NOT SO BRIGHT! The habit of wearing sunglasses to obscure facial “tells” has spread to an ever increasing number of players, much to the annoyance of some of poker’s older purists. Doyle Brunson has often announced his disgust with what he sees as a crude habit at the poker table and there’s a ground swell to have shades banned from some of the swankier Vegas card rooms. I was however amused to hear about a particular incident where a brash young player had felt the need to be Mr Cool and take things one stage further by wearing tinted ski goggles at a private Hold’em session. He was almost an hour into the game with some not-so-young-in-the-tooth professionals and his stack was dwindling at a rate of knots. When the young playboy was finally down to his last ten bucks one of the old cronies eventually pointed out that he’d been able to read the young upstart’s hole cards as reflections in his ski mask for most of the evening. Maybe his gambling future will be a little brighter without the shades from now on.
ONLINE QUALIFIERS I’m always banging on about new players being able to barge their way into big buy-in tournaments by simply going to the trouble to keep entering online qualifiers. A lot of players probably think, “It won’t be me that wins a $15,000 buy-in.” Well, a young man called Hedy Messabih qualified online for the recent Bellagio Five Diamond Classic and had a heap of fun ploughing his way through a field of experienced players. He didn’t just save himself the $15,000 entry fee but stormed all the way to a respectable 79th place and a $24,150 going home present. Playing for buy-ins to big events is a good way to sharpen up your newly acquired skills and poker is one of the few games where the new kid on the block can really make it into the money. The recent PokerStars tournament in the Bahamas further illustrates my point. A whole raft of big name poker stars including Joe Hachem, Jim McManus and Erik Lindgren had a swathe cut through them by dozens of internet qualifiers. The site had been promoting Caribbean Adventure qualifiers (many of which start for as little as $2) for months and the new onliners were not just taking the bait, they ended up taking half the seats at the final table.
BLIND AMBITION Who would’ve thought anyone would be able to create a gaming site for the blind? Well, if you have any visually impaired pals get them hooked up with AllinPlay.com. All the games at the moment are just for fun and include “Draw Poker” but they’ll soon be monetised.
