With the WSOP Main Event having begun, the question of how players can stay mentally focused for so many days and such long sessions. The simple answer is that it isn’t very easy and you absolutely have to be prepared if you are going to invest in this marathon tournament and take your shot at poker glory. However, it is not just a session like this that requires preparation. Sitting down at any MTT is a commitment and if you aren’t ready for it, you will find yourself mumbling and walking to the rail because of an unfocused play that costs you your stack.
If you are going to go deep in any tournament, you need to do a couple of things that will help you stay in the game. The most obvious of course is to pay attention to the play of everyone on your table, but keeping that focus is not easy if that is all you are doing. Sitting there staring at the table will turn you into a zombie. Have you ever noticed how many players are wearing headphones in today’s tournaments?
Music is a great way to not only keep your focus, but also a great reminder to keep your play on track. For instance, maybe you want to program some rather aggressive music once an hour or so to mentally trigger you that if your stack in not in good shape, that you need to start making moves. Music also will allow you to enjoy the tournament instead of getting stuck in that zombie state. People are often much more focused under the influence of music. Get that iPod out and put your favorites on there. Just don’t forget that you want to also use it as a trigger to keep that play focused.
Another thing that you may want to consider is to bring some energy snacks to the table with you. Let’s face it, a huge MTT field means a lot of boring hours at the tables. During those long runs when the cards dry out, it is often very difficult to stay sharp and alert. By eating some healthy energy snacks, you can get that much needed boost to keep you alert and ready for that massive run that awaits you.
Finally, don’t be afraid to get out of your seat if you are starting to feel tired. Even if a break is not coming up, get up and take a quick walk after the blinds pass you by. It will get the blood flowing again and re-energize you at the table. When everyone else is falling asleep because of the long hours, you can pounce like a tiger and start scooping pots. It is quite easy to fall into the trap of fold, fold, fold and you want to avoid that at all costs by staying sharp and alert.
An MTT is not an easy thing to win and if you are going to give yourself a true shot, you must come prepared. Physical ability is one thing, but you also have to be mentally prepared for the long hours that you have to put in at that table. The fact that you cannot re-buy means that one simple mistake could lead to you being ousted. Stay sharp and use this tips to give you an advantage and get you to the final table.
Ladbrokes Poker is the brainchild of the famous British bookmaker, Ladbrokes. After offering its prestigious services for more than a century, Ladbrokes decided to offer its gambling opportunities online as well. Just like its widespread gambling network offline, it has carved an equally fine niche for itself in the field of online gambling too. Apart from the regular poker games that you find on all the other poker sites, the website also offers online casino games that make your gaming experience all the more exciting. You can choose to play on the demo version or for real money as is your wish. The games are loose and there is plenty of money to be won. Ladbrokes also offers some good promotions that have very lucrative attractions.
Software:
Ladbrokes Poker now uses the well-known Microgaming network software. The software offers some neat graphics with 3D features. The lobby is uncluttered and easily navigable with the games easy to locate and quick to function. There is no wait in between games, as they move at a very fast rate. The software comes in both the downloadable as well as in the browser playing facility.
All required data can be accessed from the ‘My Lobby’ tab. This gives you immediate access to the games of your choice along with live hand history, current table statistics, flop percentages, average pot size, number of players and some other useful information. A calendar and timers are also placed at the distance of a click.
Cash Games:
Ladbrokes Poker offers Texas Holdem, an all-time favorite, besides which there is Omaha, Omaha High-Low, 5Card Draw, Five Card Stud and Seven Card Stud. Wagers can start from micro levels and go up to high stakes for high rollers. However, the most amount of action can be seen at the fixed limit tables with bets starting at $0.25/$0.40 and going up to $300/$600.
Casino games include the popular Blackjack, Roulette, Slot machine games, video slots and a few other games. Sadly, the Ladbrokes Poker Room is not open to US players.
Tournaments:
There are lots of tournaments taking place at Ladbrokes Poker with one starting every ten to fifteen minutes. Players can find a tournament that is within their budget. Tournaments are the most sought after and include single table and multi-table tournaments, guaranteed tournaments, satellites with buy ins to great poker events carrying huge cash prizes. Also available are free rolls for players to increase their player points. Jackpot tournaments with massive amounts to be won are also held for the benefit of the patrons.
Bonus:
Ladbrokes Poker offers 100% up to $500 to every new player who signs up and makes a first-time deposit. The bonus amount can be wagered for within thirty days by playing the required amount of raked hands and tournaments. Once you have accumulated enough points, the bonus amount will be deposited into your account. This bonus is easy to accumulate if you like to play a lot of games and can manage to wager thirty times your deposit amount.
Promotions:
Ladbrokes Poker offers Player Points to its players who play real money games. These points can be gathered and then exchanged for cash or for buy-ins to tournaments. Also there is the ‘rake race’ leaderboard tournament every month, which awards the top 3,000 players a cash reward that sums up to a massive $1,000,000. There are free rolls with cash amounts of $25,000 and some good jackpots too.
Deposit/Withdrawal Options:
There are several deposit options available, which include Visa, MasterCard, Delta, Neteller, Switch, Solo, PayPal, Wire Transfer and check. Withdrawal methods just like everywhere else are fewer than deposit options. These include Visa, MasterCard, Neteller, PayPal, Bank Wire and check.
One thing that you hear preached over and over again in no limit poker is that position is power. Every strategy that you can think of allows you to play more hands in position that you can early in the betting because of this very reason. To fully take advantage of your position, you need to know why it is so important.
Information is and always has been one of the major keys to success when you are playing No Limit. By picking up subtle tells, you can exploit a weaker opponent and take down hands that you have no right even playing in. Being in late position is much the same weapon. You can force the action against players who are on marginal hands and put them on a decision. This play works more than you think because of the sheer fact that you always have position on them.
Look at the scenario of the table folding around to the button and he merely doubles the blinds to get some action in the hand. Both players call because they more or less have the odds to do so. A flop of AK7 hits the board. SB is holding 710 and BB is holding K2. SB checks and the BB bets out a half pot sized bet. The button player comes right over the top and triples the bet. The SB folds and the action is on the BB. What do you do?
You are sitting on middle pair with absolutely no kicker. The action pretty much commits you to a large portion of your stack, but this player has been acting aggressively in that position all night long. It doesn’t matter, you still have to let the hand go because even if you do call him, you know he is going to make a huge bet on the turn. He may very well be sitting on a weak A and you are crushed in the hand. Regardless, he is the one forcing the action here and your hand strength is too weak to make this risky play.
The other very powerful aspect of being in late position is that you can play those weaker hands at just about any time. You are going to be getting odds for any draw and in actuality, the more people that are in the hand, the lower you want your cards to be. It may sound a little crazy, but you are much better off sitting on QJs on the button with 6 other players already in than you are AQ.
Think about the logic on this. If you have a bunch of players that are limping in from early position, you are probably looking at a bunch of weak A’s and middle pocket pairs. Uneducated players will go into almost any hand from any position with an A. Now here you are sitting on middle suited connectors. In most cases, your cards are going to be live and you are drawing to both a straight and a flush. All of high cards are probably out in the hands that are being played and you have a much better chance of hitting than anyone else in the pot.
When you are in position, you need to loosen up your game and play a much wider variety of hands when everyone is limping in or there was only a small raise in front of you. It isn’t going to cost you much to do this and when you hit, the payoffs will tend to be very large. You are going to need to hit about 1 out of every 9 or 10 of these to break even. After that, it is all profit.
We are seeing some incredible heads up actions in these poker tournaments and Event #9 was no different. Ken Aldridge and Carman Cavella went head’s up and we saw dramatic chips swings and fantastic play for the duration. Aldridge came out on top, but this was a showdown that people will remember for quite some time. After three hours, Aldridge finally found a hand that allowed him to capture the bracelet. Here is the final hand.
Aldridge had been getting the best of Cavella for quite a while at this point and Cavella needed to make a move to try and get back in the tournament. He looked down at K4 diamonds and liked his chances so he shoved in and got an instacall from Aldridge who had him dominated with KQ. The flop gave him a little hope with K99, but the board never matched or hit an Ace and this marathon was finally over. Aldridge takes down $428,259 for first and Cavella will take home $264,814 for second place.
Event #10 was another long day, 13 hours in all. This tournament had been moving much slower than the others. So much so that the last day was only supposed to be a final table, but they had to play from 18 because of the pace. In the end, Boukai would emerge as another first time bracelet winner. We are seeing a lot of new names emerge so far as the pros are having a very difficult picking their way through these massive fields of very aggressive players. Here is a recap of the last hand.
Bennani was on the button and made a pot limit raise. Bouakai came over the top to put him all in and Bennani made the call. Boukai was sittign on pocket 9’s, but Bennani had two live over cards with a JdQh. The flop was great news with AKQ and it looked great for Bennnani until Boukai hit a 2 outer on the turn with a 9d. To add insult to injury, an Ad hit the river and Bennani was sent to the rail. He collected $151,335 for second place and Boukai wins $244,862 and his first bracelet.
In other tournaments…
Event #11 has finished its day two with 25 players still remaining so they will have to come back a little early and play a long session down to the bracelet winner. Hellmuth was eliminated to his usual rant when he placed his faith in 66 and was not rewarded. Picking a name out of this one is like a blind draw, but Scott Hall has been playing great and is well within striking distance of the chip leader. Let’s see if he can make a move on the final day.
Event #12 is easily the largest field of pros that we have seen go this far in a tournament. In fact, the top position is held by Huck Seed and Todd and Doyle Brunson are nipping at his heels. When Seed has chips he is as good as they get, but nostalgia has to have you hoping that Doyle can get it done one more time.
Event #13 is still trudging along with 180 players left in the field. Chip counts were not yet posted for this event. Event #14 was also in its first day and this one has a surprising amount of eliminations being a limit tournament. Our guess is the players playing no limit hands in a limit game and donating their chips in pot after pot. This is another event that is stacked with top name pros as the game of limit is a little more than most No Limit players can adjust to. This should be a great day two.
Pacific Poker belongs to the 888.com Holdings Group that is also responsible for the creation of Casino-on Net, one of the largest online gaming networks across the globe. It allows players to access the other gaming sites on the network from a single account thereby introducing a healthy mix of players from the Casino and Sport betting sites.
There is a fair amount of games offered on the Pacific Poker website and games played provide soft competition due to the various types of players at the tables. This gives rise to some wild games that can turn out to be quite profitable.
Software:
Pacific Poker now has an upgraded software that has improved the altogether look of the website. The previously shoddy looking lobby is more attractive but is simple to use with most of the functions easily navigable. Many of the features are customizable and the graphics have improved considerably with an add-on of the 3-D avatars. It offers advanced search features, a user-friendly layout and incorporated bingo and casino games along with the poker games.
There is a multi-table facility available with players being able to attempt up to four games at the same time. Also, you can view the cashier who is always to be seen on the screen. Apart from this you can get information on the standard hand statistics, flop percentages and the average pot size at the various tables. The graphic rerun of played hands is an interesting addition as it allows you to see how you had played your hand giving you scope for improvement.
Pacific Poker has recently hosted a no-download software that has specially been designed for Mac and Linux users who are constantly left out of enjoying online games due to non-compatibility with software. This is a plus point for Pacific Poker as it is the only site that offers this special feature.
Pacific Poker Games:
Games offered on Pacific Poker are the common Poker games that one would find at all poker playing websites. These include the most sought after Texas Holdem games available in Limit, No Limit and Pot Limit versions, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud High/Low, Omaha and Omaha High/Low. The stakes can start as low as $0.05/$0.10 and reach up to $30/$60 in Limit Holdem. Some of the best games are seen at Pot Limit and No Limit cash games, as the flop percentages can be outrageously high here.
The general rake applied by Pacific Poker is much higher than the standard rake of 5% of the pot size used by other poker playing sites.
As for tournament enthusiasts, there are several multi table tournaments as well as sit and go tournaments to be played too. A buy-in for a sit and go tournament can lie anywhere from $2.50 to $100. Tournaments are a hot favorite among players with peak hour traffic of tournament players being a good 8000 contestants competing for the prize money. Around 2000 players can be seen attempting other cash games.
Unfortunately, like most of the other gaming websites, US players are not allowed to play cash games at Pacific Poker.
Bonus:
New players enrolling into the Pacific Poker website are entitled to a 100% sign up bonus of up to $400 of which $100 is credited to your account immediately while the rest is put in as you play the cash games. You must wager 20 times the bonus amount in order to receive this bonus and you have only thirty days in which to wager for it, which is a little hard to achieve if you are a micro limit player.
Promotions:
Pacific Poker offers freeroll tournaments and other guaranteed tournaments with six figure rewards that attract a lot of players. Players are also offered loyalty points for every cash game they play. The Pacific Poker Points can be accumulated and later exchanged for cash or to play more cash games.
Payment Options:
There are several deposit and withdrawal options that include Credit and Debit Cards, FirePay, Prepaid ATM, NETeller among various others.
Customer Support:
You can contact the customer support staff via email or telephone though many a time the response from the support team is rather slow while the telephone lines can be hard to get.
There are a lot of people that are heading out to Vegas with a few thousand dollars and looking to take their shot at a poker title. The question is what tournament should they choose? It is not so easy to pick, but if you don’t pick right, you could be wasting your money. There are a lot of things to consider before you put your name down on that registration form.
If you are looking for a huge field in a lower buy in, you are going to want to get out there early and play in the first open event or you will want to wait until the end and play in the buy ins that are close to the main event. The first event typically has one of the largest fields of the event. The later events also get big fields as everyone is scrambling for the last shot at a bracelet.
Something else to consider is how long and how many days do you or can you play for. If you are going after one of the events that are mentioned above, you can expect to be in the chair for about 12-14 hours during the first day and another marathon session on the second day. A lot of these early events go for 3 days and that is a huge time commitment that you have to be ready for if you are really going to compete.
If you are looking for a legitimate opportunity to take down a tournament, you may want to consider more of the ones that start about half way through the WSOP. More specifically, you want to look at tournaments that are the day before or day after some of the larger buy ins that you know the professionals are going to be in. For instance, the HORSE Event is something that they all look forward to. However, the price of the event dictates that only the best of the best and the richest of the richest are going to be in it. This means the tournaments that are bookends to that will be lacking professional players and therefore you can have an easier time of it, hopefully.
Another reason you may want to look at coming into some of the tournaments that are scheduled during the middle is because a lot of the players that are there for the whole stretch begin to get a little wary and if they aren’t cashing, they also get very frustrated and start to make sloppy plays. Coming in fresh will give you an added edge over them.
We all know that everything has to be lined up perfectly in order to cash in one of these tournaments, let alone make the final table. You need to make sure you can get everything possible to fit your style of play and put you in the best scenario. Study the formats and schedules thoroughly to decide which tournament will actually give you the best chance for win. That little edge may just get you some new jewelry.
The season did not end up the way you would think as three amateurs split the final pot of the season and let one man walk away with the title with nothing more than a handshake. Jean Gaspard will be going to the WSOP, but you have to think the other two players will be kicking themselves for years to come for not sticking it out and seeing who really would have won.
The final World Series Circuit Tour Event of the season had a mere 167 players to get through and Billy Kopp had made short work of them all for the last two days of the tournament. He had gradually built up his stack to a point that he was assured of being a force and to think that he would just hand the championship away is almost criminal.
The way the whole tournament went down screams of rule changes. If this is truly a vehicle of the WSOP, splits should not be allowed. Add to the fact that one player was allowed to walk with the championship without actually having to win it and you just have to shake your head. Even if they agree to split, there had to be some kind of rule that they should have to keep a certain portion of the money set to the side and play until there is one winner.
What was going through the other two players minds that had them walk away from the table with $50,000 less and just flat out giving up a chance to play in the WSOP for free? You can almost understand why Christopher went for the chop as he was only sitting with under 500,000 while the other two were over 1,000,000 in chips. However, Kopp should be absolutely ashamed at walking away from this split when he had about 2/3 the amount of the chips as the leader. When you break down the cash, the split is hardly reasonable considering the difference from second to third.
Players wait their whole lives for this opportunity and to hand a tournament of this caliber to someone is absolutely ridiculous. This rule needs to be changed or the series will be regarded as a complete joke. You cannot even split a tournament on Poker Stars without playing to the end and putting a certain amount aside for the winner. How you can you justify allowing this to happen in a WSOP Circuit Tour Event?
