Chris Iaquinta's blog

Here’s some rather unfortunate news. Binion’s, home to one of if not the most famous poker rooms in the world, has announced that they will be closing down the hotel side of their business due to the crummy Vegas economy. Binion’s was the birthplacle of the World Series of Poker and is where many of the legendary players of today got their poker careers started.

“This is a result of this brutal economy that has affected Las Vegas," said Lisa Robinson, a spokesperson for the hotel. “We looked at every aspect of our operations, and the hotel rooms are no longer competitive in this market.”

Thankfully, it appears that the casino and the poker room will stay open with no sign that they’ll be closing anytime soon. The entire building, complete with hotel, opened up in downtown Las Vegas all the way back in 1951 and didn’t host the first ever WSOP until 19 years later in 1970. Every subsequent WSOP was held within the storied walls until both the hotel and the rights to the WSOP were bought up by Harrah’s Entertainment in 2004, with the WSOP then moved to the Rio to accommodate larger fields.

However, Binion’s is currently owned by TLC Casino Enterprises, which it acquired for $32 million back in January 2008. Anyone that’s booked a reservation in one of the 365 rooms at Binion’s before December 14th will still be able to stay at the hotel, however afterwards all room requests will be forwarded to another TLC property, the Four Queens.

It really is a shame to see a piece of Binion’s go under, heck, even I got my poker start there, back when the poker room looked like you’d expect a card shark’s paradise to look like before the poker boom. You can still enjoy the best parts of Binion’s though, namely the card room, and I highly recommend doing so during your next trip to Vegas.

UIGEA Delayed Six Months

Poker players and industry members around the country are rejoicing after the announcement that the Treasury and Federal Reserve would be delaying the implementation of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act regulations for no less than six months. The original deadline for the UIGEA was December 1st and would have forced banks to comply with regulations set by the act. A request for a delay was submitted by the PPA and a number of other associations including the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and American Greyhound Track Operators Association, which now approved pushes the deadline back to June 1st, 2010.

“The [Poker Players Alliance] is extremely pleased with the decision by the Federal Reserve and Treasury to grant the six month extension. This is a great victory for poker, but an even greater victory for advocates of good and fair public policy,” said PPA Chairman and former Senator Alfonse D’Amato. “These additional months are critical to provide legislators time to clarify UIGEA and pass legislation to license and regulate poker early next year. It is our hope that another extension would be granted should the deadline approach before these pieces of legislation can be passed.”

Players are hopeful that the delay will allow for new poker legislation to be heard, such as the hearing on December 3rd held by Rep. Barney Frank, which will start the process on two poker-related bills he introduced back in May. One bill seeks to legalize and regulate the online gaming industry, while the other asks the UIGEA deadline to be pushed back all the way to Dec. 1st, 2010.

“It shows signs from this administration that the UIGEA, as it is drafted, is not sound public policy and that it is worthy of further review,” said PPA Executive Director John Pappas. “This also puts the burden back on Congress to say, hey, we’ve delayed this, it’s up to you guys to clarify this law. It really puts Congress on notice to do something.”

We often stress in our columns here the importance of patience and focus while playing highly competitive poker, but what one player accomplished recently goes so far above and beyond the average threshold for multitasking that he set a world record in the process. Online poker pro Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, while passing the time waiting for the EPT Grand Final event he was attending in Monte Carlo to start, decided to play in 62 online sit-n-go tournaments within the span of an hour.

Grospellier registered for 62 turbo-style SNG events, each with a $6.50 buy-in, and spread the games out among four widescreen monitors. At one point he was playing as many as 30 games simultaneously, frantically moving from one window to the next while making split second decisions to either fold, call or raise.

In order to qualify for the world record, ElkY had to post an overall profit at the end of 62 games, a mark he just barely set by coming in 1st place in the final SNG game he played. Overall, he nabbed just $23.67 for his efforts, but that was good enough to obtain the new world record.

Now personally I get headaches from trying to play matrix events (four tables at once) online, and I can’t even fathom playing in more than six at a time. Just wanted to let you all know that even poker world records aren’t going to be an easy way to get yourself into the history books.

They say that practice makes perfect, but I’m a firm believer that being a student of whatever your trying to master is the fastest way to reaching your goal. Luckily for poker players, there exists a sea of helpful instructional materials to help you along your poker path, whether you’re trying to bust your buddies’ home game or take down a major tournament.

So which training methods are best for you? Over my next three posts I’m going to share with you the three best ways of learning poker, and explain which kinds of players should use specific tools and ignore the others. Lets get started.

Books

Before the poker boom, there was a little book called “The Super System”, written by Texas Dolly himself, Doyle Brunson. Considered the unofficial bible of poker by the majority of the poker community at the time, “The Super System” was the best textbook available anywhere when it came to playing against the types of players you were likely to find in a card room before thousands of 20 year olds flooded the scene.

For the most part now though, the original Super System isn’t nearly as effective against today’s young, fast action players as it was when originally written. Instead, there now exists a giant library of books that cover everything from math-based play to tells and everything in-between. Here’s what I recommend:

• Harrington on Hold’em:
By Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie

Written by 1995 world champion Dan Harrington, “Harrington on Hold’em” is widely considered to be the best of the new breed of poker books. Not only has Dan won the WSOP, he also made the final table back to back in 2003 and 2004, which featured two of the biggest fields in Main Event history.

Unlike books by players/authors like Phil Hellmuth, which include a lot of personal commentary, “Harrington on Hold’em” is very straightforward and wastes no time hitting you with big strategic theories and gamesmanship. Co-written by Bill Robertie, a backgammon expert, this book is ideal for players that enjoy diverse hand discussions and poker scenarios that make the reader really think about what’s going on in the lesson.

Considered a very conservative player, Harrington likes to focus on teaching his students how to make the right move at the right time and how to use smart, strict hand selection to capitalize on loose, aggressive players. Each chapter begins with a general discussion on the chosen topic, and then moves towards situational poker problems that tasks readers to try and work out a solution. Afterwards, Harrington gives his opinion on how he would’ve handled the scenario.

A second volume, one that focuses on endgame strategy, has also been released, and pairing the two together will be more than enough reading material for any one player to sift through.

• Kill Everyone:
By Less Nelson, Tysen Streib and Kim Lee

The follow-up to the very popular “Kill Phil” book, “Kill Everyone” moves away from the long-ball style of play primarily taught for use against expert players, and instead focuses more on short term tournament play.

Refreshingly, “Kill Everyone” makes a point to mostly focus on two specific segments of tournament play, the early game and the endgame. Basically, you are taught how to quickly accumulate chips early on in a tournament, and then how to change gears and adopt a more “move-in” style of play.

The trio of writers here understand better than most that far too many tournament players will let themselves be blinded off while waiting for top premium hands, when in many cases they should be moving in, forcing action, and focusing on making it to the final table instead of just surviving to the later rounds.

Although some of the strategies taught require a fair command of poker knowledge, most players will be able to benefit heavily from this very straightforward manual geared towards playing a “I’m here to win” style of tournament poker.

• Every Hand Revealed
By Gus Hansen

You can normally learn more from your bad plays than your correct plays in poker, and this is the method of which poker pro Gus Hansen elects to teach you with his book. Rather than being a straightforward “When the pot odds are right, call” type poker editorial, Hansen instead dedicates his entire work to recalling and discussing his plays during a live tournament.

Hansen is known for walking away from a table occasionally and speaking into a tape recorder. Until now no one ever knew just what the heck he was saying into that thing. With “Every Hand Revealed”, Gus lets the reader in on his mindset during almost every hand he played during the event, commenting on gut feeling, tells, emotionally dealing with bad beats, making the wrong play at the right time, and other interesting insights that can only come from one of the most eccentric pros of our time.

Hansen is also notorious for changing gears and playing styles on a moments notice, which is explains and comments on throughout his narrative. On top of all this, the book is just flat out interesting to read. Instead of being feed dead panned poker tips, readers are instead given a light-hearted retelling of a real player in a real poker tournament. There’s almost no better way to learn.

• Ace on the River
By Barry Greenstein

Most poker authors stay away from the super high-level and high-limit strategy’s that are usually reserved for poker experts in order to avoid alienating too much of their potential readership. Barry Greenstein apparently could care less about avoiding such topics, as “Ace on the River” is aimed almost directly at established players who are either attempting to make a living at poker, or at the very least are competing in high-limit games.

Outside of professional game theory, Greenstein also openly discusses maintaining a disciplined lifestyle that he feels is necessary for pros to adhere to, from staying away from other types of gambling like sports betting, to even how to manage your attitude and family life while still finding the time to grind out a living.

First time poker players will have no idea what Greenstein is discussing in this book, but I strongly believe in having a wide range of tools to draw upon in your poker workbench, which is why I highly recommend that even novice level players give this one a chance. If nothing else, it will help you decide just how serious of a poker player you want to become.

Wrapping it up

Now that we’ve talked about some of the best poker books out there, the question is, are poker books right for you? Most poker players play the game casually in their spare time and don’t have the opportunity to thumb through an extensive 300+ page book, especially one that requires them to focus on and remember strategy. For those looking for a quick dose of poker tips, you should consider turning to poker DVD’s and even poker clinics, both of which I’ll be discussing in future blogs.

But, for avid poker players that are willing to really put the time in, you simply can’t compare DVD’s and clinics to the amount of information you can absorb from one of the four books listed here. Read 10 pages a day or a chapter a week, and start to slowing implement the techniques you learn into your future poker sessions. You won’t regret it.

See you next time!

When World Poker Tour Enterprises announced almost two months ago that the company was facing dire economic strain, one of their upcoming aces in the hole that they hoped would dig them out of the recession was their China edition of their World Poker Tour TV show. Now at last, the show was arrived.

WPT China debuted on China’s Nanjing Entertainment Television channel and is already making history, as the program represents the first time a government-sanctioned poker tournament has been aired nationwide in the country. The series has 16 planned events to take place within China, but most interestingly enough, the main game of the tournaments will not be Texas Hold’em, but rather Traktor Poker.

Basically, Traktor Poker is a cross between bridge and gin, where teams of either two or four players play against each other. Traktor is dealt using two full decks complete with jokers, and is actually considered an official sport by the CLSAC (China Leisure Sports Administration).

Filming has already been completed on the entire first season and four tournaments of season two, with the first episode appearing this month in the Jiangsu province. Broadcasting will then be expanded into additional provinces in the months to come. The grand finale will be played in Beijing in June.

As an avid WPT fan, I’m definitely on the bandwagon of supporting any and all things WPT, and so should any international players that have the ability to watch the WPT China episodes. If nothing else, you get to see what team-based poker is like! Check it out!

I recently posted an entry explaining my dislike of many of the aspects of the new method of showcasing the WSOP Final Table that ESPN undertook this year. Well, apparently I’m not alone, as a number of pokers best and brightest have voiced their criticisms of the program as well.

In an interview with Card Player TV, Mike Matusow explained, “If I was a fan, it’d be a big letdown. As far as that, I think it was a failure. As far as Harrah’s and ESPN, I think it was a major success.”

He’s right on the success part when it comes to ESPN. The final table program garnered 46% more viewers than in 2007, despite the fact that fans had to wait four months after the rest of the Main Event had ended in order to watch it. But for purists, it’s the content that matters, not the hype, and the fact that the final table, which ran for 17 hours total (the longest in WSOP history), was edited down into a two hour elimination montage, continues to be severely disappointing.

“They just never showed any hands,” said Matusow. “They just showed everyone’s bust-out hand.”

Over 274 hands were played at the final table, 23 of them made it to air. With just nine players at the table, that means that almost half of the hands shown were the ones that knocked players out of the tournament. And in an almost criminal fashion, only two hands total were shown during the final heads-up action, when in fact over 105 were played between winner Peter Eastgate and runner-up Ivan Demidov.

Chris Ferguson has come out and said, “The one glaring omission was that the heads up lasted two hands on television. It really didn’t show the entire battle between these two great players.”

The Mouth, as usual, also had an opinion on the lack of heads-up footage, saying, “It’s a shame the rest of the American public didn’t get to see that. It would’ve been so sick to watch.”

With the next WSOP still over half a year away, we’ll have to wait and see if Harrah’s and ESPN decide to stick with their new formula. Hopefully, they heed the advice of the pros and make some important and needed changes.

For anyone looking to combine two fine sports in one vacation its worth taking a look at the next stop on the PokerNews World Cup roster.

The next event will be held atop the Austrian Alps in Saalbach-Hinterglemm in a five-star luxury ski resort, the Alpine Palace. The 2009 PokerNews Cup Alpine is set to feature of total of eight events running through March 21st-28th, with a €1,500 Main Event as the priority attraction.

PokerNews hopes to attract players with the promise of over €400,000 in prize packages that include private helicopter transfer from the airport to the resort, main event entry, hotel accommodations, ski and spa passes, and spending money for their pleasure travels.

"It is our aim to take poker tournaments to the next level by providing qualifiers and guests with more than just a poker tournament," says PokerNews Ltd CEO, Damon Rasheed. "As such, PokerNews is delighted to have the next leg of the PokerNews Cup held at The Alpine Palace, the most exclusive venue to ever host a poker tournament."

My only question is whether anyone can handle an 8am skilift after an all night table or if I should simply look at this as a very cold place to play poker?

If you’re like me, you’re a fan of the Game Show Network (GSN) hit poker show High Stakes Poker because it showcases some of the best cash game players in the world, all playing super high no-limit poker with their own money at risk. Pots regularly get up into the hundreds and thousands of dollars, and it’s not unusual for someone like Doyle Brunson to buy into the game for a cool $1 million.

For the fifth season though, the minimum buy in for players will be raised. As soon as the first cards are dealt in the new season, everyone must put up at least two hundred thousand dollars to even be able to sit down at the table. The previous buy in limit for the other four seasons was set at $100,000, though due to player demand, the buy in was raised for a short period to $500,000 towards the tail end of the year.

“High Stakes Poker, by a wide margin, has become a must-see on Game Show Network for poker players and poker fans all over the world,” said Henry Orenstein, an executive producer of the show.

Production for the new season will commence on Dec. 19th – 21st, and the game will continue to take place at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with GSN in filming their fifth season of High Stakes Poker,” said Brett Kellerman, the chief operating officer for the Golden Nugget. “It is a perfect fit for the players, the fans, and the Golden Nugget.”

Just how big could the play get with the new table minimum? If past seasons have been any indication, there is going to be small fortunes won and lost during each episode. Just make sure to check your local listings for the start of the fifth season of High Stakes Poker.

With all my hobbies, I have become an avid collector of memorabilia and one of a kind items, poker included. Unique poker items though can be hard to come by, but thanks to Harrah’s, it looks like myself and other poker player across the globe will get the opportunity to grab some great World Series of Poker (WSOP) items.

Over 30 items are being placed into eBay auctions, with the crème a la crème being a very special poker table, complete with LED and blue-glass lighting, which was used to host the final table for both the 2007 and 2008 WSOP Main Events. The table was manufactured by Diamond Tables of Las Vegas. The starting bid for the table is $25,000, and also includes free shipping to anywhere in the continental U.S.

For those with smaller wallets, you can find relatively inexpensive items such as decks of cards used at the final table for as little as $50 (the price the card auctions started at), and even the dealer button used in the televised event. The winner of the dealer button will also receive a special certificate of authenticity signed by WSOP Commissioner Jeffery Pollack.

Whether you’re looking for the exclusive Milwaukee’s Best Light neon poker sign that hung above the WSOP poker set or one of a dozen “main table” felts, there should be an item to grab everyone’s attention.

Better hurry though, as many auctions end within’ a day. Happy hunting!

By now you’ve probably at the very least seen some highlights from last Tuesdays ESPN WSOP Final Table event. I was able to watch the whole thing from beginning to end in my cabin aboard the Norwegian Star during my WPT poker cruise that I was on all last week. From the opening moments to the end credits it was obvious that ESPN was trying to go for something very different here and take a chance at doing the impossible, making poker a spectator sport.

Personally, I didn’t really get a good vibe from the whole production. Having an auditorium full of screaming fans didn’t exactly seem appropriate when you realize that the only action any of these spectators are going to see (since they can’t see the player’s hole cards) are the poker players pushing in chips or folding their hand. Not very exciting in its own right, in fact it’s down right boring. Poker in its nature is a very laid back activity, played for the most part in silent card rooms with few distractions. It’s not quite as mentally taxing as say chess, but there are numerous comparisons between the two that you can draw, and try to imagine a chess match that was televised with the same amount of over-the-top voice over and hype that the WSOP Final Table was. It just doesn’t make for a good fit.

Part of the reason I don’t believe this idea will ever be used again is because the players themselves were almost painfully boring. Despite the WSOP’s best intentions, these guys were not the all-stars that we were made to believe they would become in the months leading up to the final table event, and much like any other pro sporting event, without having someone to root for, and without having a great personality to watch (like a Phil Hellmuth or Daniel Negraneau), it was hard to stay emotionally invested with the show.

You can’t blame the poker players either, they were placed in a impossible, emotionally charged situation that was light-years different from any previous final table experience they may have had, and many of the “November 9” were too busy sweating bullets and worried about looking dumb on TV instead of providing compelling table talk or showing any kind of emotion at all that was worth watching.

For me, the final nail in the coffin was when Peter Eastgate finally eliminated Ivan Demidov in heads up play. The 22yr Eastgate had just won $9 million in cash, became the youngest player to ever win the WSOP Main Event, and he didn’t even crack a smile. Imagine watching the Super Bowl and when the winning team’s kicker makes a last minute field goal to secure the victory, he just walks off the field without celebrating. It would quickly ruin millions of viewer’s experience of the event, and Peter Eastgate’s zombie-like expression served as a cherry on top of why poker just shouldn’t be treated like a UFC type sporting event.

We have yet to find out just how many viewers tuned in to watch the final table, but regardless of the numbers I highly doubt that the production which was months in the making lived up in ESPN’s eyes to all the hype and time and money they spent trying to turn poker into something it isn’t. Here’s hoping that for 2009 we can look forward to the return of classic poker television.

If you're like me, one of the first big things to come out of the poker boom that really got me hooked on poker 24/7 was the World Poker Tour (WPT) TV show. Whether it was the charm of commentators Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patton or the shows ability to turn no-name amateurs into instant celebrities, I still to this day make sure that every episode of the WPT makes it way to my DVR.

Unfortunately, the WPTE (World Poker Tour Enterprises), the parent company of the WPT, has not been having a great economic year.

Third-quarter revenue for the company is down 39% to $2.7 million, almost half that of last years $4.4 million. The company sites a decrease in domestic television license fees and lower domestic sponsorship fees as the reason.

The first casualty of the WPTE financial hardships will be the WTP-branded online gaming website, which is in the process of being shut down for good. To try and recover from their decline, WPTE President and CEO Steve Lipscomb has announced plans to expand their reach into the Chinese market, as well as produce a new poker TV show for the Fox Sports Network, which will include 13 one-hour episodes.

No word on how/if this is going to affect their main WPT TV show, so die hard fans like myself should keep their fingers crossed that one of the biggest shows that put TV poker on the map will continue to live to fight another day.

Buy the dip and get your home game buddies ready, the World Series of Poker finale is coming up!

Final-table play starts this Sunday, November 9th and will finish up on Monday. For the first time ever though, the coverage of the final table will air on ESPN just one day after the last hand is dealt and a champion is crowned. This is a welcome change from previous years where viewers, most of whom already had learned online who had won the Main Event, had to wait a full month before viewing the coverage. It never really made any sense to me. Would you still watch the Super Bowl if you knew four weeks ago who had won?

If you haven’t been following the WSOP this year, the Main Event began in July with a field of 6,884 players. Play continued until nine players were left, and they were quickly dubbed the “November Nine”, the ones who would return to the Rio hotel in Vegas this weekend to play for the $9 million dollar first place prize.

Producers for the telecast expect to have about 16 hours worth of footage to comb through once the event is over, and they will have just one day to transform that into a cohesive two-hour package for the viewing audience on Tuesday. Play will begin on noon Sunday and will continue until the final two competitors remain. Then on Monday at midnight, the two finalists will return to play heads-up until just one of them is left. Hard to imagine that if heads-up play runs long, the production crew will have just a handful of hours to edit and finalize the package. But, I agree it’s a needed step in the right direction of poker broadcasting.

Personally I can’t wait to prop up my feet in the poker room aboard the Norwegian Star cruise liner and view a piece of poker history. Check your local listings and don’t forget to tune in to ESPN on Tuesday!

Last week, students attending the University of Nevada Las Vegas were given a special treat when famed poker and blackjack expert Andy Bloch stopped by the campus for a lecture on the life of a professional gambler and card counter.

Bloch, who first gained notoriety as a member of the infamous MIT Blackjack Team, relived some of his stories during his card-counting days during the 1980’s, 1990’s, and into the 21st century. He also delved into the realism of card counting as portrayed in such movies as the recent hit “21”, starring Kevin Spacy.

Bloch also discussed trade secrets of the MIT card-counting team, such as common hand-signals the group would use to communicate with each other without alerting the casino security staff, and even broke down the intricacies of how much to tip a dealer so that you could give off the illusion that you were merely random tourist, not a professional gambler.

Certain scenes from “21” were then showed to the audience, which Bloch would dissect and critique based on realism on what parts were true to his real life experiences, and which were movie drama that were added in for extra effect.

Afterwards, Bloch moved on to discussions of his career as a professional poker player and gave insights into his self-admitted analytical style of play.