional poker players”, “professional wannabes”, and the rest of us. However, true “professionalism” in poker comes from the management side not the player side. How tournaments and cash games are run with a “professional” style and uniformity comes from the individual card rooms, casinos, poker tours, poker room managers and floor staff. Recently, there have been several examples of how the management of the game is not keeping up with the game itself.
RENO: Today marks the first day of the World Poker Challenge in Reno, Nevada. This annual event formerly played at the Reno Hilton and now at the Grand Sierra (same casino, new owners). When the players were seated today, they were given seats based upon when they registered; so the normally late arriving “professionals” were all put at the final four tables and the many satellite winners over the last several months were all seated together. This pattern of registration is nothing new and is handled with a random draw by every other casino we have encountered in the last three or four years. But without some “professional” standards, this unnecessary situation arises. We can only assume new casino ownership, new poker room staff because we know the former poker room manager and he never would have allow this to happen.
EPT: The European Poker Tour has grown too fast. So far they have had to limit the number of seats in most events because they simply cannot accommodate more players. So there is a black market in tournament seats. As the numbers get close to the cutoff, some local entrepreneurs have been buying seats, only to offer them to late arriving professionals at a premium. Scalping seats to the EPT, a good line of work until they institute the “you buy it, you play it” rule, which has been around on other poker tours for years. It is not necessary to re-invent the rules, just look at how other successful tours deal with such situations or hire one of the several highly qualified tournament directors, who have the necessary experience.
TDA: The tournament directors association has been doing a very good job of seeking to standardized rules for running a poker tournament. The problem is that they have not and will not venture outside of that narrow area of concern. They do not feel they should be addressing issues such as the two mentioned above. TDA wants to focus on the actual running of the tournament from “Shuffle Up and Deal” to “We have a Winner.” The problem is that many other issues that affect the players are outside of their self-appointed mandate and there is no other organization to address those issues of “professionalism” in poker.
Meet Special K
March 26, 2008
Who the heck is Special K? He is a new contributor to LasVegasVegas.com.
I imagine that my nickname will get me in trouble with the Kellogg’s folks, but that is just how I roll, brave until confronted and then I run like crazy. One lawyer letter and I’ll be Oatmeal McGrits.
Hi, I’m Special K. I’m an amateur poker player. I’m an amateur photographer. I shoot a pretty mean game of pool sometimes. Other times it looks like I rode a short bus to the pool hall (thus the nickname). Mostly, I’m a friend to Flipchip and the Poker Prof and they have been good friends to me.
Gay Bar.
March 25, 2008
So one of Lori’s old friends wanted to meet up yesterday, and he suggested that we’d go to the place that he sometimes hangs out at, a place called “Innuendo” in downtown St Paul. A gay bar.
This was my first time in a gay bar, and honestly, I didn’t know quite what to expect. Mostly […]
MATH Recap, and Semi-Bluffing on the Flop
March 25, 2008
75 runners showed up for the MATH on Monday night on full tilt, making for a nice round $1800 prize pool and payouts to the top 8 finishers. As usual given the faster 6-max format of the MATH, our first bustout happened within just a few minutes as la…