This post will be about: A poker documentary shoot I was a part of that was shooting in Vegas Some interesting tournament hands from playing down there So a few weeks ago, I was invited to be a part of a documentary that features the multiple world champion boxer from London David Haye. The documentary is about Haye trying to become a pro-level poker player. So they invited me to be in ...
The state of the Portland area poker scene
I often get acquaintances who visit Portland and ask me for recommendations of where to play poker in Portland, so I thought I'd write a short post about what poker games are running in the Portland area, and give an update on the new "players are required to deal" rules. If anyone spots any wrong info in this or wants to give me some info to add, use the Contact form to let me know; thanks! On ...
My Experience as a Contestant on the TV Show PokerStars’ The Big Game
This is a guest blog post written by Ken Hrankowski, who appeared as the amateur guest player during a few episodes of the TV show Pokerstars’ The Big Game. This post recounts his experience getting onto the show and what it was like playing with big-name players like Phil Hellmuth, Tony G, and Daniel Negreanu. I started playing poker after the “Moneymaker Effect,” as they called it. I found it ...
Poker tells at a Chicago poker tournament
This past weekend I went to a Windy City Poker charity tournament in Chicago. I played a couple interesting hands that featured a good amount of reliable poker tells, which I’ll share below. The tournament was a $1,000 buy-in one; it got about 50 players. It had one featured table, with RFID sensors and camera coverage, that switched players once every hour. The episodes didn’t stream live but ...
Recent Vegas Trip and Poker Tells Seminar
I went to Vegas last week for a week, mainly for the poker tells seminar I was doing, but also to play some poker and do some promotional stuff for the book. (If you haven't heard about the poker tells presentation I'm doing, here's a PokerNews article talking about it: http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/06/poker-tells-seminar-at-wsop-makes-use-of-unique-behavioral-d-4355.htm.) The seminar ...
Poker trip to Los Angeles, observing verbal behavior
I spent a week in L.A. at the end of February, playing poker and appearing in a couple episodes of the live-streaming poker show Live at the Bike. I played primarily $5-5 and $5-10 NLHE cash games. I haven’t played much at all in the last few years, so it was an interesting and educational trip, getting back into playing all the time and seeing how people were playing at these stakes. I’d also ...
Played embarrassingly bad on Live At The Bike $5-10 NLHE
I played $1-3 PLO last Tuesday on Live At The Bike and then $5-10 NLHE last night. I got made fun of for my PLO play, which I didn't care about because I hadn't played PLO in six years and was never very good at it. Last night, though, I was embarrassed by my play. A bit of it was due to my anxiety and a bit of it was due to drinking a couple glasses of red wine on an empty stomach. I'd also ...
$500 Pendleton tournament – Immediate check-behind from aggressor raises red flags
This past weekend I played in several tournaments at Wild Horse Casino in Pendleton, Oregon. I played a $200, a $300, and a $500 buy-in. I had some pretty bad luck, but I also did some stupid stuff that probably contributed to my lousy showing. For one thing, I had scheduled a 30-minute phone interview right in the middle of the $200 tournament, which caused me to be blinded and anted down from ...
Got third in a fairly big tournament: thoughts on poker tells
This past weekend I played a $215 tourney at Chinook Winds, put on by Deepstacks Poker. Out of about 280 players, I got third for $5,700. I feel like I’m playing my best tournament game I’ve ever played; I can literally only point to one hand of the entire 22 hours of playing where I believed I’d made a mistake. That’s a big step up for me; in most of the few bigger buy-in tourneys I’ve played ...
An American playing poker in Paris: Cercle Cadet trip report
In September, I was in France for my honeymoon, so like any good new husband I wanted to get out and play some poker while I was there. After researching some Paris poker rooms, I ended up playing just a few hours at the Cercle Cadet poker club. This post will contain a few tips it might help you to know if you plan on playing there and my general impression of the card room and players. ...
Parx Casino $5-10 NLHE Trip Report
I got a chance to play an 8-hour $5-10 NL session at Parx Casino, outside of Philadelphia, PA. The cardroom was very nice; they have 64 tables, and the place seems well-run and is pleasant to be in. They only had one $5-10 NLHE game, but had several $2-5 games and a bunch of $1-2 games. They also had a couple $15-30 limit games going on, so the action was decent. Probably the coolest thing ...
Some tells in a $5-10 no-limit game
I went to Spirit Mountain Casino (in Grand Ronde, Oregon) this past weekend to study the difference between no-limit tells across a range of three different stakes: $1-3, $2-5, and $5-10. I wanted to do this because I'd been working on some chapters for the book related to how tells differ across stakes and between limit and no-limit. I'll tell you a few interesting observations I made on the ...
Poker in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
Sharky's Last week I was on the island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. I couldn't find hardly anything online searching for 'St. Thomas poker'. A lot of people said that there was no place to play cards on St. Thomas; that you had to go to St. Croix to find a poker game at the casinos there. But I did find, on a nightlife-themed website, a small mention of one place advertising a ...