In the early 1970’s Mike often played five-card draw in Gardena, CA, then known as “the poker capital of the world.” You see, Gardena was where the pros gathered to play against newbie’s and intermediate players who liked to challenge them.

Gardena style. During those days Mike discovered that a considerable number of poker players had adopted the bullying technique as a way to intimidate other players in the hopes of enlarging their own chip stacks... [read more]

LAS VEGAS (March 7, 2010) – Annie Duke triumphed against the crème de la crème of the poker world to win the 6th Annual National Heads-Up Poker Championship presented by GoDaddy.com, the world's largest domain name registrar, at the Caesars Palace Poker Tournament Room. Duke defeated Erik Seidel, who has won eight World Series of Poker bracelets and ranks 9th all-time money list, in the tournament’s best-of-three finals to claim the championship and the $500,000 first-place prize. Seidel takes home $250,000 as the second-place finisher... [read more]

Recently I was playing in an aggressive limit hold ’em game in which the betting was frequently capped before the flop, which made for a pretty juicy game and a real roller coaster ride!

For the uninitiated, capping the betting in limit hold ’em is to take the last allowable raise. This game had a four-bet maximum, which means that after an initial bet, there could only be three raises for a total of four bets. The third and last raise is called the cap. This rule is eliminated when the pot is heads up, when unlimited raises are permitted... [read more]

I worked as a union organizer in West Virginia from 1983 until 1988, and in many respects, not much has changed in the 25 years or so since I first visited. West Virginia is still largely impoverished, still beautiful, and I still stick out like a sore thumb!

I recently visited the three West Virginia poker rooms. I stopped first on a Saturday night at the Mountaineer Race Track www.mtrgamng... [read more]

(Atlantic City, NJ) - The most recent World Series of Poker Circuit final table began on the eve of the Main Event and went so long, it ended just as players were funneling into the room preparing to play the next day’s championship. Indeed, if some poker tournaments have become an around the clock pursuit, most of the WSOP Circuit events played this year at Caesars Atlantic City may as well start serving breakfast. Today’s early bird special included hot coffee, bacon, eggs, and about ninety grand in prize money.



The man who scrambled his opponents and toasted the competition was Thomas “Sandy” Taylor, who brought home the bacon with his first WSOP-related victory, following a number of big cashes in other tournaments... [read more]

We’ve all done it at the cash game tables—dug ourselves into a hole so deep that it might as well be our grave. You can blame variance, the fickle poker gods, or that idiot from Helsinki who chased a gutshot and cracked your set of aces. But freaking out and placing the blame on your horrendous opponents won’t solve your problem. Rather, you must remain as calm as possible in order to focus on getting unstuck, otherwise you might as well start picking out coffins and making funeral arrangements... [read more]

Tournament Killer Poker By The Numbers: The Keys to No-Limit Hold ‘em Success
by Tony Guerrera
Lyle Stuart (2008), 276 pp ISBN 978-0818407239, $14.95

Tony Guerrera’s latest work, Tournament Killer Poker By The Numbers: The Keys to No-Limit Hold ‘em Success puts forth a text that aims at the use of numbers for those who need that extra something to make their hold ’em game work. His approach is keyed to reading and adapting to opponents with specific information on why it’s vital to understand the blind and payout structure. He discusses hand distribution and probability, including permutations, factorials, combinations, the binomial distribution, approximations, independence and clumping... [read more]