Learning to multi-table is important

 I think that too many people in poker fall for the hype that is in the game at this time. This then means that they end up playing the wrong form of poker. I believe that too many people are playing six max poker when they should really be playing full ring. If you lack skills as a poker player then you really should be reducing the number of hands that you play and not increasing them. The vast majority of people who attempt to play poker are not psychologically cut out to play the game or they simply haven’t got enough time to study the game in depth. Also if they have personality flaws linked to point number one then that can represent a very formidable obstacle to overcome.

So if these players want to make more money then they should do so by playing less hands and not more hands. You can only do this by playing full ring where you are correctly folding a far greater percentage of your hands and in many cases then 90% is close to being correct. When you play full ring then multi-tabling is far easier. You can play ten tables pretty easily in full ring and still have time for doing other stuff. This is especially the case if you have a style of play that reduces the number of flops that you see. This is what multi-tabling is all about because if you can successfully multi-table then you will dramatically add to your bottom line. Let us look at a hand where you could be playing ten tables all at once and it is folded around to the cut-off who raises to $1.75 in NL50.

You have Jc-10c on the button and now you have to decide what to do with the hand. If you were playing a single table then calling the raise is more of an option than if you are playing ten tables and I will explain why. If you call then unless one of the blinds re-raises then you are forced into playing post flop poker. This may be optimal if you have good reads on your opponent but you will often have to face marginal decisions on the post flop rounds. Let’s say that the flop comes Q-10-5 and your opponent c-bets. You call and the turn card is the 4c and they barrel again. You only have second pair with a mediocre kicker and now you don’t really know what to do. You are going to be spending time here trying to collate data but playing so many tables means that other tricky decisions may be happening elsewhere.

The more tables that you play then the more of these situations that you will face! So getting back to the previous hand then if I were playing 10-12 tables then I would be more apt to either fold or three bet this rather than just call. I think that this style of play is more conducive to playing more tables when your decision making processes are simpler. When you three bet to say $6 then you are simplifying the hand even though your risk-reward ratio isn’t great. With only $2.50 in the pot and you raising to $6 then you are doing several things with the hand. Firstly you are looking to win an immediate $2.50 and that is a very good result. But secondly you are speculating as well that you can win the hand by using the combined power of your hand strength and your position to perhaps win a huge pot.

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Edoardo Alescio Wins WPT Venice

When most people think about their first live tournament cash, they have fond memories of a low buy-in tournament, probably at their local casino, when they were able to just eek out a profit.  Its an exciting time, even if the cash is so tiny that the cost of food and drink that night makes the player a net loser.  Now imagine how Edoardo Alescio must feel.  He scored his first ever live tournament cash this weekend, not in some $60 shove fest, but in the €3,000 World Poker Tour (WPT) Venice Main Event.  By World Poker Tour standards, it was rather small with just 213 players registering, but its still the World Poker Tour and Alescio is now €175,000 richer.

Edoardo Alescio entered the six-handed final table in second place with 1,714,000 chips.  There was a clear divide between the haves and have nots at the table, with three players over a million chips (Michele Caroli led the way with over 2 million) and three players at half a million or under.  Here were the chip counts to start the day:

Michele Caroli 2,097,000 Edoardo Alescio 1,714,000 Andrea Benelli 1,143,000 Steve ODwyer 501,000 Alex Dovzhenko 480,000 Andrea Dato 461,000

Alescio started quickly, winning the first pot and taking a one million chip lead in less than an hour.  It was American Steve ODwyer who took the first pelt, though, eliminating Alex Dovzhenko in a race: ODwyers A-K outflopped Dovzhenkos 9-9.  Dovzhenko was out in 6th place, while ODwyer was right back in the match with a million chips.

That cushion lasted less than an hour, as in what would be a preview of a face-off wed see a lot of later, Alescio knocked him back down to near his final table starting stack.  Alescio continued to soar, growing his chip stack to over 3 million in the first two hours of play.  It looked like it would be a short day for all involved.

There was no quit in ODwyer, though.  Despite sinking lower, he kept up the fight, doubling up once through Andrea Benelli and then making a big move in a three-way hand.  Benelli moved all-in for his last 76,000 chips with K-T, ODwyer called with a dominated Q-T, and Michele Caroli called from the big blind with K-3.  The flop of 9-8-2 kept Benelli in the lead, but the turn was not so happy, as a Queen shifted the power to ODwyer.  Another Queen on the river sealed Benellis fate and he was gone in 5th place, while ODwyer climbed up to 1,743,000.

Just a few hands later, Andrea Dato moved all-in pre-flop for 249,000 with K-9 and ODwyer called with A-4.  Neither player improved through the river, which meant that Dato, the chip leader after Day 1A, was eliminated in 4th place and ODwyer moved into the chip lead.

From there, ODwyer looked like he was going to run away with the tournament, just like it appeared that Alescio would earlier.  His two Italian opponents couldnt make any good moves, both attempting big bluffs at exactly the wrong time.  They kept sinking while ODwyer kept rising.  Eventually, Alescio need to just start shoving, something he did in an astounding eight of ten hands at one point, and in none of those instances was he called.

Finally, about six hours after the start of the final table, Alescio was looked up on an all-in.  He committed all his chips pre-flop with A-Q and Caroli made the call with A-J (considering the hand and Alescios shoving frequency, it was a good play, just bad timing).  The community cards were all blanks and Caroli hit the rail in 3rd place.

It was down to the decorated ODwyer versus the devoid-of-live-cashes Alescio, with ODwyer holding about a 3-to-1 chip lead.  Put your money on ODwyer, right?  Not so fast.

ODwyer got it up to around a 5 million to 1 million chip lead, but then Alescio went on a tear.  He picked up about 600,000 in two hands combined by – what else – moving all-in pre-flop.  He then picked up another quarter million before taking down what was probably the most important pot of the tournament.  With the board reading Q-9-4-7 with two diamonds, ODwyer bet and Alescio went all-in, holding 6-7 of diamonds.  ODwyer made the call with Q-T, giving him top pair versus Alescios third pair and flush draw.  The river made Alescios flush, allowing him to double up to just over 4 million and regain the chip lead for the first time in hours.

He extended his lead over the next few hands before finally putting the nail in ODwyers poker coffin.  ODwyer was all-in pre-flop with A-7 and Alescio called him with pocket 5s.  The dealer laid out one of those yeeeaaahhh….nooooooo! flops, as he gave ODwyer a 7, but at the same time put down a 5 to give Alescio a set.  ODwyer couldnt get lucky after that and Edoardo Alescio had made his first live cash, just a little thing called the WPT Venice championship.

WPT Venice – Final Table Results

1.    Edoardo Alescio €175,000 2.    Steve ODwyer €95,530 3.    Michele Caroli €66,090 4.    Andrea Dato – €43,170 5.    Andrea Benelli €34,245 6.    Alex Dovzhenko €27,035

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Hawaii And Ohio Added To List Of Possible Online Gambling States

Online gambling has become one of the most popular discussions at water coolers around the country over the past couple of weeks. Reports have been surfacing in many states that lawmakers are considering online gambling regulations, and with each state that throws their hat into the ring, the discussions become louder and more defined at the water coolers. “We have been discussing this subject for months in our office,” said Marcel Newstreet, an Ohio resident. “It’s funny, we always talk about how just a couple of years ago, we had no casino gambling, and now it looks like we will have not only casinos, but online casinos as well. Ironic.” Newstreet’s puzzlement matches what many Americans are feeling these days. The online gambling discussion intensified when the Department of Justice issued an opinion released in December that reverses the federal government’s previous stand on Internet gambling. With that opinion, an entire nation turned their eyes towards the revenue possibilities of online poker and other casino games. Ohio and Hawaii are the latest two states where a push is being made for online poker. In Ohio, voters approved four casinos a couple of years ago. The casinos will be located in Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, and Toledo. The DoJ opinion has some Ohio lawmakers thinking bigger than just land-based casinos. “We’re exploring this topic,” said Dennis Berg, Ohio Lottery Commission interim director. “We want to be in the forefront of being able to generate revenue for the lottery commission. But it’s a policy decision that we will not make on our own.” In Hawaii, California-based US Digital Gaming has been lobbying legislators with presentations that describe the billions of dollars the state could gain by regulating online poker. The presentation is similar to others being shopped in dozens of states around the country. “They turn out to be really large numbers that can really benefit in funding essential services for the state of Hawaii,” said Digital Gaming’s executive vice president, Melissa Riahei. “It is a very significant sum. What we were doing is basically just informing the senators and the representatives of what’s going on across the country right now in the digital gaming world and what different states are doing.”


Isaac Haxton Might be Good at Poker

It’s like we’ve said time and time again, we don’t like to make flat-out statements about how good poker players are. Poker’s a complicated game, and even after years and years of winning, millions of hands played, the farthest we’ll go is to say someone be good at poker.

This week we’re bestowing that dubious honor on Isaac Haxton.

Interestingly it was the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure that first brought Haxton to our attention, and it’s the PCA that put him on our radar today.

The first entry on Haxton’s tournament record is an $861,789 runner-up finish in the 2007 PCA main event.

Since then he’s earned roughly $2.7 million playing live poker tournaments and he’s looking to build on that big-time today in the Bahamas as he leads the final 16 in the $100,000 buy-in Super High Roller event.

The Backstory

When you find players excelling in poker at a young age more often than not they excelled at other mental athletics as well. Such was the case for young Isaac Haxton.

Born in New York and raised in Syracuse, Haxton was the son of an English professor and started playing chess at four years of age.

Haxton was too cool for school, or at least the fifth grade.  

Like some sort of Tenenbaum replicant Haxton skipped the fifth grade and was absorbed by Magic: The Gathering by age ten. Swept up in the wave of MTG players making the switch to poker, Haxton was making trips to the Turning Stone Casino in New York as a high-school senior. It wasn’t long after that he found online poker.

Haxton started winning and, using the knack for gaming excellence he had acquired early on, applied himself to poker in a big way.

The Evidence

Isaax Haxton has been providing evidence that he might be good at poker for years, starting chiefly with the aforementioned $861k PCA score five years ago.

As  we reported all those years ago, Haxton ran extremely bad to have transferred his winnings from his PokerStars account to Neteller. That’s because the day after the funds hit his Neteller account, the online payment processor’s funds were seized by the Department of Justice and its owners arrested.

It took many months for Haxton to recoup the money, but luckily for him he went on to earn another $214,000 before the end of 2007. That mini-heater included a final table at the WSOP, and extended straight into 2008 with four more World Series cashes and a six-figure payday at the EPT London High Roller event.

Haxton’s biggest score to date came at the 2009 WSOP when he finished second to Vitaly Lunkin in the $40,000 40th Anniversary event. Haxton earned $1,168,568.

In 2010 Haxton fared well with two more six-figure finishes, winning a $2,500 Venetian Deep Stack event and finishing ninth in the $25k WSOP Six-Max Championship.

His most recent windfall before today’s PCA Super High Roller came in the way of a third-place finish in the $100,000 buy-in event at the Bellagio’s Five Diamond series in Las Vegas. That result earned him $581,806.

And now we treat you to the photo reel of Isaax Haxton we’ve compiled over the years.

Haxton used to have long hair, like really long.   Looking very Jim Morrison at the 2007 WSOP.   2008 and the hair remains.   2009 was the first time we saw Haxton 2.0   After a while it just started to look normal.   One year ago in the Bahamas.  


Blom Takes the PCA Super High Roller

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) is the first big event on the poker calendar for 2012. As usual it is being held at the luxurious Atlantis Resort & Casino on Paradise Island in The Bahamas. The $100,000 Super High Roller has just been completed and it was a fitting beginning to the New Year.

The final table of eight players was the most star studded one seen in a long time. The poker fans have been dreaming of such a table at the WSOP Main Event for years. At the top of the table was Galen Hall, the winner of the 2011 PCA Main Event, hoping to create history at the Atlantis with back to back wins. Jonathan Duhamel, having put aside the home robbery by his ex-girl friend, was in the second spot. The veteran Daniel Negreanu, the leader in the all time live tournament earnings, was in third spot. Viktor Blom was next. As Isildur 1, Blom has ruled online poker rooms, but has yet to make a mark in live tournaments, where he has only one cash to his name. He finished 16th at the 2011 WSOP Europe Main Event. Dan Shak was the last player with the million plus chips. The last three were Scott Seiver, Mike “Timex” MacDonald and Humberto Brenes.

Brenes was the first to get eliminated, followed by McDonald and Seiver. All this while, Blom was grinding away making small but steady gains. Of the biggest names Negreanu was the first to go. His live tournament earnings will go up by a minuscule $250k. Soon after Duhamel was eliminated, Blom seized the top spot and things were tight from then on. Hall went next and Shak lost to Blom in the heads up.

It was a different Blom at the PCA Super High Roller. The aggressive raises were replaced by a patient waiting game. There is a list somewhere of top class poker players who have not won a major event. That list will now have one name less. Blom is a member of Team PokerStars, the sponsors of the event and this is what the PokerStars blog says. Famous among fans and infamous among the media for his reticence, Blom nearly escaped after his victory without saying a word. Instead, he gave a rare on-camera interview during which he said, in part, “It feels good to succeed.”


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