UltimateBet to Hold Charity Event But Not For People They Robbed Blind

The only time UltimateBet has recently looked good was when patched on Tiffany Michelle.
UltimateBet (one half of the super-cheating CEREUS poker network) is holding a charity event this weekend for Ante Up for Africa. On UltimateBet. So the proceeds are definitely all going to charity. If by "charity" you mean "Russ Hamilton."
The online poker site, which for some reason people still play on despite the fact they cheated their players out of millions of dollars and could potentially sink the industry because of it, will still likely get a decent turn-out because, again, for some unfathomable reason people still play on it.
Expected to be in the tournament are Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, Shawn Rice, Tiffany Michelle, and "Cliff" JohnnyBax "Josephy." Also expected [to play] is Don Cheadle, who once was one of our favorite actors but after a couple of red carpet experiences he actually seems like a humorless prick. Lighten up dude.
So basically UB is now 10,000 charity events away from making up for the fact that they're cheating shady douchebags who haven't gotten anywhere near the level of shit they deserve.

dubbeemin Wins FTOPS Main Event

dubbeemin Wins FTOPS Main Event
For all we know dubbeemin is pictured lower left with shaved head. To revist our Girls on the Rail go here.
Full Tilt Poker wrapped the FTOPS yesterday with their $2.5 mil guarenteed Main Event. The tourney drew 4,880 runners people online players for a first place pull of $432,400.
Without Harrah's and ESPN in the way, the final table played down to a winner without a four-month break in between. And just missing out on that final table was a member of The November 9TM, short-stacked and big-boned Kelly Kim. He punched out in 16th place, banking $12,375.
While we're sure Ace-King ran into Aces and some other stuff happened, eventually dubbeemin took down valleyho for the title. dubbeemin banks $432,400 for the win and snags a gold FTOPS jersey and avatar. Although if dubbeemin is at all like us, he'd be requesting a Cookier avatar cause that's just gotta happen.

Scotty Nguyen Just Ruined His Reputation - UPDATE

Scotty Nguyen Just Ruined His Reputation - UPDATE
After the 2008 WSOP $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. final table, we heard from a few prominent pros that it was going to be nearly impossible for ESPN to edit this one and make eventual champ Scotty Nguyen look good.
The stream of mf bombs and insults coming out of Nguyen's mouth would've gotten almost any other player a penalty of some sort, but not the Prince of Poker.
By now most people should be over the illusion of poker players as role models. But ESPN and the WPT has done a good job over the years of glossing over the seedier stuff in the industry, and Nguyen was easily one of the biggest benefactors of this treatment.
However, he just flushed all that good will down the toilet.
From his complete disrespect for other players, belligerent drunkenness, attempts at collusion with Erick Lindgren (who obviously wanted no part of it and was distancing himself from/standing up to Scotty throughout the night), and desecrating the memory of Chip Reese (who the night was kind of dedicated to), Scotty will likely never be looked at the same again.
Or Layne Flack, who looked like a big douche too

Blinds

Solid play from the blind positions is crucial to being a winning poker player, especially in Texas Hold'em. Yet few players focus on blind play nor consider it of anywhere near the same importance as starting hands outside the blinds. (More on playing the blinds.)If you were simply to be away from a brick and mortar Holdem table when it was your turn to take the blinds, you would lose about three big bets in an hour (assuming the button orbits the table four times an hour). In contrast, a solid win rate is one big bet an hour. Clearly then, to make that win rate, you would have to make four big bets an hour when in the other positions -- not counting the additional amount you would need to win to offset the house rake.A difference between good Holdem players and less-good ones is that a good player will more often bet second pair when good and fold it when it's a loser. Thus, even though everyone gets approximately the same cards in a game with very high short-term random luck, the good player will extract a little positive value from marginally good situations and save from losing a little negative value in marginally bad situations. That phenomenon is not difficult to understand (even if challenging to do).What occurs in blind play is very similar. Better players take more value from their opponents' blinds while losing less while in their own blinds. Some players mistakenly only try to do the first: attack other blinds. But that is actually the less important skill. Playing from the blinds well not only has the benefit of earning us some profit, it encourages weaker players to similarly play from the blinds, where they will tend to play in an unprofitable way -- not just because they will play relatively poorly from out of position, but because the more hands weaker players play, the more likely they are to get frustrated and go on tilt. It's an absolute: if you play with players who do go on tilt, doing small things to encourage them to play more hands directly leads to them going ontiltmore often.Some players simply are unable to comprehend the concept of playing when you are an underdog, but have pot odds to do so. This is one enormous difference between great players and merely good ones. If someone raises your big blind and everyone folds, you're getting 3.5 to 1 on calling the raise. It does not matter at all if your opponent is a favorite in this situation. What matters is if mathematically those 3.5 to 1 pot odds are profitable to you. You don't have to win anywhere near half the time to make this call be profitable. You merely need to extract more value from the pot than you put into it. That's it. Get some of that 3.5 bets worth of value. After you call there will be 4.5 small bets in the pot. You should be quite happy to regularly get back the equity of 1.5 or 1.7 or 2.1 small bets. Even 1.1 is a good return. It makes no difference at all if your opponent does better than that. What matters to us is we took the most profitable action available to us.One of the most intimidating plays in Holdem is to call a raise before the flop from the big blind, and check/call after the flop when the flop comes out a bunch of low rags. Watch this sometime. You can almost hear the pre-flop raiser's brain say: "Uh-oh". The point here is not to advocate that you often make this play, but only to emphasize that playing against a player in the big blind (much less so in the small blind) is a difficult thing to do -- especially if they are solid player. The range of hands the blind player could have is not easy to pinpoint, for one thing. People often say they hate playing from the blinds against a pre-flop raiser because it is hard. It's hard to play against a player who has better cards than you. That's true, but the reverse is also true. It's very difficult to play against a tough/solid/tricky player in the big blind (assuming the raiser doesn't flop a no-brainer hand) who could be playing a very wide variety of cards.

Omaha

Here are some principles to keep in mind whenever you're playing Omaha. I'll keep it short and sweet, because there isn't really much that needs to be said about each of them. If anyone does want more in depth information about any of these, please leave me a comment and I will tell you whatever you need to know.1) If you're not drawing to the nuts, you're drawing dead. In Omaha you will more often then not be playing draws on the flop, and maybe even the turn. Rarely will you flop a made hand that is likely to still be the nuts by the end of the hand. So, when you are playing a draw, make sure you are drawing to the nuts, because if you are not, and it hits, you will often find yourself with the 2nd best hand.With players having 4 cards apiece, if you are drawing to a king-high flush, the odds are fairly good that someone else is drawing to an ace-high flush, and if your card hits, you will actually be dead in the pot. So make sure you are the one drawing to the nuts.2) One of the differences between a winning Omaha player and a losing Omaha player is a winning Omaha player can fold three-of-a-kind.Three of a kind is a drawing hand, not a made hand like in Hold'em. Trips and sets get more people in trouble playing omaha than anything, except for maybe Principle #1 above. TOAK (three-of a kind) is a VERY vulnerable hand. You are really just drawing to a full house, and if you don't make it and there are three to a straight or three to a flush on the board, you should probably fold. You will save yourself a LOT of money/chips.Winning players are the ones who know when their hand is vulnerable, and have the discipline to follow through with that knowledge and fold.3) There is NO SUCH THING as slow-playing in Omaha. This is something else that costs players a lot of pots. Thinking that their set is safe on a rainbow flop, many players try to get fancy and try to slow-play, allowing someone else to catch a better hand. Then, when they do try to speed up, they find themselves a big underdog. One card in Omaha can mean the difference between being a big favorite and a big underdog. You never know what card will give another player better trips in a situation like this, but if you bet your trips, you will probably push out someone who would have made a better set.If you have a hand, bet. That's all there is to it.4) Don't go overboard with betting. Just because you are allowed to bet the pot, does NOT mean that you should. Preflop, if you have a big hand, you might want to bet the pot to isolate/create value, but after the pot, take it easy. Evaluate the situation before going hell-bent for leather. Too many people just bet the pot at every opportunity and end up losing far more than they should. Understand the art of pot manipulation and take advantage of it. It will allow you to win more and lose less.5) Keep bluffing to a minimum. Omaha is not a bluffing game. This is another mistake that costs players a lot of chips. There are probably going to be several players in the pot, and you have no idea what the flop could have given one of them. There are INFREQUENT situations where a bluff might be appropriate, but they are few and far between, so don't bother.If you don't have a real hand, don't bet, you might run into someone who does.6) Look for reasons to fold, not reasons to call. It is human nature to try to find reasons to call bets, rather than fold. You must learn to override that impulse. A backdoor 10-high flush draw is not a reason to call, it is a reason to fold. If you can't immediately see a reason to call, don't look for one.So many people find excuses to stay in the pot, and then, when they make their excuse hand, they find themselves with the 2nd best hand, or worse. If it isn't obvious why you should call, you probably shouldn't.

stop moaning and start thinking

A friend of mine told me about a hand that knocked him out of a tournament recently. He had AK against 88. The flop came a King and the guy rivered an 8. My friend bemoaned to me that he lost the tournament to a guy who was over a 20 to 1 underdog. "Wow, that’s really unlucky!" I said. I felt really horrible for my friend who had gotten knocked out on such a long shot. Bad Beat, right? The problem was that when I saw the tournament on TV it turned out that all the money had gone in before the flop. That means the hand was a race, basically either hand was even money to win. Granted, a King did flop and the guy did hit an 8 on the river. The order the cards fell is certainly painful. It is always hard to have your hopes raised so high only to have them dashed when the river takes the tournament away from you. But the fact is that when the money goes in before the flop it is a 5 card hand. 5 cards are going to hit the board no matter what and the order those cards hit is, frankly, irrelevant. Why do I bring this up? Does it really matter if my friend wants to say he lost to a 20 to 1 shot instead of an even money shot? Yes, it really does. Critical thinking is one of the most important aspects of being a good player. This includes looking with a critical eye at every session of poker we play and not allowing our emotions to get involved in our evaluation and recounting of the poker we play. Bemoaning your bad beats is terribly unproductive. Poker has luck involved. That is a plain fact. Sometimes the vagaries of statistics bite you and a big favorite will lose. Your opponent may only have a 5% chance of winning a pot but, guess what? That 5% is going to hit sometimes and sometimes it will be in a crucial situation. I know it is not fun but it happens to all of us. Obsessing about bad luck, and in the case of my friend, recreating history to be worse than it was is counterproductive. Pondering your ill fate takes you out of the game. It makes you feel like a loser. It undermines your confidence. And as a true competitor you need to always play with supreme confidence. You need to feel like a winner at all times. Rather than focus on bad luck, you should always focus on the play of hands. Perhaps you could have played the hand you lost differently and avoided the bad situation. In the case of my friend, he moved in before the flop. Wouldn’t it be more productive to explore the possibility of a flat call before the flop and a move-in after the flop when the board hit a King? I am not saying that is the right play, but exploring it as a possibility is certainly more productive than just moaning about the loss. The fact is that I probably would have moved in pre-flop as well, in which case you just shrug your shoulders at losing the race. But a flat call certainly would have won the pot so it is worth exploring the option. You shouldn’t just explore hands you lose either. Sometimes we play hands we win poorly. Sometimes we play them well. Sometimes we play hands we lose poorly. Sometimes we play those well too. Focusing on the win or loss itself is not worth it and will undermine your ability to improve your game. Focusing instead on the play of the hand…well now you have my attention. That is the fastest road to improvement. As poker players, we all have a tendency to overemphasize skill when we are winning and bad luck when we are losing. Don’t wallow in your bad luck when you are running poorly. Instead, take a good hard look at how you could have played differently. Sometimes you will find you just got unlucky. Other times you will find that you made mistakes that created the bad luck you might otherwise be unproductively wallowing in. Likewise, don’t celebrate your immense skill when you are winning. That is just as bad as wallowing in your bad luck. Take a cold hard look at how much of your good luck streak is a result of your playing really well and how much of it is just things mathematically going your way. So many times you will find that you were playing just as well while losing as while winning but you happened to win all your 50/50 shots on the winning streak while losing them on the losing streak. Remember poker is a game that requires us all to be honest with ourselves. That kind of honesty is challenging in both our personal lives and our professional lives. But in poker, in particular, the kind of cold-hearted evaluation that eliminates emotional involvement in the outcome is supremely important to our growth as expert players.

playing the maniac

Female poker players will find that their opponents often play them differently than the men at the same table. One of the most common types of player that woman will come across is the “maniac.” The maniac can be described as a super aggressive player with a loose style of poker. Men will often fall into this category when playing women, raising and bluffing far too often. The smart female player will have an arsenal of tools in her poker toolbox to maximize profit against a player like this. And, of course, this applies to men as well, since there can be a maniac at any table. Playing an amped up game is the main characteristic of this type of player. The maniac shows aggression on steroids—he plays very loose poker, raising and bluffing way too much. Clearly, this is generally a non-optimal style of play. But the maniac does have one thing going for him—when he wins a pot it is much bigger than it is supposed to be. Because his style is so aggressive, he creates big pots for himself. Bigger pots are the maniac’s reward for playing so fast and loose. Many people take the wrong tactic in playing a maniac. They decide that since the maniac is playing so loosely, that they should open up their game against him by not only playing more hands, but playing those hands more aggressively. The theory here is that since the maniac is playing so many hands, that you should lower your hand values yourself. And since the maniac is raising every street, you can raise him back with much weaker holdings because the probability increases significantly that your hand is the best hand against a guy who plays everything. The premise of this is true—if you are facing someone who raises a lot then your weaker holdings go up in valuation against him. And generally in poker when you think you have the best hand, you should raise. Good logic - but wrong execution. All this accomplishes is turning you into a maniac as well. The problem is that building huge pots for the maniac plays right into his hand. The one important feature of maniac play that allows them to survive is that the pots they win are much bigger than they should be. He creates huge pots so people are much more likely to raise him back—even better yet, cap it with the maniac. So if this is his big advantage, should you be aiding and abetting him? Should you be helping him create huge pots? No. The way to punish a maniac is to keep his pots small. And the way to do this is to isolate him whenever possible if you think you have the best hand, and then go totally passive. If you are on his left, re-raise the maniac to knock the rest of the field out of the pot. If you are on his right, raise into him knowing he will re-raise and knock out the field. Now you have him isolated. Now what? If you are in position and the maniac is betting into you after the flop, just call. If you are out of position, just check and call. The reason for this tactic is this: chances are that he is bluffing. If you raise, you will get him to fold and lose all the money he would have continued to bluff off on later streets. Against a maniac you should wait until the river to raise when you think you have the best hand. Never discourage him from bluffing off his money. This is probably the most important aspect of playing the maniac, make sure you allow him to bluff every last penny. This means that the pots you win are bigger than they would be if you were to raise when the maniac had nothing. But just calling accomplishes another important thing as well. When the maniac does have you beat, he makes not one extra bet from you. While just calling will often make a bigger pot for you by letting the maniac bluff off extra bets, it makes a smaller pot for the maniac by not rewarding him with extra raises. The fact is you will win the majority of pots from the guy because when you enter the pot against him you will almost always start with the best hand against him. By keeping the pots small, you reduce your variance against him—winning lots and lots of normal sized pots, enough of which are much bigger than they should be because you don’t discourage the bluff. And when he does suck out on you, his pot is much smaller than he would like it to be to reap the rewards of his maniacal ways. When he does just plain have you beat, it is the same thing. If you are always isolating the maniac and then only raising on the river, you will maximize your profits and reduce your variance against those people trying to prove how much they can bully a girl!