Australian Online Poker Information

Archive for January, 2012

The typical online poker strategy is to either multi-table, or keep quiet and focus on one table at a time.  Players limit banter for fear of giving things away, and just want to earn as much money as possible in as short a time as possible.  Is that strategy going to sustain the glamour of the game?

Daniel Negreanu has spoken out about the future of the game of poker, and it seems that his version of the future isn’t all that bright.  He believes that the way that the Internet generation is dominating the game today means that poker is in danger of becoming too serious, and perhaps even boring.

When Negreanu speaks, the poker world should listen.  Negreanu has lifetime earnings of more than $14 million, and he’s in the top 3 on the all time money list.  He’s been playing poker since 1997, and there are few people that have managed to keep up with the ever changing and evolving game as well as he has.

Today, Negreanu feels that the game lacks the interesting characters that made it rise to prominence.  He said “When poker became popular you had people like Devilfish, Sammy Farha, Doyle Brunson, and Phil Ivey.  Today, the story is ‘I dropped out of college and I grinded 20 tables to build my bankroll’.  The story isn’t sexy.  People won’t care about them, because they are not interesting”.

Negreanu also added that the most recent World Series of Poker was less fun to play in than previous years, let alone watch on TV.  While it’s true that poker as a spectator sport is a matter of debate at the best of times, silent, cut-throat online players are far less interesting to watch than the old-school players with their banter and personality.

You can’t make people change their personality, and you can’t select poker players for tournaments based on marketability rather than skill – but there is certainly the possibility that brands may start selecting only marketable players to sponsor and promote.  Hopefully that will re-build the interest of the masses.

Two big brands, Caesars Interactive Entertainment and 888 Holdings, have teamed up to get ready for the United States poker market.  The partnership comes in anticipation of a change in American gambling laws, which would open the door for certain, limited, forms of online gambling.

888 Chairman Brian Mattingley, said “888 has taken a prudent approach to regulation, which culminated in the successful review conducted by the NGC, putting 888 and Dragonfish in pole position for the US market.  This gives us a strong platform to roll out our cutting edge, turnkey solution to other potential partners as the market opens.”

In recent years, 888 has been a driving force for the World Series of Poker brand in other countries, such as the United Kingdom.  It will be interesting to see how the US market evolves when online gambling opportunities open up over there.  Those who were in a position to move swiftly when the law changed (such as Caesars), should have definite advantage in the early days.

Oliver Speidel took a big chance when he left his job – in risk management, no less – and decided to try his hand at professional poker.  Speidel, from Clifton Hill, managed to win $1.6 million in a five hour Main Event game at the Aussie Millions.

He celebrated his win by diving on to the poker table and swimming in the cash.  He said of his stunt that “It felt like the right thing to do.   I was so emotional in that moment.  I feel amazing.  I still can’t believe it happened.”

Speidel said that his experience in risk management helped him to defeat the other 659 entrants.  He started playing poker five years ago, and fell in love with the strategic nature of the game, although he does admit that “It helps to be really lucky.”

He has not yet decided what he will do with his winnings.  He is considering buying an inner city apartment, and he might also enter some bigger tournaments.  He feels that the win is “life changing.”

Watch out for Speidel at bigger tournaments over the next year.

Lewis Hunter, a poker pro from Scotland, has made his first successful raid on the UK poker scene, taking away a prize of £49,600 after his victory in the Grosvenor United Kingdom Poker Tour.

The tournament, which took place in Manchester, saw Hunter best 170 other players to take the first place prize.  In second place was Kevin Steel, of England, who left with £34,630 for his efforts.

Hunter said that he felt “very good” about his performance, especially considering that the “trophy is going back to Scotland”.  He did say that he was disappointed as he had lost a lot of bluffing, but he was glad to have succeeded in the tournament in general.

Steele said that he was fairly happy with his runner up spot, feeling that it was not a bad start to the new year.  He believes that he can move on from second place to enjoy bigger and better things later in the year.

If you’ve ever missed a freeroll, or gotten confused about the dates of a forthcoming tournament, then you’ll love this mobile application. On-Mobi has released a new Poker Planner application on the Apple App Store.  The application acts as an online tournament reminder.  Poker players can purchase notification bundles for a small fee (20 notifications for $0.99, US dollars or 200 for $4.99).  They will then be informed about tournaments ahead of time, ensuring that they don’t miss out.

You can set up the app to inform you about tournaments based on a range of criteria – including real money or play money play, your preferred sites, buy-in, tournament name, and the time that the tournament will start.   This will allow you to stay on top of the poker calendar, making sure that you don’t lose track of all the tournaments that are going on during peak season.

The app is free to download, but the notifications will cost money.  For the small fee, however, it’s worth at least buying one pack of notifications to see whether it’s useful to you or not.

As January draws to a close, so does the satellite calendar for Titan Poker’s $10K Monthly Bonanza Tournament.  This tournament takes place on the last day of the month, every month, and there are just a couple of satellite tournaments remaining in this month’s schedule.  You can buy-in to the tournament with 2,000 points, or you can enter one of the qualifying tournaments.  There are freeroll satellites, and points satellites which offer re-buys and add-ons for just ten points.

The freerolls run every three hours throughout the day, but you can only enter one freeroll ever 24 hours.  If you’re a depositing player, you have the option of taking part in a depositors only satellite on Monday at 7PM.  If you miss the qualifiers this month, be sure to check the schedule to see if you’ll be able to qualify in time for the February 10K.

This month’s $10K Monthly Bonanza tournament will take place on Jan 31st at 20:30 GMT.

The major poker tournaments are always expanding, but in the last year or so that expansion has been marred by financial woes, clashing schedules, and organizational issues – not to mention threats of boycotts after black friday.

This year, the poker calendar is even more cluttered than usual – with big name tournament clashes starting early.  Florida based players are expected to choose between the WPT Lucky Hearts Open, or the Miami Gardens Poker Classic next month.  Why are both main events on the same day?  What do the two events have to gain by competing with each other – or is it just an accident, brouht about through poor planning?

Some poker tournament organizers are working to mitigate these clashes, with multiple Day 1s a popular way of giving people the opportunity to take two bites of the tournament cherry, so to speak.

However, that still leaves people with the difficult of choosing what to enter first.  Prioritizing a tournament is a public show of support.  That may not be a huge deal for a dedicated amateur, but it puts big name players in a difficult position.

Would it be better if the bigger names worked together to schedule their tournaments?  There’s always room for a little competition, but spreading out tournament dates would benefit many players, and could increase the number of entrants overall.

I believe that if the major tournaments spread out their dates a little better, and perhaps ran shorter series – so that there were more events running concurrently, it would be good for the players, and give more exposure to the brands too.