After 12 total days of poker, including four Day 1′s and two Day 2′s, the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event is finally down to its November Nine. The Main Event always draws a ridiculously large field, and this year was no different with 6,865 players, and an incredible $64,531,000 in the prize pool. A stat even more incredible than that? The first place winner takes home over $8.7 million, nice pay day huh? Let’s take a look at the final nine, their chip stacks, and a little more in-depth at who has a real shot to take this thing down.

Here are the final nine, in order of chip stacks:

1. Martin Staszko- 40,175,000
2. Eoghan O’Dea- 33,925,000
3. Matt Giannetti- 24,750,000
4. Phil Collins- 23,875,000
5. Ben Lamb- 20,875,000
6. Badih Bounahra- 19,700,000
7. Pius Heinz- 16,425,000
8. Anton Makiievskyi- 13,825,000
9. Sam Holden- 12,375,000

The chip stacks don’t exactly tell the story of how the final day went though. Texas Hold’em play was down to ten handed, and John Hewitt (who finished 10th) struggled to pick up anything playable throughout ten-handed play. But the biggest stories of the day were of Ben Lamb and Matt Giannetti. For anyone who watched the final ten fight to get down to the November Nine, the play of both of these players was impressive. Ben Lamb raised and three-bet players in perfect spots, and made very strong decisions. He put pressure on the shorter stacks, forcing them to decide if they wanted to risk their entire stacks. Lamb has made huge strides this year in the World Series, as he won his first gold bracelet, had a 2nd place finish, an 8th place finish, and a 12th place finish. He’s hoping to add a Main Event gold bracelet to that resume as well.

Matt Giannetti is the other player who caught the eye of a few spectators. He was in the top three of short stacks throughout a good amount of ten handed play, but he made all the right moves. The man was patient as he waited to pick up a big hand, and showed no fear getting his chips in the middle. His biggest hand came against Ben Lamb, when Lamb raised pre-flop, and Giannetti made the huge decision to shove over top of him with his pocket jacks. Lamb turned over King-nine off suit, and Giannetti doubled up. From there, Giannetti started putting pressure on the shorter stacks, and just continued to build up his stack. He’s looking to be one of the strongest players out of the final nine, and has a great shot to win it all.

Who Could Win It All?

Well, one of the great things about the game of poker is that anyone can get hot at the right time. If Sam Holden can pick up a few hands, he’ll be at the top of the leader board. But based on pure talent, strong decision making, and confidence heading into the final nine? It looks like it’s a three horse race in my opinion. Matt Staszko ran very well, and did make some good decisions in ten handed play, but I think these three players will be able to overtake him at the top. Eoghan O’Dea, Matt Giannetti, and Ben Lamb are the ones who I have my eyes on.

O’Dea was calm, cool, and collected, and just continued to chip up and keep his chip stack near the top throughout ten handed play. Most of all though, O’Dea is an excellent decision maker, just like Giannetti and Lamb. Giannetti showed a lot of poise and composure while he was waiting for a big hand to push all in, and instantly showed that he could play big stack bully as well. Giannetti is going to be a scary player at this final table, especially now that he has chips. Ben Lamb looks like the player of destiny at this World Series. It’s tough to bet against a guy who has played this great in the World Series, but watching his play just makes it even more convincing that he’ll be in the top 3 in the end.

Even though the 2011 November Nine doesn’t feature big names like Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, or Doyle Brunson; the nine players who did make it will definitely give the fans a pretty interesting final table. The November Nine will get underway on November 5th to and will finish up on November 7th of this year.

So, what exactly does the letter state?

Reid implored with Mr General (what’s his real name?) to initiate stringent action against entities offering illegal gambling in the country. This action includes poker sites and sports betting sites. The dickhead corrupt senator went on to blame the AG for not prosecuting the 1700 websites (WHO OPERATE IN OTHER COUNTRIES LEGALLY!) that continue to offer online gambling illegally to US citizens. He wants to know what the fvck the Department of Justice plans to do about it too. Personally Mu$on thinks they should tell him to F off but okay, moving on with the story.

The big irony

Senator Reid represents Nevada, one of the two American states that has passed a legislation allowing online gaming in their jurisdictions. So, essentially he is from a pro-gambling state. What makes his holier than thou attitude on internet gambling more ironic is the fact that two physical casinos, Harrah’s International and MGM Resorts, have provided much lobbying moolah to the Democrat senator. It wouldn’t be wrong to think that by imposing his proposed restrictions on internet gambling, the competition to physical casinos is effectively being cut off. Thanks though for protecting children in the process Mr Reid.

A ‘true’ Conservative speaks

Corrupt republican senator John Kyl has declared himself as a hater of all things that have to do with online gambling. Outlawing it seems to be the 69-year old’s big mission- to this end, he has made his feelings about internet gambling clearly known in his official website. Some of the things he has to say in criticism of gambling are over-the-top, and in the present world, where the risks and dangers have become a part and parcel of every-day life, a ‘cause’ that does not make complete sense.

Take for instance, Kyl’s ranting that internet gambling can be addictive, with players indulging in it all day long. Or look at his fear that children can also be exposed to internet gambling by not providing enough verification with regard to age. He also says that frivolous use of credit cards to bet online can lead to addictions, bankruptcy and suicide. While this is a bit much, what is more puzzling is the Senator’s view that internet gambling is different than other kinds of gambling- so does this mean that it is okay to spend money foolishly in a brick-and-mortar casino?

Kyl’s changing view on online poker

Kyl seems more eager to separate poker from other online betting games as he feels that it is less of a luck-based sport, rather a game that requires skill. What inspired this change of heart is still not apparent, though photos of his many mistresses is Mu$on leading guess. If not, I suppose the lord might have appeared from a cloud and said, dude Texas Holdem is the game in heaven, knock it off or you’ll be sentenced to eternal doom switch when you arrive. Anyways who the hell knows with these quacks, but different day same line. Gambling is bad, me, you, and 5.99 billion people around the globe are going to burn in hell listening to Kyl say “told you so” for all of eternity.

Mu$on has drafted a letter to Mr Kyl in response.

Dear Senator John Kyl

Thank you for your many years protecting the interest of children, suicide fiends and degenerate gamblers. If it wasn’t for people like yourself, lottery would probably be sold at every convenient store worldwide, and billion dollar casinos would also exist. We’d also have animal cruelty in the form of dog racing and such. I however a position you might consider. For me I believe online gambling is the methadone equivalent for gambling addicts. It’s a little less harmless, people don’t see it, there are no free drinks and casino girls can’t work online etc.. It’s safer, and I think it’s time we considered it. I hope you will agree.

Thanks,
Mu$on

Knocking the entry price down to $55 still leaves out a lot of potential fish, you know the ones who get really angry in 1c / 2c games when the black aces they slowplayed to the river get beaten on a 4-5-6-7-K board with 4 hearts. Ensuring that as many fish as aquatically possible get into the game, satellite qualifiers are already running starting at just $1.

Twisted Gambler has to ask – what will a deep stacked tournament with more than 20,000 fish look like?

Well, for a start getting anywhere near deep is going to involve a lot of holding up, dodging bullets and hitting big draws. It is pretty safe to say that the huge majority of the field will eventually go out while holding the best hand when the chips went in. This is great for Pokerstars of course, the more players who believe that they are really very good – just unlucky – will increase the number for future tournaments.

A number of players will undoubtedly blind away, having joined before realizing it was their anniversary dinner that night and not being able to raise interest from any friends to play the game for them.

There will of course be a huge number of clever moves made in this game, based on intelligent reads, a high level of situational awareness and the math worked out to 3 decimal places. Unfortunately these will go straight over the heads of the other players in the hand who will call half of their stack on the turn anyway – because, well, if they river is a club they will have a 9-high flush – and probably win a big pot.

Looking deeper into the crystal ball we predict more than 22 instances of short stacked players complaining that late all-ins are just ‘bingo’ and that nobody really wants to play any real poker anymore. With your 8 big blinds we look forward to some exciting post flop play, with a 2.5 raise pre, 2/3rds pot continuation bet and, ah, damn it, you have no chips left for the turn.

With more than 10k of the field from Europe likely to completely mess up their sleeping patterns for a disappointing double-up, we look forward to the Red Spade open with baited breath… or do we?

Check out Pokerstars now for the biggest and best tournaments anywhere online!!

In 2008 Betfair, who are the biggest betting exchange in the world, introduced a whopping 20% commission for consistent winners. Given that the starting commission paid is only 5% on any winning bet this shook things up considerably and now Betfair have decided, as of July 18th 2011, that commissions will be rising to between 40% and 60% for those that have lifetime profits over £250,000.

Whilst the figure of £250,000 might not seem like a lot who’s to say that over the next few years they won’t just periodically decrease this figure. At present BetUnFair claim that the new hike in commissions will only affect around 500 users. However anyone with over £250k in profit is likely not only providing a lot of liquidity on the exchanges but also making a living from trading sports as well. That’s 500 people out of a job right there, well that’s after they break £250k in their wives, brothers, mothers, sisters and cousins accounts.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been using Betfair either. If your account is positive £250k or more then you’re paying the new increased fees. This seems particularly unfair on the punter that’s been using Befair for 10 years and making a consistent profit of around £25,000 per year.

Winning punters on Betfair are often thought to be those using software programs to trade very small margins during in play markets. Whilst these particular punters do provide little value to both other punters using Betfair and Betfair themselves the fact remains that in the group of 500 there will be a percentage who are relying on their individual knowledge or systems to profit. If what Betfair are trying to do with this move is weed out the robots then surely there’s better ways to do this than the proposed increase in commissions.

What this all really means is that Betfair are attempting to discourage winning punters from using the exchanges. In recent years they’ve already introduced a section of their website where you bet against Betfair as opposed to other punters and it looks more and more like they’re headed towards becoming an online bookmaker as opposed to a betting exchange.

From a company that once promised ‘Winners are always welcome’ the above changes come as a reel kick in the teeth. Befair really do need to decide if they are a betting exchange or a regular bookmaker.

If someone would provide a viable alternative to Betfair then maybe things would be different but until their monopoly is dissolved if we want to play we play by their rules. With less and less value to be had at Betfair I suggest you check out Dave’s site where he lists other sites good for football betting.

In case you missed it

Betfair has also managed to F-over winning casino players as well. You can read about this in the Online Poker Sites Betfair Warning. The short gist they claimed casino players who won in their generous bonus offer were “violating the spirit of the bonus”. These uses didn’t do a thing wrong. The spirit of gambling is the beat the house. Gamblers play all day long in games they have little long term chance to win, Betfair has made hundreds of millions of dollars from gamblers wagering –EV games, and the one time bettors win on a mass scale (due to BetUnFair’s error) rather than suck it up they flat out stole the money back.

Mu$on telling it to you like it is. I still play at Betfair. We still promote them on some of our portals, the changes and theft affected a small number of people… however who knows how things play out long term. At this point be cautious when betting with this company and consider other options such as Bookmaker, Pinnacle, Bodog and the likes where it is still possible to “Bet Fair” (pun intended). Okay I’m tired now as this was a long post. Mu$on must beat up on some more fish so I can have money to get my pimp on come Friday. Best of luck to all my degen readers, Mu$on here signing out.

To give you a quick run down, a federal indictment was unsealed against Full Tilt Poker on April 15, 2015. In short, their crime was providing Americans with a service they demanded and doing a good job at that. The penalty for such crime is a three billion dollar fine (nope – not exaggerating that’s $3,000,000,000 with 10 digits / 9 zeros after the three) and a bunch of years in prison.

Well included with the indictment the terrorist the US authorities took their bank accounts and held their domain name for ransom. (Full Tilt paid the US DOJ’s ransom demands and got their domain name back). All this has left Full Tilt near broke.

They have no money. Well now they are offline *Poof* just like gone! But wait… it appears this isn’t a case where they just headed for the hills. Which Bingo is reporting this is the result of Full Tilt’s gambling licenses getting suspended.

Even more interesting here is the company who suspended it was kinda sorta in a way backing them just a little while earlier. Alderney Gambling Commission in their last update on this topic said:

“initial investigations indicate no reason to believe that player fund transactions are fundamentally threatened by any consequence of the US authorities’ actions”

^THAT WAS MAY 16!!

We haven’t heard boo from Alderney Gambling Commission since. All of us are sitting feeling our funds are okay, Alderney has out backs! Then those jerks pull the plug! *Poof!* Full Tilt Poker is gone.

Where is the apology from AGCC, which for the record is Alderney Gambling Countrol Commission and their website is gamblingcontrol.org <-- yes no link, Mu$on give you jerks no link love - sorry AGCC.

Well get this.. as Online Poker Sites pointed out these guys removed their May 16, 2011 post where they were kinda sorta telling us Full Tilt Poker was fine, they investigated and see no reason players won’t be paid.

HELLO “McBiff, are you in there?”!!

Full Tilt is not a publicly traded company, we can’t see their financials etc. We can assume however their licensing body can. So not only did you deceive players you have now covered up and removed your tracks, where you kinda sorta told us Full Tilt was going to be fine post (again – sure insinuated all was well from the way I and others had read it). AGCC = Rigged! <-- you head it here first from Mu$on.

In any case maybe they'll be back online later but for now Full Tilt Poker is closed.

Cody took down $851,192 dollars with his 1st place finish, he felted Yevgeniy Timoshenko to win the title and before that took he took down circuit veteran Gus Hansen. The final hand Cody shoved all in with K-9 putting pressure on Timoshenko as he did all match, Timoshenko tanked and then called. Cody hit his K on the flop and his K-9 held as he celebrated with friends.

Cody becomes the 3rd player to win a World Series of Poker bracelet, a World Poker Tour title, and a European Poker Tour title. He is the youngest ever to accomplish this feat, with the main event still looming the future is looking bright for Jake Cody.

Hoping to make a half a million within a few years, he read books and attended seminars on bluffing and reading opponents mannerisms. He traveled to tournaments and played online poker for 40 hrs a week, after a few initial wins, he began losing. A year later, Mr. Cohen found himself fed up with professional poker and down 122,000 after his 1st year. He filed a professional and assumed he was in line for deductions from the Canadian Revenue Service.

The CRA however disagreed, they made the case because Mr. Cohen had not even had a one profitable month in his poker career and did not qualify as a poker professional. Mr. Cohen’s main source for poker bankroll was his credit cards, the CRA argued that he did not conduct himself in the nature in which his poker hobby would fall within the definition of a legal business.

Steven Cohen disagreed with the CRA ruling and of course with the judge presiding over his case. Not many Canadians have been able to convince the CRA that are professional poker players rather than hobbyists. There is no written set of rules that qualifies one as a professional and with such a grey area, there may be many cases like Mr. Cohen’s going to the courts in the future.

The group has 19 members, 9 of which made the trip to the World Series, one of them of course being Jeffrey Lavelle. On June 11th, Jeff began to play in a 1500 dollar no-limit hold em’ tournament, two days later he would become almost 322,000 dollars richer, with a 3rd place finish in the event. The Pour House Poker Club has a rule that any member who cashes, must donate 1% of his winnings to the members of the poker club. Mr. Lavelle won a little over 3k for the members of the Pour House Poker Club, a pretty nice profit for his friends back home.

Lavelle was taken out by Foster Hays, who felted him after he hit top pair on a 9-5-3 board with K-9, the turn was a 7 and Lavelle went all in only to see Hays showdown AA and hit trip aces on the river. Lavelle is grateful and enjoyed his experience at the WSOP. Lavelle has three children, including an 18 year old pre-med student. Congratulations, Officer Lavelle!

Paid For Guest Post (by Mark)

Since the Black Friday of online poker, when the domain names of the three largest US facing poker rooms were seized and the owners indicted by the United States government, there have been varying degrees of clarity regarding the status funds of players on those sites.

The situation at Pokerstars become clear very early on, as they contacted high volume players by phone on Black Friday and posted status updates poker forums in the coming days. Pokerstars began to return funds within two weeks of Black Friday and the payments have been successfully deposited into US bank accounts.

At the Cereus network the situation is not crystal clear yet, but it appears that the company is in a very bad financial situation and that there is a very high chance players will not receive their funds. It has laid off 95% of staff and rumors of bankruptcy have been floating around, although the parent company, Blanca Games, denies this. Cereus has not communicated with the players, other than through press releases. In addition, the Cereus network has imposed very low withdrawal ceilings for non-American players, suggesting that they do not possess enough capital to payout players.

The situation is the least clear at Full Tilt Poker, where the company has been in communication with customers on a regular basis but has not provided unambiguous information about when and how players will receive their funds. There are a lot of assertions being thrown around the poker world about the solvency of Full Tilt Poker. For example, Tony G has been claiming that Full Tilt just needs a small amount of time to clear things up, but then was accused by Mike Matusow, a Full Tilt pro, of trying to attract attention to his website by creating fake news. An official company statement indicates the need to “raise capital.” Phil Ivey, a prominent poker player with a vested financial interest in Full Tilt Poker filed a lawsuit against Tiltware LLC, the Full Tilt parent company, to free himself from his contract and to faciliate the payment of player funds. The lawsuit was met with condemnation from Tiltware and an assertion that Ivey in fact owed Tiltware money. Very few people know for sure whether Full Tilt will be able to meet its obligations, and the ones that do know aren’t very likely to share the truth with the world.

For players from outside the United States this is a very important situation to keep abreast of. Keeping money in a Full Tilt Poker account definitely exposes players to the possibility of losing the funds due to Full Tilt going bankrupt. Players should not only avoid sites that have been indicted, but should also avoid sites that are currently US facing. There is no one who can give a 100% guarantee that money is safe on any poker site, but the risk of losing your funds on Full Tilt is significantly larger than it is on other poker sites. That being said, Full Tilt continues to be the second most popular online poker site in the world and is successfully processing payments for players outside of the United States. With the absence of American grinders and the migration of non-American pros to less risky sites, the games could be fishier than usual. As long as players know the risks associated with play on Full Tilt they may make an informed decision, but considering that the survival of Full Tilt is up in the air at this point, it might be wise to pick a safer poker site.

Most of the largest 10 or 15 online poker sites are very safe, but for extra security, a site like Party Poker is a very good option. Party Poker has a longstanding reputation in the online poker world and is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange (all three indicted poker sites are privately owned). Combine that with the fact that Party Poker does not accept US customers and is the third largest poker site in the world and you have a site that is extremely unlikely to be in serious financial trouble any time soon.

Forums have their value but so do these books, often written before poker strategy forums became such a driving force in educating wannabe ballers. So if you’re ready to unplug the laptop and finish reading the latest “Heads Up for Rollz” thread from the morons at 2P2, try checking out Google or Amazon for some of the Best Poker Books to add to your collection.

Take Phil Hellmuth’s book, you can read all about how he’s made sick reads and crushed inferior opponents over the years. In the process, you may learn the best starting hands for Texas Hold’em as well. While we only recommend this book for the noobest of noobs, there’s still a case to be made for trying out a book or two vs. keeping your head stuck in Internet forums all day.