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Poker Celibacy- The key to my recent success

February 24, 2010

I’m sure most of you have realized that i have slowed down a lot with my poker posts. The main reason is that i haven’t really played much poker. Apart from the social league, it has been a quiet poker year for me.

Today, i played my first freeroll in well over a month on the Pigg’s. It started off fairly well and i quickly found my grove, my game has improved a lot over the past few months and it seems that my new approach and poker ethos is working. Anyway, i slogged it out in the hold’em tournament and managed a win.

I pocketed a nice amount of R350 ( about $35) which boosts my 2010 freeroll earnings to $61.95. Not bad considering i haven’t loaded any accounts with my own money!!!

Feeling in great poker shape, I took R80 from my winnings and played in the R5000 Guaranteed Tournament on the Pigg’s and played a similar game, applying the tactics i have been training for and WHAM… a top 10 finish in 7th with a nice R776.00 purse( No re-buys or add-on’s) and my freeroll earnings explodes to $141.95.

The key to my success at online poker. Poker Celibacy!!! Yes, you heard correctly! I have taken a well deserved break and feeling fresh, fresh enough to pick up from where i left off! I will continue to play once or twice a week but not more and concentrate on quality online poker sessions rather than long innings!

”All-in Stefk”

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Tom “durrrr” Dwan’s $1.5 Million Dollar Challenge

February 19, 2010

Tom "durrrr" Dwan puts out a heads-up challenge

Hello fellow poker fans, Jason Lindgren here with the first of hopefully many news articles for Poker Shuffle! I’ve decided to start with news regarding  Tom Dwan aka “durrrr” online, a young and unpredictable professional poker player who has won and lost several fortunes in his career. So lets begin with Tom Dwan’s “durrrr” heads-up challenge.

So whats the “durrrr” challenge all about? Well Tom Dwan  issued a challenge to the international poker world in January 2009 (anyone with the cash can accept the challenge). He will put up $1.5 million dollars to any opponent’s $500,000, guaranteeing challengers 3 to 1 odds.

The way it works is, the opponent plays “durrrr” in heads-up at 4 tables all at once, 50,000 hands. After the last hand has been played, the player who is up, even by one dollar, wins the challenge. So if  “durrrr” wins, he keeps any money he won during the challenge and the opponents $500,000. However if the opponent wins they keep their winnings and the $1.5 million that “durrrr” put up.

There are a few rules that “durrrr” has laid out:

  • The game type must be No-Limit Hold ‘em or Pot-Limit Omaha
  • The stakes must be a minimum of $200/$400
  • Once the stakes have been decided upon, they must stay the same for the entire challenge
  • Players must reload if their stack falls below 75 big blinds at any time be it No-Limit Hold ‘em or Pot-Limit Omaha

Patrik Antonius steps up to the challenge

Professional poker star Patrick Antonius has been the first in line to try win the $1.5 million dollars in the “durrrr Challenge”. Other big name players including Phil Ivey and David Benyamine have expressed interest in accepting the challenge.

After a year, have these two high-stakes experts played through all 50,000 hands?  They are yet to reach their  goal, so far 32,874 hands have been played of the 50,000

The problem here is that there is no set time for playing the challenge, only playing when they are both available and willing. For instance Patrik is not online or readily avalible when Tom is, or vice versa. So they struggle to get Challenge time.

However, often you will see Patrik Antonius online as well as Tom Dwan and they are not playing in the “durrrr Challenge”. The reason behind this is, the challenge is set to either “No-Limit Hold ‘em” or “Pot-Limit Omaha”, and as both players are professional Stud H/L, Razz, Stud Hi and other variants of poker they prefer to be playing other games, instead of only the one form.

The stats so far? Well after 52 sessions “durrrr” is up by just over 1.4 million dollars so it is clear Patrik has a lot of catching up to do with less than 20,000 hands left to play.

In the last session they played a total of 79 hands, which is not very much at all. With “durrrr” only going up another $22,000. I will be following the “durrrr Challenge” closely to see what unfolds, but with Tom’s lead it is not looking very good for Patrik, but this is poker, anything can happen in 20,000 hands!

Patrik in the "durrrr challenge"

The game type must be No-Limit Hold ‘em or Pot-Limit Omaha

Written by Jason Lindgren · Filed Under Poker News | 3 Comments 

A tough time at the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (WBCOOP).

February 5, 2010

Team Poker Shuffle had a very dry run at this years PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (WBCOOP). The competition was tougher than what we had realised and that was our first mistake we made. Never underestimate the other players ability, respect the play and dont go looking for action unless you have a very strong pre-flop hand AA KK etc. Premium hands are great starting hands but in a game like this, execute positional moves to try and stay in front.

Our second mistake was playing at strange times of the morning. The 7 day tournament took place from 1am and this odd time took its toll on us. On three occasions we overslept, one tournament we started and fell asleep after the first break and the rest we were just plain stale.

Donkey

Lessons learnt from this experience:

  1. Never play tired
  2. Choose your competitions wisely ie. time wise
  3. Never underestimate your competition
  4. Play premium hands
  5. Don’t play out of position

The above is poker 101 but every now and then we ALL need a reminder.

”All-in Stefk”

Written by admin · Filed Under Poker News | 1 Comment 

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Choosing the right Avatar to represent you in the poker room can be a very tricky but extremely vital part of success in online poker. The avatar(picture) is a portrayal of what kind of image you would like to represent and of course it goes along with what your alias is. I play with a few avatars from that go along with all of my aliases on the various sites. But does your avatar affect the way players perceive you at the table? I think it does make a difference. For instance, look at how players react to 'players' that put themselves across as female players-very tricky and most come short as they underestimate the female players abilities. A the end of the day, avatars provide extra fun to the world of online poker. Full Tilt provides the best set of avatars as they change according to how you feel- happy, serious or angry. Here is my avatar that i use on Full Tilt- Silent, Swift and Deadly ;-):