 I wonder what Churchill would have thought of "The Euro"??? "RaisetheRiver Live!!!!" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A guy was playing 10-20 holdem and was stuck about 300 dollars when he looked down beside the table and saw a little green leprechuan. "Quit playing poker forever right now and I'll give you a pot of gold worth a million dollars.", said the little fellow.The player replied, "Let me get even first."
1) How are you going to start the challenge?? 45 man $1.10 turbo and 18 man $1.75 turbo , im not too good at multitabling so im going to stick to 2 tables open 2) You're up to $25 after an hour. What do you do in that situation?? Faint lol , no if im up by $25 after an hour then im going to continue playing the same tourneys as they say if it aint broken dont fix it 3) And when are you doing the challenge?? Challenge will begin at 8pm on tues 20/11/07 4) Who's going to do better? Mair or Hammerheid?? S Stupid bleeding question - i think it will be a close run thing but ive got to go for me lol
  Is that why they call him "Dirty Harry"? I know she's attractive, but control yourself man....
A man came home from a poker game late one night and found his hideous harpy of a wife waiting for him with a rolling pin.
"Where the hell have you been?" she asked.
"You'll have to pack all your things, dear," he ad-libbed.
"I've just lost you in a card game."
"How did you manage to do that?"
"It wasn't easy, honest. I had to fold with a royal flush."
Tonight (tuesday) sees Mair and Hammerheid go head to head in the RTR challenge. Here is Mair's pre-game interview. 1) How are you going to start the challenge?? I seem to do quite well in the $3.40 10 Man Turbos so I am going to fire up 2 of them to start with. If there are enough people playing the 16 man $1.75 HORSE Turbo I will fire up that also. 2) You're up to $25 after an hour. What do you do in that situation?? If I am up $25 in an hour I will probably faint, but I will most likely move up to $6.50 NLHM Turbo 9 Man (I like those!) and possibly a highter buy-in HORSE tournament eg $6.50 8 Man Turbo one. 3) And when are you doing the challenge?? Tuesday evening 20/11/07 at 8pm on Pokerstars 4) Who's going to do better? Mair or Hammerheid?? Stan's form at the moment hasnt been good so I am hoping I have an advantage, knowing my luck, his luck will change and he will fly!
The forum post of the week was made, using my own judgement, by myself, BurnleyMik!! After a lot of thought I thought this would be a very useful thread to lots of players out there and definately worth a read. Best Tournament tips. Includes tips from the mighty M.Saban, who is a member of Poker Player Magazine for the new PP Grandprix season! Other good posts this week:Comedy ValueNot a lot in the way of jokes or comedy this week. So the only bit I could find was my reply to acefilled dream limit question thread. In this reply I basically try and get inside the thoughts of a fish who slightly over played 10,3 sooooooooooooooooted! StrategyA post by a newbie, JAYSAKERA, entitled I always die with the best cards in my hand. How ironic. Some excellent replies and thoughts were made by some good players. Taking this advice onboard will certainly do you no harm! Hand HistoryA very good post was made by purus, titled Kings on the bubble. This post makes some great explanations about regardless of how powerful your starting hand there are other factors which must be taken into consideration before making that move around the bubble of a game. Achievements by membersMike Saban did fantastically well this week and managed to finish 3rd in the £300 buy-in event at the Winter Festival of Poker, which was held in Sheffield. You can see the live thread HERE. Congrats from all at RTR Mike! Unfortuantely we have no more member successes to brag about that we know of!!! If you know of any let us know. We are now adding a new feature to this section: Blog Post Of The WeekAs always there are lots of excellent blog posts written by the members, but the winner this week is written by Yorkshire Pudding for his post "I'VE BEEN TAGGED". Please be aware that this post is not for the faint hearted and does contain some "scenes of a sexual nature", lots of swearing and lots of comedy value!
A very interesting article today from RTR member and cash game forum moderator Raffel69One of these days - a day in the life of a lowstakes player Ok, here we go. It's saturday and I have a day off from work. Time to hit the games. Session 1: I started to play at 09:45 in the morning. I wanted to multitable the $50NL at Betfair but the few promising tables were full. There was one $100 Potlimit table running (shorthanded, as usual), stuffed with some bad players. So I took my seat after I observed the table for about 10 minutes. There was one guy sitting with a monsterstack of $827, and by the way he played I really wondered how he could build such a big stack. Anyhow, three hands played and $29 down immediatly. The first key hand was me with A-Q in the CO with the big-stack in the BB. It gets folded to me and I raise pot. The button folds and so does the SB, the BB calls. Flop comes down Queen high, TP/TK for me. Two clubs showing and a Jack. I bet pot to push him off his flushdraw (I knew he's a chaser) but he calls. Turn comes the King of clubs for the flushcard. Check-Check. River is a blank, I don't trust him so it goes check-check again and he shows A-10 offsuit for the straight. Thank you Betfair. He called with a crap hand off position, ok he has a monster stack so I can understand that he is willing to gamble a little bit, but please explain how he can call a potbet with an inside straight draw? Anyhow, against my usual habit I decided not to reload. I thought I might just play with one bullet and that's my stack, $71. You see how the bad streak that I suffer these days affects my thinking? Not good. Well, I stayed at the table until 11:15, carddead most of the time, but managed to take my money back with busting some $10 shortstacks who meanwhile have joined the table. Smallpot-poker, something I don't like, but good enough to stay break-even while I was waiting for playable hands. The one guy on my left, obviously a good player, and the luckbox bigstack made it impossible to play position. They called or reraised everything, anytime I made a play at the button. Against players like this, you can't stop being agressive, but you need some decent hands to beat them, and the decent hands never came. So I left the table with my stack at $104 for a phenomenal profit of $4. Wasted time. - Breaktime thinking... I am on a bad run at Betfair, after some real good succcess. Maybe I should step down and multitable the $20NL again. Very profitable games, I can make 50, 60 maybe 70 bucks each session if I ever catch some playable hands. If they only would remove the damn' doomswitch, what the hell is it that causes this bad streak? Ok, where do I have money? I am still waiting for my cashout from Pacific. What a crap site, I will never ever play there again. Three days now to get my money out and still waiting. Most of the roll still at neteller, the other part at Betfair, couple of bucks left at UB and FullTilt, also at DTD but I hate Crypto. Not in the mood to play pennypoker, today I want to make profit. Repair my damaged roll and my damaged mind a little bit. What a [censored] game. Whenever I need it to get me away from all this [censored] that surrounds me, it let's me down. Well, if life gives you lemons kick her in the ass and tell her "I ordered a beer bitch"... Session 2: 12:00 o clock. On to a little game at UB. I only have short money left there after my last cashout and after losing the most on some brutal turn/river bad beats within the last couple of days. Me and Ultimate Bet, it's a love-hate relationship. I love the software, I hate the tons of actionflops. On a good day, when their somehow strange system decides to let me win, I win a lot there. And on the bad days, it is impossible to hit a damn thing. Well, the last five days were bad days. However, on to a $25NL, all that I can affort with the $36 bucks I have left there. "It's a shame" I think, "hopefully nobody is watching me here". It goes how it goes since days at UB, I lose the lot and I lose it with good cards on horrible suckouts. After the first beat I reload my stack with what is left, and I now sit with the amazing wealth of $22,41 at a $25NL shorthanded table at Ultimate Bet. A clear waste of money, and I don't care about winning or losing anymore. I have no problem with wasting what is left, and so I play some Kamikaze-poker. Stack goes down to $9 and up again to $45 and of course UB decides "this will not do" and sucks me down to $20 again. Then I stopped, angry and ashamed I leave the game and call it a day. - Breaktime Out for lunch in a fast food restaurant. Doesn't make me happy... Back home, my girl returns from shopping, with a DVD in her hands. "See what I have here" she says, and she hands me the DVD. Rounders! Directors Cut! All I had was a low quality copy until now. I watch it and it is still the best pokermovie out there, even if it is a clichee. I spend the afternoon with watching Rounders, eating some selfmade marmalade, thinking about my bad game. What has happened? I was doing good, I was in the zone, I played on high concentration. What has happened that I lost my focus? I must get myself together and get back into the game somehow, or I will lose a lot... Session 3: Evening, 6:00 o clock. I am back at Betfair and I am looking for some $50NL grinding. Again, all tables are full, except of one $100NL. THere are two players I have played against earlier, good players who seem to know what they do but also are predictable and they play ABC most of the time. And there are three unknowns. One seat is open, two of the unknowns with shorter stacks on my left, the two guys I Know on my right, perfect. I take the seat and bring $100 to the table. First hand I play at the button, K-Q. It gets folded to me and I raise pot preflop, the SB calls and the BB folds. Flop comes Q-10-3 and the SB checks. I bet a little bit above 2/3 the pot. The SB thinks for a while and calls. Turn comes a blank and he checks. I think for a while, and without any read on the guy I somehow know 100% I am beat. I know he flopped a set of tens. However I must find out if I am right, so I bet half the pot. He thinks for a while and then minraises me. I now know my TP is no good and I don't have a chance to win the pot. And without any kind of information about the guy, I tell him in the chat "you have a set of tens", and I fold. He shows his cards: 10-10 for the set. He answers "amazing read" and I say "instinct". Ok, a little bit down after my first played hand, but I know I am in the zone. A couple of hands later I take somebodys stack with a flopped straight, and from there on I did not lose one single hand I played. I went straight into their heads, which enabled me to play some huge bluffs and to outplay them at any given time. They played scared and I knew it. My confidence came back, the confidence I missed for the last couple of days. And I crushed the table. Left with $418 after only two hours of play. It was not the pots I took that gave me my confidence back. It was the first good fold that I made since days. During the game I made some monster laydowns, when I folded K-K postflop without an ace showing. Again I know I am beat by a set (eights this time), and I even folded a nut straight when the board paired on the river and one guy pushed me. I fold and he shows a full house. One hand later and I take his stack with a nut house myself. Unfortunatly I ran out of time, had an appointment and promised the lady to spend some time with her in the evening, so I stopped and called the session and the day. Solid profit, and back in the zone with playing my A-game. Hope I can hold on to it for a while...
Poker is a tough game. We all know that. Sometimes the odd player might make it a little easier for us with a bad bet or call, but essentially it can be a very frustrating game. When trying to build a bankroll, it’s not called “grinding” for nothing – it’s hard work, and you have to put the hours in. I read somewhere this week that the joy of a win is only a quarter of the annoyance you feel when you suffer a bad beat – and in a game where bad beats are always going to happen, you are putting yourself through an emotional rollercoaster every time you play – and unless you win at least 80% of the time, you are generally going to feel bad about poker more than you are going to feel good about poker – it’s a fact of poker life. So, if poker is such hard work, and such an annoying game, then why do we play? Why don’t we turn off the laptop and do something else?? There are a million things out there to do. You could go and have a round of golf. You could go and have a pint. You could build a raft for Milla Jovovich (well, one member of RTR might..) I can’t answer for anyone else, but here’s why I play poker… I am a lover of sport. It used to be the case that if there was sport on TV, I’d watch it. Anything – football, darts, snooker, formation ballroom dancing, boxing, and I’d get involved emotionally with it. I’ve rowed with Sir Steve Redgrave, I’ve celebrated with Gazza as he looped the ball over the central defender and banged it in the net (Wembley 1996 – some of you might remember that with a smile on your face – some of you won’t) and I’ve pushed Desert Orchid to a Gold Cup win. However, since I started playing poker, I have become the Sportsman – and with a little bit of help from the poker gods, my poker destiny is in my own hands. If I decided that I wanted to try and become the WSOP champion, then I could have a go, and depending on how much money I want to invest, I might have to win one,two, three or four events to achieve my aim. If I decide that I might want to have a go at winning a big Sunday night event, I can go for it. And in what other sport can I compete against people from all over the world whenever I want to?? So now, instead of being a watcher of sport, I am now the competitor. And nothing else I do fulfils my competitive instinct like poker does. So, yes it’s tough. Yes, sometimes it hurts. Yes, it drags me down sometimes. But I’ll always come running back. Cloud
This will be a split post with the latest poker news and HullJimi's account of his RTRC. WE HAVE A NEW RTRC "HALL OF FAME" LEADER!!!!!!
Well done to HullJimi, who now heads up the table with an excellent profit of $8.98 and the full time of 3hrs thirty achieved! Here is Jimi's account in his own words: Hour 1: I decided I was going to play nice and tight with the full $10 on Bodog - the site has loosest NL10 games I've ever found! I found myself a table with a few nutters on (full ring) and got comfy. Surely I'd have doubled up within the first hour? Well, no. First hand? The Hammer! A sign surely....?! The very next hand a donkey loses his full buy in by going all in with Q9o - and I was sat thinking to myself "Happy Days", yet it never really happened for me in the first hour. I saw 4 flops in the first 40 hands as I was being dealt utter garbage so guess what? I raised with the next installment of "The Hammer" (it was suited after all!). I get two callers. Eek. I follow it up with another pot sized bet on a flop of J86 rainbow and it gets through! Hooray for the hammer! So I was a whole $1 up after the first hour. Hour 2: Still sat in the cash game, I posted my progress in the RTR online forum only to be slagged by BM for not gambling enough. A fair cop guvnor! I'm sure this had nothing to do with my time in the challenge rapidly approaching BM's, or did it BM? So I juggled my money around, and fired up a $1.75 18 man turbo on Stars and waited for my luck to change. And it did. Massively. Whilst being railed by MattH and Cogs, and getting mocked by BM, I started to turn the challenge around. The SNG was mental - with an "all in" on the first hand (Some nob with a 10 high flush draw!). I picked up AA and took a pot but other than that kept out of the way with my eyes firmly on the massive $10 win. Anyway, the other eye can't have been working properly as I played too tight and had to start to chuck my chips in with gay abandon (not in a Brighton way though Cogs!). End result? I got knocked out. Balls. The cash game was going swimmingly however, with a nice pot taken down with quad 5's! Hour 3: I entered a $1.20 single table SNG (same as the one's Matt played) and and finished 3rd for a small return. As Matty will tell you (he was watching), I sucked out twice. Nice Getting short, I ran AQ into AK and saw a cheeky queen (again, not Cogs) and then I pushed my A8o into AK again to see a cheeky little 8 appear! So with a bit of time left, I piled into a 6 man turbo, $3.40 SNG and I managed to finish 2nd! Nothing spectacular happened, I just played "Quality hands baby" for a nice little win of $6.30. So, knackered, I called it a day after 3hrs 17mins rather than trying to spin the money up any further in a cash game for 10 minutes. And quite smug I was too! First one to show a profit, and a decent return too with it being very nearly double. Starting: $10 Cash Profit $7.23 ($17.23) Tourney Profit - $8.10 ($ 25.33) Less entrance fees - $6.35 Total: $18.98 End result +$8.98 ! I'm pretty certain someone will whizz past my effort by a long way (I'm looking at Kenn and assuming he'll whack the lot in a $10 SNG!), but it's tough and I was lucky when I needed to be. Good luck to the next contestant! HullJimi Next contestant: TBC Congratulations to HJ, can anyone beat this excellent feat?
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Online High-Stakes News
HORSE
It was all Patrik “FinddaGrind” Antonius in the $1000/$2000 H.O.R.S.E. game on Full Tilt Poker table Hatteras as he raked in over $165K in just 410 hands at the table. Also picking up decent wins were “Da Munsta” ($54K+) and Gus Hansen ($48K+). The biggest loser in the game was Niki Jedlicka (-$31K).
Stud Hi/Lo
In some $1000/$2000 Limit Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo on Full Tilt Poker table Sethfield, the player under the handle “2little2late2″ managed a solid $46K+ win in the game. Also picking up wins were “woeisme” ($35K+) and ”gamble up77″ ($21K+). Sharing the losses were David Singer (-$35K) and Patrik “FinddaGrind” Antonius (-$56K).
Heads up
"p_c4Libr4ted” was the next lucky poker soul to be privileged to some heads-up action against the infamous “tie53″. Playing $300/$600 NL Hold’em on several different tables throughout the afternoon, “p_c4Libr4ted” managed to rake in over $68K in winnings against the generous gambler.
PLO
As if collecting over $700K during a 13-hour period in the $200/$400 PL Omaha games on Full Tilt Poker wasn’t enough, the Great Dane managed to nearly duplicate the feat the very next day. Resting for just eight hours before going at it again, Gus Hansen raked in a $619K+ win after 21 hours.
LHE
The player known as “MadManMax” was busy in a $500/$1000 Limit Hold’em match on Full Tilt Poker table Tiger punishing “Fatal Fog. It was a battle that lasted over three and a half-hours and saw “MadManMax” rake in over $95K in winnings before it was all over.
General poker news
WPT
Six players took their seats shortly after 5 p.m. ET at Foxwoods Resort and Casino for the final table of the 2007 World Poker Tour World Poker Finals. While all six of them had the $1,704,986 first-place prize on their minds there could only be one winner and that was Mike Vela of New Windsor, New York. Before this Mike had a lifetimes winnings of $163,550, so this would be a pretty big boost to his bankroll.
UIGEA
The PPA (Poker Players Alliance) had day 1 of the meeting regarding the UIGEA. Teams from both sides of the argument, to make online poker legal again in the US, fought their corners, but from what I have read it sounds as though the PPA really took the fight to the opposition. Annie Duke was a huge factor and did extremely well for her part. The opposition used arguments such as comparisons to arms smuggling and cocaine trade, all which were easily discounted by the PPA. In conclusion it is looking very positive for time being.
For those of you not totally aware Americans were a HUGE part of online poker traffic (and also some great casual playing fish), but since all the major financial institutions were prosecuted for dealing with transactions between players and poker sites the average American player has found it so difficult to get funds into their poker accounts that they have stopped playing the game altogether. Lets hope the PPA keep up the good fight.
RTR News
We have progress on the New Raise the River League, Seaon 2! We recieved an email from Littlewoods happy that the situation with DTD and Cryptologic has all been cleared up and we are ready to go! Unfortunately the satellites to the CPC have now ended so the winner of the league will recieve a seat in the online final satellite to the EPT (European Poker Tour), worth over $500!! All we need now is confirmation from the forumites that they are happy with the start date. Please check the forum for the proposal.
We have a new leader in the Hall Of Fame for the RTR Challenge. HullJimi this week managed to pull off an amazing profit of $8.98!!! We get the feeling this will take a lot of beating!!! Well done Jimi.
We are hoping to make this the best damn blog we possibly can, so please leave comments and feedback. Tell us what you would like to see and we will take ALL ideas on board!
 Joe Hachem plays this weeks TLB winner GeorgieDubya, heads up on sunday November 18, for $5,000!!  Somehow, the Green Goblin doesn't seem quite so scary these days....  It's fun to stay at the YMCA!!!!
This weeks forum post of the week was written by: acefilleddreams. Here is the link to the thread. LINKBasically Ace had his laptop cooked in the oven!! There are pictures and everything at his blog. I wondered if he served it up with vegetables.... Other good posts this weekComedy Value:This thread just about scrapes it for me, but it was created by Cogsgoigne and the link is HERE. Very funny indeed! Strategy:This was a thread created by Brainchylde and is in regards to how so many people over play AK. The link can be found HERE. Acheivements by members:A huge congratualtions to Mair, for qualifying for the APAT again down at Manchester. She managed a 3rd position finish from 55 runners and picked up a Bronze medal in the process. The thread can be found HERE. Also congratulations to Kenn, who has been tearing up the MTT's again this week and taken a few prop bets on his progress too. He managed to take down the $5k guaranteed and also place 3rd in the $30 rebuy as well as numerous other deep runs. Very well done. Most of kenn's live railage and live updates can be found in the "Online Live" Forum. Lastly a huge congrats to MattyH or known on the forum as 2much2drink, who won a live poker satellite to play an online final where the top 5 get to go to Vegas to play the WSOP 2008! Very well done Matty and best of luck in the online final. keep us posted. You can see the image and the thread HEREBad Beat of the Week:Was by Portdeco, who suffered a horrendous 1 outer, when his straight flush was beaten by a higher rivered straight flush!! You can check it out HEREAre there other catagories you would like to see? Hope you enjoy the new weekly feature and hopefully your thread could feature on here next week.
Stage 1:
I decided to start with two $3.40 stt turbos, hoping to get some profit on the board early. It didn't work according to plan. I busted out of both of them in the late stages. One when my pocket tens all-in (crapshoot time in true turbo style) ran into the mighty pocket 6s, which then spiked a turned 6. The other when my push with 10,J suited ran into A,Q and neither of us improved.
So, that left me short of options. So I decided to jump into a $1.20 stt with standard blind levels. This was more like my sort of game. Plenty of time to watch the game develope without the blinds eventually pushing you into committing all your chips with any old thing if you were card dead on a loose table early doors. I managed to cash in 2nd place in this game for $2.70
Stage 2:
In the meantime I had already started another of these $1.20 games. Again I finished 2nd in this one. Headsup he just had me covered when I picked up AK and reraised. Villain pushes allin and I hope I'm either miles ahead or racing. As it turns out he is holding KK. No ace and I'm out in 2nd again for another $2.70
Seeing as these games were doing well for me I decided to go for another. I fired this one up and worked out how I was going to invest the money I had left. I figured the best thing to do was fire up yet another one of the $1.20 games and, also, go back and have another go at a $3.40 stt turbo. This meant playing 3 tables at once, which I had to do as time was running short. Now this wont seem much to many of you who multi table all the time, but for me it was bloody difficult. I haven't played online seriously for over a year now due to my live play seriously kicking off, and when I did play online seriously it was on the Boss Network, and only ever one table at a time. I only ever fired up Stars to play a couple of satellites a long time ago, and have only ever used it for drunk donking poker. This Friday nights H.O.R.S.E donking session with a few of the RTR Crew being a good example. So here I was struggling like hell to seriously concentrate on 3 tables at once
Final Stage:
So, I'm multi tabling 3 stts as my finale. For much of all 3 games I held the chip lead at each table. The $1.20 standard blind level games were taking care of themselves (thanks donks) and the turbo was typically fluctuating. Two successive sick beats saw me bust out of the turbo in 5th when I was set for a cash finish. I called an allin for half my stack with JJ and find myself facing J,Q suited. Hitting one Queen wasn't good enough for him as he rivered a 2nd. That left me fairly short stacked and the very next hand I picked up A,Q in the BB. I had two callers and figured this would be as good a chance as any to either triple up or steal the blinds as both callers had fold equity. One called my allin with A,10 and a flop of 9,7,8 left him open ended and four to the flush. The river brought his flush for him and I'm out in 5th
The other two $1.20 stts are going well though. I eventually managed yet another 2nd place in one, and a third place in the other. So here is my RTR Challenge result summary:
Result:
$3.40 turbo - No cash
$3.40 turbo - No cash
$3.40 turbo - No cash
$1.20 NLHE - 2nd $2.70
$1.20 NLHE - 2nd $2.70
$1.20 NLHE - 2nd $2.70
$1.20 NLHE - 3rd $1.20
That's a loss of $4.30 from my starting $10
My total time at the tables was - 3 Hours and 37 Minutes.
Conclusion:
With hindsight I wouldn't have played any turbos. They are too crapshooty from the middle to end stages. At such low stakes the standard is typically awful and loose, and as such you need cards to make any moves with in the latter stages if you've been card dead on a loose table early doors
If I was to do this again I would probably start with a $6 stt with standard blind levels and use the remaining on the $1.20 games.
I found this challenge very difficult. The need to multi table is not one I'm familiar with or good at. Quite the opposite - I was dreadful. I am, however, relatively happy with my results, although my one gripe is not being able to turn any of my cashes into a win.
Good luck to whoever is next at the felt
Matty H
RESULT: FULL TIME ACHEIVED. LOSS OF $4.30
Next to take the challenge is HullJimi
1) How are you going to start the challenge?? I've decided to take a different line of attack than the two previous attempts. I'm going to sit down at 5c/10c table on Bodog with the whole stack - I've just signed up for Bodog and it's bonkers at that level. So I'll be hoping for some nutter to double me up sharpish.....or I'll get outdrawn and last all of 5 minutes! 2) You're up to $25 after an hour. What do you do in that situation?? Do a little dance, make a little love - basically get down tonight! Well, given I'm playing cash, I must have found a juicy table. So, I'll leave some money on the cash tables and chuck in a SNG or two on Stars for a change of scenary.... 3) And when are you doing the challenge?? Saturday night. Unless the wife throws a spanner in the works. If she does *I'll beat her and throw her back in the kitchen* (strike this out!!), I'll be doing it Tuesday night. I'll post on the forums so everyone knows it's game on! 4) If you stay in the money, you'll beat BurnleyMik. Will you consider just sitting out?? ;o) Not only BM, but Matty too..... And no, they'll be no sitting out!
The year is 2057, and eighty-six year old Mr Cloud (still sprightly, with a twinkle in his eye, but very elongated ears) sits down to have a game of poker. He logs on to his favourite site, BurnleyMikPoker.com, the world’s number one new site. He thinks back to the days when he was happy to get 30% rakeback and laughs. No rake poker has been the norm for around thirty years now – although it still annoys him a little to see the tables having advertising all over them, and he knows his virtual avatar will be wearing a polo shirt emblazoned with the logo of the biggest fast food outlet. He plays his first hand, a $1/$2 nl cash game, now considered micro stakes, and takes a look around at his opponents. Despite their virtual clothing, he can see their faces clearly, and then he picks up his cards (the playing cards virtual reality pack is now freely available as a sign-up bonus – and enable players to physically pick up their cards, which are wirelessly attached to the PC, and will display the relevant cards that players are dealt). He has ten jack suited in the big blind, there are a few limpers, so he taps the table and his hand is automatically checked. One of his opposition is talking, but the voice he hears is not quite in synch with the players lips – obviously he is not talking English, and it is being translated, but he turns the volume down – the chat is all a little too abusive these days. The flop doesn’t help him, so he folds and he is treated to an ad about hearing aids whilst the rest of the hand is playing out – these tailored ads annoy the hell out of him – he wants to watch the action, but he knows that part of the no rake deal is that he watches these ads, and his eye movement is being monitored. He plays for around an hour and wins $40 – enough to buy his daily paper, delivered through his printer on the re-usable paper that is so rare these days, He turns immediately to the back pages and reads up on the latest WSOP news. The million dollar buy-in main event is down to the final table, and he is looking forward to the pay per view final table package that he has ordered through his television – which enables him to sit at any seat during the game, and see through the eyes of the superstars of the game, and see who would take the half a billion first prize. He goes back to his PC and logs back on just in time for Bloggerment 2634 – will he finally break his duck??
Welcome to the new RaiseTheRiver Poker news feature. hopefully this will be brought to you once every week to try and keep you up-to-date with all the latest goings on in the poker world. If you know of any good stories please feel free to email: mik@raisetheriver.comHigh Stakes OnlineNLHE A player under the handle “tie53" was apparantly back at the high stakes tables making more donations. His first lucky recepient was Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond who booked a $38K win against “tie53″ in just 14 hands of heads-up $200/$400 NL Hold’em on Full Tilt Poker table Vasari. HORSE High stakes professional Andy Bloch was in impressive form as he took down a $100K+ win during the $1000/$2000 H.O.R.S.E. game going down on Full Tilt Poker table Hatteras. Following right behind him was David Benyamine with over $96K in winnings through 970+ hands of play. “thedoorisopen” (-$24K) and David Oppenheim (-$29K) were the big losers. Limit Omaha Hi/Lo During the $1000/$2000 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo game over on Full Tilt Poker table Pearl, “thegodhimself” raked in over $87K in winnings through 240+ hands. Only other winner in the game was “2little2late2″ who took down a $32K+ win. Taking most of the losses were Gus Hansen (-$23K), David Benyamine (-$29K), and “thedoorisopen” (-$39K). Heads Up In under an hour of heads-up Limit Hold’em play, Matt “Hoss_TBF” Hawrilenko showed why he’s one of the best at the game. He faced off against “TheElephant” at $1000/$2000 stakes on Full Tilt Poker table Harlin and easily raked in over $75K in winnings against his opponent High Stakes Live The latest episode of high stakes poker is now available on PokerTube. it's free and you have to watch it in 4 ten minute parts General Poker NewsThe WPT (World Poker Tour) Finals have kicked of at the Foxwoods resort, Connecticut, US. This is season four of the event. For the latest updates visit http://www.pokernews.com/The Full tilt "FTOPS" (Full Tilt Online Poker Series) kicked off yesterday with the 6-handed NLHE event. This is the 6th of this online quarterly event and all the usual big names are expected so keep your eyes peeled! if you know anyone having any success let us know and we will try and track their progress! RTR LatestSeason two of the RTR league has been delayed due to some confusion with Littlewoods. The spokesman was worried that Littlewoods would be competing against another Cryptologic licensee, DTD. It has now been clarified that the DTD team challenge event ends next Friday and so they will not be in competition. hopefully this will clear the confusion and we can start to make final plans. 2much2drink (aka MattyH) was the latest person to take the challenge. Matty did manage to beat BurnleyMik (not much to beat there!!) when he completed the full 3hrs and 30 mins with a small loss of $4.30, which was very impressive. The full report is to follow. The top five finishers in week 3 of the 5 week series were: 5th raffel69 4th phishfood 3rd cogsgoigne 2nd HullJimi 1st BurnleyMik The league is hotting up like crazy and with only the top 4 finishers guaranteed seats some of you guys need a good showing this last two weeks. you can view the league here: RTR DTD LEAGUE TABLE Lastly, but by no means least, we would like to take this opportunity to wish Amatay all the very best in his, soon-to-be new life as a full-time player. Until next week remember to RAISE THE RIVER!!!!!!!!!
There's a guy who belongs to RaisetheRiver. One morning, he hears a voice in his head. The voice says, "Quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, and go to Las Vegas." He ignores the voice. Later in the day, he hears the voice again."Quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, and go to Las Vegas." Again, he ignores the voice. Soon he hears the voice every minute of the day. "Quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, and go to Las Vegas." He can't take it anymore. He believes the voice. He quits his job, sells his house, takes all his money, and flies to Las Vegas.As soon as he steps off the plane, the voice says, "Go to the Horseshoe." He goes to The Horseshoe. The voice says, "Put all your money into a World Series of Poker (WSOP) entry." He puts up his $10,000 and buys an entry into the WSOP. He goes to his assigned tournament table. The first hand is dealt and the guy is dealt AsAd. The voice says, "Go all in." He pushes his entire $10,000 bankroll into the pot. Three players call. The dealer lays down the flop which is 8h9h10h. The voice says, "Shit."  Sticking to your word........  Let's get together and make a beard!! . . . . . (This is a regular feature - every wednesday - so if you see anything funny at the tables, grab a screenshot and send it to me, or if you hear a funny poker story or joke, send it to me, "the cloud" at the forum)
1) You've got three and a half hours. How much do you think you will make?? I'll be happy to make profit.It's not an easy challenge. If you can double your money here you are doing incredibly well. So any profit will do 2) How are you going to start the challenge??I liked Miks idea of playing a couple of $3.40 10 seat turbos. I will start with two of them and see how I get on from there. My other options will depend on how I do in these two. I'm tempted to plough the rest into a cash game, but unlike Miks challenge I wont be wittling away at the 1 and 2 cents tables. I'll join a 10 and 25 cent 6 seater and attempt a risky hit and run. Like I say though, this will depend on how my two sit and goes go 3) You're up to $25 after an hour. What do you do in that situation??Apart from wondering how I'll almost certainly put 10 bucks of it into a cash game and attempt to at least double it before scarpering. Will probably donk another $3.40 into another stt seeing as they had been kind to me if I'm that much in profit 4) And when are you doing the challenge??Monday the 5th of November starting around 9pm all being well, but will confirm on the RTR Forum tomorrow 5) If you donk out in twenty minutes, will you be brave enough to show your face in the RTR games on sunday night??Hell yeah baby! I win it every week
The idea of the challange is to start with $10 and run it up to as much as possible in 3.5 hours. I set out my plan of attack, which you can see here, and decided to just go for it! Stage 1I had decided to multi-table and fire up 3 games: A $3.40 10 Player Turbo SnG - I didn't play particularly badly but I busted on the bloody bubble!! I maybe should have sat out, just to get ITM, but my aim was to cash as much as possible so i could quickly move up. Second game was also a $3.40 SnG Turbo 10 Player- This was a little tougher, I made a few good plays and put myself into contention when the blinds starteted to rise. There were 3 of us left and I was suprised to see both my opponents understood the push/fold concept. It became really tough and I upped the aggro factor. Thanks to some railage by Cogs, I couldn't be too fishy if someone was watching!!! Anyways, I played hard and finally lost out in 3rd when I called my opponents shove when I had A5 and he had KT. Oh well $6 coming my way i guess!! Third game i had running at the same time was a $2.20 Heads Up SnG. I figured this was where I could double up quickly and take the proceeds to a cash game.... how wrong I was. I played the fishiest German guy on the bloody internet! He just kept sucking out and he was driving me bloody nuts! Twice he kept hold of bottom pair on the flop and turn, despite me betting heavily, and twice he caught two pair on the river!! LOL. It all eneded on a 3h 4s 6s flop, when I had 5h 5s and he had Ks8s. He made the flush on the turn and I was busted! Stage2the first game to finish above was the heads up and at this point it only meant i had a measly $1 to my name. With the two above SnG's running I took the $1 to a micro stakes 0.01./0.02 6-max cash game. Needless to say i ain't no cash game player and didn't do very well! As i mentioned i bubbled the first SnG, but I did pick up $6 for third in the second, so I put another $2.80 onto the cash and fired up another $3.40 turbo SnG. Somehow I managed to win the SnG and for the first time I am in profit by $5 and i have $15 plus what I have at the cash table! By now I am thinking I could break the $1000 mark in this challenge!!!! So I now decided to put $2 more onto the cash game and fired up 2 more SnG's: Firstly a $6.50 9 player turbo - I played ok, but some of the other play was far worse than the $3 games. I ran into a guy who just could not fold an ace and he made a runner runner str8 on me when i held KK, which was pretty sick for me. I tried to hang around for as long as possible and finally shoved it all in with A7 and ran into AJ and finished in 6th. Second $6.50 turbo - Played solid again, but lost over half my stack in a race when i eventually called his shove with AKs and he had JJ, which held. Managed to accumulate a couple more chips, but not enough to make a comeback and eventually bubbled! Was so sick. All this time I still had the cash game going, where i was just leaking chips. I was missing all my draws and no one respected my raises! I FOUR BET one hand when i had QQ and got three callers..LOL. Unfortunately the board brough AK3 all clubs and someone shoved... LOL. Final StageDoddling abut at the cash game when the SnG's were going was not too bad, but I maybe should have played a little higher to try and accumulate. Once i bubbled the last SnG I was a tilting a fair bit and decided to shove all-in with a clubs flush draw on the cash game and ran into top two pair and that was that! ResultI started my challenge at 11.15am and finished at 13.34! So i managed a 2hr 19 mins stint! You can see the live thread i posted at the time of playing here. Overall Thoughts/ConclusionI was under no impressions it would be easy and it certainly wasn't. If i had a little more luck in the $6 turbo's i think I could have taken a good shot at finishing in profit, but I guess it wasn't to be. If i could do it again, i think i would give the cash table a miss because I realised there was just no money to be made, especially for me as I am rubbish at cash, but I think i would have still taken the same route with the SnG's. Overall I actually enjoyed it much much more than I thought I would and calling it a "challenge" is very appropriate as it definately is!!! By BurnleymikYou will see the hall-of-faame on the left-hand side of the blog. BM's 2hr 19mins is the target to beat. Next player up is: 2MUCH2DRINK (aka MattyH) Good Luck
1) You've got three and a half hours. How much do you think you will make?? Realistically, I would be happy to finish the challenge in profit. If i could double the initial investment then I would think I would be in a good position on the RTRC hall of fame. 2) How are you going to start the challenge?? Well cash games are not my strong point, as most of you know! ;o) so I think I am going to fire up 2 $3 SnG's and one smaller buy-in and see if i can make a profit from those. They will have to be turbo's though due to the time restrictions. 3) You're up to $25 after an hour. What do you do in that situation?? Ooooh! if I am I will be happy bunny, thats for sure! If by some miracle I don't donk it off in the first games and I do get so high, I may start to mix the SnG's and cash games to try and speculate to accumulate. 4) And when are you doing the challenge??I will be attempting the challenge this Sunday afternoon (4th November), most likely. 5) If you donk out in twenty minutes, will you be brave enough to show your face in the RTR games on sunday night??Of course! I have more front than the Great Wall of China!!!
Ok guys we have a new fun challenge! here are the guidlines/rules: 1.You get 3 and a half hours to try and turn $10 into as much as possible (and if you lose the $10, the challenge is over). 2. You can multi-table as many as you wish. 3. You must post a thread with the start-time and finish-time and someone will try to keep up with your progress. 4.You must post the following information: -site -type of game -level -all games played in 5.Only allowed to start an STT at least half an hour before the end of the challenge. Only allowed to start an MTT at least an hour before the end of the challenge. Any cash games are only allowed to go around to the next big blind after the time is up. 6. You will have a Before and After set of interview questions to be published at the time of you taking up the challenge! 7. Your results will then be entered into the "Hall Of Fame" 8. One person will be selected per week from a list of volunteers. It's pretty simple really and it will be a lot of fun to see who can make the most of $10 in the three hour period. Anyone who fancies having a go, feel free to PM either myself (BurnleyMik), Cloud or Brainchylde at the forum and your name will be entered into the hat! Good Luck and Have fun!
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