This is quite a complex principle to understand to most players, as it seems to go against the intuitive logic of how poker works. I have the best hand, surely getting my money in the pot in any way is the right way to play?

This is actually not true in many situations, as often in poker you face choices that make the strength of your hand largely irrelevant.

As an example of this, I want to look at a hand I once played deep in a large ten dollar rebuy online. We were down to 27 players out of a starting group of over a thousand. I had been playing extremely loose and aggressive, running over a table of stacks that basically ranged from twenty to thirty big blinds, with one stack that had around a hundred blinds on my left. This big stacked player had been causing me problems during the last few orbits, regularly re-raising my opens and forcing me to fold.

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Frank Frisina of Life’s A Bluff has notified friends and followers through his Twitter account that his niece has been found safe and returned home. (Thanks, KevMath, for sending this great news to a non-Twitterer.) Jennifer had been missing since Saturday, but it seems we have a very positive outcome to a scary situation.

WE FOUND HER!!!!! SHE IS OK!!! I JUST BROUGHT HER HOME!!!! WILL POST DETAILS SOON ON LIFESABLUFF.COM – thank you everyone!!!!

UPDATE: In response to speculation in the blogosphere that it was a runaway situation, Frank Frisina posted a response in his latest blog:

At the request of my niece and for the sake of her privacy, I have one final statement regarding last week’s ordeal;

She is safe and at home, she did NOT run away, and we are not releasing any more information at this time.

Semi-related to poker: Kinky Friedman has declared his intent to become the Democratic candidate for Texas governor in 2010. This is good news for poker, if only because he’s the only previous candidate who has championed the desire/need for fully legal poker in Texas on the stump.

Meanwhile, current Republican Gov. Rick Perry is talking recession secession. All I’ll say about that is Texas! Texas! Woooo TEXAS! interesting. But in some way this is actually kinda good for poker … because while Perry has vowed to veto any gambling legislation that comes across his desk, he’s kinda tying his hands now, delivering strong rhetoric about honoring the will of the people. Could be used against him, or at least to negotiate.

According to the subscription newsletter Gambling Compliance:

Harrah’s Denies Garber Hire Tale

15 Apr, 2009 / GamblingCompliance Ltd. / Scott Longley
Harrah’s has moved to deny rumours that ex-PartyGaming chief Mitch Garber has joined the company to run an online operation which would incorporate the World Series of Poker (WSOP).

A spokesperson for the Las Vegas giant said the company “did not have anything to share” regarding the Garber rumours. He added: “We haven’t announced anything, and we don’t have any plans to announce anything.”

Suggestions that Garber was about to join Harrah’s have been circulating for months, and gained new currency when they were repeated in a Sunday Times story last weekend in the UK.

Garber left Party back in May 2008 having helmed the firm through a tough period around the time of the enforced UIGEA-related exit from the US market in October 2006. He handed over control to current chief executive Jim Ryan.

I dunno … doesn’t sound like that much of a denial to me. But maybe … who knows?

We’re going on a little early … 12:30 pacific … as former PokerNews honcho John Caldwell officially joins the crew today. Tune in live or catch the podcast later on PokerRoad.com. Also on today’s episode there’s gonna be some Dan vs. BJ action, over the relevance, facts, and significance of Mitch Garber’s reported heading to Harrah’s. The important question is, of course, which one of us is Hannity, and which is Colmes?

Dannity and Bjolmes.

Ack … I hate that I wrote a hedline that sounds like something out of a PokerStars press release, but not sure how else it could turn out when Italian soccer star Christian Vieri announced his intention to play in the upcoming EPT Championship at Monte Carlo.

The deeper he goes, the better I gotta think it is for (European) poker.

Thanks, Craig, for the link!

Once upon a time, the WinStar Casino was literally just a little big tent on a riverbank. But now, fueled in many ways by the DFW poker scene, the place has blown up … just two days ago I ran into a guy at the Golden Nugget from Dallas telling me how wild the action was there … “Because when people make the long haul to Oklahoma, they show up ready to play, I imagine,” I said.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “And they serve alcohol now, so that livens things up.”

Continuing Thackerville’s conversion from nothing-land to resort destination: WinStar is adding a spa. Sweet. So not only can you rest assured that many of your opponents will be well-pedicured, but also you could only expect this to increase the quality (and quantity) of railbirds willing to make the trek across the border.

More details on Dallas/Plano-based Spa Habitat’s investment in a new Oklahoma branch below:

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Caesars Palace is hosting its World Series of Poker Circuit Event, which started April 11th and runs through April 29, 2009.  Registration for all events is underway.

The winner of the $5,150 World Series of Poker Circuit Main Event on April, 27th will receive 1st Place Prize Money plus entry into the 2009 World Series of Poker $10,000 Main Event.  For more information contact the Caesars Palace Poker Room at 702-785-6566.

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It appears that the WPT Europe that was announced in February 2008 may finally get off the ground this year in its attempt to compete with the mighty European Poker Tour. A criticism of the WPT as its tournament schedule has decreased has been its focus on staying in North America. However, at least 4 tournaments are scheduled to take place in Europe and Africa in the coming months.

Besides the already announced WPT Venice in May and WPT Marrakech in October, two more WPT tournaments have been announced this week. The WPT Spanish Championship returns to Barcelona in late June, while in September the WPT-Merit Cyprus Classic Poker Tournament makes its debut. None of these tournaments are scheduled to air in the US, but the action can be followed online or broadcast on European television.

Also noteworthy are the various online poker sites that don’t allow US customers that are getting on the WPT bandwagon to hold satellites for these WPT tournaments like bwin in Venice and Chili Poker in Marrakech. The season VIII schedule for the rest of the tour has yet to be announced, and will be interesting to see what other changes will appear.

An unnamed tournament director at an unnamed casino was playing online poker tonight while running a live tournament. He plays pretty good.

Age 14, approx 5′ 5″, 120/130 lbs, brown hair/eyes

This is a rather unusual post, and one that is not pleasant to write except to help in some way. Frank Frisina, one of the main dudes over at Life’s A Bluff and poker industry friend, is in desperate need of help. His 14-year old niece, Jennifer, is missing in Colorado, and Frank is beside himself with heartache. The Colorado Bureau of Investigations and Arapahoe County Sheriff’s office are involved, but it sure can’t hurt to get her picture out to the public and try to spread the word to our Colorado readers.

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Another one bites the dust. It was in late March that Bugsy’s Club closed and sent its players to PokerStars, but another shut its online poker operations yesterday. PokerRoom.com posted a message on its site, including a note suggesting that players are switching to bwin, where special bonuses await the fleeing players. Here is the note from PokerRoom:

End of an Era
Apr 14, 2009

Well folks, after almost ten years of fun and games, it is with a heavy heart and a tear in my eye that I have to announce that this is it; as of 11:00 CET today, Tuesday the 14th of April 2009, PokerRoom.com will no longer be open for online poker.

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Bellagio’s ultra high stakes action is spilling out of Bobby’s room into the main poker room. WPT $25k is bringing out all the high rollers.

Actually, I’m hearing unconfirmed buzz about a World Series of Poker – Latin America, and I’m sure at least a few folks have thought about a WSOP in Asia. But something actively worked on: the “Latin Series of Poker” and “LSOP”. Legally, what these entities intend to be, according to their recent filings with the US Feds:

Entertainment services, namely, organizing, conducting, producing and exhibiting poker events and tournaments rendered live and through the media of television and the Internet, and providing poker news and information via a global computer network

Now to be sure, just because someone applies for a trademark doesn’t mean the business is going to fly. I suspect “Poker Bowl” was registered back in the day before its collapse. The folks behind the forthcoming LSOP are Siete Dos Publications out of Carson City, NV. Hmm, I didn’t realize actual people even lived in Carson City. But I do like the idea of a media company with a namesake mission of gloriously spreading word of The Hammer to the non-English-speaking world.

I do, however, wonder what the folks at Harrah’s think of that. Not only is it interesting to see the ongoing and evolving convergence between digital poker media and actual tournament operations, but also … We ran into some similar trouble in Dallas back in the day … when two independent but eventually overlapping groups of rounders were both running an annual tournament called The DSOP. (In the end the Batfaces surrendered the name to the guys in McKinney, I was allowed to keep my 2003 co-champion title, and Desktop Solutions of Pennsylvania was allowed to keep the highly coveted DSOP.com web domain.)

UPDATE: The LSOP is apparently not that new of a venture, even though they just applied this month for trademark registration. Their website — www.lsop.com — is up and active, and has a $500k guaranteed main event scheduled for 110 days from now in Panama.

The World Series of Poker Europe (presented by our good friends at Betfair) is set … so we go WSOP in June and July … take August off … WSOP-Europe in September … take October off … November Nine.

Click below for details. I think the £2,500 PLH/PLO will be a hit … no prob for the pros, of course, and “round of each” seems to be popping up more and more these days in the States – in home games, country clubs, and even for lower stakes in casinos.

NOTE: It used to be you could convert pounds to dollars quick-and-simply by doubling it. Now, however, the rough-estimate factor is x1.5 … making it just a $3,750 event in the example above. Can’t quite figure out if this exchange makes it better or worse for American EV.

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