FoldorRaise.com Blog

Titan Poker just launched, and they’re offering a great 100 percent deposit bonus up to $500. There’s also a $1,000 freeroll for all depositors.

And perhaps best of all, FoldorRaise.com is sponsoring a special $100 NO-DEPOSIT-NECESSARY FREEROLL on Monday, September 12. Password is takeit. See you there.

FoldorRaise is sponsoring a $50 freeroll on August 7 at Noble Poker. Password is proveit. No deposit necessary. See you there. Noble, meanwhile, is running a cool promotion. Win seven straight $10 sit-and-gos and you get $1 million. Finish in the top two five straight times and you get $250.

USA Today digs deep and discovers that the record turnout at the World Series of Poker is … making it really hard to go to the bathroom at the Rio.

Meanwhile, the New York Post interviews Maxim’s Erin Ness and other players who have, you know, jobs and are using up their vacation time in an attempt to become the next Greg Raymer. You can also only imagine how many college kids are telling their parents they won’t be around much this summer because they’re playing poker.

—
Sign up for Noble Poker today and get an $800 matching bonus and an invite into our private $250 freeroll!

FoldorRaise is sponsoring a Sunday night $100 freeroll at Noble Poker. Password is princepk. No deposit necessary. See you there.

If you think the $10K main event is the most expensive tournament at the World Series, well, you’re not Daniel Negreanu. Last year, he rebought something like 30 times in the $1K rebuy no-limit hold-’em event, but he finished third and ended up having a profitable tourney. This year was much less eventful. Negreanu rebought 12 times and finished one out of the money.

Cardplayer has the rest of the details.

Just a quick sponsorship note:
FoldorRaise.com is happy to announce an amazing exclusive deal with the fine folks at Noble Poker.

If you haven’t played on Noble, which we’ve found to have soft games and great software with impressive stats-tracking, FoldorRaise.com is giving you some great reasons to check it out:
* A 100 percent deposit bonus up to $800 and a 60 percent reload bonus up to $200.
* All first-time depositors will be eligible for a $1,000 freeroll, and FoldorRaise.com is also sponsoring an exclusive private $250 freeroll just for our users at the end of June. Soon after that, we’ll be setting up a regular series of private tournaments on Noble.
* And if you’re not quite ready to deposit, that doesn’t mean you can’t play for real money. There are also freerolls for anybody who downloads Noble Poker through our link.

Despite the fact that they’re fighting through a sea of players in fields with thousands of players, poker pros are, so far, asserting their dominance in the World Series. Allen Cunningham beat Scott Fischman to take down a $1,500 NL hold-’em event, and Layne Flack finished second in a $1,500 pot-limit event. Given the field sizes, if any of these guys makes another final table this WSOP, it will be an accomplishment that rivals what Dan Harrington did the last two years.

So it begins.

From Arieh’s latest blog entry: “Once I set my mark on the poker world this year, I can be remembered forever as one of the greats of all time (my honest opinion).”

Whatever happens, we’ll all get some good TV out of it.

and it probably doesn’t, Phil Laak had an even more brutal beat with pocket aces.

On an unrelated note, Bill Fillmaff explains expected value.

- - -
Qualify for the World Series of Poker for as little as $12 in Party Poker’s step tournaments. Visit Party Poker and get a 20% bonus up to $100. Enter RAISE22 as your bonus code.

There is little justice in poker, even when you’re a Hollywood star. On Day 2 of the Mirage Poker Showdown, Tobey Maguire got knocked out when his pocket kings got cracked by 99. And Jennifer Tilly was eliminated when her pocket aces got cracked by a flush.

Meanwhile, in the world of larger stakes, Joe Cassidy beat up Daniel Negreanu.

John Phan is on one heck of a roll, but some even more notable items from the first day of Mirage Poker Showdown (to us at least) include the fact that Card Player bosses/father and son Barry Shulman and Jeff Shulman are second and fourth in chips. And Jennifer Tilly has slightly more chips than her boytoy Phil Laak.

- - -
Qualify for the World Series of Poker for as little as $12 in Party Poker’s step tournaments. Visit Party Poker and get a 20% bonus up to $100. Enter RAISE22 as your bonus code.

Players want to wear logos + poker’s growing popularity on TV + laws = more potential controversy.

Daniel Negreanu beats Mimi Tran (and her backer Barry Greenstein) out of $500K. We still think this whole series of challenge matches seems a bit nuts.

If you hold a $50K buy-in event and nobody shows up, did it ever exist? We might find out on Wednesday. We’re hearing the turnout for this one might be a bit disappointing.

We’re also hearing that the WSOP may sell out well before the main event kicks off in July.

Antonio Esfandiari is such a tool.
—
PACIFIC POKER: 5-person and 10-person sit-and-gos 24/7. Get up to a $100 bonus on your first deposit.

Daniel Negreanu drops $200K to David Oppenheim. We know his heads-up challenges are meant to drive attention and players to the Wynn, but if Negreanu loses his next one, this will already start to seem like a really bad idea. It wouldn’t be the money so much (although the money would really hurt). It’s the idea that Negreanu’s vulnerable (no matter how true or false this really is) that could hurt both his reputation and the Wynn.

Michael Mizrachi may end up winning more money on the tournament circuit than anyone in history if he keeps this up.

A guy from Partypoker beat Greg Raymer to win the British Poker Maybe this is Partypoker’s year to turn online champions into tournament superstars. We know that Pokerstars has been more than a little lucky with this in recent years. It’s back to the WSOP step tourneys on Party for us.

- - -
Qualify for the World Series of Poker for as little as $12 in Party Poker’s step tournaments. Visit Party Poker and get a 20% bonus up to $100. Enter RAISE22 as your bonus code.

But, hey, Phil Ivey just won’t go away. As for all the talk about how Ivey “tilted the entire field” by refusing to play down to 18 players the day before, we think that story has to be a bit out of context. Maybe Ivey’s stomach didn’t feel good. If you’ve read Aces and Kings, you’ll know what we mean

Mizrachi and Ivey are continuing their scarily consistent play at the WSOP Circuit event in Lake Tahoe. But we’re picking John Juanda.
And we still think he’s gonna make a big push for Player of the Year.

- - -
Qualify for the World Series of Poker for as little as $12 in Party Poker’s step tournaments. Visit Party Poker and get a 20% bonus up to $100. Enter RAISE22 as your bonus code.

From Pokerwire.com’s report on the WSOP Circuit event in Lake Tahoe:
“Tuan Le eliminates Hasan Habib.”

There’s been some discussion about whether John Stolzmann overbet the pot on the hand where he had the nut flush against Chau Giang’s two pair. It seems pretty clear that the answer is No. The big bet seemed fishy enough that Giang called, even though he had to be worried about sets and a bigger two pair, in addition to the possible Broadway straight on the board. Stolzmann made some big plays during the WPT Tunica event (re-re-raising Michael Mizrachi with no hand and no draw was fun to watch), and this overbet was as good as any.

—
PACIFIC POKER is giving away $250K in its Grandstand event. Get up to a $100 bonus on your first deposit.

And more hilarity ensues.

The blog’s been quiet for a little while because we’ve been working on a special FoldorRaise.com event that’s happening on Saturday, May 7. If you’re in the New York City area, and you’d like more info, email us at foldorraise.

Just a few other quick things. Paul Phillips goes above and beyond analyzing a few hands between Hasan Habib and Tuan Le.

Then Daniel Negreanu weighs in.

NBC’s first broadcast of the National Heads-Up Championship was very well done. We could have seen a few more poker hands (and we can’t wait until we get to see Phillips vs. Hellmuth), but the commentary and story lines were good. Our favorite part was the bit about Erick Lindgren when Daniel Negreanu and Josh Arieh talked about how groovy and rad and totally awesome Lindgren is. What else would you expect Lindgren’s bestest bestest best poker buddies to say?

—
PACIFIC POKER is giving away $250K in its Grandstand event. Get up to a $100 bonus on your first deposit.