Poker - the future????

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??

Latest Poker News -8th November 2007

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.com



High Stakes Online

NLHE

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 News




The 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 Latest

Season 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!!!!!!!!!

Poker Third Eye

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!!

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(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)

RTR Challenge -Matty H - Pre Match Interview

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 RaiseTheRiver Challenge - BurnleyMik-Report

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 1

I 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!

Stage2

the 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 Stage

Doddling 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!

Result

I 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/Conclusion

I 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 Burnleymik


You 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

RTR Challenge- BurnleyMik

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!!!

The RTR Challenge! - Instructions

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!