Cards, Cash and Guns There have always been concerns about game integrity in poker. In the late 1950s, Doyle Brunson and his motley crew of fellow Texas road gamblers travelled from town to town, seeking out the biggest games, carrying decks of cards, wads of cash and a cache of
The Don When the final table of the 2015 Irish Open Main Event reached its climax in Dublin, it carried the weight of decades of European poker history. The second oldest poker tournament in the world had seen legends like Colette Doherty, Noel Furlong, Liam Flood, Joe Beevers and Neil
A Partial Mirror Poker players are often uncomfortable with the idea of role models. The game attracts a lot of independent thinkers, sceptics and a people who tend to bristle at anything that smells like hero- worship. Yet whether we admit it or not, most of us were pulled into
The Meme Partypoker ambassador and The Chip Race newsman Barry Carter is a master of both the long and short form. He is an award winning author whose books with Dara O’Kearney and Jared Tendler have received widespread acclaim. He is also the King Of Poker Twitter with his pithy
When JP McCann and Paul O’Reilly took over the Irish Open, they were not inheriting a booming juggernaut. They were taking over a brand heavy with nostalgia, still capable of stirring emotion, but one that had, to put it bluntly, “lost its way a little bit.” It was 2016 and
The first rule of marketing is understanding the product that you are trying to sell. With that in mind, is poker gambling? Is it gaming? E-sports? Is it a mind-sport? Is it deigning? And, If it’s all of these things, is it one more than the other? The second rule
Something Irrational? A few weeks ago, Patrick Leonard put a question to the Twitterati. He asked: “What’s something irrational that really tilts you in poker? I hate [when] on the river the dealers count down the remaining deck whilst people are thinking. I know they have to do it /
Yifrach Outlasts Boivin and Shahade to win the NAPT title On Wednesday evening, as the sun was setting in Las Vegas, the embattled alleged money-launderer Gal Yifrach took down the North American Poker Tour (NAPT) $5300 Main Event after an unlikely comeback against Belgian highstakes beast Thomas Boivin who utterly
Making Mental Notes At The Irish Open 2012 It was the Spring of 2012 and I was starting to dabble a bit more away from the virtual felt. I had a bit of live poker experience, maybe a hundred or so tournaments played, but I was predominantly a 40-tabling online
Territorial Pissing "The game’s out there, and it’s play or get played." Always delivered with aplomb by the late great Michael K Williams, Omar Little had an aphoristic way with words and a distinctive way of beholding the nature of things. He recognised the dog-eat-dog world in which he lived
Koon’s Stoicism If you have ever sat at a poker table, you know that the game is a test of endurance, patience and resilience. If live poker is hours of boredom punctuated moments of sheer terror, then online poker is a test of your mental sturdiness, regular bad beats eroding
A Life Raft With an Engine Let me begin with a confession. The first time I heard someone mention the Kelly Criterion at the poker table, I thought it was the name of a Scandinavian online reg. The phrase “Just use Kelly” was completely alien to me but I made
