Manuel Ferrari’s Million-Euro Moment The dust has finally settled on another Pokerstars EPT Barcelona, the centrepiece of the European poker schedule each year, and it didn’t disappoint, producing stories aplenty, not least in the Main Event. Italian pro Manuel Ferrari came to the final table as chip leader but he
Your face, my thane, is as a book where menMay read strange matters. To beguile the time,Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,Your hand, your tongue: look like th’ innocent flower,But be the serpent under’t.” ~ Lady Macbeth The Serpent There is a type of poker player who
The Noumenal Realm In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Immanuel Kant introduced the idea of the noumenal realm as reality as it exists independently of human perception. He argued that while people can experience and understand the phenomenal world through their senses and reason, the noumenal world, or the
Opaque A few weeks ago, I wrote about Crispin Rovere’s first investigation into CoinPoker and the uncomfortable questions it raised about the relationship between offshore gambling, poker content creators and the people willing to put their reputations on the line for a sponsorship cheque. The central warning of that piece
Dragon Teeth In Greek mythology, Cadmus is celebrated as the founder of Thebes, but before he could establish the great city, he faced an extraordinary challenge. After slaying the sacred dragon of Ares, he was instructed by the goddess Athena to sow the dragon's teeth into the earth. Rather than
Trust Poker players are decision-makers. We make fast decisions under pressure, staring at a screen full of tiled virtual tables. We tank long and hard over tough decisions for chunky percentages of our net worth, glaring at our opponents across the green baize. There are, however, different but certainly no
A Main Event Day 7 Surprise Just over a week ago, the World Series Of Poker dived head-first into their umpteenth controversy of the Vegas Summer when they surprised the 62 remaining players in the Main Event with an ‘Action Clock’. For 57 years, there had never been any fixed
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.“ ~ Abraham Lincoln Brain Trust During one of the short breaks at the recent PokerStars Open Malaga event, myself and Dara O’Kearney had a great chat with tournament director Nick O’Hara.
The Story We Wanted Last year, Leo Margets gave the poker world the story it desperately wanted. The Spanish poker pro did not set out to become a symbol. Quite the contrary. On the latest episode of ‘The Chip Race’, she talked about how she actually balks at the idea
A Birthday That Changes Everything When Shaun Deeb turned 40 earlier this year, he crossed one of the stranger thresholds in poker in that he suddenly became eligible for the Poker Hall of Fame. It’s an odd milestone and one that has never really made sense to me. Maybe during
An Ocean Of Variance In Graham Greene’s ‘Loser Takes All’ (1955), there is one memorable Monte Carlo Casino passage which follows the character Bertram as he becomes absorbed by the roulette table. Initially inexperienced and uncertain, he treats gambling almost like a puzzle rather than a reckless risk. Instead of
Freudian Insights I read a lot of Freud in college, both the try-hard, rigorous Freud who was deeply respectful of the scientific method and the playful, after-dinner Freud who waxed lyrical on psycho-sexual motivations. I was studying philosophy and, within that broad subject, I drifted towards existentialism and its overlap
