Tournament Highlights:

Event Headlines -

1. David 'Gunslinger' Bach Wins First WSOP Gold Bracelet

2. 2009 H.O.R.S.E. Championship is Second-Longest Final Table in WSOP History

2. Bach Wins Fourth Annual H.OR.S.E. World Championship

3. Bach Pockets Nearly $1.3 Million -- Second-Highest Cash Prize of 2009 WSOP, So Far

4. Three Non-Gold Bracelet Winners Finish 1-2-3 at Final Table, While Five Former Bracelet Winners Take Spots 4-5-6-7-8.

The Champion --

• The 2009 World Series of Poker $50,000 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. World Champion is David 'Gunslinger' Bach, from Athens, GA.

• Bach was born in Springfield, MO.

• Bach is a 37-year-old professional poker player. Prior to poker player, Bach was a professional bowler.

• Bach earned a college degree in psychology from the University of Georgia.

• Te... Continue reading Event #49 2009 H.O.R.S.E. Championship is Second-Longest Final Table in WSOP History

Mike is presenting six seminars at the Rio during the World Series of Poker and playing in some of the events.

Poker personality, columnist, and WSOP Media director Nolan Dalla has been introducing Mike and regaled the audience with a tale about Mike from 15 years ago.

Mike was giving a seminar at a restaurant, and as occasionally befalls such events, the audio equipment went on the blink.

Mike usually manages to discover a way to make the most of a bad situation. This time he led the seminar audience outside onto a balcony and climbed on a ledge to address that crowd of poker players.

Wild. Mike is aware that he presents a rather wild image, but imagine the Mad Genius atop a ledge, on a roof, in the moonlight, his hair in its usual disarray, waving his arms about and speaking loudly to his audience. A worried security guard asked Nolan, 'Do you think he's going to jump?' What a sight that must have been!

Today ... Continue reading Lessons From Mike Caro University Of Poker: Old Memories

'The price of poker is going up!' as Mike Sexton would say.

Just when you thought that action at the nosebleed tables was already ridiculously high, the stakes have been elevated. Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and Ilari 'Ziigmund' Sahamies engaged in several $3,000-$9,000 heads-up pot-limit Omaha matches. The two normally played with $500-$1,000 blinds, but they agreed to make it at least $9,000 to see the flop. Ziigmund alluded that he wasn't all that comfortable playing so high, but with the lack of available high stakes opponents, he really had no choice.

'I hope I won't do it anymore,' wrote Ziigmund on his blog. 'That's sick, sick big game.'

The swings have been immense. Durrrr won and lost a couple of million dollar sessions during the first week of escalated blinds. Eventually the two were involved in a pot so big that it set a record for largest pot-limit Omaha pot of all time. It was also the second largest pot ever played online. In case you w... Continue reading Higher and Higher

One of the skills of a winning poker player is patience. In cash games if you play maniacally you usually end up losing. In tournaments, though, sometimes patience must take a back seat to naked aggression.

My good friend Aaron played in a home game satellite for a spot in a major, live tournament series. Twenty players began the tournament, and the key was to finish in the top three to advance to the playoffs. The structure was fast. Each player began with T1,000 and the blinds increased every 15 minutes. There were two heats with the top three players from each heat advancing to the playoffs. The playoff had a slower structure, and each player stared with T5,000 and the blinds advancing every 25 minutes.

Unfortunately for Aaron, all he looked at for the first half hour was a steady diet of junk. At a ten-handed, player-dealt table, it can easily take 15 minutes for an orbit. In fact, after two levels only 18 hands were dealt at Aaron's table.

A Tournament Reality

One of the recurring themes of poker theorists is the concept of dominated hands. Entire books on poker strategy are based primarily on the concept of building the kinds of hands that dominate those held by opponents, and avoiding situations where yours is the hand that's dominated.

If this concept is new to you, here's how it works. If I'm holding A-10 and you have A-K, my hand is dominated. Miraculous straights and flushes that might accrue to A-10 notwithstanding, I have just three outs, and three outs only, to win this pot. And while there are a few more hands that will enable me to split the pot-a rainbow coalition of K-Q-J-10 might hit the board and our straights will propel us to a split pot-that's beside the point since my objective is to win; it's not about playing a lesser hand in hopes of getting my money back courtesy of a really miraculous fall of cards.

Dominated hands, by definition, have three outs. Except for those aforementioned miraculou... Continue reading Domination, Part 1