Shari Geller

By Shari Geller
 
The World Series of Poker held its annual conference call at 1:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday, May 15, with Executive Director Ty Stewart and Tournament Director Jack Effel sharing news and information about the upcoming series and took questions from the media.  Stewart started out by telling the participants that the theme of this year's series is "To get it right and put on the best damned poker tournament series in the world."
 
The 44th annual WSOP will start on May 29th at the Rio All-Suite Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. "One of our big goals over the past few years has been to kick off the series with a bang," Stewart said as he introduced some of the special events set for this year.
 

by Shari Geller

How many times have you known the right thing to do at the table, yet you stubbornly did the opposite. You see this on TV all the time. The player who tells their opponent, “I know you have me beat” just before tossing in their chips. Some literally kiss their chips goodbye as they make what they know to be a bad call (I’m looking at you, Daniel Negreanu). Why do they do that, and how can you avoid making that same mistake? Often what is going on is a player is letting their ego get in the way of making the right decision. By announcing that you know you’re beat, and still committing chips to the pot, you are effectively trying to have it both ways. If you lose, you look like a genius because you read your opponent correctly. If you win, you get their chips and can thank your brilliant “instincts” that won out over logic.

 Another way we can sabotage ourselves is to let emotions take over for our heads. Be cautious about allowing feelings (ranging from anger to jealousy to embarrassment to entitlement) derail our logical thinking. In any given hand, you should always act as if nothing but making the correct decision mattered. If, instead, you are focused on settling a score, or proving something, or being rewarded, you will set yourself up for failure.

By Shari Geller
 
In an unsealed indictment filed in the US District Court for the Second District of New York, a notorious Russian businessman is alleged to be the ringleader of a massive criminal enterprise involving sports betting and illegal poker games that brought in some $50 million.  Poker pros Abe Mosseri, Bill Edler, Peter Feldman, Joe Mancuso, John Hanson, and Justin Smith were named in three of the twenty-seven counts of the 84-page indictment that reads like a movie script -- something like Rounders meets The Godfather.  But the star of this real-life crime drama is defendant Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, most notable for having been charged with, but ultimately never tried for, allegedly attempting to bribe figure skating judges at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City

By Shari Geller
 
Today was already a newsworthy day for the poker community.  April 15, 2013 marks the two-year anniversary of Black Friday, a day when online poker was taken away from U.S. players.  It was also the day that former Full Tilt Poker CEO Ray Bitar was sentenced, pursuant to a plea agreement, to time served and the forfeiture of assets in the amount of some $40 million for fraud, money laundering and violation of federal gaming laws.  Elsewhere, a popular player won a gold bracelet in the first ever WSOP Asia Pacific Main Event.
 

By Shari Geller

And that's a wrap.  The first ever World Series of Poker Asia Pacific (WSOP APAC) came to a close after midnight local time on Tuesday, April 16th.  The Crown Casino in Melbourne held the inaugural expansion of the WSOP to the land down under with five bracelet events, one high roller non-bracelet event, and, at its conclusion, the end of a nearly five-year bracelet drought for one of poker's most famous faces.

By Shari Geller
 
Phil Ivey added to his WSOP bracelet collection with a ninth win at the inaugural World Series of Poker - Asia Pacific (WSOP APAC) this week in Melbourne, Australia.  But he was not the only US player who found gold on the other side of the globe.  Following on the heels of the WSOP's successful expansion into Europe, the WSOP APAC is awarding bracelets in five different events held at the Crown Casino Melbourne. 
 
The first bracelet event, a No Limit Hold'em $1,000 buy-in, five-day event, was won by American Bryan Piccioli, who defeated Aussie Jonathan Karamalikis for the $211,575 top prize.  It was a tough final table, boasting 2010 WSOP Main Event champ Jonathan Duhamel and 2012 5th place finisher Jeremy Ausmus, who finished 4th and 5th respectively.
 

by Shari Geller

I’ve been having trouble writing again since my friend, co-host and former editor Lou Krieger passed away in December. When something hits you for a loop, it’s not easy bouncing back. But that’s what we all must learn to do, take what comes your way and don’t let it stop you. This is not just good advice for life, but also crucial advice to poker players. How you deal with adversity is much more important than how you handle when everything is going your way.

 The bad beat. We’ve all had them. We love to regale our bored friends and families with the outrage of that miracle card that gave some jerk the hand that should have been ours, conveniently omitting any time we were the lucky recipient of a miraculous suck out. Losing a hand that we are convinced “should have been ours” has a way of taking over our brain. It burrows in there laying seeds of doubt, frustration, and resignation. We lose focus and feel compelled to replay that hand over and over as if on repeated plays we can eke out a different result.

By: Shari Geller
 
When Lou was my editor here at Poker Player Newspaper, I frequently apologized to him for my inability to come up with pithy or eye-catching titles for my articles. Of course Lou, being the most supportive and encouraging of editors, told me not to worry and he'd often come in with a good fix that would save the day.  But I can't count on his help today.
 
Yesterday, Lou passed away unexpectedly.  Yes, he was diagnosed this past summer with esophageal cancer and so, intellectually, I was aware that he might die.  But Lou was such a force of life, so full of enthusiasm and passion and, yes, fight, that it never seemed possible he would actually succumb to this horrible disease.  He would battle until he won and we talked of the great party that we'd have once he was cancer-free.
 

by Shari Geller

The 2012 WSOP Main Event is in the books and while we have a new champ, Gregory Merson, it is tempting to put an asterisk by his name and wonder what might have been. Because in poker, as in life, every action has a ripple effect that reverberates far beyond its beginning. One such ripple started with a questionable floor ruling on a hand involving eventual October Niner, Andras Koroknai, and ended when the final table bubble burst last July, establishing who would be part of the final table.

 Back on Day 5, ultimate sixth-place finisher, Koroknai, was involved in a controversial hand with later tenth-place finisher, Gaelle Baumann. Baumann had min-raised from under the gun to 60K and it folded around to Koroknai in the small blind. He shoved for his last 1.3 million, and when Gavin Smith in the big blind folded, Koroknai mucked his cards. It was then that he realized that Baumann was still in the hand, and he attempted to retrieve his cards, but only one could be found.