Poker Players fall in love with Twitter

Have you heard of twitter so far? Well, if you read my blog frequently you my have seen the little box in the right column. Occasionally this box moves into one of my posts to live update my tournament play.

Twitter allows you to shout out whatever you like (as long as it is shorter then 140 characters) to the whole world or answer to other peoples shouts. Hopefully you find people that get interested in your shouts and follow you on a frequent base. Of course it helps a lot if you frequently talk about something specific and interesting. Hard to keep peoples attention if you only twitter about ordinary days happenings (e.g. having breakfast, going to work, going to bed). On the other hand doing something like living the life of a professional poker player seems to be far from ordinary.

While for some time poker players seemed to ignore all this technical stuff this has changed recently. The number of known players that have their own blog or can be found at Facebook is getting bigger and bigger.

The newest toy is definately Twitter. Just recently a list of Pros who use Twitter was posted at the Poker 2.0 blog. You can find names like Phil Hellmuth, Liz Lieu, Annette Obrestad, Annie Duke, Tiffany Michelle, Joe Sebok and many others on the list. In addition there are several reporters (like BJNemeth) and organisations (Pokernews, WPT etc.) twittering around.

So beside useful and fast informations about the pokerworld and current tournaments you can find a good number of hilarious stories which are just fun to follow. Recently during the WPT Bay 101 tournament Joe Sebook tried to convince Amanda Leatherman to appear naked in front of the final table. The online negotiations went as high as 50K for that. Obviously it didn't happen ... but you never can be sure with Joe Sebok involved ;-)

So grab a twitter account and start to find people to follow. And if you get too many to follow grab a tool like TweetDeck and group them for better visability.

My pokerlife is not as interesting as the life of the pros but you may follow me on twitter too if you like: @ShadowBJ21.

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Still walking through "Bad Beat Valley"

After a very successful last quarter in 2008 I went into a big downswing in 2009. After almost bubbling two times in Dublin in early February I now can't get any decent results anymore. I know I am guilty of what can be described as the "Matusow Blow-up" e.g. ruining a good game with one awful decision two times. But beside that I play a very good game that is only stopped by bad beats.

And yesterday wasn't any better. Originally I had planned to attend the PokerNews Cup in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Austria. Unfortunately the side-events have a ugly structure which is worse of what can be found daily around in the Salzburg area. Therefore I decided to boykott this event and play the "Tandem-Tournament" at the Poker-Club in Salzburg. It's a real shame that somebody like Pokernews (who should know better) is willing to offer crapshot events. The onyl one with a decent structure is the main-event.

For the tandem tournament at the Poker-Club you have to team-up with a partner. Each team member plays in his own tournament and the results are combined. Half of the prizepool is distrubuted on the single result and the other half on the team result. The structure is generous: 20,000 starting-chips and 30 minute levels. 5x times more chips then in the Poker-News Cup opening event and 20% longer blindlevels!

Until the first break I was able to maintain my stack at around 20k. Most remarkable hand was a turned straight-flush with 68s that unfortunately didn't pay many chips. During the 200/400 (50) level the following hand occured: The player in first position raised to 900. I re-raised to 3,000 with AA from second position. A player in MP called and the original raiser called too.

Flop comes 2-3-5. Not a bad flop for Aces. First position checks and I bet 6,000 into a 10k pot. MP folds and first position calls. Wow! Pot is now around 22k. Turn is a 6. What can he have that beats me? A4? Raising from EP and calling a re-raise. Unlikely. A set of 2s, 3s or 5s? Possible but still overpaid. KK or QQ? Again possible but overplayed (he invested 20% of his stack by calling my pre-flop re-raise).

So what to do now? I could check but this didn't make much sense here. He had only 7k left (and I had 10k). So I would assume he would bet the river anyway and I wouldn't fold here. So I bet all-in and he immediately called showing me 44 for a turned straight.

Wow! Calling my re-raise with 44 was already a loose call ... but then calling my bet on the flop on just a draw ... I'm speecheless. Now down to 2,5k and busted shortly after. Poker can be a cruel game.

So what are my next plans? In early April there is the Pokertour.at event in St. Pölten followed by some SCOOP online events at PokerStars. Shortly after the Pokertour stopps in Linz again. Of course I plan to make it to the WSOP again mainly targeting the Venetian DeepStacks and (if offered again) the Caesars Mega-Stacks. Trying to add a lower buy-in WSOP event too. In late August I will be back at my favorite Pokerrrom: The Dusk Till Dawn is place of the WCOAP World Amateur Championship Main Event (organized by the APAT). Thanks to Des Duffy (MD of the APAT) for helping me with my troubles during the sign-up process!

There are several other events of interest (some interfering with each other). Depending on my success or lack of that I decide what I will play. E.g. there is the Shortstack Championship in early June in Dublin as well as some other well structured events everywere.

If you want to have a share in my action then I suggest you to visit "Chip Me Up". I told you about this page in a former post and I used it as well as buyer and seller so far. Transactions can be done easily and its's fun to have people invest in you as well as to find the right people to invest in. So if you want to try your luck ... this is my plan of offered shares so far (more added later):

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The 2009 WSOP structures are just "WOW"!

Harrahs and the WSOP are often beaten for just being interested in milking players. You all may remember the discussions about the delayed final table and many other "highlights" (cards, tent etc).

But it seems this time they really got the best of it. They upped the starting stack again by 50% and added some additional levels. For example the $1,500 events now get 4,500 chips and have an added 75/150 level as well as another level at 1,200/2,400(300).

So how much does this change the structure? If I haven't miscalculated it (and I checked twice) the 1,500-Events now have a Patience-Factor PF=27.94. Not only are they now in direct competition to the well designed deep-stacks at Ceasars and Venetian. It's also double to what it was last year (PF=15). Away from a crappy structure back to a real championships event. Expect a lot of Qualifiers and first timers overplay their stacks in the beginning. Also there's still luck involved we might see again the rise of the pros in all the WSOP events.

But the new $1,000 event is now the big crapshot with "only" 3,000 chips? You will be surprised: For this event they brought back the 25/25 entry level which translates to an amazing PF=28.77.

The $2,500 six-handed offers a whooping PF=41.66

I still can't believe the numbers ... but others came up with the same results. Congrats to Harrahs and all that made this possible. This can become the best WSOP ever!

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