Plus, Jamie Gold spills the beans on his strategies for winning WSOP 2006
BIG GUNS IN LONDON It’s not often we see the likes of Phil Ivey, Mike “The mouth” Matusow, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and Gus Hansen in London all at the same time. They each arrived with at least $100,000 to film the first stage of a four stage European Masters Tournament which Sky will be showing shortly after Christmas. The Euro Masters begins in London, moves to Paris and Dublin and finishes at a venue to be decided somewhere in Austria. Obviously some heavy betting is intended from poker’s elite. It should make good TV. Look out for Howard “The Professor” Lederer. His game is always a tutorial, all on its own.
INSOMNIACS LOVE ONLINE POKER Apparently the 24/7 availability of online poker has helped thousands of insomniacs and night shift workers to enjoy what is normally a challenging period in their lives. It seems three hours of focused online Hold’em really tires people out and they are at last exhausted enough to succumb. Not sure if this is good news for Bank security but the High Street money merchants are probably making up any shortfall to the occasional robbery via massive profits from night time credit card clearances.
MORE PURE GOLD Getting the chance to hear what this year’s $12,000,000 man, WSOP Champ Jamie Gold, has to say about playing poker is worth taking onboard. The reason we have to give respect to some of his rather oddball poker ideas is that all poker pundits to a man agree that Jamie didn’t win the WSOP by luck. Almost every quote you will read features the statement, “He simply outplayed everyone else!” Now that’s quite an accolade. Here are the main points of controversy that appear from Jamie’s firmly held views:
I do everything you’re not supposed to do. I play around eighty percent of my hands.
I bluff a lot.
Worse still. I often show a bluff after I’ve pulled it off.
I talk all the time.
Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson and even Phil Hellmuth told me to sit back as chip leader at the final table and take second place and $6,000,000 with guaranteed ease. I didn’t listen to these brilliant champs. I did exactly the opposite and took on everyone of the remaining players at the final table in a mammoth head-butt.
I just played the way I felt I had to play.
IN SUMMARY Whilst a lot of the points Jamie makes would result in suicide for average players, he did find himself in remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime circumstances, and decided to do it his way. I can’t argue with the outcome but I do think the fact that all of these tactics paid off are glaring evidence that, along with Gold’s magic instinct, luck smiled on him that day.
