Royal Flush Poker

Roland de Wolfe was born in London 1979, and although he hasn’t been a regular on the poker circuit for all that long, he is beginning to make quite a name for himself winning both an EPT and a WPT title in the space of eighteen months. The first of these titles was won in 2005 at the ‘Major Grand Prix de Paris’ event, he consolidated this with a very respectable 3rd place, early 2006 in another WPT event netting himself over $1,000,000 in prize money. His EPT title came in the Dublin event and earned him over 500,000 euros in the process, as well as the unprecedented honour of holding both a european and world title.

His live tournament career earnings so far, total almost $4 million and Roland continues to grow in stature after his recent excellent form in live major tournaments, he also made an appearance on this years ?Late Night poker? tournament, playing a good tournament and finishing runner up. Roland has not won a World Series bracelet yet but there is still plenty of time for that to change, and his dominant, aggressive style could be his ticket to more WPT and EPT titles in years to come.

Roland de Wolfe has really come to the forefront of the professional game recently which is a great start to his pro poker playing career after previously working as a writer for a poker magazine. There will surely be more to come from Roland this year and with any luck, a final table or two at this years World Series too.

Freddy Deeb was born in Lebanon on November 27th 1955 and his lived in America since his late teens. Deeb was pretty much forced into gambling when, upon war breaking out in Lebanon, he lost touch with his family there who were sending him money so that he could further his education. Without being able to gain employment due to his visa situation, he decided to play poker to try and win the money instead, although he did not quite manage this feat, freddy learned the basics of a game which would go on to earn him an extremely prestigious bracelet and 1st place prize money at the World Series many years later. 11 years before his second bracelet, Freddy had won his first in 1996 at the 2-7 draw $5,000 event and has had two impressive finishes in the main event too, with 17th and 13th place.

Added to this Freddy has a WPT event title in the Ultimate Poker Classic event and a great many good plays and pots in televised cash games. All this though did not compare to his excellent triumph at the 2007 World Series when he won the coveted $50,000 buy in H.O.R.S.E event, in which he defeated the finest players in the world to take the bracelet and over $2.2 million for first place. Freddy resides in Las Vegas with his family these days and will surely be inspired by his performance at last years World Series hopefully going on to gain more bracelets, final tables, and additions, to his already accumulated $5.8 million in recorded tournament earnings.

Everest Poker offers first time depositors a generous 100% bonus up to the amount of $100 and has some good other points of note too. The player traffic may not be quite as prolific as some of the bigger name sites online, but there are more than enough players to offer a tournament or cash game at most times. Everest offers the usual hand history notes and has a lobby which is easy enough to use, and the graphics onsite are not too bad either, although they could do with a few small improvements. One negative point that must be mentioned is that there isn’t a great choice in games to play, only Holdem is offered, but the players you find at the tables playing seem to include quite a few players of a lower skill level, which is good if you enjoy playing against such players.

The support and help aspects of Everest are good in the sense of being helpful and quick, although they do not offer live support, only e-mail, they are extremely competent and helpful. In some ways Everest seems to orientate itself especially towards helping beginners, with tutorials and beginners only tournaments, that said however, if you are a more experienced player, you will still find a good poker playing experience here if your game of choice is Holdem. Although I wouldn’t say Everest was amongst the most established sites online, it is reliable and the gameplay is good and it certainly a site worth checking out.

Isabelle Mercier is an integral part of team pokerstars, having been noticed shortly after launching her professional career in 2004. She is known to have an icy stare at the poker tables and an aggressive style of play to match. She won the 2004 WPT ‘Ladies Night Out’ event and continues to impress in tournament play, which she is said to prefer to the often favoured cash games. Isabelles life has not always seemed directed towards a career in poker, having been born in Quebec, Canada in 1975, she studied law whilst working to make ends meet as a card dealer, managing a masters degree in law by the age of 23. After practicing as a lawyer for a time Isabelle also was furthering her career in casinos too, working her way up to become manager in the well known Aviation Club de France. After some consideration however, Isabelle decided to set her sights on a different life and gave all this up, to travel the world living in hotels and playing professional poker.

Isabelle has had numerous finishes in the money in major tournaments over the past few years and has amassed live tournament earnings of around $350,000 during her promising fledgling poker career. She has certainly been noticed as an upcoming star by many poker players and if she is not to be found competing in a major tournament at any time, Isabelle spends time playing online at Pokerstars too under the pseudonym, which doubles as her nickname too, ?NoMercy?

In this instance I decided to put one of the classic heads up, all in, scenarios to the test (Ad,Kc) versus (Qh,Qs) this is a situation which can significantly improve, or utterly destroy a players tournament, and accepted odds calculators show for these types of hands, results as follows. The pocket Queens hand should win against Ace King 56.99% of the time, with the Ace King winning 42.66% of the time, and the other circumstances resulting in a tie.

After taking the time to deal one hundred boards with these hands three times over, and then taking the average, with these two hole cards going head to head I found my results actually came out as (Ad,Kc) beating (Qh,Qs) 51% of the time, and (Qh,Qs) winning 49% of the time. Perhaps this is why it sometimes seems that your pocket pair doesn?t hold up against two over cards as often as it should, in theory it should win more often than it loses, but in practice this doesn?t seem to be the case.

Of course you might be able to say that it was just luck playing it’s part and things may have evened themselves out over a thousand hands, but I am not entirely convinced. I can recall two hands during the test when a Queen came out on the board and neither the Ace or King paired, I wonder if the odds claculations would chalk this down as a win for the (Q,Q). The fact was of course that the Queen came out, as well as a ten and a Jack, giving the (A,K) a straight and winning the hand, I find it difficult to believe that a simple calculation can take every variable into account. You can take these test results however you wish but they certainly show an interesting trend which I may have to re-test in my own time at a later date to see if I discover the same results.

This is a hand that took place on the televised game called ‘High Stakes Poker’ and was the largest televised pot ever seen in cash terms. Gus Hansen began the hand being dealt (5d,5c) and Daniel is dealt (6s,6h) which is certainly a good start for Daniel and instantly as the flop hits, things get a lot better, the flop comes down (9c,6d,5h) and despite making a set, Gus checks. Daniel puts in a fairly small raise and Gus reraises, clearly thinking he may be in front. After Daniel calls, Gus certainly knows for sure he’s in front when the miracle card’(5s), hit’s the board, this is a fantastic card for Gus as it turns Daniels set of 6’s into a full house, seeming like a great card to him, at the same time as, ironically, leaving him with only one card left in the deck to save him.

After a strong bet from Gus and a smooth call from a Daniel Negreanu clearly feeling he has the best of it, the river brings an (8s) which gives the added thought in Daniels mind, that if Gus had a straight draw of some kind, he may have just made it on the river which would of course be great news for his full house. Gus, with an unbeatable four fives, sets the trap by ‘checking’ and after thinking for a while, Daniel raises a very considerable $65,000 Gus doesn?t think for long before declaring ‘all in’ and the shock on Daniels face is obvious.

It is easy to to see why Daniel thinks he is in front, up to this point there is no real evidence to make him think he could be behind, and it would take a lot to make him change his feeling that he is in front and make him throw his hand away, such is it’s strength. After some consideration Daniel decides that he simply has to call, and I can’t really blame him for struggling to get away from such a hand, the following look on his face when he sees the four fives says it all. It’s a truly devastating hand for any poker player, the only comfort being that he hasn’t played it badly, it’s just awful luck.

Having said this, there is an argument that can be made here to say that it was possible to make a quite brilliant fold, the reraise from Gus was $167,000 which when you couple this sized reraise on the river with the fact that he trap checked first, shows that he really does probably have a big hand, and the following hole cards would in theory have defeated Daniel – (8,8) (9,9) (5,5), so it was possible to fold the hand even when every card up to that point seemed to be a good one for him, although it’s an extremely difficult fold even for a player of Daniels quality. A brilliant hand for the poker fan to watch at home but a heartbreaking one for Daniel, but that is of course the way that the cards very occasionally, decide to fall.

Antonio Esfandiari was born in Iran on December 8th 1978 and his birth name was actually Amir but he eventually changed it to Antonio. He moved to California with his parents at the age of 9 and only decided to change his name when he decided he was going to become a magician, the nickname on the poker circuit of ‘the magician’ is one which he keeps to this day. It isn’t difficult to tell that Antonio harboured ambitions of being a great magician, he is legendary for his many card and poker chip tricks and still shows them for the enjoyment of his fans sometimes. it was whilst working in his chosen profession that he encountered Texas Holdem and began to take up the game himself, over time he established himself as an up and coming talent and managed to win his first World Series bracelet in 2004 at Pot limit Holdem. He has also appeared in many live, televised poker games and has his own co starring part in a television series with Phil Laak called ‘I bet you’.

As well as one WSOP bracelet, Antonio also has a WPT title and one EPT final table appearance to his name too. Texas Holdem would probably rank as the game that he finds the most success in and his live tournament earnings to date are over the $3 million mark. I am sure Antonio will be entering and doing well in many more tournaments of this type in the coming months, as well as being a constant danger on the cash tables.

Eli Elezra was born on the 24th of November 1960 in Israel, but resides and spends much of his time in Las Vegas these days pursuing both his interest in poker, and his business prospects. After suffering a leg injury in the army he began to devote large amounts of his time to poker, and rapidly became very astute at the game. He has finished in the money in several separate WSOP events and has also been seen on televised poker games, most notably ‘High Stakes Poker’. He has a no limit holdem WPT title to his name which he won in 2004, and also one WSOP bracelet which he won in 2007 at the World Championship seven card stud hi/lo event, where he beat Scotty Nguyen to take the title and first place winnings of almost $200,000. Interestingly he had a private bet with another player that he would win his first World Series bracelet that year, and pocketed $250,000 alone from that wager making it a more lucrative win than his first placed prize money.

As well as being an excellent poker player Eli also devotes a great deal of time to his family as well as running his own businesses in Las Vegas, he is arguably more successful at limit poker than no limit, and can often be found playing high stakes limit holdem in the big casinos on the strip. He is also proficient in tournament play too and has estimated earnings at tournaments alone, of over $1.3 million. After his recently acquired first WSOP bracelet, I would certainly expect to see Eli entering several more events this year in search of a second, and unlike one particular player last year, I definitely wouldn?t bet against him winning one.

Huck was born on November 30th 1968 and was raised in Montana, he left college to pursue a poker career at a relatively early stage in his life and never looked back. His achievements at the World Series over the years are considerable, he won his first bracelet in 1994 in a pot limit Omaha event. He then went on to win the main event in 1996 followed by the $1,500 Razz event in 2000 and the $5,000 in 2003. He also has numerous finishes in the money and plays extremely well in the cash side games too. His tournament earnings are at an estimated $3.5 million which bears testament to his successes in tournament play, much of these victories being earned through aggressive pressure play. There is of course far more to Hucks game than pure aggression though, although this will be the first thing to become apparent whilst watching his play.

Huck has perhaps not won as many bracelets over the years as the likes of Phil Hellmuth but he has had a glittering poker career so far and seems to have mastered the skill of finishing in the money in many of the tournaments he plays in. Perhaps he deserves to have more than his four bracelets, although that in itself is a feat which will never be accomplished by most professional players. There is still time though for the talented and quiet man from Montana to add to his haul and this years World Series just might be the time for him to pick up his fifth bracelet, I for one will be wishing him all the best.

I feel there will always be some sections of the populace who look to find fault in anything people choose to do and examine very carefully any possible effect it might have on society, particularly young people. I am pretty sure that if there were an advertising campaign for poker sites on television regularly there would always be the odd one or two people who might think its wrong or influences youngsters to gamble in some way. The fact of the matter is, most adverts of this sort would be shown late at night and so only the young children whose parents don’t enforce a bedtime of some sort would even see such advertisements anyway. That aside, many parents think poker is some terrible game that turns people into lifelong gamblers, they don’t think twice about allowing those same children to play computer games where the sole objective is to blow as many people to pieces with automatic weapons as possible. If I were to have any children I would certainly rather they were sat round playing poker than out on the street getting drunk and mixing with gangs of troublesome youths. But then society these days does seem very blinkered to the obvious problems of itself, and I for one would be more than happy to see adverts for online poker rooms, as long as they were shown past a certain time of the night. The reason I say ‘beyond a certain time of night’ is because I do think there is a point of some sort to consider in terms of children being impressionable and poker adverts possibly glamorising a game which is predominantly gambling based. But as with all things, if we use our common sense and enjoy things in moderation then there should be no reason why gaming companies should not be allowed to sensibly advertise themselves.