Poker Tournaments

Since the first organized World Series Poker tournament in 1970, poker tournaments have become extensively popular. In the last few years, poker tournaments broadcasted on big sports channels have drawn attentions of millions of viewers. The multi-million dollar poker tournaments that attract the leading poker players across world have produced numerous online poker tournaments of different sizes. Whereas the prize pools vary in size, the larger tournaments have prizes of more than one million dollars.

Play poker tournaments aggressively:

Although the winnings are great in majority cases, there is a big distinctness between successful money players and successful tournament players. Tournament players cannot bide their time in the same way that a money player needs to. In poker tournaments, player has to win all the chips on the table if they want to gain; they cannot afford to wait and bid their time. They must play with a hostile edge.

Be sensible while playing poker tournaments:

One of the most essential poker tournament skills is a powerful psychological presence. It sounds odd and a little intimidate, but luck has a lot to do with poker tournaments success. To make restitution for this, you need to try to make yourself as lucky as possible; think positive, don’t let your moods swing with the tilts. Be realistic but keep up the aggressive plays. In poker tournaments, you need to get all the chips on the table in a certain amount of time, against the added pressure of increasing blinds. You can’t afford to let a run of bad luck hit you if you want to get anywhere in the tournament. You must do whatever you can to maintain a positive outlook.

As a general rule, you should play tight at starting of the tournament, when the blinds are low; this is the only time you can afford to sit and wait for other players to make errors. As the blinds rise – as they do in tournaments – you need to begin gambling aggressively.

Controlling your tournament gambling should be the gap concept, introduced by David Sklanksy. The elementary principle and practice of this concept is that you should open the betting whenever your hand makes it sensible in action and thought. You can open the betting yourself with a marginal to semi-strong hand and it’s a lot easier to bet with yourself. Yet, if the betting has already been opened, if someone else makes a bet before you, then you must have a strong hand to call.

Table positions also come into play in poker tournaments. You should play tight in the early positions and let the people playing after you take the lead most of the time (unless you have a hand that warrants aggressive play, such as high honors). As you move to later positions, specifically the end positions, you should look to bluff and play semi-strong hands.

No Distractions while playing poker tournaments:

Online perplexities aren’t actually a problem, but you can still get put off by some of the pop-ups and information bombardments. You shouldn’t worry about the other tables or the other poker players in the tournament. Your focus should remain on the table and chips you’re making efforts to acquire.

Your focal point in a poker tournament needs to be on your table, on your position, and on your opponents play. Good tournament players look to shift gears, alternating between tight and aggressive plays as the situation calls. Examine your opponents for sighs that they are following one or other of these strategies.

Follow the strategies yourself. Remember that survival is a key to winning a tournament, more so than in money games. You can’t be eliminated from money games, but you can and will be knocked out of tournaments for silly and careless errors.

To win poker tournaments you need to train your brain to focus above and further money game play. In poker tournaments, how you behave against your opponents, how you respond to your opponents on a psychological level can have an impact on your game if you don’t check yourself. Some of the excellent advices from poker tournaments champs are to play our own cards. Don’t think about anyone else’s cards and don’t try to analyze or critic the plays of anyone else. Never say anything about anyone else’s plays, strategies, or styles. It’s never worth existing on someone else’s game except to understand them as an opponent.

Poker tournaments last advice:

And the last morsel of tournament-play advice: trust your aptitude. Know the guidelines for online poker tournaments play specifically – but trust your instinct and feel for the cards. The leading poker tournaments players play by feel much of the time, you should do if you want to win.

Online Poker Strategy

Online poker strategy to avoid bad beats is very crucial to understand. Bad beats are one of the most disappointing and frustrating things that can happen to any poker player. It can be explained as losing a hand to an opponent who held an inferior set of cards to you, but in reality, the term is mainly reserved for when your opponent wins the hand regardless of being a big underdog statistically to do so.

The most disappointing thing about bad beats, and the reason why all poker players of all levels hate them, is because they essentially level the playing field between the professional players and the unskilled players, because at times luck can overcome skill.

However it’s a major determinant in every online poker strategy, and one of the reasons why poker is so popular across the world. Because in any given hand there is always a chance that a rank bad hand can win through against a strong hand, especially in the most popular form of the game, Texas hold’em.

Most players will have tales about how unlucky they have been in differing hands and at different times in tournaments. But it is the way players deal with these bad beats that will eventually determine how successful they will be at the game.

Online poker strategy can avoid bad beats to make a big dent in a player’s bankroll, and can affect the way a player plays the game. For example, you will generally see players go on tilt as a conclusion of suffering a bad beat. They may also verbally abuse the player who imposes the bad beat. In some cases will go after that player and try and make efforts to win their money back. All of these scenarios usually only lead to the player making further dents in their bankroll as a result of reckless play.

So through this online poker strategy you have to learn to be acquainted, disciplined and to control your emotions. Bad beats are just a part of the game, and you just have to accept the fact that even if you are a strong favorite to win any given hand, you will still lose to the occasional bad beat.

The most essential thing to summon into mind is that if you develop a sound playing online poker strategy and stick to this online poker strategy throughout, then the occasional bad beat will not stop you from making good long term profits from poker. Don’t make the mistake of criticizing other players and chasing losses as this will only do more harm than good.

One other point of online poker strategy worth mentioning is that if you find yourself going through a bad beat patch, agonizing adversely large number of bad beats; remember that your poker play is generally sound because you’re going into a lot of hands as the favorite. Consequently statistically you will win far more of these hands than you will lose in the long run.

And additionally of course, there will be some moments when you have some good fortune yourself and administer bad beats on your opponents, so they even themselves out in the long run. The benefit would be you would know the secret code to the system and wouldn’t lose money. You could use the online poker strategy to make a lot of money.

OFFICIAL IFP WORLD POKER CHAMPION!!!

IFP World poker champion

The International Federation of Poker(IFP) made history in poker news after launching its first World Championship in history, and the final table, or what they call “The Table” featured some amusing play from the word go. When all was said and done and it was down to two players, it was Raul Mestre the IFP World poker champion from Spain, matched up against Victoria Coren from the United Kingdom for the first place finish and the grand prize. IFP World poker championship was held between November 17-20, 2011 in two iconic locations in the city of London: EDF Energy London Eye & London County Hall.

Starting of IFP World Poker Championship!!

Play went on for 11 hours on Saturday, and it spotlights a starting field of 135 players who were ultimately taken down to only 9 final players, who made up the final table. This final table featured all types of players from across world, and presented 3 women, Sandra Naujoks (Germany), Marsha Waggoner (Australia), and Coren. The 1st place prize for the first IFP World poker Champion was an exciting $250k payday, and would also give them the bragging rights to say that they were the first ever IFP Champion.

Final Table of IFP World Poker Championship!!

The final table action started off with players from various countries including IFP World poker champion Raul Mestre (426k) from Spain, Igor Trafane (369k) from Brazil, Sandra Naujoks (167k) and Tim Reese (44k) from Germany, Takuo Serita (41k) and Kinichi Nakata (29k) from Japan, Victoria Coren (204k) from United Kingdom, Slavko Tomic (44k) came from Serbia, and Waggoner (32k) came from Australia. From those chip stacks begin the last final table, there was a wide range of starting stacks, and two of the bigger stacks were the ones who found themselves alive at the end of the day. Coren was highly combative in the early going, eliminating Kinichi Nakata and Tim Reese from the tournament within the first hour of the start of the tournament. She maintained this aggressive approach as she began to climb up the leaderboard to threaten chip leader and IFP World poker champion Raul Mestre. His heads-up opponent Victoria Coren had a right to argue she had been unlucky not to have gone one step further.

To separate down the last and final table action, all the remaining players was given a prize for their exclusive hard work and efforts by giving them watches from Perrelet Company. Perrelet was the sponsor of the event, and gave them a Perrelet Turbine watch. It’s a nice prize for any of them, particularly due to the fact that it has a value of around US $6500.

The action begin off soon, as Victoria Coren eliminated Kinichi and Tim in just 1st hour of play, and kept flying up the leader board all around the day. The action saw Takuo and Sandra eliminated in 7th and 6th places, respectively. The 2 players who finally made it to heads up play in Victoria and IFP World poker champion Raul Mestre then made 2 big knock outs when Victoria sent Waggoner home in 5th, and IFP World poker champion Raul Mestre sent Tomic home in 4th place. This left three players remaining, with IFP World poker champion Mestre holding 732k chips, Trafane holding 486k chips, and Coren holding 134k chips. Three handed play went on for three hours before the elimination finally came.

The biggest hand came when both Victoria and Igor Trafane got it all in with A-Q, but Victoria has spades. The flop fell with all spades and left Igor debilitate with only 14k in chips. Igor Trafane was then knocked out by IFP World poker champion Raul Mestre on the very next hand, which set up the match between Coren and Mestre.

IFP World poker championship

Here is a look at the final table payouts from the tournament:

1. Raul Mestre (Spain) — $250,000

2. Victoria Coren (UK) — $100,000

3. Igor Trafane (Brazil) — $50,000

4. Slavko Tomic (Serbia) — $25,000

5. Marsha Waggoner (Australia) — $20,000

6. Sandra Naujoks (Germany) — 17500

7. Takuo Serita (Japan) — 15,000

8. Tim Reese (Germany) — 12,500

9. Kinichi Nakata (Japan) — $10,000

IFP World poker champion begun up strong, but Victoria waited for her spots and finally latch on the chip lead from him. The 2 went back and forth for a good while, before Raul pushed all in, with Coren calling. Raul turned over pocket fives and was up against the A-J of Coren. IFP World poker champion Mestre held up though, and held a chip lead of 1.17 million to 180k. Coren put up a good fight to make the comeback, but IFP World poker champion Mestre eventually took it down when he had his A-5 up against the A-3 of Coren. In this poker news of IFP World poker champion Raul Mestre won it all, and took home the $250k prize, while his opponent Coren got a nice consolation prize of $100k.

Long Island, New York poker pro Daniel Santoro won his first World Poker Tour title and claimed $449,910 first-place prize at the WorldPoker Finals at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut which concluded on Tuesday 1st Nov 2011 after an eight hour 200-hand final table. This WPT winning of $449,910 gave a boost to WPT final winner Santoro’s earnings and doubled his life tournament earnings of $260,862.

However, for WPT final winner Santoro winning was not that easy. He had to put a tough fight with his opponents in order to win the WPT title. The final table comprised top professional poker players such as Andy Frankenberger; the WPT Player of the Year, Steven Brackesy; the former chip stack leader and Christian Harder; the renowned professional poker player.

Ultimately, it was Christian Harder who emerged as the runner up after a ferocious heads-up battle against WPT final winner Santoro, which went on for several hours.

Final Table Battle as played by WPT final winner Santoro

The final table saw an epic poker game where WPT final winner Santoro played very well and had the poker gods on his side when he really needed them. Santoro arrived at the final table third in chips 1,163,000, to sit behind chip leader Steven Brackesy (1,807,000) and Christian Harder (1,293,000).

Norwegian Eli Berg, who had started the final table in sixth place on 496,000 chips, was eliminated on the third hand of the day. Incredibly, just 10 hands later, another New Yorker, Andy Frankenberger, was out in fifth place after moving all-in following Harder’s re-raise. That pot gave Christian Harder the chip lead. The day’s initial chip leader Brackesy and Santoro got embroiled in a pre-flop raising battled that eliminated Brackesy in fourth place.

Brackesy was followed by Bob Carbone whose luck ran out soon after he moved all in while facing Santoro and he finished at third place. After knocking out Carbone in 3rd place with pocket aces vs. pocket 10s, Santoro entered heads-up with a 4-1 chip leader Christian Harder. Santoro had to survive a tough battle with Harder that saw the lead go back and forth a few times before WPT final winner Santoro finally prevailed to claim the $449,910 first prize.

Here’s how the final table shook down:

1. Daniel Santoro – $449,910
2. Christian Harder – $248,962
3. Bob Carbone – $166,271
4. Steven Brackesy – $129,816
5. Andy Frankenberger – $99,585
6. Eli Berg – $83,580

A 23 year old poker pro, WPT final winner Santoro has made inroads into both online poker and in live poker tournaments and had earned big winnings. Apart from poker, Santoro also invests his money in stock market and enjoys sports and playing music.