When you are preparing to play a game of holdem, we should consider a lot of important concepts. The thing we have to remember is that no limit is a game of skill, not luck, and if you are attempting…
More: continued here
At this point, you have probably heard enough about online internet casinos to a certain extent causing you to give it a try. Many avid …
More: continued here
Having played poker now for a few years I have seen quite a lot of different style of player in that time. I have met, like me, middle of the road players who are trying to take their games to the nex…
More: continued here
If they are preparing to get in a game of poker, you need to remember a lot of highly important concepts. The idea you need to remember is that poker is a game of skill, not chance, and in the case y…
More: continued here
463 players sat down for day 2
A total of 463 players made it through to day 2 of the WPT LA Poker Classic. PartyPoker had 11 players returning to take their seats for day 2. Our PartyPoker chip leader at the start of day 2 was Sergei Norikov from Russia who was in position 27.
All the players are fully supportive of each other because of the fantastic $1,000,000 bonus prize that Partypoker will award if any of our qualifiers win this main event.
If we do have a Partypoker player take down this title they will win a staggering $500,000 and all the other Partypoker players who have taken part in this event will share the other $500,000. This creates a good sense of Party spirit amongst the guys because they all have an interest in each other.
George from Canada trying to win for his children
One guy who could profit more than anyone is George Grant from Canada who qualified for this event on our PartyPoker.net site after seeing a Partypoker.net TV advert one evening.
George has never previously played in a live poker tournament or even played poker for money online but I have a feeling that this will change after this week.
George admitted to being very nervous before play started on Friday but said that he was amazed how friendly everyone has been. Despite the lack of live poker experience George is giving a very good account of himself and at 17:00 on Saturday is still sitting with 17,000 chips. I asked George what he would do with the money if he won this event. He smiled and said he would travel the world and make sure his two children had a great life.
We lost a couple of our players in the first couple of levels today. Sadly Gavin Greenwood was not able to find any cards today and when he did make a move with 10 J he got called by a guy holding a dominating QJ. The flop came down Q66 and Gavin was in real trouble. A further Q on the turn sealed Gavin’s fate and sent him to the rail. Another insignificant 6 came on the river but Gavin was already on his way out of the tournament room.
Rudger and Nicholas also hit the rail sooner than they would have liked. By 18:00 Marco, one of two Italian players also had to say “Arrivederci” to his tournament. His friend Salvatore is still flying the flag for our Party Italia players.
With an hour to go today we still had 6 players scattered throughout the tournament room. Estimated chip counts at 20:00 Saturday were as follows:
Malte with table mates Jennifer Tilly and Johnny Chan
Unfortunately as I stood counting Malte’s chips he lost a pot against the legendary Johnny Chan. Malte is on a tough table because he has Jennifer Tilly to his left and Johnny Chan on Jennifer’s left. He has to pick his spots carefully but has obviously being doing just that if he can amass such a good chip stack on such a tough table.
With an hour to go, two of the chip leaders were recent PartyPoker Premier League participants, Daniel Negreanu with 300,000 and Vanessa Rousso on over 200,000.
Andrey was busted when he pushed pre-flop with Kings only to get called by a guy with Aces. No help came on the board and Andrey was greeted at the rail by his girlfriend.
With 30 minutes remaining I walked by Malte’s table to see him pulling in a huge pile of chips and player leaving the table. Malte had pocket queens under the gun and made a standard raise which was called by the blinds. On a ten high flop the blinds check and Malte makes a continuation bet which was called by the small blind. Another low card came on fourth street and the small blind check raised all in. Malte insta-called and had the guy easily covered. The queens were looking good against an open ended straight draw which never came. Malte was still stacking his newly won chips for another two hands.
At 20:30 the chips were bagged and the big screen showed that the average chip stack was about 79,000 and only 187 made it through today. The 5 remaining PartyPoker players all had a reasonable amount of chips and they could hit the bar knowing they would have the following chips when they come back on Sunday for day 3.
George doubled up in the final hand of the night when he pushed pre-flop with pocket queens and got a call by a guy with AJ. A low board meant George would be back on Sunday.
We will also be back on Sunday when play resumes at 12:00 local time.
Sergei from Russia is happy to have made it through to day 3
Those who turned up five minutes before registration ended seem to be faring well today as the eliminations come hard and fast. Antonio Esfandiari didn’t even arrive until today, so had his chip stack completely blinded out through day one. Here is what his seat looked like last thing last night:
They don’t call him ‘The Magician’ for nothing – that said if you want to go anywhere in Vegas and you just say you know Antonio and magic happens! Thank you to Steve Hall of PokerGossip.com for the picture.
After three weeks in casino environments, I am getting a little tired. Why don’t you go to a tanning salon someone said?
Good suggestion but I dont want to end up looking like the below:
As I write the field has whittled down to 288. From tomorrow I am on my own here. As I write this midway through day two we have the following runners still live.
And it has been bike time for: Mykhailo Demydenko, Nicholas Verkaik, Rudger Gravestein and Gavin Greenwood.
There may be trouble ahead. My learning and development schedule was light on Russian lessons and our boys with chips do not speak a word of English.
Maybe I should call Kermit the Frog, aka Mr Tony G, but I’m sure he wont be helpful as he’ll ’send them back to Russia.’ Tony, can you help me with some Russian diplomacy? Do you know what the Russian for ‘On Your Bike’ is?
To add to my problems Jeff ‘JaffaCake’ Kimber is still in. A fellow Brit, we go back many years to the days of sports journalism. He found his way from TV and Satellite Week Magazine to becoming a major UK player.
He is from Newcastle in the UK though so I may find him harder to communicate with than our Russian players.
Wi -ay! On your bike…
Day 1 of the LA Poker Classic
We now have the all important stats for this event.
A total of 745 players have entered the WPT La Poker Classic which has generated a prize pool of $7,152,000. First prize will be a cool $1,778,001 and even 2nd place will walk away over $1,000,000. With the top 72 places getting paid, there is plenty to play for.
Tournament Director, Matt Savage told me he is delighted with the turnout. Matt has done a lot of work re-vamping the whole tournament structure for the entire LA Poker Classic series. As well as the main event, Matt introduced a lot of new side events which has increased the overall turnout for the series. This has helped make the LA Poker Classic the second biggest poker event behind the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
Looking around the tournament room, there were a lot of late entrants. It is always the top players who arrive during the 2nd or 3rd level. Maybe they think they do not have to bother themselves with the early stages – who knows. Some the late entrants included Peter Eastgate, Bertrand ‘Elky’ Grospellier, Chris Ferguson, Joe Hachem and Annie Duke. Some of them did not hang around long. I saw Peter Eastgate hit the rail soon after he sat down. I was very disappointed that Mike Matusow was had also left the tournament room before I had a chance to get a copy of his book. Unless he comes back tomorrow, I’ll have to look on Amazon.
Marco from Italy
Many of the partypoker players are sitting with very nice chip stacks. Unfortunately as we reached the later stages of the day we lost a couple of our players. Robert from Sweden was seen heading to rail at about 7pm. He has come out to Los Angeles with his family so I’m sure they will enjoy their time here. Mario from Germany and Joe from Canada were also missing from their chairs so I presumed they have also busted.
Robert from Sweden
By the time the chips were bagged up at 8.30pm we still had 11 players left in the tournament.
Here are the important chip counts at the end of Day 1.
Partypoker players in position and with chip counts:
27 Sergei Norikov 71,025
28 Malte Moennig 70,950
71 Jeff Kimber 50,600
98 Andrey Marsev 44,575
109 Salvatore De Luca 42,975
200 Rudger Gravestein 31,450
219 Marco Callari 29,300
266 Mykhailo Demydenko 24,875
306 Nicholas Verkaik 20,000
326 George Grant 18,225
406 Gavin Greenwood 11,650
Sergey from Russia starts day 2 with over 71,000 chips
Speaking with the players as they left the tournament room, many were happy with their days work and were looking forward to Saturday. Many went into Los Angeles for dinner in a chic restaurant in Beverly Hills. Because it was Friday night, some were hoping they might run into a famous movie star. Unfortunately we only saw other poker players. But at least the dinner was delicious
We are back on Saturday for Day 2.
Before you play Texas holdem poker it is important to figure out how much you can afford. The size of your Texas holdem bankroll must be given some important thought. Figuring out how much you can …
More: continued here
A deck of playing cards consist of 52 cards and are divided into four suits. The suits are the hearts, spades, clubs and diamonds. Each suit has thirteen ranks and all of them are of equal value, n…
More: continued here
When we are preparing to play a game of cards, they have to consider some important things. One thing they should to consider is that poker is a contest of skill, not luck, and in the case we are try…
More: continued here