It’s a few weeks old but Dean on 2+2 posted the hand history and the video of Krantz taking down a $95,795.50 pot off of perkyshmerky in a $200/$400 NL game on Full Tilt. He’s high as a kite in the video and he and his buddies are laughing uncontrollably. The setup is Krantz tries to limp HU in the SB. perkyshmerky raises it to $1200. Krantz pops it to $4000 with 86o. Flop comes Q high and Krantz pairs his 8. Check, check. The turn puts a second 8 on board and perkyshmerky decides to bet his KQ and gets himself all in.
One of the best lines is:
“Holy shit he’s never going to fucking see this coming. He’s going to be so goddamned shocked if this gets to showdown we will own his soul for the rest of his goddamned life.”
I’m in London this week on business so a couple of my co-workers drug me out to the Gutshot Poker Club on Clerkenwell Road for lunch. This is the infamous London poker room owned by Derek Kelly who challenged the UK courts that poker was a skill game and was thus exempt from the gaming act. It is also where 2005 WSOP sweetheart Tiffany Williamson won her entry into the main event.
Being from Los Angeles and a frequent visitor to Las Vegas I was expecting a proper card room. Gutshot is anything but. You walk in and there are computer monitors all over the place. People are seated in front of a keyboard playing online poker . . . in a poker room. I had to become a “member” and pay a £3 fee as well as sign a involuntary tipping agreement which basically said I had to pay the house a percentage of any wins.
We came for lunch so we ordered from the bar. It’s a cramped space and we had to fight to find a place to sit to eat.
There was a tournament starting at 2pm with a £20 buyin so the three of us bought in and finished lunch. I can’t say that they run a smooth operation but they try. They use round tables so every table had the same confusion of people trying to figure out where the 1 seat was and then all the seats numbers that followed which delayed things a bit. It’s also a deal your own place so the staff simply resolve disputes and yell out when the blinds have gone up.
I had one guy at my table who had a laptop and was playing online poker and playing in the tournament at the same time. In LA they kick you off the table for taking a phone call.
Tournament started with about 50 players. I went out in 12th. Blinds were $250/$500 and I had about $2000 in front of me. MP limps and I’m on the BB with ATs. I push. He calls with A4s. Not only does he hit his 4 but he also pulls the flush so I’m sent to the rail. Oh well. That’s poker.
A friend IM’d me on tilt the other day so I decided to push his buttons. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
OY: Bill seriously
OY: i go all-in
OY: with 95
OY: ne4d to steal the blinfds and shit
Bill Rini: premium hand
OY: I GET CALLED by 10 3
OY: what the fuck
OY: i hate HELLKAT
OY: it [...]
PartyPoker released a beta version of HellKat Poker last week. What is HellKat? It’s a time based SnG. Instead of playing until one player has all the chips (or until you bust out) the tournament lasts a specific time period (say 15 minutes). At the end of 15 minutes any active [...]
I ran across a post on the Matusow Truth Blog that I thought was worth a mention. The site is run by Scott Matusow, Mike’s brother and most of the time it’s pretty basic stuff about Mike. But the post that I’ve taken issue with is Scott’s analysis of the final table of [...]
Nothing poker related in this but it is funny so I thought I would share.
Cleveland Councilman Michael Polensek wrote a letter to an alleged drug dealer who was arrested in his district. It’s a scathing, profanity-filled letter tearing Arsenio Winston a new a-hole.
Here are some choice quotes:
Mr. Winston, you have to be “dumber than [...]
Ran across this little story the other day. Retired Baptist minister and Cabarrus County commissioner, Coy C. Privette, got caught with his hands in the honey pot when he got popped for several misdemeanors related to prostitution. Now, the whole politician/minister thing makes this funny enough alone but the article goes on to [...]
Proof Online Poker is Rigged One can hardly read any poker forum without running across individuals claiming that this or that site is rigged. Usually they are humiliated with the forum .experts. rudely telling them that the reason they.re losing is because they aren.t good poker players. I.m sad to say that I used to be one of those .experts.. I was one of the doubters until I actually caught one site cheating.
Why Online Poker Is Not Rigged In this post I will attempt to address every argument I.ve ever heard regarding online poker being rigged. Mind you, I do work for a company that develops online poker software but my motivation is not to convince people to trust *my* employer.s software, rather it is to have a central place where people can point misinformed message board and blog posters who think somebody is pulling something on them.
Motivations For Rigging Online Poker I.m not sure whether it.s funny or sad that even after my post on why online poker is not rigged, I still get people emailing me trying to convince me otherwise. The funny/sad part is that despite the fact that I.ve all but called people who make that claim without hand histories or other empirical evidence idiots I continue to receive 1 . 5 emails a week telling me some bad beat story and QED, online poker is rigged. So with that in mind, I.m going to expound a bit on some new points as well as clarify previously made points.
PokerBot Pro - Another Online Poker Scam Pauly emailed me this link the other day and I just can.t help calling the guy on his bullshit. He's certainly not the first person to make such absurd claims but he happened to be the one I decided to pick on.
Online Poker Tells Many players will tell you that online poker tells either don.t exist or are difficult to judge. That's a load. All the online pros know the tells but it's some sort of unspoken rule never to let others in on it. Well, that ends right now! I will share with my loyal readers 5 of the top online poker tells that they (and we know who *they* is, don.t we?) don.t want you to know about.
The Wisdom of Bonus Whoring One of the common topics you.ll see mentioned in the poker blogosphere is bonus whoring. Of course, bonus whoring is the act of playing on a particular site in order to take advantage of a reload or some other type of promotional bonus. Many people chase bonuses from site to site and even include bonuses in their monthly win/lose figures. The more I've thought about it though, the more I.m beginning to question the wisdom of bonus whoring.
Seeing The World Through The Eyes of a Fish Have you ever been left scratching your head trying to figure out why your opponent played the hand the way he did? I certainly did so I found a fish and hooked him up to the USB port on my computer and did the same to myself. The results of this experiment are below:
The Ultimate Secret to Winning Poker I'm going to let everyone in on the biggest secret in poker; there is no secret! You can quit looking for that special book, video, website, etc. that.s going to turn your game around and make you into the next Phil Hellmuth Ivey.
Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.