I talked to a few of my friends at the tournament to get the truth on the robbery.

In reports, masked men armed with guns and machetes rushed mid-day Saturday into the casino at the Berlin Grand Hyatt hotel trying to steal about €240,000 in entry fees.

My friends said they heard no guns and saw no machetes being held by the robbers. In fact, a bunch of the poker players didn’t even come in contact with the robbers, who were down the hall at the tournament registration area.

Here’s the scene from behind the tournament registration area, which you can see one of the robbers getting caught by a casino official, who releases him/her when another bandit threatens him with what looks like a rope stand — and definitely not like a gun or machete.

Here’s video of the poker room as the robbery is taking place:

In case you’re wondering, when play resumed tournament directors offered players the option to take their chips back in any active hand and declare it dead. Also, there’s no indication that any prize money is being withheld from any of the tournaments.

Here’s the statement from tournament organizers:

“Yesterday at approximately 2:15 p.m., an armed robbery took place at the European Poker Tour (EPT) event in Berlin. Nobody was seriously injured.

No shots were fired and the suspects quickly fled after a security guard intervened. The police investigation so far has shown that the suspects had a handgun and a machete. Contrary to tabloid reports, no Kalashnikov assault rifles or hand grenades were used. The suspects did not enter the tournament area and the money taken was substantially less than what has been reported.”

There’s a mini-revolution I’ve noticed going around the tournament circuit. Some struggling players are turning to psychologists, or mindset coaches as they are calling themselves, to improve their games.

It’s worked for Antonio Esfandiari, Josh Arieh and Gavin Smith — and many poker players are beginning to swear by their mindset coach, Sam Chauhan.

Here’s an article from Chauhan.

The mindset coach isn’t new. Professional golfers have used sports psychologists to improve their games for years. But they’re starting to pop up in the poker world — and they’re making tons of money.

The problem is, there’s nothing they teach and there’s nothing in the above article you don’t already know or haven’t already heard.

I don’t know how these guys pay money for an hour of “you can do it” and “believe in yourself” interspersed with tips like “stay positive and avoid tilt.”

Poker can be a tough game, especially the tournament circuit. You can invest 20 hours into a tournament and get bad-beated at the bubble and lose your mind. Sometimes it’s hard, and gut-wrenching.

But to me, Chauhan’s mindset coaching is a bunch of crap.

It’s no secret that you play better poker when your confidence level is high. that if you believe you are going to win, you’ll fare better than someone with low game-esteem levels.

If you need a mindset coach to point out the obvious, mail me a check for $1,000 and I’ll send you a special compact disc recording of my tips to help you achieve your maximum potential.

I started playing poker with friends, hanging out, drinking pints and making wild five-bets on the river.

Poker has always been a social game for me, so when I started, I was always generous with my winnings. If I won, I’d buy the beverages, or if I took an exceptionally large pot off a friend, I’d let him have some back. I just played for fun.

But when I started to play for real money, I found that the courtesy I extended to my friends transferred over to the tables.

With a larger stack, I’d call all-ins with garbage. If I sucked out on someone, I’d donk off chips back to them. And I wouldn’t pick on the people to my left and right because we struck up such good conversation.

I like to think I’m a nice guy, but nice guy just doesn’t work in this game.

So a year after picking up poker, I dedicated myself to being a jerk, not in behavior but when it came to winning money, I made a decision to extract every chip I could from my opponents — while still being a nice guy at the table.

For some people, like me, this is harder than imagined. You’re sitting at a table, within a few inches of the people left and right from you. They’re splendid people and now, your job is to crush their spirits.

If you’re a decent human being, then you’ll most likely feel tinges of guilt when you start taking a person’s hard-earned wages. Watching them stand up and walk away with their heads down or even worse, watching them throw a tantrum.— it takes a toll at first.

At some point you have to draw a line. And sometimes, it’s the difference between a winning and losing session. This is a brutal game. They knew the consequences when they sat down.

Resist the urge to pity people. Naturally, when you win, it pisses people off. But if you don’t frustrate people, you aren’t playing this game correctly.

Viktor Blom, the young Swede rumored to be high-stakes online player Isildur1, was shown in a hand on ESPN during the television network’s coverage of the WSOP-Europe main event.

Here, Blom ships his huge stack to an even bigger stack, on a paired board.

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Isildur1 is known for his huge river bets, constantly putting pressure on his opponents. Here Blom puts pressure on his opponent, though it’s not much, considering his opponent has trips.

I know it’s only one hand, but now, I’m almost sure they’re the same guy.

So I cashed in a recent freeroll and hit the tables a few nights ago. I had just 88 cents, barely enough to sit down at the $.02/$.04 tables at Betsson.

For those unaware, read about my challenge here.

When I got myself in this situation before, I was losing my one buy-in and having to start from scratch in the freerolls.

But tonight, I sat down, posted my blind and on the very first hand, I got lucky when I turned two pair and cracked aces doubling my bankroll.

I immediately stood up and went to to the next table, where I posted my blind and flopped trip threes on an unraised pot. With a flush draw on the board, I made pot-sized bets on the flop and on the turn and was called by a player with a small pocket pair. I waited until the big blind was to my right, then I stood up.

Now, a lot of people will look down on this method and there’s no doubt I’ve done what I would consider a pretty rough hit-and-run in two straight hands.

But when you’ve got a tiny bankroll, it’s best to cut your losses, and your gains. As your bankroll grows, there’s nothing more important than getting enough buy-ins to overcome the natural variance in poker. And it only takes one cooler to send you back to the play chips.

As a side note, I’ve been playing more live and online with my full bankroll and I’m doing well, so I’ve been neglecting this challenge. It’s pretty frustrating to do well in high-stakes tournaments and mid-level cash games, then struggle at $.02/$.04.

But it reminds me and it should reiterate to you that bankroll management is one of the most important parts of building a strong poker game.

I had a post recently about the largest televised pot between Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey, and I remembered that it wasn’t technically the biggest.

A couple of years ago, there was this $1.2 million pot between French high-stakes pro David Benyamine and Guy Laliberte, a self-made billionaire and founder of Cirque du Soleil.
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I know it’s a disappointing ending to an exciting hand. As you now know, Laliberte let Benyamine off the hook and raked in a $238,900 pot. No run it twice. No rabbit hunting.

After he gets called, Benyamine tells another player he just wanted to gamble — and that’s what he did. And as someone familiar with Benyamine’s game, I can tell you that he’s put his money in worse spots over the years.

It’s a curious deal from Laliberte, who reminds everyone that a million dollars is a mere pittance to him, which makes me wonder what he’s doing there in the first place.

Assuming everyone there is comfortable playing for those stakes, I don’t see why this deal is made.

So what do you think, loyal blog readers? Would you have proposed the deal? Would you, as Benyamine, accepted it?

It’s happened. The enigmatic Swede is back at the tables, much to the delight of poker players across the globe.

He's back.

In the last three days, Isildur1 has won more than $1.6 million, including about $451,000 off nemesis Brian Hastings — who controversially teamed up with Brian Townsend to take $4 million from Isildur1 in December.

So far, Isildur1 is playing a lot of $300/$600 pot-limit Omaha and $200/$400 no-limit hold’em, not far from the $500/$1,000 games we were so used to seeing him play toward the end of last year.

After being spotted struggling at the lower stakes games a few days ago, it’s pretty obvious Isildur1 has found a backer — someone willing to stake him to take on the pros who thinks Isildur1 has an edge on them.

Whatever the case, I’m glad he’s back, the poker world is just much more interesting with him in it.

If you’ve played more than 400,000 hands in this game, then you’ve probably considered, at one time, subscribing to an online poker training site, or getting a coach.

There’s big money in poker, and a lot of people are more than willing to give up large amounts of cash to learn secrets from professional coaches.

But sometimes, those secrets aren’t so profitable. And those supposed elite players are just scam artists.

Take Jason Ho, who on the surface, seemed to be a competent player. He had his own Web site and was promoting his services as a instructor, claiming to have earned more than $1 million in 2008 in cash games. He was also one of the coaches at StoxPoker, a respected online poker training site that specializes in low- to mid-level stakes games.

But, late last month, people started speaking up on the StoxPoker forums, saying Ho’s lessons had a far from positive effect on their games.

Post after post revealed negative experiences with Ho, including a few where Ho convinced players to join him in Macau for private lessons, charging them a $7,000 fee while providing less than seven hours of coaching. Another one of his students claimed Ho sold him a $2,000 poker guide resulting in that player losing $5,000 over 400,000 hands.

After the complaints, StoxPoker recently announced Ho is no longer with the training site, and says it won’t reimburse or take responsibility for Ho’s actions, shifting blame to his students.

The poker site is right, to a degree. Most of Ho’s biggest rip-offs weren’t done through the site, he did most of his scamming through his private lessons. And his story should forever remain as a cautionary tale to anyone considering a poker coach.

But StoxPoker perpetuated Ho’s reputation and should, at least, recognize its influence on poker players. The people who got duped into paying Ho thousands of dollars were mostly StoxPoker subscribers — and they got screwed because the site didn’t properly research Ho before making him one of its coaches.

The lesson here is: Be careful out there. There’s people in poker who want to take your money, both on and off the table.

A while ago, I noticed that whenever I was playing online, I had at least one distraction. Whether I’m watching the television, listening to iTunes, reading some newspaper articles or playing other tournaments.

While it kept me stimulated and satisfied my attention deficit, it was a major leak on my game.

Take this science experiment as an example:

A group of people were split up and half were given a two-digit number to remember the other half were given a seven-digit number to remember. Each person was then instructed to walk down a hall to another room.

As they walked to the next room, they were stopped by someone, offering them to pick a snack of either chocolate cake or a bowl of fresh fruit. Overwhelmingly, the people who had to remember the seven-digit number chose the fatty chocolate cake. The people with the two-digit number wrestled with their choice, then picked the fruit bowl.

It seems the people who had to remember seven digits had the rational part of their brain bogged down with memorization, so much so, they didn’t have the mental power to overcome the temptation of the chocolate cake.

It’s that same part of the brain most utilized when you’re playing poker. In order to make the most intelligent decisions, you need to be free from distractions, and let your mind focus on the task at hand.

When I’m watching the television, I’m not watching my opponents and I’m not taking note of their tendencies.

In mid-to-high-stakes tournaments and cash games, you have to use whatever information you get in the short time that you have. Not paying attention to the hands your opponents show down, or their post-flop bets will cost you.

Playing solid poker can only take you so far — eventually you have to play your opponents and listening to Lady GaGa while playing Klondike Solitaire while watching YouTube videos of people getting hit in the groin, isn’t the best way to get a read on the guy that just four-bet you.

Next time you play, find a comfortable chair and make sure the only thing open on your desktop is your poker client — I promise you’ll make smarter decisions.

For the newbies, I’m trying to turn $0 into $10,000 on Betsson, and it’s not going so well. I’ve done OK in freerolls, but whenever I get the chance to hit the tables, I’ve only got enough for one buy-in.

For example, I cashed in a freeroll yesterday, bringing my balance up to $0.84, enough to sit down at the $0.02/$0.04 no-limit hold ‘em tables.

I play a couple of hands to move down to 68 cents. Then I raise minimum with K-Q out of position (a questionable play).

Like that — one three-outer later — I’m back to the freerolls. I’ve got two chances to make the money each night, and it’s getting a little frustrating, especially considering it takes about five hours to cash in one of those things. During that time, I could be making hundreds in real cash — but I’m committed to this challenge.

Also, I’m trying to get a freeroll together for readers of this blog — and maybe it will help me in my quest. If you have the time, don’t be afraid to drop by Betsson and say hello, I’m tonypoker13.

This hand happened last year, but Sky Poker just got around to airing this episode:

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When I first heard about this hand, I wanted to criticize Phil Ivey for losing so much money after hitting the sucker end of a straight.

But after watching it, I realized that after the turn hit, there’s no way both those players are going to avoid getting their stacks in.

For one, Tom Dwan’s range is infinite, which is why he’s such a tough no-limit hold ‘em player. But after Ivey made the flop bet and Dwan just flat-called, there are few people who would put Dwan on 7-6 there — even the best player in the world. Normally, Dwan raises big, putting pressure on his opponent especially if he has a powerful draw.

After Dwan 3-bets Ivey on the turn, Ivey figures his original read is confirmed and he’s just has to think about how much money he’s going to win from Dwan — and how he doesn’t want to see another card.

So what can we take away from this hand? Besides how crazy these two are. Dwan and Ivey make money by playing similar aggressive styles — they’re always looking for weakness in their opponents. And they make sure their opponents can’t put them on a hand. That way, when they hit crazy, longshot draws, they’ll usually get paid off.

Side note: Anyone else think it’s strange how deliberate Dwan is, considering he learned this game online?

I’ve been getting a few e-mails lately, so I figure this would be a good time to answer a few questions.

Here’s a recent e-mail question I received from Igor V.

Q: I’m a new player to poker. I wanted to ask how much do you bet when you are on a flush draw or straight draw?

The problem with poker is that there’s no right answer, most of it depends of your opponent, whether you think he’ll call, re-raise or fold to your bet.

It’s hard to hit flops — the odds of flopping a flush draw is about 13 percent and the odds of flopping an open-ended straight draw is about 10 percent. Together, with a hand like 6♠ 5♠, you’ve got a 19-percent chance of flopping one or the other.

Generally, when your hand improves, you should bet.

Let’s use an example:

You’re at the beginning of a standard online tournament and every player has their starting stack of 1,500. It folds to you on the button, where you have A♦ 10♦. You raise to 150, (the starting blinds are 25-50 for this example) and you are called by the small blind. The big blind folds.

Flop: 7♦ 5♠ 2♦

The small blind checks.

Now, that’s a good flop for you. You’ve represented strength with your pre-flop raise, so it’s good to continue to show your opponent that strength. In the beginning stages of a tournament, where you don’t have a read on your opponent yet, a standard continuation bet of anywhere from half the pot (175) to the entire pot should be enough to take it down.

Since you’re a new player, you’re probably playing low stakes, so your opponent won’t do anything crazy in this spot. But if he/she does…

(Stopping here would be the short answer to your question.)

It’s important to think about is what you’re willing to call or fold or re-raise with for that same draw — and it’s the math that’s fundamental to succeeding at this game.

Let’s say you bet 175 and the small blind makes a minimum re-raise to 350. Now, your opponent is representing strength, but he or she is giving you odds to make your flush. You’ve got roughly a 4-to-1 shot to hit your flush on the next card and it will cost you 175 to win the 875 chips in the pot, which is almost 6-to-1 for your money. Casinos make millions each year based on small advantages like these and you should take them when you get them.

(Side analysis: Since you’re in a low-stakes online tournament in this example, it’s likely your opponent, who check-raised you, will not fold to an all-in re-raise. He’s representing a set, a pocket pair higher than the board or a hand like A-7. The only hand that would fold would be a bluff or a lesser diamond draw — and you don’t want to scare those hands away.)

While that’s a relatively simple understanding of odds, you must also consider the amount of chips you could win from your opponent after the river if you make your flush — this is called implied odds.

Let’s say the turn card is the J♥.

You’ve still got a 4-to-1 shot to hit your flush, but your opponent bets 500 into the 1,050-chip pot. Now, you’d only be getting about 3-to-1 on your money to chase a flush, but your opponent would most likely shove his remaining chips on the river or call your all-in regardless of the card (and once you’ve got 1,000 chips of your 1,500 stack, you’re almost pot-committed to a call) — that means you’re really getting 4-to-1 when you count his remaining chips.

I know it can be confusing — there are about a thousand different ways a poker hand can be played and I didn’t make it easy with my side notes — but I hope you have a better grasp on odds and when to bet/call/raise/fold.

One of the highlights of my Aussie Millions trip was finding time to watch Phil Ivey at the final table of the $100,000 high roller event.

Ivey cruised to heads-up and had the chiplead against American Dan Shak, and the consensus at the tournament was that Ivey was easily a 4-to-1 favorite to win at that point. But Shak picked up a big pot and took the chiplead.

And like in true Ivey fashion, he got his money in good but couldn’t overcome pure luck.

Here was the final hand, there were about 2.4 million chips in play and Ivey had about 700,000:

Ivey raised to 100,000 on the button and Shak shoved. Ivey made the call and they turned over their hands.

Ivey: Ad 10
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Shak: Ac 7c

Flop: Qc 7h 5s

Ivey was eliminated and took home $600,000 to pass Daniel Negreanu on the all-time tournament money list at $12.8 million. Ivey’s also the all-time winningest player in online cash games, in addition to whatever he wins in Bobby’s Room. If there’s any doubt to the best poker player in the world, this has to seal it.

Here’s a recent hand from a deep-stack tournament I was in:

It was late in the tournament, I was in middle position with about 450,000, blinds were 3,000/6,000 and the action folded to me. I raised it to 18,000 with 10-9 of clubs. Everyone folds around to the big blind, who calls. He’s got about 275,000.

Flop: As 9d 2h
BB checks. I check.

Turn: 6s
BB bets 22,000. I call.

River: Ks
BB bets 30,000. I raise to 105,000.

Now, a lot of people might think their only options on the river here are to call or fold, especially with a hand like third pair.

I raised because I was pretty sure that the big blind had either marginal cards like Ax, or a monster flush. Since the ace of spades is out, I think the likelihood of a flush is very low. His bet size backs up my guess.

I raised here, and took the pot down. I was confident my opponent would fold to a big river bet with the range of cards I put him on. I didn’t go all-in, because of the possibility of the monster hand. Also, if he had a big hand, it would be an easy fold for me after he re-raised.

During a poker hand, you need to review all of your options and the way your opponent is going to react to those different plays — if you don’t, you’re missing out on some chips.

There’s a lot of talk about this hand this week. ESPN just anointed it the hand of the decade and it’s hard to argue with the sports leader on this one.

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I can tell you where I was when I first saw this hand. I was in university, an aimless 21-year-old. After the hand aired — over and over again on ESPN — my friends and I played every Wednesday for a year. I played freeroll upon freeroll, sometimes when I was supposed to be going to lecture.

Two years later, I was playing in the main event, and I had a new goal in life: to make most of my money from poker.

I’ve met tons like me on the circuit — actually most people I meet playing poker were inspired to play because of Chris Moneymaker’s win.

If watching this hand doesn’t give you some weird kind of pleasure or excitement — well, you’re in the wrong place on the Internet.

If you act fast, you can own something every tournament poker player dreams of — a World Series of Poker bracelet.

Apparently a pawn shop in Plano, Texas, USA is selling one of T.J. Cloutier’s six bracelets — the one he earned for winning a $5,000 no-limit hold ‘em event in 2005.

T.J. Cloutier's sixth bracelet

For $3,551 — there are five bids on the item — you could own this gold bracelet that has 13 round-cut diamonds totaling one-quarter of a carat.

When I first saw this for sale, I felt bad for T.J. The last time I saw him was at the WSOP, walking around looking for someone to stake him.

He either thinks very little of his bracelets, or he’s broke — and I’m inclined to believe the latter considering his penchant for craps tables. If he’s truly busto, than that’s remarkable, considering he has more than $9.7 million in tournament earnings in his career.

Whatever the case, his loss could be your gain. Let’s take a moment to watch a little bit of T.J.

It’s been a good week so far. I didn’t make the money in the first event of the Aussie Millions but I’m doing splendid at the side games and I can’t wait for the upcoming main event.

I’ve also been playing heavily online. I don’t believe in rushes, but if I feel like I’m playing well, I’ll try to play more.

Here’s a few things I do to try to stay at my peak level:

• Don’t play too long. As soon as I feel tired I leave games. As hard as it is, I’ve had more “rushes” turn into losing sessions after trying to stretch them more than 12 hours. Even though you may have an edge on your opponents when you’re awake, it only takes one mistake to lose that edge.

• Eat/drink reasonably healthy. I love bananas and trail mix during breaks of tournaments and I keep a bottle of water to sip on during levels. If you’re playing in a live tournament, or even if you take a break to go have dinner during a marathon online session, try to eat light. It’s amazing to watch people come back in a state of postprandial somnolence and donk off their chips.

• Take timeouts. There will always be a game, even if you stand up to stretch your legs for a couple of minutes. But the later it gets, the harder it is to accept bad beats. If you get pissed off about anything, take a deep breath and count to 10. It’s stupid, but it works, and I guarantee less tilt and money saved.

If you’re playing well and cashing in, I don’t suggest sleep — you should rest when you’re playing poorly. But when you inevitably get to the point where you’re in the 21st hour of a 24-hour session, your body could be exhausted, but your mind should be wide awake.

A few posts ago, I wrote about the differences between live and online poker, but the one you should pay closest attention to is stack sizes.

Here’s a hand from the first Aussie Millions event:

The blinds were 2,000/4,000 with a 400-chip ante.

Young Aussie sitting to my left near the dealer, with a chip stack of about 50,000, raises to 12,500 on the button. The big blind moves all-in for 20,100.

Can you count these please?

The Aussie leans over the table to look at the big blind, confused. He moves to muck his hand, but realizes its only a little more to call. He calls and turns over 10-6 of diamonds. the big blind has K-10.

The Aussie loses the hand is eliminated shortly after — before the money.

Clearly, the young player was upset that he got caught stealing, but I think he wasn’t paying attention. Had he known that the big blind had just about four bets there and would probably call or shove with any two cards, he would have raised with better holdings — especially considering his own stack size.

Online, you can see everyone’s chip stack and quickly judge their relation to the blinds and antes down to the smallest bet. But live is much different. You have to pay attention to the players that sit down, and watch the chips move across the table.

Chip stack sizes are almost as important as cards in poker. A stack size, to a certain extent, determines the style and hand selection of a player. Good players use their stack size to their advantage throughout a game, bullying smaller stacks.

If you know a player’s stack size, you have a better idea of what they’ll call, raise or fold with.

Before you call or raise in live poker, make sure you know how much each player that could possibly play the hand has, and you won’t get blind-sided like my young Aussie friend.

It’s been hard to find time away from the sights and sounds of Melbourne this week. As I mentioned before, the Crown Casino is amazing and I’ve been hitting the tables with ferocity this week, but I figure I’d find time to come up and play a little online.

The Crown Casino

I prefer online cash games and tournaments to live poker. There’s always a tournament or game running when I log on, there are games to fit every bankroll and I don’t have to pay for airfare, hotel and food — I just need £30 a month for a good Internet connection.

In live poker, if you’re lucky, you may see about 20 hands an hour. If I’m on several tables online, I can see more than 150 in an hour — which may be a bad thing now that I think about it.

With the exception of the big-time events, the structures in live, smaller buy-in tournaments are usually awful — they turn into a lottery after the fourth level.

Still, some live pros I know don’t play online — and if they do, it’s to fulfill an obligation to a certain site. They don’t like that they can’t see who they’re playing against and there are some players who couldn’t make a decision in 15 seconds if their life depended on it. (Likewise I know a bunch of online pros who don’t have the patience for the speed of a live tournament.)

There’s something about holding the cards and chips in your hand that gives you a different — and better — feeling than clicking a mouse. But there’s nothing like the feeling of getting knocked out of a big live tournament, and not being able to register into another one minutes after.

There are no lonely walks online.

I’m in Australia for the Aussie Millions for the next couple of weeks. The Crown Casino is one of my favorite places to go in the world and I try to never miss a chance to go down there.

The casino is awesome, the food is ridiculously good and the sights never cease to amaze me. Most importantly my friends, the poker is great.

Anyway, I was playing in the first event last night — a $1,100 four-day donkament, and I drew an awesome table, full of a bunch of wild Aussies, two young Americans, a couple of fringe pros and the brother of a big-name pro.

I was heading along smoothly until I tilted like a madman.

Late in the night, big-name pro’s brother has a huge stack, most of it from when his queens cracked an opponent’s kings early in the tournament and from an equally nasty beat he put on me, rivering an eight-high flush to my top set. Anyway, big-name pro walks up to bitch to his brother about some unknown woman who knocked out the short-stacked big-name pro with pocket tens, to big-name pro’s ace-queen.

Apparently, the big-name pro had five-bet the woman, and she didn’t back down calling his all-in with the f—ing tens. Big-name pro carries on and on about how unlucky he is, how he can’t catch a break. (Without giving away his identity, let’s just say, he’s got a multi-million dollar score to his record.) And this isn’t the first time I’ve heard him complain — so it shouldn’t surprise me.

Then, big-name pro’s brother starts bitching about the same thing. How “effing” unlucky he’s been and he’s serious, talking about a hand where he called a super short-stack with A-10, only to get sucked out by the short-stack’s K-10 — meanwhile, he’s easily got the biggest stack at our table.

I chime in here: “I wish I was as unlucky as both of you.” Then I pointed to the brother’s stack and said, “You especially. You’re really running bad.”

“Mind your fucking business,” big-name pro says.

Now, I’ve played poker with big-name pro’s brother before and the guy couldn’t have been nicer, ditto for big-name pro. They’re fun to have at the table, they play tight as balls and most of the time, they’re civil. But now…

“Why don’t you stop crying and let your brother focus on losing his chips?” I asked him.

This is when the tournament director, who had been called to the table by the dealer seconds before, steps in and tells the pro to leave and gives me a 10-minute penalty. Which I turn into a 30-minute penalty. Apparently what I said was “abusive” language. When I get back, I can’t find my table for another 10 minutes because it was broken up.

After I sat down at my new table, I should have taken a couple of deep breaths and laughed it off — my cure for tilting. But for some reason, this particular series of events stuck in my brain so I bluffed off a massive amount of chips and when it was time to bag up, I finished with much less than an average stack going into Day 2.

So here’s the lesson — because I guess there’s supposed to be one or why else would I be telling this story — stupid things are going to happen at the poker table. People are going to say stupid things, that may tilt you. As far as I know, their speeches were part of an elaborate scheme to tilt everyone at my table.

The point is, learn from my mistakes.

Let’s take a look at this Allen Cunningham hand from the WSOP:

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This is pretty remarkable, considering Loecke gave Cunningham a decent price to call, but Cunningham knew he was beat, and let it go. Obviously Cunningham had an excellent read on his opponent — that he was a tight player, who wasn’t prone to value-bet bluffs on the river. Cunningham probably would have snap-called a looser player — as all of us should.

The hardest thing you’ll do in poker is make a big laydown on the river. It’s easy to call, to pick off the random bluff and pat yourself on the back for that great call. But if you make calls of big bets on the river a habit, you’ll find yourself broke before you know it.

A good player wins more than three out of four of their showdowns, and the ones they lose are small pots.

Think about this more as you move up in stakes. The better players tend to bluff less — the worst thing you can do in poker is becoming a calling station. I’m not saying you should fold every time you face a bet on the river, but if you have a nagging feeling that you’re behind and you’re going to lose the hand, you’re probably right.

Last year wasn’t so great for the 23-year-old online sensation. He spent most of it in the red online — at shocking development considering durrrr won more than $5 million online in 2008 and established himself as one of the game’s elite. This year, at his lowest point, Tom “durrrr” Dwan was down $6.8 million in November, mostly thanks to Isildur1, who before he went broke, crushed Dwan for millions.

Tom Dwan

In December though, Dwan hit the lower stakes and rebounded, winning $2.7 million. He’s also up almost a million in the Million Dollar Challenge with Patrik Antonius with about 20,000 hands left to play. (durrrr challenged everyone but Phil Galfond to a four-table, 50,000-hand contest, if his opponent was up at least $1 after 50,000 hands, durrrr would owe the player an additional $1.5 million, if Dwan was up at least $1, he’d get $500,000 extra from his opponent.) His live play, at least the hands that have been shown on television in the last year, has also been exceptional, so it’s a reasonable assumption that he’s in the black in live games.

Games like the Million Dollar Challenge are the reason why I think durrrr will have a decent year in 2010. He sets the terms in his games, playing only when he thinks he has an advantage. And though I don’t think he has a tremendous edge over his competition, he confidence in his heads up game — and confidence goes a long way in poker.

Plus, durrrr is now a full partner in Full Tilt, so when you play a $5 pot on the site and they take 50 cents for the rake, he gets a percentage of that. The site will probably encourage durrrr to play some tournaments this year, it will be interesting to see if durrrr has enough motivation to play well — he’s had success in the past with a few final tables in 2007 and 2008.

Whatever durrrr does, whether he goes broke or crushes the competition, he’ll continue to play the biggest games online — it should at least be fun to watch.

After the year ended, I went back to watch a few videos and try to find my top 5 poker moments of the year. There were a lot to choose from, and this site is filled with great hands from 2009, but to me, the following clearly stood out as the ones that made the most impact on the poker world.

No. 5 — Daniel Negreanu vs. Barry Shulman at the WSOP Europe main event final table.

After a flop of 5d-8d-Jc, Shulman led out for 300,000 and was re-raised to 900,000 by Negreanu. Shulman went all-in and that sent Negreanu to the tank.

Negreanu eventually called, showing Qc Jd. Shulman tabled As Ah.

Pandemonium ensued as the dealer put the turn card out: the Jh, and Negreanu only had to fade two remaining aces in the deck for a WSOP bracelet.

When the Ad fell, the pro-Negreanu crowd fell silent and the likeable pro was crippled. He went out on the next hand and Shulman won the title.

During the heads-up match, Negreanu had chances to eliminate Shulman, but the owner of Card Player magazine proved resilient. Nevertheless, Negreanu’s finish earned him enough money to jump to first on the all-time money list.

No. 4 — Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko against Daniel “djk123″ Kelly in the World Championship of Online Poker.

To understand djk123’s play, you need to really watch a lot of hands at the final table. Timoshenko was making plays with lesser hands and raising in position a ton. Still, it’s tough to watch Kelly 5-bet his stack away. With Timoshenko’s biggest competition out of the tournament, he went on to take the title and the $1.7 million first prize — a few months after winning the 2009 WPT Championship.

No. 3 — Antoine Saout crippled as a huge favorite at WSOP main event final table.

As far as I’m concerned, after Phil Ivey was eliminated, this was Antoine Saout’s tournament. If it wasn’t for outstandingly bad luck on this hand, Saout would have — and should have — been the WSOP champion. Ce qui sera.

No. 2 — Phil Ivey eliminated from WSOP main event final table.

This should actually be called the worst poker moment of 2009. The world’s best player gets his money in as a 3-to-1 favorite and gets a queen in the window, much to the chagrin of the entire poker world. Though this hand breaks my heart to watch,  it doesn’t look like it bothered Ivey one bit. He just takes a bite from his apple, then stands up, shakes hands and walks away.

No. 1 — Isildur1 vs. Patrik Antonius for the biggest pot in online poker history.

For a month-and-a-half, no one captured the imagination of the poker world more than Isildur1. In that time, he was seen 8-tabling against Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius and durrrr, putting in huge river bluffs and having million-dollar bankroll swings in the matter of hours. The aforementioned hand came at the height of the Isildur1 craze, when million-dollar pots became the norm. The Swede played 166,073 hands in three months and was a profitable no limit hold ‘em player while struggling at pot limit Omaha, which proved to be his undoing. He played the best at their game and lost — and because he was online, we got to see variance in real-time, sort of a lifetime of a high stakes career in three months.

There’s been a lot of talk about hand histories and Isildur1 lately — and it reminded me of an recent interview I heard with Patrik Antonius.

Even the best have to study sometimes

After that — according to his interview — Antonius decided to do some studying.

He railed the Swede and looked back at his own hand histories, dissecting Isildur1’s play — something he’s never done against any opponent, Antonius said.

After studying, Antonius rallied, and is up $2.5 million on Isildur1 ever since the mystery player came on the poker scene in September.

If Antonius — one of the best cash players in the world — took time to study hand histories, you should too.

Go back and flip through the hands, like Antonius did, make some notes on your opponents and look at the hands you lost and won. If anything, studying your hand histories will help you close up leaks in your game. Those hand histories are there for a reason.