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PokerSchool Online
You can download the PokerPages and PSO software absolutely free and play in our freeroll tournaments. Play online with other players to compete for points and sponsorships! We have changed the look to the PokerSchoolOnline home page and you can now easily surf between both of our sites with the new easy to use tabs at the top.
PokerSchool membership is only $14.95 per month or $149.95 annually. With that membership, you get an amazing amount of content and advice from the top players in poker. Our supportive poker community is the best on the internet. Learn from them and compete with them for a chance to play in our current major tournament promotion, the Big One III with prizes in sponsorships worth over $100,000! Read more about PokerSchool Online and the Big One III!
 Congratulations to Daniel Rentzer - The PokerSchoolOnline member that placed 2nd in the LA Poker Classic $10K WPT event. He won $250,000 + $25K seat in the Bellagio event! More on his Spectacular Finish in the next Newsletter.
The Pokerschool Online Tutorial Team
Poker In America
Tim Kopp of PokerPages writes about Poker in America
Hello again and welcome back for another edition of poker in America. For all of you on the East Coast, I hope you've been able to shovel your way out of your house and back into the poker room.
There's been a lot of poker action these last few weeks so let's get right to it.
Since the buzz of the WPO has worn off, tournament pros and amateurs alike had several big tournaments to chose from lately.
The hot spot this month has been California. Two Big annual events are under way; the Comerce Casino's LA Poker Classic and Casino San Pablo's Golden Gate Classic.
This month we turn our attention to the Commerce and pick up action.
Event #9 Pot Limit Omaha - 136 players, $130,000 Prize pool - 1st Place: Daniel Negreanu ($49,900) Player of the Year TJ Cloutier would take 2nd ($24,700)
Event #10 Limit Hold 'Em - 415 players - 1 Million dollar prize pool - 1st place David Pham ($457,320)
Event #11 Omaha Hi/Lo 146 Players - $146.000 Prize pool - 1st place Phil Hellmuth ($55,485)
Event #12 No Limit Hold 'Em - 227 players - $227,000 Prize pool - 1st Place Jeff Shulman ($83,990)
Event #13 7-Card Stud Hi/lo - 141 Players - $141,000 Prize pool - 1st place Louis Velador ($54,995)
Event #14 No Limit Hold 'Em - 606 Players - $206,800 Prize pool - 1st Place Greg Kouyoumdjian ($76,515)
Event #15 Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 66 Players $133,000 Prize pool - 1st Place: John Bonetti ($53,200)
Event #16 H.O.E - 123 Players - $123.000 Prize pool - 1st Place: Chip Jett ($37,965)
Event #17 Limit Hold 'Em - 548 Players - 894 Rebuys - $432,600 Prize pool - 1st Place: Jack Boghossain ($160,060)
Event #18 No Limit Hold 'Em - 327 Players - 1st Place Freddie Deeb ($113,$30)
Event #19 7-Card Stud - 117 Players - $117,000 Prize pool - 1st Place Chris Biggler ($45,630)
Event #20 Omaha Hi/Lo - 97 Players - $145,500 Prize pool - First Place John Esposita ($58,200)
This just in: Congratulations to Daniel Rentzer - PokerSchoolOnline Member that placed 2nd in the LA Poker Classic $10K WPT event, he wins $250,000 + $25K seat in
Bellagio event. More on his spectacular win in the the next newsletter.
There's still some big events left for the month of February. About to get underway is Larry Flynt's Poker Challenge Cup at the Hustler Casino (February 23 to March 9). Also, don't forget to watch your favorite pros square off at the Commerce Casino's WPT Invitational: $200,000 Free Roll, it's sure to be a blast. PokerPages is always the first to post results so keep checking back to our Tournament Section to see if any of your friends made to the money.
Please feel free to send me any news or interesting tidbits of poker information to be included into up and coming Poker In America reports.
Until next time, may all your houses be full,
Tim Kopp
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The Big One III
You must be a member of PokerSchool Online in order to participate! PokerSchool membership is only $14.95 per month or $149.95 annually. Click here to join now!
The Big One III began January 1st 2003 with over $100,000 of Sponsorship Awards Available for Major Tournament buy-ins Worldwide.
If you enjoyed our World Poker Open Warm Up on PokerPages, why not participate in 3 times the excitement by entering The Big One III? You wanted to win a $10,000 seat at the Open so why not take a chance at winning your share of over 100,000 Sponsorship Points?, with a top prize in each of the 3 finals of 15,000 Sponsorship Points, that can be traded in, to enter any tournament of your choice worldwide. If you thought the World Poker Open Warm Up was tremendous value then take a closer look at The Big One III as the points are higher and there are 3 finals a year.
We are excited to announce our next 'Big One' promotion, aptly called The Big One III. There will be over $100,000 of Sponsorship Awards for major tournament buy-ins worldwide available. The difference this year, is instead of one final event, we will hold 3 Big One III Finals.
*** The Spring Final on April 26th ***
*** The Summer Final on August 23rd ***
*** The Winter Final on December 20th. ***
Watch this space for more information about the Big One III!
To see results of Big One II, click here, and to read the Big One II wrap up report, click here.
Poker In Europe
Kevin Pratt of PokerPages writes about Poker in Europe
Since the last newsletter we have had one of the biggest tournaments of the year at the Aviation Club de France, The Euro Finals of Poker, featuring the €10,000 World Poker Tour No Limit Holdem.
Players from around the globe were drawn to this event as it was the only European leg in the Tour, which is being televised for US networks. 86 players lined up at the start making a prize pool of €831,000 and a first prize of €500,000. After the first day there were 34 left with the overnight chip leader being Sherkha Farnood. Not far behind was the top young American pro Allen Cunningham and many were now tipping Cunningham to take the title. Early casualties on the first day included the 1-2 from the World Poker Open played the week before, namely Dave Ulliott and Phil Ivey.
Day 2 saw the field narrowed down to 6 and the lead had now switched to Chris Johansson from Sweden. Cunningham was still there along with Tony G from Australia and 3 Frenchmen, Jacques Durand, Claude Cohen, and Alain Hagege. Play was pretty cagey as you might expect with a top heavy first prize of half a million Euros up for grabs. Johansson however took a leaf out of Devilfish's book and dominated the final using his big chip lead to good effect, finally taking first prize from Cohen with Cunningham coming in third.
The European Heads Up Championship saw 32 players pay €5,000 to enter and interestingly two of the biggest online players met face to face in round 1, namely Ram 'Crazy Horse' Vaswani and Eric 'King of Ding' Sagstrom. These two play for thousands online but it was Ram who sent Eric packing back to his computer in this instance. Maybe he went to download the BugsysClub software as I've seen Ram there already.
The final of the Heads Up was a very short affair with Mike Sexton from the USA showing Poker Million winner John Duthie the way and in the process taking €6,500.
The European Omaha Championship with a €3,000 buy in saw Rob Hollink scoop a first prize of €122,440. The 3 hour final table had world class player Erik Seidel from America looking to take charge but eventually when heads up Hollink's superior aggression paid off. Rob Hollink can truly be described as the European Champion at Omaha as he also won the title in 2001.
Our old friend Lucy Rokach who I seem to write about in every newsletter showed that she has a tremendous all round game by winning the €1,000 Round of Each, adding another 41K to her bankroll. Lucy is on such a roll at the moment it would be great to see her take them all on at the World Series as she has it in her to become the first female World Champion.
Other winners at Paris included Haim Kakoun €1000 Limit Omaha, Eric Sagstrom €1,000 No Limit Holdem and David Meyer €500 Pot Limit Holdem.
It seems that with the introduction of the World Poker Tour along with a supporting cast of the Heads Up Championship and the European Omaha Championship has put the Aviation back as one of the premier tournament card rooms in Europe. Congratulations to Isabelle Mercier for putting on a fantastic 2 weeks of top class tournaments that managed to attract the top players in the world.
Isabelle kept us all up to date on a daily basis providing tournament coverage and results in a timely manner, and she has also sent us the schedule for the Spring Tournament at the Aviation which you can see has some nice priced events for all players.
Next up in Europe is the Omaha Poker Championships from Bregenz in Austria and I have also added in the schedule for the Torneo di Poker at Hit Casinos Slovenia in May.
After such a fantastic couple of weeks at the Aviation lets hope the rest of the European Casino Operators can try to match things throughout the rest of the year.
Good luck wherever you are playing until the next newsletter,
Kevin Pratt
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Round 2 and Final Event Qualifications
Round Two Qualifiers List
To get on this list, you must play in one of our 10k Round 1 Warm Up Tournaments
and be one of the top fifteen winners. These winners will be qualified
to play in the coming weekend's Round 2 events. Each Round 2 event will
have approximately 300 players. Be one of the top 20 to place in a Round
2 event, and you will qualify for the Final Event on May 10th, 3pm CST.
Go to the Round
2 qualifier list to see who has qualified so far or click
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The Final Event Qualifiers List
To get on this list, you must place at least 20th in a Round 2 event.
Final Event qualifiers are then qualified to play in the Final Event.
The first place prize is a $10,000 seat of your choice worldwide! Go to the Final
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More Information
Find out who won the $10K seat in the 2002 WPO Warm-Up, here
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So You Wanna' Be a Tournament Pro? Fuhgetaboutit!
By Nolan Dalla (All Rights Reserved)
Coming Home
I returned home recently after spending a full month in Tunica, Mississippi at the World Poker Open. This marks the second consecutive year I have attended (and covered) this prestigious poker tournament. Before proceeding, I wish to say there is no tournament held anywhere in the world which is better run than the Jack Binion World Poker Open. The Gold Strike and Horseshoe casinos both team up to host an exceptional annual event, which is now entering its fifth consecutive year. In no way are the points of view expressed here intended to reflect poorly on this tournament or the organizers.
I came back home from Mississippi with many of my earlier perceptions fortified, and others changed forever -- changed in ways that make it impossible for me to look upon the tournament circuit with the same vivacity and wonderment that I once had for this great game. In many ways, January 2003 marked the loss of my innocence and woke me up to some cold stark realities... Read more
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Memorizing your Hole Cards in Live Hold'em (Can Also Be Used For Seven Card Stud) Games
By Andrew Lacey
How many times have you had to go back to look at your hole cards again to
check which suits you have? This article is applicable to live action play
and not online (where you can see your hole cards at all times on your
screen). The situation often occurs when 3 cards of the same suit flop or a
3rd card of the same suit appears on the turn.
You know, for example, you have an offsuit Ace and King but cannot remember their suits. When I see a typical player checking his hole cards again and calling a bet on the flop
or turn when 3 cards of the same suit are on board, it's a big tell
(usually) that he is flush drawing. (Some players, including my good self
sometimes, with a completed flush will do so for deception purposes). So how
can you prevent giving away this information to your opponents and how can
you reliably memorize the suits of your hole cards? By being sure which
cards you are holding allows you to play more confidently and assuredly in
certain situations... Read more
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Poker in the U.K.
Andrew Lacey of the PokerPages Team writes about poker in the UK.
Completed Tournamants
February has been a relatively quiet month for major tournaments in the UK and Ireland, with many players travelling to play in the large tournaments in Paris and Los Angeles. The Grosvenor in Salford, Manchester staged the North of England Open, running from February 5th to 9th. Day one kicked off with the £100 Pot Limit Hold'em event, which saw 110 players enter and a prize pool of £28,800. A deal was done at the final table, with the winner L Gosney taking the first place prize of £4,920, with the 2nd through 6th place finishers pocketing £4,000 apiece.
Next day was a £100 Pot Limit Omaha game, with 43 runners and a total prize pool of £9,500. J Eadie took first place honours and £3,340, defeating Dave Colclough in the heads-up game. Dave's 2nd place finish earned him £3,200. The third event was the £200 Pot Limit Hold'em. 74 players registered and we had £29,600 in the prize pool. M Latif did battle with Dave Colclough and Malcolm Harwood when they got down to three players. M Latif prevailed and took down first place and £8,159, with Dave taking 2nd and £6,263 (his second 2nd place finish of the week. Dave actually placed in the money in 4 of the 5 events that week. Well played Dave). Malcolm picked up £5,802 for his 3rd place finish.
Saturday the 8th saw the Main Event day - the £250 No Limit Hold'em event. 47 players turned up and a total of £21,500 was up for grabs. When the game finally got heads-up between A Mallu and P Geary, a deal was struck, whereby they would split the money 50/50 and play for the title. So each player netted £7,410, but it was A Mallu who went on to claim the title. The Grosvenor wrapped events up on Sunday, 9th with a £50 Pot Limit Hold'em tournament. 85 players signed up putting £13,000 in the prize pool. B Aghatabay went on to win first prize and £3,600, defeating B Hardman who earned £2,600 for 2nd place. Our congratulations go to all the winners.
The Gala Casino Teeside staged The Teeside Poker Festival from February 19th to 23rd. The final event was completed last Sunday night. At the time of writing we have not obtained any results but expect to have them very shortly. So please check our Results section soon.
Poker Million 2003
One of the most eagerly anticipated tournaments of the year went into full gear in February. I am of course referring to the Poker Million heats which Sky Sports are broadcasting each week, with the grand final being shown live on March 14th. This is a special, invite only, 36 player event. The 36 players comprise a mixture of top professional poker players and enthusiasts, with a few celebrity sports stars thrown in for good measure to spice up the interest and to boost the television ratings no doubt - a clever ploy by organiser Barry Hearn and Sky Sports. Even Barry himself is going to play one of the heats to make it even spicier.
The format being used is six heats, one per week, with six players per heat. The first 4 heats have already been televised. The fifth heat will be shown on February 28th and the sixth on March 7th. The winner of each heat will progress to the Grand Final on March 14th, which will be broadcast live on Sky Sports 1 at 8:00pm.
Heat 1 was immensely popular, even for non-poker aficionados, as it featured snooker and pool professional Steve Davis. For those of you not familiar with Steve, he dominated the snooker world for many years, particularly in the 1980s, and was crowned world snooker champion on 6 occasions. He has won countless other events over the years. He also devoted a lot of his time to 9-ball pool and has captained the European Pool team in the Mosconi Cup against America (an event Europe won last year with Steve playing a pivotal role). A genuine nice guy (he also has an OBE) and a regular presenter on BBC television, with a happy and relaxed demeanour, everyone was wondering just how would he fare at the poker tables?
In Heat 1 with Steve were Bruno Fitoussi from France, Dave Cleary from Ireland, Roy Brindley from Ireland, Dave 'Devilfish' Ulliot from England and Mike Magee also from Ireland. With all due respect to the other players who have a great game, when you get drawn at a 6 handed table with the Devilfish and Mike Magee you just know it's going to be tough. Both are considered to be among the best and toughest tournament players in the world. Dave proved his quality last month by winning the main event at the World Poker Open in Tunica and first place prize of almost $600,000, while Mike Magee has won more tournaments than I've had hot dinners. Steve Davis knows a lot about pots in the snooker and pool world. How would he cope with pots of the chip variety? Well to cut a long story short, he won the heat and took the Devilfish out en route!
Dave's failure to raise Steve pre-flop with pocket Kings proved to be his downfall. With Steve in the big blind and Dave in the small blind, Dave just limped in trying to trap Steve, who held a trashy 7 3. But the Poker Gods shone on Steve as they delivered a flop of 3 10 7, two pair for Steve who now catapulted into the lead. Dave bet out 20,000 hoping to find Steve with enough of the flop to call. Steve indicated he had indeed hit the flop when he popped Dave back an extra 20,000. Dave must have been licking his chops that Steve had a hand like J10 or Q10 - a big underdog to his 2 Kings - and the chips went flying all-in. He didn't like what he saw when Steve turned over his two pair. The turn was a harmless 8 and the river a Jack. Within seconds the Devilfish, for many people a favourite to win the tournament, was out and Steve Davis had more chips than McDonalds and Burger King combined. As the other players were knocked out it ended heads-up between Steve and Roy Brindley, with Steve eventually booking his final table appearance. Can he repeat the performance in the final? I, for one, cannot wait to find out.
Heat 2 was another tough table (with only 36 players invited, every table was going to be tough!), with yet another sports celebrity in golfer Sam Torrance; manager of Europe's 2002 European Ryder Cup winning team. The golfers flocked to their television sets to watch. We had Surindar Sunar, Tony Bloom, Simon Trumper, Harry Demetriou (all from England) and Padraig Parkinson from Ireland. Unfortunately Sam couldn't match Steve Davis' achievements and was first to exit. Tony Bloom, who came 4th in the inaugural Poker Million tournament, went on to book his final seat.
The Heat 3 line-up consisted of Johnny Akesson, Peter Costa, Gary Jones, Tim Flanders, Bruce Atkinson and, last but not least, the reigning Poker Million champion John Duthie. Could John make it two in a row? Alas, history will not be repeating itself, as it was Bruce Atkinson who emerged victorious and booked his seat in the final.
Heat 4 saw Alan Abraham, Guy Bowles, Teddy Tuil (runner-up to John Duthie in the last Poker Million final), Noel Furlong (1999 World Series of Poker champion), Ram Vaswani and Alan Mudd fight it out. When the dust settled in this one it was England's Guy Bowles who will be at the final table.
Heat 5, which will be televised this coming Friday, February 28th, should be a cracker. The six contenders are Barny Boatman, Joe Beevers (both of the infamous Hendon Mob group of London based poker professionals), Dave Colclough, Guy Semel, Carlo Citrone and Barry Hearn himself.
The final heat on March 7th will see Ross Boatman, Jac Arama, Paul Samuel, Julian Gardener, Tristan McDonald and yet another snooker professional Jimmy White do battle. No doubt many people will be cheering for Jimmy to make the final on March 14th and see him take on Steve Davis! This heat will be fascinating viewing for sure.
Upcoming Events
The big event for March is the eagerly anticipated British Open at the Vic in London, which will run from March 10th to the 16th. Most of the top UK and Irish players will attend and we expect healthy numbers of foreign players to also compete.
Napoleons Casino in Sheffield will host their March Festival from the 26th to the 28th and will feature 3 tournaments. Full details are also on our website.
We will of course bring you all the results here at PokerPages. Until next time, take care,
andrew@pokerpages.com
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Poker Down Under
Reported by David Parlor
The National Poker Championships will commence in Canberra this weekend and have secured sponsorship from both, Jim Beam Bourbon & Consolidated Sportsbet. This week of poker is sure to be enjoyed by all the East Coast tournament junkies that just can't get enough. A few are sure to have some scores to settle following Australia's largest poker Tournament in Melbourne last month.
Following this, the New Zealand Championship is scheduled for the 15th March and will begin with a Casino Employee tournament that is likely to attract around 40 players. Many of the Crown staff that were involved with the Australasian Poker Championship in January will be trying their luck on the other side of the tables and I am sure will enjoy being a player for a week.
Pokernetwork.com have kindly offered to sponsor a team of dealers in the teams' event to be held on Thursday march 20th. Any interested dealers that are attending the championship are encouraged to register their interest with a team name on the pokernetwork noticeboard to qualify. A random draw will be made for the sponsorship with pokernetwork taking no cut of the prize.
Crown's weekly tournaments are again proving popular and are attracting large fields every Thursday. They will continue throughout the year in preparation for next year's Australasian Championship that is sure to be bigger than ever.
For any other questions about Poker in Australia please email me.
-David Parlor
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PokerDollars
Play for free on our PokerPages software and win a chance to join PokerSchool Online! Just download the PokerPages software here!
If you have registered and downloaded our software and play in the fun play cardroom of PokerPages you can Win Poker Dollars. The Top 3 players on the ranking system at the end of the month win, 3 months, 2 months and 1 month respectively in PokerSchool Online. You must play in at least 20 freeroll tournaments during this month in order to win. To see our winners so far, click here!
If you are an existing school member you can still play in the Fun Play cardroom and win Poker Dollars towards your existing school membership.
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Signing Off
We hope you enjoyed our twice-monthly newsletter. If you would like to contribute to this newsletter or have any suggestions, please email tina@pokerpages.com. So until next time, be lucky!
Sincerely,
The PokerPages Staff.
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