Article Content:
Another day gone by, and another FTOPS Event in the books! Today we had the pleasure of witnessing the action of FTOPS XV, Event #15: 0+ No Limit Hold’em Turbo.

This event was hosted by Brazil’s own Leandro “Brasa” Pimentel, a feared live tournament player. He is the first Brazilain poker player to have reached a WSOP final table.

Notable finishes include: perrenial crowd favorite and Allen Cunningham in 137th place; possibly the most feared HU player in the world that isn’t Phil Ivey (and also a very accomplished dances) Chris Ferguson in 147th place; and Jared ‘TheWacoKidd’ Hamby, skilled online phenom and generally not someone who you want seated at the same SNG or MTT table you are.

Other notable participants of this event were Isaac Baron, David Pham, Gavin Smith, Jon “Pearljammer” Turner, Marco Traniello, Ram Vaswani, and Adam Schoenlefeld.

This event was a rebuy and addon event (R/A), which means that players which busted out prior to the end of the Rebuy period could rebuy chips to have another go. Additionally, at the end of the rebuy period, players are allowed to buy one add-on for the price of a buy-in, which adds the same amount of chips they started with to their stack.

This event attracted 2880 hopefuls and has a total prizepool worth exactly 0,000, so there was some overlay for those involved, which is always good news.

The top 9 cashes in this event were as follows:

9th: WhySoCereus, ,200

8th: downrig, ,600

7th: pochacco, ,800

6th: 01GrandPrixGT, ,400

5th: CStep02, ,600

4th: Wretchy, ,800

3rd: feezable, ,200

2nd: GoDaeBu, ,600

And a big round of applause to Tazmaniapwnsyou, who “pwned” all other 2,879 hopefuls en route to victory. Victory in this case being: an FTOPS winner Yellow Jersey avatar; endless bragging rights for having taken down an FTOPS event; and, perhaps more importantl 1,800 in cold hard cash.

Congratulations to all who participated, and remember, if you did not cash or place, there is always next event! God Bless Internet Poker!

Tazmaniapwnsyou. FTOPS, FlopTurnRiver, Rebuy, Add-on, GoDaeBu, Full Tilt, Tournament

———————

Article Content:
Another day gone by, and another FTOPS Event in the books! Today we had the pleasure of witnessing the action of FTOPS XV, Event #9: 0+ Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em.

Heads-UP NLHE is one of the toughest forms of poker available, period. No amount of books can teach you how to play this properly. In HUNL, you need experience, logic, instinct, a functioning BS-detector and a dash of luck to be truly successful. The game dynamics are always changing, the aggression being probably the only constant. And because you face just one opponent each time, the amount of hands you have to play consecutively boggles the mind. And no, you can’t fold your way to safety and lay it down every hand. If you try that route you will face defeat even quicker.

With this being one of the toughest forms of poker, it is to expect that a high buy-in online tourney will bring together the cream of the crop to participate. A buy-in of 0+ certainly qualifies as high, and therefore we witnessed exactly that happening for this event.

1,024 of the toughest online players reserved their seats in this event. FTOPS XV Event #9’s cast of participants, among many, included online legends such as Eric Beren, Gigabet, Mr_BigQueso, NeverScaredB, no not baxter and Pappe_Ruk. Full Tilt’s red pros also made their presense felt, represented among many by the likes of Bill Gazes, Caio Pimenta, Stefan Rapop, Jeff Madsen, Isaac Baron, Haseeb Qureshi, Vivek Rajkumar, David “The Dragon” Pham and the always charismatic Gavin Smith.

Now normally, I always bring the screenshots of every bustout and/or interesting hand of every poker tournament I cover. Not so this time. The fact that it’s HU makes it very much impossible to show, in one bustout hand, exactly how it all went down. Any given match has waay too many ups and down for every player involved, and players coming back from 9:1 chip deficits and winning is definitely not unheard of. So I will be giving a detailed recap of the final HU match, and also the top 8 money positions.

Top 8
8th: Jas11, ,336
7th: Smokinokun, ,336
6th: Drake17, ,336
5th: UnoffensiveNick, ,336
4th: Amoroso50, ,136
3rd: GnightMoon, ,136

and then we had the HU tourney’s HU phase.

HU
As the two emerged from the sea of contenters, both players just like every other individual HU match for this tourney started with 6000 chips in the final HU match of the tourney. The players in question, AAeveryhand and chickface, would then quickly reach to a deal which would award ,000 guaranteed to second place, and they would play for the rest, which was ,336. HU play did conclude relatively quickly though, compared to the pace of the rest of the event. Right after the deal was discussed, the following key hand took place.

AAeveryhand, on the dealer and thus first to act preflop, raises to 90. Chickface then commits the additional 60 into the pot. The pot going to the flop is 180 chips.

The flop comes 6s6hAc. chickface, first to act, decides to check it to the rpeflop raiser, who in turn does make an expected cbet of 120 into the 180 pot. chickface then calls.

The turn brings a Js, which on this board can be considered a total blank. Chickface checks once more, and AAeveryhand once again fires 300 into the pot. Chickface then calls. The pot is at 1,020 chips going into the river.

The river brings a 9d. Chickface checks once more, and AAeveryhand bets for a third time when checked to, this time for 875. Chickface calls very quickly, and just as quickly mucks her hand, sending the very large first pot of HU over to AAeveryhand who shows down 56o for the flopped trips.



After that blow, chickface could not recover anymore, and just a few hands later decided to see if Lady Luck was smiling on her with a KQo pf allin by betting and 3betting. Too bad that AAeveryhand picked up pocket 8s at the same time, and…



The rest is history. Chickface takes home the agreed-upon ,000 for her efforts tonight, while AAeveryhand takes home the yellow FTOPS Jersey, ,336 in spending money, and bragging rights for having won an FTOPS event. Congratulations everyone who participated, and remember: just because you did not meet Lady Victory today, does not mean that you won’t tomorrow. So try again in the next event!

———————

Article Content:
After tarnishing their name early, Ultimate Bet has rebounded in a more than stellar way.  UltimateBet has announced UBOC4 (Ultimate Bet Online Championship) to be held again in January, and none other than Joe Sebok will be asked to host the first tournament to kick off the million in 12 days.

These tournaments will start on the 20th of January, and end on the 31st, with the Poker Brat’s million guaranteed NLHE tournament.

Here is the list of tournaments:

01/20/10
20:05
UBOC 1- Sniper NLH
0+20
0K
Joe Sebok

01/20/10
20:05
UBOC 2- 8 Game Mix (HORSE+PLO, NLH, PLO8)
0+12
K
Michael Binger

01/21/10
8:05 PM
UBOC 3- NLH 4 MAX
0+20
0K
Debo34

01/22/10
20:05
UBOC 4- Sniper NLH
0+10
K
L. Jones & T. Cantanella

01/23/10
13:00
UBOC 5- HEADS UP (capped at 128 players) (2 day event)
K+50
8K
No Host

01/23/10
14:00
UBOC 6 -NLH triple chance (3 rebuy max)
0+12
0K
Brandon Cantu

01/24/10
14:00
UBOC 7- NLH
0+15
0K
Scott Ian

01/24/10
16:00
UBOC 8- Deepstack NLH 6 MAX
00 +100
million
Annie Duke

01/25/10
20:05
UBOC 9- Limit Hold’em 6 max
0+9
K
Tiffany Michelle

01/25/10
20:05
UBOC 10- PLH/PLO/PLO8 (Pot Limit Championship)
0+20
0K
Bryan Devonshire

01/26/10
20:05
UBOC 11- PLO 1 rebuy+1 add on
0+15
0K
Matt Graham

01/26/10
20:05
UBOC 12- HORSE
0+15
K
Hollywood Dave

01/27/10
20:05
UBOC 13- Omaha 8/b and Stud 8/b mix
0+12
K
Poker Jo

01/27/10
20:05
UBOC 14- Deepstack NLH
K+50
0K
Adam “Roothlus” Levy

01/28/10
20:05
UBOC 15- PLO8
0+20
0K
Billy Kopp

01/29/10
20:05
UBOC 16- Deepstack PLH 6 MAX
0+30
0K
Liv Boeree

01/30/10
14:00
UBOC 17- NLH Turbo unlimited Rebuys
0+9
0K
P0kerH0

01/31/10
16:00
UBOC 18- UBOC Championship (10K starting chips)
K+50
Million
Phil Hellmuth

While the tournament winnings are sweet, the watch for winning one of these major tournaments is that much better.  The winner of one of these tournaments, or who has the leading points overall in these tournaments, will be sent a Tourneau watch as a congratulations.

Like the miniFTOPS, Ubet is taking notes and decided to have themselves a mini series of tournaments.  These tournaments, like miniFTOPS, will be a fraction of the buy-in, except on Ultimatebet, the tournaments will be hosted, by other frequent players.

Here is the list of mini-UBOC:

1/20/10
Sniper NLH
+3
K
SPIN31

1/20/10
8 Game Mix (HORSE+PLO, NLH, PLO8)
+.50
K
TRAMBOPOLINE

1/21/10
NLH 4 MAX
+3
K
GUIGUI_88

1/22/10
Sniper NLH
+1
K
AIRKID3

1/22/10
NLH triple chance (3 rebuy max)
+1.50
K
Z06FANATIC

1/23/10
HEADS UP
+1 (2 day event)
,120
FLOATACHECK

1/24/10
NLH
+2
K
NUTINSIDER

1/25/10
Limit Hold’em 6 max
+1
K
IWON2

1/25/10
PLH/PLO/PLO8 (Pot Limit Championship)
+1
K
PATIZZIE

1/26/10
PLO 1 rebuy+1 add on
+2
K
FOOLISHGOLF

1/26/10
HORSE
+2
K
BIGDOGPCKT5S

1/27/10
Omaha 8/b and Stud 8/b mix
+1.50
K
JDAWG217

1/27/10
Deepstack NLH
10+1
K
CRUDEBAR25

1/28/10
PLO8
+3
K
MAKE_IT_RAIN

1/29/10
Deepstack PLH 6 MAX
+.50
K
YELLOWDAWG

1/30/10
NLH Turbo unlimited Rebuys
+1
K
7TEMPEHEAT7

TBD
Main Event Super Sattellite (turbo)
TBD
TBD
TWOLIP69

You wont feel left out if you do well in these tournaments.  The best performing players will also earn a Tourneau watch.

Be sure to sign up at Ultimatebet, and you may get a chance to sit on the same table of one of the many Ubet professionals.

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fpokeronamac.com%2Fnews%2Fwin-4-million-in-12-days-at-ultimate-bet%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘Win+%244+million+in+12+days+at+Ultimate+Bet’;
addthis_pub = ”;

———————

Article Content:
Another day gone by, and another FTOPS Event in the books! Today we had the pleasure of witnessing the action of FTOPS XV, Event #15: 0+ No Limit Hold’em Turbo.

This event was hosted by Brazil’s own Leandro “Brasa” Pimentel, a feared live tournament player. He is the first Brazilain poker player to have reached a WSOP final table.

Notable finishes include: perrenial crowd favorite and Allen Cunningham in 137th place; possibly the most feared HU player in the world that isn’t Phil Ivey (and also a very accomplished dances) Chris Ferguson in 147th place; and Jared ‘TheWacoKidd’ Hamby, skilled online phenom and generally not someone who you want seated at the same SNG or MTT table you are.

Other notable participants of this event were Isaac Baron, David Pham, Gavin Smith, Jon “Pearljammer” Turner, Marco Traniello, Ram Vaswani, and Adam Schoenlefeld.

This event was a rebuy and addon event (R/A), which means that players which busted out prior to the end of the Rebuy period could rebuy chips to have another go. Additionally, at the end of the rebuy period, players are allowed to buy one add-on for the price of a buy-in, which adds the same amount of chips they started with to their stack.

This event attracted 2880 hopefuls and has a total prizepool worth exactly 0,000, so there was some overlay for those involved, which is always good news.

The top 9 cashes in this event were as follows:

9th: WhySoCereus, ,200

8th: downrig, ,600

7th: pochacco, ,800

6th: 01GrandPrixGT, ,400

5th: CStep02, ,600

4th: Wretchy, ,800

3rd: feezable, ,200

2nd: GoDaeBu, ,600

And a big round of applause to Tazmaniapwnsyou, who “pwned” all other 2,879 hopefuls en route to victory. Victory in this case being: an FTOPS winner Yellow Jersey avatar; endless bragging rights for having taken down an FTOPS event; and, perhaps more importantl 1,800 in cold hard cash.

Congratulations to all who participated, and remember, if you did not cash or place, there is always next event! God Bless Internet Poker!

Tazmaniapwnsyou. FTOPS, FlopTurnRiver, Rebuy, Add-on, GoDaeBu, Full Tilt, Tournament

———————

Article Content:
Another day gone by, and another FTOPS Event in the books! Today we had the pleasure of witnessing the action of FTOPS XV, Event #9: 0+ Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em.

Heads-UP NLHE is one of the toughest forms of poker available, period. No amount of books can teach you how to play this properly. In HUNL, you need experience, logic, instinct, a functioning BS-detector and a dash of luck to be truly successful. The game dynamics are always changing, the aggression being probably the only constant. And because you face just one opponent each time, the amount of hands you have to play consecutively boggles the mind. And no, you can’t fold your way to safety and lay it down every hand. If you try that route you will face defeat even quicker.

With this being one of the toughest forms of poker, it is to expect that a high buy-in online tourney will bring together the cream of the crop to participate. A buy-in of 0+ certainly qualifies as high, and therefore we witnessed exactly that happening for this event.

1,024 of the toughest online players reserved their seats in this event. FTOPS XV Event #9’s cast of participants, among many, included online legends such as Eric Beren, Gigabet, Mr_BigQueso, NeverScaredB, no not baxter and Pappe_Ruk. Full Tilt’s red pros also made their presense felt, represented among many by the likes of Bill Gazes, Caio Pimenta, Stefan Rapop, Jeff Madsen, Isaac Baron, Haseeb Qureshi, Vivek Rajkumar, David “The Dragon” Pham and the always charismatic Gavin Smith.

Now normally, I always bring the screenshots of every bustout and/or interesting hand of every poker tournament I cover. Not so this time. The fact that it’s HU makes it very much impossible to show, in one bustout hand, exactly how it all went down. Any given match has waay too many ups and down for every player involved, and players coming back from 9:1 chip deficits and winning is definitely not unheard of. So I will be giving a detailed recap of the final HU match, and also the top 8 money positions.

Top 8
8th: Jas11, ,336
7th: Smokinokun, ,336
6th: Drake17, ,336
5th: UnoffensiveNick, ,336
4th: Amoroso50, ,136
3rd: GnightMoon, ,136

and then we had the HU tourney’s HU phase.

HU
As the two emerged from the sea of contenters, both players just like every other individual HU match for this tourney started with 6000 chips in the final HU match of the tourney. The players in question, AAeveryhand and chickface, would then quickly reach to a deal which would award ,000 guaranteed to second place, and they would play for the rest, which was ,336. HU play did conclude relatively quickly though, compared to the pace of the rest of the event. Right after the deal was discussed, the following key hand took place.

AAeveryhand, on the dealer and thus first to act preflop, raises to 90. Chickface then commits the additional 60 into the pot. The pot going to the flop is 180 chips.

The flop comes 6s6hAc. chickface, first to act, decides to check it to the rpeflop raiser, who in turn does make an expected cbet of 120 into the 180 pot. chickface then calls.

The turn brings a Js, which on this board can be considered a total blank. Chickface checks once more, and AAeveryhand once again fires 300 into the pot. Chickface then calls. The pot is at 1,020 chips going into the river.

The river brings a 9d. Chickface checks once more, and AAeveryhand bets for a third time when checked to, this time for 875. Chickface calls very quickly, and just as quickly mucks her hand, sending the very large first pot of HU over to AAeveryhand who shows down 56o for the flopped trips.



After that blow, chickface could not recover anymore, and just a few hands later decided to see if Lady Luck was smiling on her with a KQo pf allin by betting and 3betting. Too bad that AAeveryhand picked up pocket 8s at the same time, and…



The rest is history. Chickface takes home the agreed-upon ,000 for her efforts tonight, while AAeveryhand takes home the yellow FTOPS Jersey, ,336 in spending money, and bragging rights for having won an FTOPS event. Congratulations everyone who participated, and remember: just because you did not meet Lady Victory today, does not mean that you won’t tomorrow. So try again in the next event!

———————

Article Content:
After tarnishing their name early, Ultimate Bet has rebounded in a more than stellar way.  UltimateBet has announced UBOC4 (Ultimate Bet Online Championship) to be held again in January, and none other than Joe Sebok will be asked to host the first tournament to kick off the million in 12 days.

These tournaments will start on the 20th of January, and end on the 31st, with the Poker Brat’s million guaranteed NLHE tournament.

Here is the list of tournaments:

01/20/10
20:05
UBOC 1- Sniper NLH
0+20
0K
Joe Sebok

01/20/10
20:05
UBOC 2- 8 Game Mix (HORSE+PLO, NLH, PLO8)
0+12
K
Michael Binger

01/21/10
8:05 PM
UBOC 3- NLH 4 MAX
0+20
0K
Debo34

01/22/10
20:05
UBOC 4- Sniper NLH
0+10
K
L. Jones & T. Cantanella

01/23/10
13:00
UBOC 5- HEADS UP (capped at 128 players) (2 day event)
K+50
8K
No Host

01/23/10
14:00
UBOC 6 -NLH triple chance (3 rebuy max)
0+12
0K
Brandon Cantu

01/24/10
14:00
UBOC 7- NLH
0+15
0K
Scott Ian

01/24/10
16:00
UBOC 8- Deepstack NLH 6 MAX
00 +100
million
Annie Duke

01/25/10
20:05
UBOC 9- Limit Hold’em 6 max
0+9
K
Tiffany Michelle

01/25/10
20:05
UBOC 10- PLH/PLO/PLO8 (Pot Limit Championship)
0+20
0K
Bryan Devonshire

01/26/10
20:05
UBOC 11- PLO 1 rebuy+1 add on
0+15
0K
Matt Graham

01/26/10
20:05
UBOC 12- HORSE
0+15
K
Hollywood Dave

01/27/10
20:05
UBOC 13- Omaha 8/b and Stud 8/b mix
0+12
K
Poker Jo

01/27/10
20:05
UBOC 14- Deepstack NLH
K+50
0K
Adam “Roothlus” Levy

01/28/10
20:05
UBOC 15- PLO8
0+20
0K
Billy Kopp

01/29/10
20:05
UBOC 16- Deepstack PLH 6 MAX
0+30
0K
Liv Boeree

01/30/10
14:00
UBOC 17- NLH Turbo unlimited Rebuys
0+9
0K
P0kerH0

01/31/10
16:00
UBOC 18- UBOC Championship (10K starting chips)
K+50
Million
Phil Hellmuth

While the tournament winnings are sweet, the watch for winning one of these major tournaments is that much better.  The winner of one of these tournaments, or who has the leading points overall in these tournaments, will be sent a Tourneau watch as a congratulations.

Like the miniFTOPS, Ubet is taking notes and decided to have themselves a mini series of tournaments.  These tournaments, like miniFTOPS, will be a fraction of the buy-in, except on Ultimatebet, the tournaments will be hosted, by other frequent players.

Here is the list of mini-UBOC:

1/20/10
Sniper NLH
+3
K
SPIN31

1/20/10
8 Game Mix (HORSE+PLO, NLH, PLO8)
+.50
K
TRAMBOPOLINE

1/21/10
NLH 4 MAX
+3
K
GUIGUI_88

1/22/10
Sniper NLH
+1
K
AIRKID3

1/22/10
NLH triple chance (3 rebuy max)
+1.50
K
Z06FANATIC

1/23/10
HEADS UP
+1 (2 day event)
,120
FLOATACHECK

1/24/10
NLH
+2
K
NUTINSIDER

1/25/10
Limit Hold’em 6 max
+1
K
IWON2

1/25/10
PLH/PLO/PLO8 (Pot Limit Championship)
+1
K
PATIZZIE

1/26/10
PLO 1 rebuy+1 add on
+2
K
FOOLISHGOLF

1/26/10
HORSE
+2
K
BIGDOGPCKT5S

1/27/10
Omaha 8/b and Stud 8/b mix
+1.50
K
JDAWG217

1/27/10
Deepstack NLH
10+1
K
CRUDEBAR25

1/28/10
PLO8
+3
K
MAKE_IT_RAIN

1/29/10
Deepstack PLH 6 MAX
+.50
K
YELLOWDAWG

1/30/10
NLH Turbo unlimited Rebuys
+1
K
7TEMPEHEAT7

TBD
Main Event Super Sattellite (turbo)
TBD
TBD
TWOLIP69

You wont feel left out if you do well in these tournaments.  The best performing players will also earn a Tourneau watch.

Be sure to sign up at Ultimatebet, and you may get a chance to sit on the same table of one of the many Ubet professionals.

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fpokeronamac.com%2Fnews%2Fwin-4-million-in-12-days-at-ultimate-bet%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘Win+%244+million+in+12+days+at+Ultimate+Bet’;
addthis_pub = ”;

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Article Content:
Today Chilipoker released details of the French stage of the ‘Chilipoker DeepStack Open’.  This exciting tournament will be held in the largest Partouche poker room in France in the Pasino of Aix-en-Provence.  The event will take place from April 9th to April 11th 2010.

Following the huge success of the Irish stage of this tournament with 465 registered players of 15 different nationalities, Chilipoker today announced that France is the next stop for this international deepstack circuit.

With an exceptional deepstack structure of 50,000 starting chips, blinds 50/100 and levels of 60 minutes, this tournament will be played over three days with every player being guaranteed the possibility to develop his/hers A-game whilst avoiding those early busts!

As in Dublin and for every stage of the ‘Chilipoker DeepStack Open’, the buy-in has been set at €500 + €50 giving all poker fans (not only from France but from the whole of Europe) the opportunity to play a large international tournament against other players with different playing abilities.

The great combination of a low buy-in, a famous reputation, the Partouche group and Chilipoker’s professionalism will ensure this event becomes a large poker celebration with entertainment, exciting competition and lots of fun.

In order to offer the best gaming environment the tournament will accept a maximum of 500 registrations.   For a cheaper buy-in, online qualifications will be available from 20th of February on Chilipoker.com.

Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO of Chilipoker, added: “This new event sponsored by Chilipoker corresponds to the new poker concept we wish to highlight.  We did not want to simply launch yet another ‘poker tour’ with high buy-ins, our goal was to create the first ‘world poker circuit’ with an exceptional structure and as attractive as any famous international poker tournament, both for players and the media. However, most importantly our main aim was to ensure this ‘poker circuit’ is affordable for a large spectrum of poker enthusiasts.’

Dozens of specialized and non-specialized journalists and media, including television channels, will be there to cover the event.  As for every Partouche tournament such as the famous Partouche Poker Tour, the professionalism of the organizers will ensure everyone is satisfied.

In order to help spice up the tournament, Chilipoker has launched two new concepts for all the Chilipoker qualified players and for those registering to the Main Event via their Chilipoker account:

* Extra-Ball: You’ve kicked everybody out of the tournament and you are our final lucky winner? Chilipoker rewards you even more by adding 50% of your winnings to the prizepool: the first half is yours and the rest will be shared between all the Chilipoker qualified players of the Main Event! This is what we call the Chilipoker Spirit!

* Knock-Out Insurance:  You’ve busted out of the tournament, finished with no money but kicked at least 5 players out? Don’t be disappointed, Chilipoker wants to reward you for your action on the tables!  We invite you to another Chilipoker DeepStack Open stage and will pay for your buy-in to the Main Event!

(Chilipoker Press Release)

———————

Article Content:


During my time at the tables, I’ve had a chance to observe an extensive amount of human behavior. Thanks to the growing popularity of the game, I’m seeing more and more diverse personalities sported by players operating on a variety of skill levels.

But with the ever-expanding pool of competitors, I find that many of my brothers and sisters who’ve been around for a while are forgetting some of the cardinal rules of the game. I’m talking, specifically, about the treatment of new players at the tables. It happens both at live events and when surfing through the online card rooms. There are veterans (and even more who think themselves to be veterans) who, by carrying themselves in a certain fashion, do themselves a disservice and consequently reduce their own level of play.

So here now are a few basics to keep in mind when sitting down at a table full of fresh faces.

Don’t Criticize Opponents for Poor Play.

This is, by far, the most common mistake I see other players make. Calls of “FISH”, “DONK”, or “NOOB” seem to be ever present at the online tables. It makes me sick, and I cannot stress the idiocy of this tactic. It doesn’t matter how it comes about – no matter whether you’ve won a huge pot or lost on a bad beat, you should never, ever criticize a new player for his poor play.

Remember, you want your opponents to make poor decisions against your. Think about it. If the enemy made the “correct” call every time, what would happen to your bankroll? By berating them, you’re only giving them the motivation they need to become better players. Poker needs all the “DONK”’s it can get!

Don’t Compliment Other Players.

Now, if you’re at a table full of friends, this may not hold true. But if you’re playing at a table full of pals, you’re not really trying to make money. When sitting with the rookies, keep your opinions to yourself. Just as you don’t want to berate them for bad play, neither should you praise their solid moves. Let them figure out for themselves whether or not their bets or calls are good. Helping them only takes money from your stack.

Watch for the whiners.

Players who complain about their poor run of cards or lack of luck will almost never bluff. If they’re in the hand with you, it means they have something. This “something”, however, could be any hand holding an ace or a king with a low kicker. Watch how and when they bet. A well-calculated bluff could result in a frustrated fold after the flop.

Chip counts count!

Anxiety is one of the biggest factors in the play of new recruits. Anyone who’s either just sat down at the table or just gotten back to even money are more likely to bluff, and less likely to play poor hands. Pay close attention to the winning and losing streaks of your competitors.

Don’t get caught up in strategic conversation.

Sometimes, players who think they know how best to manage the game will begin lecturing the neophytes on matters of strategy. Don’t fall in to this trap. If you find yourself involved in strategic discourse with a less experienced player during an actual game, then you don’t know nearly as much as you think you do. Remember, you don’t want to give them any insights into the higher levels of poker.

In closing, I do have one or two additional notes. It’s important to realize that there is a strong distinction between wanting to teach someone the proper way in which to play, and wanting to put their money in your bankroll. When playing against friends, it may be excusable to discuss the merits of certain strategies.

But when faced with strangers, don’t act like a know-it-all. You’ll wind up looking like a lost-it-all.

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Article Content:
Another day gone by, and another FTOPS Event in the books! Today we had the pleasure of witnessing the action of FTOPS XV, Event #15: 0+ No Limit Hold’em Turbo.

This event was hosted by Brazil’s own Leandro “Brasa” Pimentel, a feared live tournament player. He is the first Brazilain poker player to have reached a WSOP final table.

Notable finishes include: perrenial crowd favorite and Allen Cunningham in 137th place; possibly the most feared HU player in the world that isn’t Phil Ivey (and also a very accomplished dances) Chris Ferguson in 147th place; and Jared ‘TheWacoKidd’ Hamby, skilled online phenom and generally not someone who you want seated at the same SNG or MTT table you are.

Other notable participants of this event were Isaac Baron, David Pham, Gavin Smith, Jon “Pearljammer” Turner, Marco Traniello, Ram Vaswani, and Adam Schoenlefeld.

This event was a rebuy and addon event (R/A), which means that players which busted out prior to the end of the Rebuy period could rebuy chips to have another go. Additionally, at the end of the rebuy period, players are allowed to buy one add-on for the price of a buy-in, which adds the same amount of chips they started with to their stack.

This event attracted 2880 hopefuls and has a total prizepool worth exactly 0,000, so there was some overlay for those involved, which is always good news.

The top 9 cashes in this event were as follows:

9th: WhySoCereus, ,200

8th: downrig, ,600

7th: pochacco, ,800

6th: 01GrandPrixGT, ,400

5th: CStep02, ,600

4th: Wretchy, ,800

3rd: feezable, ,200

2nd: GoDaeBu, ,600

And a big round of applause to Tazmaniapwnsyou, who “pwned” all other 2,879 hopefuls en route to victory. Victory in this case being: an FTOPS winner Yellow Jersey avatar; endless bragging rights for having taken down an FTOPS event; and, perhaps more importantl 1,800 in cold hard cash.

Congratulations to all who participated, and remember, if you did not cash or place, there is always next event! God Bless Internet Poker!

Tazmaniapwnsyou. FTOPS, FlopTurnRiver, Rebuy, Add-on, GoDaeBu, Full Tilt, Tournament

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Article Content:
Another day gone by, and another FTOPS Event in the books! Today we had the pleasure of witnessing the action of FTOPS XV, Event #9: 0+ Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em.

Heads-UP NLHE is one of the toughest forms of poker available, period. No amount of books can teach you how to play this properly. In HUNL, you need experience, logic, instinct, a functioning BS-detector and a dash of luck to be truly successful. The game dynamics are always changing, the aggression being probably the only constant. And because you face just one opponent each time, the amount of hands you have to play consecutively boggles the mind. And no, you can’t fold your way to safety and lay it down every hand. If you try that route you will face defeat even quicker.

With this being one of the toughest forms of poker, it is to expect that a high buy-in online tourney will bring together the cream of the crop to participate. A buy-in of 0+ certainly qualifies as high, and therefore we witnessed exactly that happening for this event.

1,024 of the toughest online players reserved their seats in this event. FTOPS XV Event #9’s cast of participants, among many, included online legends such as Eric Beren, Gigabet, Mr_BigQueso, NeverScaredB, no not baxter and Pappe_Ruk. Full Tilt’s red pros also made their presense felt, represented among many by the likes of Bill Gazes, Caio Pimenta, Stefan Rapop, Jeff Madsen, Isaac Baron, Haseeb Qureshi, Vivek Rajkumar, David “The Dragon” Pham and the always charismatic Gavin Smith.

Now normally, I always bring the screenshots of every bustout and/or interesting hand of every poker tournament I cover. Not so this time. The fact that it’s HU makes it very much impossible to show, in one bustout hand, exactly how it all went down. Any given match has waay too many ups and down for every player involved, and players coming back from 9:1 chip deficits and winning is definitely not unheard of. So I will be giving a detailed recap of the final HU match, and also the top 8 money positions.

Top 8
8th: Jas11, ,336
7th: Smokinokun, ,336
6th: Drake17, ,336
5th: UnoffensiveNick, ,336
4th: Amoroso50, ,136
3rd: GnightMoon, ,136

and then we had the HU tourney’s HU phase.

HU
As the two emerged from the sea of contenters, both players just like every other individual HU match for this tourney started with 6000 chips in the final HU match of the tourney. The players in question, AAeveryhand and chickface, would then quickly reach to a deal which would award ,000 guaranteed to second place, and they would play for the rest, which was ,336. HU play did conclude relatively quickly though, compared to the pace of the rest of the event. Right after the deal was discussed, the following key hand took place.

AAeveryhand, on the dealer and thus first to act preflop, raises to 90. Chickface then commits the additional 60 into the pot. The pot going to the flop is 180 chips.

The flop comes 6s6hAc. chickface, first to act, decides to check it to the rpeflop raiser, who in turn does make an expected cbet of 120 into the 180 pot. chickface then calls.

The turn brings a Js, which on this board can be considered a total blank. Chickface checks once more, and AAeveryhand once again fires 300 into the pot. Chickface then calls. The pot is at 1,020 chips going into the river.

The river brings a 9d. Chickface checks once more, and AAeveryhand bets for a third time when checked to, this time for 875. Chickface calls very quickly, and just as quickly mucks her hand, sending the very large first pot of HU over to AAeveryhand who shows down 56o for the flopped trips.



After that blow, chickface could not recover anymore, and just a few hands later decided to see if Lady Luck was smiling on her with a KQo pf allin by betting and 3betting. Too bad that AAeveryhand picked up pocket 8s at the same time, and…



The rest is history. Chickface takes home the agreed-upon ,000 for her efforts tonight, while AAeveryhand takes home the yellow FTOPS Jersey, ,336 in spending money, and bragging rights for having won an FTOPS event. Congratulations everyone who participated, and remember: just because you did not meet Lady Victory today, does not mean that you won’t tomorrow. So try again in the next event!

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