Poker Strategy

Fifth Edition of $300K Super High Roller Bowl to be Held in December 2018.

Poker Central has announced that the dates of the $300,000 buy-in Super High Roller Bowl that is usually held in late May before the annual World Series of Poker commences, will now be held between 17^th and 19^th December 2018.

The fifth edition of the tournament will feature a 48-player cap with the rake-free tournament once again offering an overall prize pool of $14.4 million.  An amount of $5 million of the prize pool will be awarded to the eventual winner, together with a Super High Roller Bowl champion ring.

It has been reported that the changed date is a “new permanent home on the calendar” with the Super High Roller Bowl counting towards the point race for the High Roller of the Year title, which concludes at the end of the calendar year.

Those wishing to participate are required to make a deposit of $30,000 by Monday, 26^th November.  Only 25 spots will be awarded by lottery which is due to be live streamed on PokerGo on 27^th November, while 18 seats are reserved for ARIA VIP guests and five awarded to the top five players on the High Roller of the Year leaderboard.

The High Roller of the Year is a season-long competition that comes from results in Poker Central’s lineup of high-stakes events.

Sam Simmons, the Vice President of content for Poker Central, commented that the Super High Roller Bowl has grown into one of the most unique and highly sought-after poker championships in the world as the peak of the High Roller Triple Crown.  Simmons went on to say that they are proud to celebrate that milestone in December, as they implement changes that will continue the success of the event for many years to come.

The 2018 Super High Roller Bowl is scheduled to stream on PokerGO, while Super High Roller Bowl episodes will feature on NBC Sports Network on NBCSports.com as well as NBC Sports app.

The Super High Roller Bowl launched in 2015 and since its creation, has awarded $67,760,000 in prize money.

Coolbet Open in Tallinn between 16th and 21st October

The second Coolbet Open commenced on Tuesday, 16^th and will continue until Sunday, 21^st October 2018, hosted by the Olympic Park Casino at the neighbouring Hilton Tallinn Park in the Estonian capital of Tallinn.

The first event that took place in May of this year brought with it a buzz that was felt throughout the entire festival where 27 action-packed tournaments were taking place.  It is anticipated that the current festival will be even more exciting with the schedule expanded to 31 tournaments.

Players can expect the Coolbear to be scurrying around, as it did in May, with players enjoying themselves and laughing throughout the festival.

A large number of notables and Coolbet sponsored players have confirmed that they would be attending the festival, including former footballers Joel Linkpere and Bent Skammelsrud, basketball player Martin Muursepp, Norwegian celebrity Audun Sorseth and singer Kim Herold.

The festival kicked off on 16^th October with welcome drinks and entertainment at 7 p.m. EEST and featured four tournaments including the Coolbet €220 WarmUp Event, which awards two seats to the Coolbet €550 Main Event.

The Main Event is due to kick off its two opening flights on 17^th and 18^th October.  Players start with 30,000 in chips in this deep-stacked affair with blind levels starting at 45 minutes before increasing to 60 minutes in length.

There will be lots of opportunities to build a massive stack not only due to the great structure but thanks to the tournament allowing unlimited re-entries until the end of the first blind level on Day 2 on 19^th October.

Those who survive the penultimate day will compete for one final day on 20^th October until a winner is crowned.  It is expected that the tournament will be massive with festival organizers estimating a prize pool of not less than €200,000.

In May, Finland’s Sebastian Wahl outlasted a field of 425 entries to win the top prize of €50,100.  He faced a difficult opponent heads-up in Dutch player Sander van Wesemael, who received the runner-up prize of €33,000.

Both Wahl and van Wesemael are back in the Coolbet Open thanks to the top 10 finishers in the Main Event being awarded a Cooolbet Open package over and above the prizes they won.

Malta Poker Festival to be Held in Portomaso Casino in Malta

The Malta Poker Festival, Malta’s biggest event of the year, is back and scheduled to take place from Thursday, 1^st to Wednesday, 6^th November 2018 at the Portomaso Casino in St. Julian, which is the most vibrant hotspot in Malta.  The event will consist of 6 days of invigorating poker action as well as a host of exciting off-the-felt activities to accompany the perfect poker getaway to the Mediterranean isle.

The Malta Poker Festival was founded by the former organizers of the Battle of Malta and follows in its predecessor’s footsteps to return to the Portomaso Casino, where the event grew tremendously over the past seven years.

A whopping 2,074 entries were made in the Main Event last year with Nadav Lipszyc turning his original investment of €550 into a win of €200,000.  Among those players that have confirmed their attendance for this year are Daiva “Baltic Blonde” Byrne, Steve Watts, Andreas Hoivold, Jesper Hougaard, Ivo Donev and Pat Savage from the Pat Savage Band and Netflix show “Savage Roads”.

The highlight of the series is the €550 Malta Poker Festival Grand Event that runs from 1^st to 6^th November and includes three starting flights with room for 700 players each and boasts a guarantee of €500,000.  A single re-entry is allowed for each starting flight.

Survivors from the three starting flights will return to play Day 2 together on Sunday, 4^th November with the inaugural champion to be crowned on Tuesday, 6^th November.

The €1,320 Grandmaster High-Roller event will be held on 3^rd and 4^th November as well as the brand-new €220 Hendon Mob Championship on 4^th and 5^th November.

The Malta Poker Festival also partners up once more with the Israeli Poker Tour as well as APAT.  A special €100 MPF Ladies Event will take place on Saturday, 3^rd November at 4 pm.

The Hendon Mob Championship, in its inaugural tournament during the Malta Poker Festival even has a custom-made flag for the winner while the APAT Maltase Championship is also a first.  The Israeli Poker Tour will run its 7^th edition in a row at Portomaso Casino with an astounding number of players visiting from Israel.

Partypoker Launches MILLIONS Online Tournament

Following the POWERFEST that ended on 23^rd September 2018, partypoker has now switched its attention to its MILLIONS Online tournament that is scheduled to take place on Sunday, 25^th November 2018 and which guarantees to be the largest single online poker tournament in history.

MILLIONS Online is a $5,300 buy-in tournament that comes with a $20 million guaranteed prize pool.  The current record for a single online event, in terms of prize money, is the 2010 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event that offered a prize pool of $12,215.  This tournament was won by Tyson ‘POTTERPOKER’ Marks who banked an amount of $2,278,097.

Partypoker has guaranteed that the eventual MILLIONS Online champion will be awarded a prize of $2.5 million and that players who finish in second to fourth place will also become millionaires overnight.  Partypoker has also guaranteed that in the event of the MILLIONS Online Champion having won their $5,300 seat via one of the MILLIONS Online satellites between 10^th September and 7^th October 2018, they will receive a $500,000 MILLIONS Passport in addition to their $2.5 million win.

Known as ‘the Ultimate Poker Prize’, the $500,000 MILLIONS Passport enables the winner to have the opportunity to travel the world playing partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Main Events, High Rollers and Super High Rollers for a year.  Business class travel for two, luxury hotel accommodation and an amount of $5,000 spending money per event will also be awarded to the passport winner.

The prize package gives its winner an opportunity to live the high life and become a professional poker player for a year with the $500,000 MILLION Passports expiring on 31^st December 2019.

In the event of the $500,000 MILLIONS Passport not being won, there is a secondary MILLIONS Passport worth $25,000 up for grabs.  Anyone who wins their MILLIONS Online seat between 10^th September and 7^th October 2018 who then lasts the longest in the MILLIONS Online event will be awarded $25,000 worth of buy-ins to MILLIONS events during next year.

Ten Gold Bracelets to Be Awarded at 2018 World Series of Poker Europe

The 2018 World Series of Poker Europe is scheduled to be held from Tuesday, 9^th October 2018 at King’s Casino in Rozvadov for almost a full month as it sets up shop once again in the small Czech municipality.  Ten gold bracelets will be up for grabs this year, over and above the 78 WSOP bracelets that were awarded in Las Vegas during the summer.

Having found a permanent home at King’s Casino, the World Series of Poker Europe schedule for this year’s festival that will run over a period of 25 days, features a brilliant €13,000,000 in guarantees for all bracelet events that includes a €5,000,000 guarantee for the €10,300 No-Limit Hold’em WSOP Main Event.

The quest for poker’s most sought-after prize commences with the ever-popular Event #1: €550 COLOSSUS No-Limit Hold’em that drew a bumper field with 4,115 entries last year.  Matous Skopera won his first bracelet and collected €270,015 in the event.

The COLOSSUS commences on Tuesday, 9^th October with the start of eight starting days and run until Wednesday, 15^th October 2018.  Unlimited re-entries are permitted and players can register up until the end of the tenth level of each day.

Event #5: €1,100 MONSTER STACK No-Limit Hold’em is also returning to the schedule.  Last year Oleksandr Shcherbak won the event and collected €117,708 and a gold bracelet.  Players in this year’s MONSTER STACK that begins on Saturday, 18^th October will get 40,000 in chips to work with and can enter up to three times a day, one for each starting flight.

On Monday, 24^th October, the two-day Event #8: €25,000 Super High Roller No-Limit Hold’em will commence, followed by the three-day Event #9 – €100,000 King’s Super High Roller No-Limit Hold’em beginning on Wednesday, 26^th October 2018.  This replaces last year’s €111,111 High Roller for One Drop.

Event #10: €10,350 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event’s first of three starting days begins on Saturday, 27^th October.  This year’s Main Event will once again be a €5,000,000 guarantee.

The World Series of Poker Europe Main Event begins on Saturday, 27^th October and runs until Friday, 2^nd November when the new WSOPE Main Event champion will be crowned.  Players can enter up to two times with late registration being open deep into Day 2.

The 2018 WSOP Player of the Year will also come to a conclusion at the World Series of Poker Europe.

partypoker LIVE to Run $100,000 Mix Max Tournament

The partypoker LIVE MILLIONS UK Festival has been scheduled to take place at the home of British poker, Dusk Till Dawn, from Saturday, 29^th September 2018, bringing with it an amount of $8.5 million worth of guaranteed prize pools to play for.

An exciting unique tournament is due to take place on the eve of UK MILLIONS that players can only buy into with PP LIVE Dollars.

An amount of $100,000 is guaranteed to be won in the PP LIVE Mix Max Turbo – a $200 buy-in, rake-free tournament that commences on nine-handed tables and switches to eight-handed tables as soon as there are only 120 players remaining and finally to six-handed tables when the play count reaches 36.  The final table will be played on a nine-handed table.

Only the flexible partypoker LIVE currency that is known as PP LIVE Dollars is permitted to be used by players in order to buy into this tournament.  Players have a chance to win this currency in satellites online at partypoker and then spent on partypoker LIVE tournament buy-ins as well as for travel expenses and accommodation.

The PP LIVE Mix Max Turbo is a one-day event, shuffling up and dealing at 7 p.m. on Friday, 28^th September 2018.  Twenty prizes, each with a £1,100 MILLIONS Open seat on their heads, will be in the field, courtesy of partypoker LIVE and Dusk Till Dawn.

Team partypoker’s Ludovic Geilich, Dusk Till Dawn supremo Rob Yong as well as reigning MILLIONS UK champion Maria Lampropulos are but three of the celebrity names that are set to be hunted during the PP LIVE Mix Max Turbo event.

partypoker runs the PP LIVE Dollars satellites every day online giving players an opportunity to win PP LIVE Dollars in amounts of $50 ($5.50 buy-in), $200 ($22 buy-in), $1,000 ($109 buy-in), $5,000 ($530 buy-in) and $10,000 ($109 buy-in) from their computer, iOS or Android-powered devices.

Cash Game Festival Returns to Bratislava

The Cash Game Festival will be returning to Banco Casino, located in the heart of the Slovakian capital of Bratislava for five days and over 120 hours of nonstop poker action from Wednesday, 19^th to Sunday, 23^rd September 2018.

The Cash Game Festival was previously held in Bratislava at the beginning of April of this year when it set casino records for the most cash game tables running.

It is anticipated that the festival will be even more exciting this time around with a number of confirmed players, including online satellite winners and sponsored players from Cash Game Festival partners 32Red Poker and Unibet Poker.

The games will be available to players in any poker variant or stakes that they desire.  Previous festivals included action in no-limit hold’em, pot-limit Omaha, pot-limit Omaha hi/lo, deuce-seven triple draw, open-face Chinese poker, Sviten Special, H.O.R.S.E., super dealer’s choice and much more.

There will be two televised feature tables per day or 10 throughout the festival hosted on its Twitch channel with PokerNews once again covering the action.

Players are given an opportunity at stakes low and high in order to showcase themselves to family and friends at the feature tables as well as to review their own play later.  Bulgaria’s Petyo Andonov, who lives in the Netherlands, will be joining Cash Game Festival Head of Media Henry Kilbane for the first time in the booth in order to provide banter and expert commentary on the action.

An added attraction to the feature table is the Cash Game Festival’s award of a trophy and prize to the player that wins the most ‘big blinds’ at any of the ten feature tables.  When the festival was previously in town, Cash Game Festival Co-Founder, Martin ‘Franke’ von Zweigbergk won the first of his two Cash Game Festival trophies.  Von Zweigbergk will be joined by fellow two-time winners Jon Kyte and Kevin Malone in Bratislava for their guests to be the first to win a third.

Cash Game Festival qualifiers and others with the hospitality package will be treated to Welcome Drinks, a VIP Dinner, a Players’ Party, a City Tour with a twist and a Sporting Event.

Poker Masters to Kick Off on 7th September 2018

Poker Central’s annual battle of high roller giants, the Poker Masters, will kick off inside the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas on Friday, 7^th September and run through Sunday 15^th September with daily live streams starting on Saturday, 8^th September 2018.

The Poker Masters is a high-stakes tournament series that is scheduled to take place at the PokerGO Studio at the ARIA Resort & Casino.

The Poker Masters was held for the first time last year and brings together the best of the best and a number of the most captivating players to compete in a seven-event series that features No-Limit Hold’Em, Pot Limit Omaha as well as the U.S. debut of Short Deck Hold’Em.  Buy-ins range from $10,000 up to $100,000 and millions of dollars exchange hands during the Poker Masters while the highly sought-after Purple Jacket awaits the highest point-scorer across the seven Poker Masters events played out in three different formats.

All Poker Masters events are open to all comers with all events, with the exception of the main event, running for two days.  Late registration will remain open for all players that play on the final table of a given event while registration fees are waived for those players as well as those that register before play commences.

The events kick off daily at 2 p.m. local time, with the final table of each event kicking off at 1 p.m. the following day.  All the events will be six handed with players on a 30-second shot clock and will also receive three 60-second time extensions per day.

The 2018 Poker Masters will be live exclusively on PokerGO with commentary provided by the familiar voice of Ali Nejad and a number of co-commentators.  Eight straight days of live streaming can be enjoyed as of Saturday, 8^th September 2018.

The final table of each event is due to be streamed live, as well as the final two days of the series-ending $100,000 Event.  The break desk during each broadcast will feature Maria Ho, Jeff Platt and Brent Hanks.

World Poker Tour and partypoker Team Up

The World Poker Tour and partypoker have entered into a partnership that will see the two industry titans team up over the next four years to bring poker players exciting live events in Canada and Europe.

In terms of the partnership, up to seven events will be spread across the four-year period, with each event offering prize pools of up to €3 million.

Adam Pliska, Chief Executive Officer at WPT revealed in a press release that the World Poker Tour is honoured to partner with partypoker LIVE on this new, four-year global initiative.  He went on to say that the partnership allows the WPT to continue its dedication of bringing world-class poker to people’s lives, and they are proud to have John Duthie and the entire team at partypoker LIVE to share in this value.  He added that together with partypoker LIVE, they look forward to elevating the game for all levels.

The first event will take place in October of this year when Playground Poker Club in Montreal will host a WPT bonanza like the poker world has not yet seen – a WPT500 EVENT, a WPTDeepStacks event and a WPT Main Tour that will take place all in one venue during one festival.   Last season in Amsterdam the WPT also married WPTDeepStacks and WPT events.

Casino Sochi in Russia and Dusk Till Dawn in the United Kingdom, which already has strong ties to partypoker, will also be hosting events in 2019.  The World Poker Tour season schedule for this year does not feature any other events except for Montreal in locales for which the partypoker partnership would feature.

Online giant partypoker will qualify over 300 players to every event for which it teams with WPT and partypoker satellite grinds will have a chance to use their partypoker LIVE $$$ to buy in.

John Duthie revealed that the WPT has always aimed to put the players first, and that is a mission they strongly adhere to with their partypoker LIVE events.  He added that collaborating with the WPT on these additional events across Canada and Europe will allow them to continue to provide players with the tournaments they want across the globe.

TwoPlusTwo’s Pokercast on Hold

It has been confirmed that TwoPlusTwo’s Pokercast, one of the most popular podcasts in the poker industry, has been suspended indefinitely.

According to Mason Malmuth, the site proprietor, it is simply a question of the finances, and it just does not make sense for the site to keep pumping out the podcast.  He added that unfortunately, times have changed and the poker world has slowed down a great deal.

Malmuth went on to say that Eric Holder’s Justice Department, which was part of the Obama administration, did a great deal of damage to their industry and to their show when they shut down the major internet poker sites in 2011.  He also said that this has resulted in him officially announcing the suspension of the TwoPlusTwo Poker Cast.

Malmuth joined as the very first guest when Pokercast debuted on 2^nd January 2008 with hosts Adam Schwartz and Mike Johnson.

The show continued over the years with hundreds of episodes and guests ranging from leading poker personalities such as Mike Sexton, Joe Ingram and Jaime Staples to a number of the top players in the world such as Fedor Holz, Daniel Negreunu and also Phil Ivey in 2014.

Malmuth also said that Howard Lederer’s appearance in September 2012 was the show’s peak, attracting 4 million downloads.

Terrence Chan, who had been a frequent Pokercast guest, stepped in to replace Johnson on show No. 330 after he hung up his mic for the show in 2014.  Chan helped to keep the show going until episode 499, which aired on 9^th July 2018 during the World Series of Poker Main Event and was the final episode of the show.

TwoPlusTwo fans have expressed their sadness and reflected on the happy memories of the show.

Schwarz, whose run with Pokercast lasted over a decade, thanked Malmuth profusely for all of his support over the years, then thanked everyone else who made the run to 499 episodes possible, including producer Ross Henry.