Tom Dwan aka Durrrr noted Hold’em and Omaha poker expert doesn’t win a bracelet.  This is notable on a ton of levels.  First off he’s never won one, and this is the closet he’s ever been.  If tieing is like kissing your sister, second place is like kissing your sister on the mouth with tongue.  For Dwan it was worse.   He’s rumored to have over 15 million dollars in action on the side bets.

As this online poker blog mentions he easily could have offered his heads up opponent 2 million to throw the final table and still been up thirteen million on the afternoon. Plenty of old school gamblers would have done just that, and that includes many of the folks he made his bets with. So credit to Dwan’s honesty and self-belief on one hand and debit to his naivety.

Chainsaw jams. Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler a noted online forum contributor, min-cash specialist, and tight is right believer, almost shocked the internet by winning a bracelet before Tom Dwan. The Chainsaw brought every skill to the table in the 10k Stud 8 event and was in the midst of a heated battle with some of the poker boom’s best. He outlasted Jen Harmon, John Juanda, Steve Zolotow, and this years Ville Wahlbeck (Vladimir Schmelev who added his third final table to his resume and his quick start to the player of the year race). He couldn’t outlast the similarly named Frank Kassela, a Memphis pro, who has been quietly improving on the tournament circuit every year. His first place was his biggest winning–same for Allen Kessler even though it was his second second.

Kassela’s bracelet was made sweeter by the fact he almost didn’t play the event. He bubbled the final table earlier of the Limit Hold ‘Em event and with nothing to do walked up to the cage and took a shot at the Stud 8 event. Now he’s a bracelet winner. Incidentally, noted online player and live poker pro Matt Matros won the event Kassela bubbled.

Terrance Chan noted online limit hold ‘em poker stud came up just short in the Limit Hold ‘em tournament. Chan might have outlasted Kassela but he had nothing left in the tank as Matros pipped him. This is a bit of a surprise trend as save the largest donkaments the live players have had more success this year than the online players. The pendulum swings back and forth and after heavy pushing by the up and comers it appears the vets have started to push back a bit. Just when it seemed like everyone was convinced the best internet players had become simply the best players.

Phil Laak did something many online players do every other week or so. Those guys lock into marathon sessions at home with a pile of red bull cans and a fridge full of delivery left overs. Poker is a four day binge to some, yet Laak did his four day binge away from home. Laak set a world record for playing for 115 hours continuous (with a weird allotment of five minute breaks that could be banked for showers and other purposes) but did it in the Bellagio poker room.

The attendance for the World Series is generally down. Perhaps, the scarcity of satellites online to access the tournaments has contributed to the lower numbers (off 17%) but more likely the poker economy has caught up to the world economy. The Main Event will provide the biggest litmus test of all. At one point it was speculated Jaime Gold’s year could be surpassed now it’s not looking like it. Still, the WSOP has a chance to trend upwards as many players were shut out from playing last year.

Annette Obrestad shows that some of the online poker players get a little respect.  A lot of people think she is going to break out this year, this would be a good early start.  Wasicka has a title under his belt and Bloch has made it to the finals, so too Rousso.   Farha is another surprisingly highly rated bet.  He’s had a deep run, but most people wouldn’t think of Farha and heads up action as being too closely aligned.  His failure against Moneymaker after all created the poker boom.

Greg Raymer, Erik Seidel, Ted Forrest, Jennifer Harman, and Antonio Esfandiari are all 33/1.   Ted Forrest doesn’t have many trophies in poker but he’s won this event and a handful of bracelets.  He’s more noted for consistently winning in cash ring games and to a degree Jennifer Harman fits the same profile.  Erik Seidel is a math whiz and a dark horse in this event.  Like the deep runs of Ferguson and Bloch, Seidel could surprise.  Greg Raymer is probably appropriately ranked, and the same is true of Esfandiari if he’s still playing like he did at last years World Series. 

Eli Elezra, Pieter De-Korver, Eric Baldwin, Scotty Nguyen, Jason Mercier, Mike Matusow, Erick Lindgren, Barry Greenstein, Jesper Hougaard, Joe Cada, Howard Lederer, Peter Eastgate, Phil Gordon, Johnny Chan, Jaime Gold, Kara Scott, Phil Laak, and Gabe Kaplan are all 40/1.  No disrespect to the High Stakes Poker announcers but Kara Scott and Gabe Kaplan aren’t really in these guys league.  In fact, Scott should be getting the odds of the online qualifiers.  Perhaps, the oddsmakers think bettors will be more likely to bet on a pretty face.  Eric Baldwin and Jason Mercier are probably undervalued due to their lack of name recognition and is clearly a case where an online stud like Baldwin isn’t getting his due.

This is a mixed bag.  Some strong older players like Barry Greenstein (who admittedly hasn’t done much in this format), Howard Lederer, Mike Matusow, and Erick Lindgren are probably unfairly lumped in with this group.  Peter Eastgate and Cada may be young World Series of Poker Main Event champions they are certainly better than Kara Scott and probably Gabe Kaplan.  The rap on Cada was he was a heads up specialist so why wouldn’t he garner more credit then some of the other guys.

The next group of players seems interchangeable with this previous group.  For that reason alone, as they are getting a better price, you’d be better served betting on these guys at 50/1; Chris Moneymaker, John Paul Kelly, Greg Mueller, Doyle Brunson, Leo Wolpert, Darvin Moon, Jerry Yang, Mike Sexton, Brock Parker, and Joe Hachem.  Brock Parker and Greg Mueller seem like good players to take a risk on at this price.  Joe Hachem and Doyle Brunson might be wondering what they have in common with Darvin Moon, and Jerry Yang.

The next group includes two players Annie Duke and Dennis Phillips at 66/1.  Phillips has some deep runs recently so he seems perhaps a little too low.  He’s certainly more likely to go deep than Moon or Yang.  Annie Duke is by far the lowest rated female pro player and her odds are more in line with the celebrities.  Think that’s bad, poor Gavin Smith is all by his lonesome at 80/1.

The celebrities are next with Orel Hershiser (who has a deep run to his name) at 80/1 as well.  Jennifer Tilly, a WSOP bracelet winner is 100/1 along with Don Cheadle.   The seven qualifiers including Shawn Rice are 150/1.

Early on the betting services seem to be giving more respect to live players than the online players.  You could argue names like Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, and Patrik Antonius transcend labels like online and live players, though TV face time is the reason Dwan and Ivey are superstars.  Antonius to a lesser degree.  NBC will hope to give a lot of face time to these guys and the services suspect they will.

At the top Huck Seed, the defending champion is co-favorite with Phil Ivey at 10/1.   Since no player has ever repeated seems like that would be reason enough to not make Seed the favorite.  However, Seed has shown an ability to go deep in this even and be there during the pay-outs that nobody else has.  Phil Ivey has never made the finals in year of the competition and has only one deep run of note.  So again, he’s a surprising favorite too.

Chris Ferguson is next at 12/1.  Heres a guy you can justify as the outright favorite.  He’s a math whiz and understands push/shove better than most of his live peers.  He’s also gone to the finals three times winning once.  He may be the only guy with a better showing than Huck Seed, and if he is it begs the question why isn’t he favored.  It’s true “Jesus” hasn’t done much recently but the guy has a piece of a major poker site where they print money.  Why play if you are the casino elsewhere.

The next group is Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Tom Dwan, and Patrik Antonius at 16/1.   Dwan hasn’t done much in this event but he has a ton of experience playing heads up cash games.  While the escalating blinds and short stacks are a little different than what he is used to, he should be getting more respect from the odds makers.  Patrik Antonius has been on a downswing online (as Dwan was recently) but he too is an experienced heads-up player.  Both have to be among the best in recognizing patterns in their opponents. 

Hellmuth and Negreanu are arguably the two biggest stars in poker.  Hellmuth has a better showing in this event than Negreanu with a victory in the very first one.  Negreanu who can’t seem to write a blog post or tweet without referencing Hellmuth hasn’t done much of his own of in this type of format.  Negreanu excels in ring games and plays off group dynamics maybe better than he does heads up formats.  He also makes a great deal of chip accumulation preying on the weaker players that flood the fields.

Three players get rated as 20/1 to win.  They include Gus Hansen, whose online bankroll until recently was on life support, Allen Cunningham, and John Juanda.  These are guys that were atop the poker world in the middle of the 2000s, and in the culture of what have you done for me lately, the answer is not much.  Juanda has a couple of good major tournament successes but none of these guys have made a huge live impact of late. 

Like any of the players above them, criticism leveled at these guys has to be taken with a grain of salt, they are the world’s best live players.  Negreanu, Hellmuth, Cunningham etc are being challenged by this author as far as skill goes but just vs. the rest of the field in this format.

What besides a bad beat or a well place insult can fuel tilt?  Just about anything.  In fact, sometimes the cause of Tilt isn’t even poker related.  Sometimes Mad Tilt ensues when playing poker with too little sleep, too much caffeine, too much alcohol or simply your eyes being weary and you being wary of looking at the same screen for too long in one day. 

Normally, you say to avoid tilt at all costs will only lead to bigger wins and smaller losses.  If you can contiain your tilt you won’t spew and it you don’t spew you bottom line grows.  That’s true to a degree.  However, learning how to play when on tilt can be a very useful tool.

Here’s two scenarios why you need to learn how to play when on Tilt.  You are stuck waiting at the casino you have no where to go.  Rather than play the one armed bandits your best chance at turning a profit for the day is to play poker.  Let’s say you have two hours before you meet someone.  Then your set of Aces gets called down by a guy with a gutshot to the wheel on a scary board.  He calls your all-in and hits it.  Then he starts insulting you.

This guy is terrible has a lot of chips, and you know if you bust him he’s got deep pockets to go to again and again.  Tilt or not you shouldn’t leave this table.  Besides, what are you going do?  Feed quarters into an electronic machine?  No, of course not.  So you need to be able to deal with your tilt and still play well enough to felt this guy.

Second scenario you are deep in an online poker tournament.  The blinds have escalated quickly.  The price of poker has gone up but so too the payouts.  One guy has needled you all day.  You find a spot where you attempt a hero call and are wrong.  The chatbox lights up with criticism.  You are tilted.  You can feel your face get flush with color as your anger gets up.

Because of the fast structure you can’t get up and walk around until it goes away.  Just like in the cash game scenario above you can’t walk it off because you only so much time to poach the fish.  Here it’s vital to learn how to survive tilting.  That’s why the new Mad Tilt structures on bwin are so useful.  The structures are fast and it’s an all in fest.

The buy-ins are low.  The thinking is simple: shove or fold.  Let’s say you go deep in one of their poker tournaments and just bubble.  You are tilting so you don’t want to play cash.  Why not sit in one of their Mad Tilt sit ‘n gos and shove the Tilt away.  One, you’ll learn how to play with tilt and two you’ll be able to have a little fun without high stakes at risk or consequences. 

This way once you learn how to compartmentalize your tilt you’ll be ready to tackle the games anew.  So what if you are getting the needle, so what if you took the worst poker beat of your life, you’ve learned how to handle Mad Tilt and now you can handle any Tilt.

Paul Hogan re-introduced America and the World to the splendors of the Outback and the land down under.  Since then the continent that is a country has been a much sought after game show prize and a dream destination for travelers.  Sure the country has it’s less desirables…  Men at Work anyone?  But in general the Kangaroo country is a little slice of heaven.   

The same could be said for the poker tournament in Melbourne, the Aussie Millions  is one tournament nobody wants to miss on the international poker calender.    You could argue that it is somewhat becoming part of an offical poker tournament grand slam.  In fact, somebody already has here.   There they suggest the Aussie Millions is the poker version of the Australian open.  The World Series of Poker Europe in London doubles naturally for Wimbledom.  They are quite eating strawberries and cream and hosting a royal box but the presitge of the tournament is on the rise.  Tennis also has a French Open to go with the U.S. Open.  While most poker tournaments are Texas Hold ‘Em affairs and the main events generally are, it’s make sense for the French tournament to feature an Omaha main event instead.

The red clay replaced by a slightly different version of poker.  That seems right enough. 

Well, if the fabled and much needed Grand Slam of Poker never comes to fruition that’s no reason to not go to Australia.  The poker boom might have come slightly behind the U.S. poker boom but it came.    The tournament  has morphed from a local affair, catering to that corner of the Oceania region to a major, major event.  Once upon a time, way back in 1998 the first event featured a 1k buy-in and 74 entrants.  It was then known as the Australasian Poker Championship.  Wonder if the asians were upset they got lopped off the title of the tournament.  Course Aussie Millions seems to have a certain cache Australasian Poker Championship seems to lack.  Though the very wordy WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond Poker Classic tournament didn’t opt for easy. 

Fast forward to 2004, and the Aussie Millions became the Aussie Millions.  With a main event prize pool over a million the tournament started to attract the attention of the rest of the poker world.  133 players registered to try their luck in the Crown Casino in Melboure.  A couple of years later, in 2006 , it was up to 418 entrants and 1.3 million first place prize (that’s right first place was equal to the entire prize pool of 2004–juicy).  Course the Aussies had a face for poker by this point, the WSOP main event winner Joe Hachem.   

Two more years later first place 1.65 million and the players pool was over 780.  This last year 2 million went to first.  Course that masks a little bit a loss of players.  Only a little over 680 plopped down their 10k Australian to play.    The Aussie Millions attracts the big name players as well as the deep pocketed world travelers.  In 2007 Gus Hansen took down the event winning one for Denmark and foretelling a Peter Eastgate victory in the WSOP a year later.  It was Denmark’s poker heyday.   Erik Seidel came in second in ’08 proving he was more than just an extra in the movie Rounders and still able to match wits with all the up and comer online poker players.

The apps are available in the Apple’s iTunes App Store. Hint: go to you iTunes, hit Apps, and search for Tournament Clock. The little app packs a wallop, with a simple to use interface, they call intuitive, we call simple to use, because intuitive is like saying it’s obvious. It may be obvious for any iPhone users under the age of 30 but that doesn’t necessarily hold true for the over 30 set. Still, after they play with it, they’ll realize it’s easy to use.

The app includes settings which allow you to fine tune your home tournament or to start straight out of the dealer’s box with a “Quick Mode.” No need to use an egg-timer, melt your microwave by confusing the clock for cooking air on high, or using a stop watch, the Poker Tournament Clock will give you all the options right there. For those of you with a little more sophistication feel free to toss your laptop application out the window, this one is true portability on a device near you. It’s in your pocket remember.

There is plenty of flexibility in the easy to use interface. Those happy mac users and iphone owners can attest to the ease of the platform and the app is just as smooth. For those of you poker playing techies who would be ashamed to instigate “Quick Mode” no matter how good it is, rest easy they’ve thought of you too. Tournament organizers can manipulate blind structures and create profiles of the players, and there is some sophistication to the App.

The bwin group has over 20 million customers who sports bet, play poker, casino games, fortune and skill games, as utilize the audio and video streams of top sporting events. Bwin wasn’t only a first adaptor of their platform to macs they also were one of the first to offer mobile poker games against live opponents. They are on the cutting edge of all the new technologies so it’s no surprise they came up with this convenient easy to use app.

2nd place won a ton of tickets, two $500 tickets, a $300 ticket, a $200 ticket, five $100 tickets and five $50 tickets. The great part of this promotion was even spots 151 to 200 won tickets (a $50 ticket to each). 61 to 100 won two tickets. And above that each player was assured of at least 3 tickets.

Still, the best part of the promotion was the fact it was completely free. To qualify all you had to do was have a bwin account and take part in their free sit n gos. There were 10 different freeroll sit n go formats and the first sitting of each counted toward the leaderboard.

The player who achieved the most success over the ten different formats by accumulating points who the top prize. Not only that, you could play as many sit n gos as you liked afterward, for free, and of course your success could stymie somebody else’s. So you still had something to play for. Not sure if any players adopted that strategy to prevent oppponents from pointing in a particular format but they certainly had that option.

Perhaps, the winner will take the 10k package and turn it into an Aussie Millions buy-in and win Millions off a freeroll. This format is the first of its kind and allows for even a beginning player to build their bankroll by tackling the challenge. The prizes are so good that top players will vie with newcomers and players that normally couldn’t afford that kind of action get a chance to hone their skills with the best.

Look for results from the decathlon here.

Fortunately, bwin which views it’s deal as necassary to their bottom line as Real Madrid does to theirs, came through again with a lucrative sponsorship deal. Florentino Perez, President for Real Madrid commented stating that ‘International football needs partners like Bwin’.

The sponsorship deal between Bwin and nine times European champions Real Madrid continues their partnership until the end of the 2012 / 2013 season. Bwin, has over 20 million registered users, and will work hard with Real Madrid to promote both Football and the club.

Bwin was equally effusive saying that they were very proud to sponsor the worlds biggest football club and that they are linked together with far more than just a sponsorship deal. Their current Magic Moments of Poker tour is proof of that. Working with Real Madrid bwin was able to offer it’s poker players the rare opportunity to win a chance to train with the team as well as win their own sponsorship.

Football and bwin are a natural pair, as the world’s most popular sport football is the tentpole sport of all sports gambling. It’s been a good season for Real Madrid, as they forecasted a 3.5 percent increase in sales to 421.7 million euros ($621 million) because of ticket sales and other stadium-related income.