Gus Hansen

Gus Hansen has proved to be a force to be VQUZESHUF'd with on the World Poker Tour. He is amongst the top cashers ever on the Tour and has played less events than the people ahead of him. The World Poker Tour is the largest Poker Tour out there and demands a special invite to be able to participate in their tournaments. Aka there are no rookies or amatuers allowed, the fields are near impossible to break through without having your game at it's best. Gus Hansen has seemed to mastered a style to be able to fight through these fields consistantly and make his fair share of money. He was dominating the Final Table of his most recent event, being in 1st place to start the day, and quickly knocking out 4 of the 6 players, to leave himself in 1st with only 2 people left. He went into Heads up play with a 5-1 chip advantage, in other words he had 5 times as many chips as his opponent. His good run stopped there though, getting extremely unlucky to lose a few hands headsup and eventually after 60 hands of heads up play, he lost while being a huge favorite. I guess it wasn't his day to take another win, but he can't be complaining about his 2 million dollars or so in winnings.

Full Tilt Poker

Full Tilt Poker, an already dominant force in the online poker world, is working it's way to get bigger and stronger, and is now getting it's name out there even more. Full Tilt is now going to become a sponsor of the Las Vegas Sports and Entertainment event which has been said to be the most innovative golf tournament. This is just another way for Full Tilt to draw a larger crowd of people to their website. I know it doesn't really count for that much because anyone who is legitamitely into poker already knows about Full Tilt and plays over there, so it's only going to attract a bunch of people who will play for a few weeks and get bored, but that is better than nothing, and will atleast attract more people in general, which produces more revenue for them. And if they are lucky they can get these people to conitinue to play, even if it's just 1 or 2 that play for a year on there and make them some real money, it'll be worth it. VQUZESHUF

New Poker Software Will be VQUZESHUF

I don't understand why people keep trying to come up with their own new online poker websites and think that they are going to have much if any success at all. But now yet another company, Poker-Software.us is trying to start a new poker/casino website, just like the other 100 there are. But the bottom line is there are a select few that actually work and make money, and that actually have people playing on them. Sites like Pokerstars and Full Tilt will always dominate the online poker world, and that's just how it's going to be. They have the largest range of stakes, and the most money available to win because they have the most players. Who wouldn't want to play there if they acutally wanted a chance at making some real money?? I know that a lot of people just like to play for fun here and there, but would you rather join a $10 tournament for fun and have a chance to win like 175$ on one of these joke small sites, or join a $5 tournament on pokerstars and have a chance at winning more like $30,000? Is there even a comparison??

Max's Blog

I think Max's blog is great. I mean there might be something wrong with someone who just wants to sit at his computer and chat to random people all day long, but if that's what he likes to do then let him do it. Interesting how much he gets involved into all of that, he even had a talking avatar which he so disappointingly had to get rid of because it made other things on the page too slow. He also talks about using some instant messaging program called Meebo, which i have never heard of so i have no clue how many people or what kind of people are on that program. I guess it is interesting though just by what he briefly says about it, i might have to look into it a bit more. If anyone has any info feel free to let me know.

Post on A friends poker blog

http://z06fanaticspokerblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/return-to-normalcy-or-just-running-good.html

Social Networking - Facebook

VQUZESHUF is exactly what people are starting to say about the nonsense people keep bringing up about facebook and myspace.

Now employers are starting to not hire people who have a facebook or myspace account. Employees are taking it even worse, they are starting to refuse to even want the jobs that don't allow them to go onto facebook or myspace during the work day. Both point of views are ridiculous in my opinion. I understand that employers don't want their workers to be looking at their personal sites and socializing all day long because it takes away from the amount of work they are doing. But there is no reason not to allow them to have accounts on either of the sites in general. Employees should just be allowed to have the account, but not be allowed to use them during the work day. I don't get what has to be so complicated about it, people can do things a lot worse than playing around on either of those sites, stop worrying about something that stupid. Facebook and myspace are definitely taking over the social networking industry and more and more people are getting involved in it. It's going to be around for a while so people have to start learning how to deal with it.

VQUZESHUF

Bad news for online poker players. The most convenient source of depositing money online has now been banned by new policies. Epassporte was the quickest and easiest way to transfer money onto the poker websites, and was also the best for having the highest deposit limits. Now that it is banned players have to be more careful about making sure that they leave enough money online on their accounts incase they go broke because deposit limits are much lower and deposits themselves will take longer. Right now my friends and I are all trying to figure a way around this new road block, and hoping that they can create a similar method to Epassporte that can be allowed. They are trying to say that Echecks are a good replacement for Epassporte, but it's a little more risky and a lot more of a hassel to do. It doesn't have as high of limits to deposit either, which is yet another downside of it. This is one of many new blocks that the US government is trying to put up to stop online gambling in the United States. But they are all seemingly useless as people continue to find new ways around things. The last one tried to ban all US players from playing on any site that wasn't broadcasted from the US, but that was solved by the sites keeping their banks in foreign countries, but just having their site be from the US. I'm sure there will soon be a way around this, or atleast i really hope that there will be.

Asian Poker Tour Announces Schedule

This big set of 4 events will be kicking off on May 27th of 2008 in the Philipeans. The following 3 events out of the series of 4 tournaments will be held in Singapore, Macau, and South Korea. Each of these events will cost $2,500 to enter, and will gaurantee a prize pool of $1,000,000. So they are hoping to be able to draw some big names into this tournament, but there's one problem. They made an awful decision on when to schedule this tournament, considering that the biggest series of tournament events, the WSOP, is having their first even on the same date. So the chances of the poker pro's going to the Asian Poker Tour over the $10,000 buy in WSOP even is very slim.

Personally I would love to attend these events but I don't quite have that kind of money yet, but a lot of my poker friends do, and are definitely going to play in the WSOP even instead since there is a chance to win so much more money. But at the same time that means that the field of players is going to be a lot weaker over at the Asian Poker Tour so you would probably have a better chance of winning some money. Either way i figured I'd talk about this because i thought it was just such a stupid idea to schedule it like that because the WSOP is on almost the same exact schedule every year, there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to schedule around it.

Technorati

I think this post from Max is quite interesting, the post itself is linked in the title. The 1st topic of the post is about Technorati, and its future as a popular, and hopefully dominate blogging site. But as of right now the popularity and status has been fading. Right now it's struggling to try to find a buyer or a financer to help support it with money to expand and improve.

The site currently has a few upsides and flaws all mentioned in this article, and it looks to me like the flaws are outweighing these minimal plusses. The plusses seem to be pretty simplistic things that many other blogging sites can offer just as easily, while the negatives include the lack of interest in the site because it doesn't provide an opportunity to make any money. I think a site would definitely want something like the opportunity to make money on the positive side to brag about.

Also from looking at all the graphs at the end of the post of Technorati that show its statistics for the past 6-12 months, it is easy to see that it is struggling and only declining. The site is going to have to do something to figure out a way to increase its popularity and move back up on the scales.

Gaming Industry Takes Adv of Social Networking

As most of you have noticed im sure with facebook, there are more and more applications being added constantly. There are all kinds of things like stupid little quizzes, superpoking, sports fans, games, etc. The gaming industry is actually starting to make quite a hit out of these social networking sites, especially facebook.

Mobile gaming had been on a slump all year last year, but it's serious new investment in social networking is bringing it back and looking very promising for the future. I for one am not a big fan of all these facebook applications, i usually deny the majority of the requests people send me. But from looking at all my friends pages and seeing all of the invitations i get i can only imagine how many people have these games and are playing them constantly. According to the article 1 of the newer games that has come to facebook had over 400,000 downloads within only 4 months.

The gaming industry is definitely looking to continue to expand and facebook is just the 1st step for this mobile gaming process. Hopefully it will continue to expand and grow, just like all these other technologies which are seemingly taking over.

Phil Ivey Claims Big Win

Poker Pro Phil Ivey has finally ended his streak of lossing in the World Poker Tour(WPT). He is one of the best, if not the best poker player in the world, and he has had trouble claiming a win at some of the best tournaments around, seemingly always to be playing well but getting unlucky at the Final table....which includes the final 9 players of the tournament.

This tournament is pretty far superior to any other tournaments that I have talked about. This one didn't have that many more entrants, seeing as it only had about 655. But the entry fee to get in was $10,000. So only the best of the best usually enter these kind of tournaments, especially since the WPT has an exclusive list of players who are even allowed to enter. Phil Ivey has set the record for the most Final Table appearances without a win til this point.

This time the luck for Phil Ivey had finally changed, at which was for sure his hardest final table, featuring 2 other top players in the world, one in Phil Helmuth who is also regarded as possibly the best in the world. Phil Helmuth though lost early, finishing in 6th place. That still left him with 1 of the top players left with only 4 total players remaining. But this time luck was on Ivey's side as he knocked out follow poker pro Nam Le while having only a 20% chance to win the hand. He spiked one of the cards he needed to win and from then on was in complete control of the tournament, and dominated his way to a win.

Many players talked about him in the post game interviews, all saying that he was on his game tonight and that they were scared to get involved in hands with him. The only player that didn't give him credit was Phil Helmuth, who is known as the "poker brat." He never gives anyone else any credit, as he thinks in his mind that nobody else is as good a player as he is, and that if there was no luck involved that he would win every single tournament. Others obviously disagree, but the bottom line was it was Phil Ivey's night to take down the prize of over 1 million dollars, and finally claim his first win.

$250,000 Gauranteed Prize Pool

This news isn't as good as the last one i posted, atleast not for me. Last week my friend won $15,000 in the 3rd largest tournament on the website. This week someone that i hate and pride myself to do better than won the biggest. The prize pool is gauranteed to be atleast $250,000 to be spread amongst the top 54 finishers. I did well, finishing 50th of 433 people to make a little money, but my rival did a bit better.

The tournament is set up so that out of the 433 entrants, 54 will make a profit, while the other 400 or so lose the $530 that it cost to play. The higher the position you finish in, obviously the more money you get. Prizes ranged from 54th being $875 all the way to 1st being $62,500. The tournament takes anywhere from 6-7 hours to finish, which takes a lot of patience to be able to concentrate on it for that long. But some people have the ability and are lucky enough to make it that far. My rival happened to do that this week.

BigDogPckt5s happened to make it all the way to the end, and won the entire tournament, winning a measly $62,500. Not too bad for a 6 1/2 hour day of work eh? But to make it even worse he got lucky against my friend when there were only 4 people left. He only had a 30% chance of winning the hand that could have knocked him out of the tournament there. My friend who was a 70% favorite ended up getting unlucky and lossing the hand, leaving BigDogPckt5s in great position to win the entire thing.

"The Biz" Social Networking

There has been a new addition to the social networking community.

"This time Variety, the world's premier source of entertainment news, in association with Jobster, announced the launch of "The Biz" (www.variety.com/thebiz) the first social networking site for entertainment professionals and enthusiasts in the U.S."

So now the big names have their own "facebook" so to say to play around with. It's serving themselves with a great place to network ideas and help eachother out in lots of different ways. One thing that i saw that was very interesting is that they also use it almost as a job posting. They help eachother get jobs and look for people to help them. It seems to be a lot more productive way of social networking then the messing around and joking around on facebook or myspace that people love.

The site also talks about how they hope that the site will be able to help readers interact better with the professionals and hopefully help forge stronger and better relationships. All these things are just hopes for now. It has only been up for about a week, so i guess we'll see how it works out.


The Biz

Online Poker Tournament

Sunday night a friend of mine entered a poker tournament for $162 with the hope of just making it deep and hopefully making it into the money. As I was watched him and his chipstack grew and the players in the tournament shriveled, we realized that it was a real possiblity that he would be able to make good money while playing in the tournament, first place was well over 18,000 dollars. As the tournament got down to the final two tables he had the chip lead and the oppurtunity to win the entire tournament, after a bunch of ups and downs they were down to the final four people after he was able to take out both and the final two people, decided to split the 30,000 in half and each take 15,000. He was ecstatic and that wasn't a bad pay day just to play some poker. He is one of the best players on the absolute poker website and he was able to take down one of the biggest tournaments the site has.

Aboslute Poker Acquires a New Skin

Absolute Poker as i said is one of the smaller sites of online poker but is trying very hard to grow and become more like the larger, more popular sites like Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker. They have officially just finished their acquisition of Vegas Poker, another smaller site. This is a huge step in their growth after they have already acquired another site in the previous year. The ability of Absolute Poker to grow and expand further and become larger will help it acquire a higher level of play and attract more players. It used to be known as a site where there were no good players and that it could be easy to win money there. But the reputation is quickly rising and will hopefully continue to do so. Article

Social Networking

Just found an incredible article about social networkings dominance over young teens. In the past 5 years social networking sites have gone from being just a relaxing activity to engaging about 55% of all online american youths from ages 12-17. How ridiculous of a statistic is that. I think it's crazy. This is just a brief outlining article but read more about it if you'd like i thought it was really interesting. SOCIAL NETWORKING

FTOPS Event 1

The FTOPS are probably the largest group of online poker tournaments, including more than 30 events. The first of these events was today, and sadly i didn't get around in time to be able to enter it. It cost $215 to get into and had an amazing 5319 entries. Wouldn't it be nice to win something like that? It took all of 9 hours and 45 minutes for a winner to be claimed, and for him to win a nice prize of over $180,000. Not so bad for a days work huh?? And people wonder why i play online poker.

For more info on this event check out FTOPS EVENT 1

Welcome

Welcome to this blog about both online and live poker. The reason I am writing a blog about this is because i currently use online poker as my job and have a very high interest in what is going on with the professional players and I'm interested to see how interested other people are. I currently play on the website Absolute Poker. This site is a rather small site comapred to some of the others, but I will get into other things as we go along.