Since the end of summer I have set aside time to merge two lifelong passions of mine: food and writing. The result: www.stillservedwarm.com

Season 3, Event 1 will be held at Running Aces Harness Park in Columbus, Minnesota, just 30 miles north of Minneapolis. This event is $100,000 Guaranteed. Last year’s BLUFF MSPT event at Running Aces created a prize pool over $200,000!

This season though, due to anticipated large fields, the BLUFF MSPT has added multiple Day 1 flights which will likely create a prize pool close to $300,000. Satellites and qualifiers will take place February 4, 11 and 15-18.

The $1,000+$100 Main Event Day 1A is scheduled for Friday, February 17. Day 1B is Saturday, February 18. Players who make it through either Day 1 flight will play Day 2 on Sunday, February 19. Players who bust out on Day 1A are eligible to re-enter on Day 1B.

The BLUFF MSPT Main Event provides players with a 20,000 starting stack and 50-minute levels.

And don’t forget, the Main Event Final Table will be broadcast live (15-minute delay) on www.bluffmagazine.com using RFID technology! RFID tracks the movement of playing cards and superimposes that information on a live video feed for the viewers at home, allowing them to see the hole cards.

View the entire BLUFF MSPT – Running Aces event schedule HERE.

For local hotel discounts during this event, go HERE. Be sure to reference “Mid-States Poker Tour” to receive the discounted rate.

Season 3, Event 2

For the first time in tour history, the BLUFF MSPT and Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel in Tama, Iowa have teamed up to offer a $300,000 Guaranteed Main Event prize pool!! The Main Event buy-in is still only $1,000+$100.

The BLUFF MSPT at Meskwaki Casino will take place March 24 – April 1. Again, there will be multiple Day 1 flights on March 30-31 with Day 2 on April 1. Satellites and qualifiers will be held in the days and weeks leading up to the event.

For the complete BLUFF MSPT – Meskwaki Casino event schedule and special hotel rates, keep checking back at www.msptoker.com.

Not many things are more painful than enduring a baseball game. The activity is glacial process, like waiting for my banzai tree to grow. Fastball, slider or change up, what is the difference? Regardless, the score is only going to change three times during the entire game. The only thing I like about it is I can take a nap while watching a game and not worry about missing anything.

In the same way that Billy Beane “hates losing more than he loves winning,” I like Bennett Miller’s Moneyball more than I dislike baseball. In playing the role of Billy Beane, Brad Pitt was particularly noteworthy. “If you don’t know Billy, you get a good idea of what drives him and who he is,” says Craig Breslow, a relief pitcher for the Oakland Athletics. “From the mannerisms and conversations to temper and intonations, it was all there.”

Billy Beane possessed no shortage of eccentricities. In the opening scene, Beane sits alone in the Oakland Athletics stadium while the team is on the road. As he listens to the game on a hand held radio, veins protrude from his right hand while he obsessively flips the dial back and forth. “On” and “off.” Beane, whose failed attempt as a baseball player explains his inability to accept losing, never allows himself a moment of satisfaction. “I don’t watch games,” he mocks, surprised the thought would cross his partner’s mind.

When Beane is not obsessing over exercise, he is negotiating trades, recruiting players, throwing chairs and, as Derik Barton of the Oakland Athletics admits, “eating a lot.” Beane has a daughter, although his consumption with baseball leaves little time for her. Similar to the relationship between Becca and Hank Moody in Californication, the father often buys her a guitar instead of watching her play it.

Jonah Hill plays the role of Peter Brand, (based on the real life Paul DePodesta), in his first big drama. Despite having a background in comedic improv, his performance came with the ease of Federer’s cross-court backhand. “They both contain real people,” he says in an interview comparing the differences in thematic style. “The process is similar, it just depends on what story you’re telling.” Admittedly, I didn’t get Hill enough credit, but one does not imagine Kanye West becoming a sensational country music star.

The “moneyball” concept, formally known as sabermetrics, uses statistics to determine the value of a particular player. Bill James, who coined the term in 1994, describes sabermetrics as “the search for objective knowledge about baseball.” It attempts to answer not only who hit the most home runs but more specific questions such as: which player(s) contribute the most to the offense? As Brand confesses to Beane, “your goal shouldn’t be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins.”

The Athletics’s board of advisors, comprised of a group of borderline seniles, are not exactly what you call objective. “I like Perez,” one particular advisor remarks. “But he doesn’t have a girlfriend,” argues another. “No girlfriend means no confidence.” When Beane questions their prehistoric thought, they dismiss his mathematical approach as nonsensical. As Breslow said: “baseball is very much an old timers game and this is a radical change.” For Howe and the board, they make their decisions based on emotion and they value those decisions based on the results. It is tantamount to the poker fish who says, “I feel lucky this hand,” in defense of drawing to a gut shot, and “it was a good play” because he got there.

The movie sheds light on an even more absurd notion: how a billion dollar industry could show disdain for the assistance of mathematics? Moneyball, like 21, is a notable story about inefficiency. As an economics graduate from Yale, Peter Brand’s understanding of economics was the catalyst to change an entire industry. Beane’s trade negotiation with Cleveland are rejected, mainly because of Brand’s advice. When he interrogates Peter about his identity, expecting him to reveal a secret, Brand looks confused and says, “I’m just Peter Brand.” Perhaps the reason for casting Jonah Hill to portray an affable Peter Brand was merely to make him appear trivial.

When the movie ended, I held the exit for an elderly couple. While the man pushed his wife through the door, she remarked: “it was good honey.” He shook his head solemnly: “if only that baloney were true.” Art and the board never did come to terms with the fact that the game had changed. As the Red Sox manager expressed to Beane: “Whenever you try to flip the switch on the people holding the reigns, they go insane. It’s threatening the way they do things.” “We are card counters at the Blackjack table – Beane tells the board – and we’re going to turn the odds against the house.” What Beane and Brand set out to prove, is that sometimes, even the house can lose.

In an interview with Craig Breslow, we discussed some of the inefficiencies in baseball. Hadn’t I known better, I could have been listening to a professional poker player. Misconceptions about poker and baseball were easily translatable, particularly that there is a huge difference between the way people think things are done, and the way they actually are. Breslow put it best: “Any sport like baseball that one can attempt to quantify, should be making a move towards a strategy that completely removes intuition or hunch and statistically put yourself in a favorable position to win.”

The idea behind sabermetrics does not only pertain to baseball, but to every facet of our society. Companies like Ticketmaster, a ticket sales provider with millions in annual revenue, exists only because of the inefficiency in the primary market. A Taylor Swift ticket retails at $89.00. Thirty seconds later, when the show sells out, tickets are immediately purchased on Ebay for $400, a mark up of 500%. Just like the fans who want to see home runs in baseball and fights in hockey, the agents focus on immediate sell outs and hype instead of maximizing returns. To make a call from California to Italy costs $1.69 per minute with Verizon. Skype, which recently sold for $8,500,000,000 to Microsoft, made their fortune by cutting this rate down to 2 cents per minute, a decrease of 8,450%.

Sabermetrics changed my view of baseball. An experience that once seemed painful became a challenge to find flaws in a teams strategy. As Breslow stated: “teams are only running at 50-70% of their maximum potential.”

Like baseball, poker was once an inefficient game. However, with the implementation of statistical programs such as holdem manager and pokerstove, it has become saturated with information. Fortunately for us, billions of dollars are bleeding away by a society that is what Annie Duke refers to as, “scared of math.” Our job is to find it. ♠

If anyone has comments, suggestions or questions shoot me an email at alectorelli@gmail.com. For all my blogs, pictures and videos, check out my website www.alectorelli.com. You can also follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/alectorelli

The tour’s final stop of Season 2 at Canterbury Park, December 7-12, 2011, turned out over 800 players throughout the week who either attempted to satellite in for as low as $60 or just direct buy into the $1,000+$100 Main Event, eventually creating a $230,000 prize pool.

Local pro Kou Vang (pictured) navigated through two full days of poker but it took only one hand heads-up for Vang and professional poker player Everett Carlton to get it all-in. Vang’s ace-jack held earning him $64,465 for the win!

For those unfamiliar with the nation’s fastest rising poker tour, the BLUFF MSPT is a series of affordable deep stack poker tournaments, initially held throughout the Midwest but is in the process of expanding nationally after its partnership with BLUFF, the poker industry’s leading publication.

Founded in December of 2009, the BLUFF MSPT offers tournaments with a $1,000 buy-in and guarantees ranging from $100,000 to $300,000. The Tour is known to be player-friendly with 50-minute blind levels and its deep stack structure. For BLUFF MSPT structure details, go HERE.

The Final Table of each event will also be broadcast LIVE (15-minute delay) on www.bluffmagazine.com using the state-of-the-art RFID (radio-frequency identification) poker table which will allow viewers at home to see players’ hole cards. The BLUFF MSPT is currently the only tour in the nation to use this technology.

Due to increasing demand and the anticipation of large fields at upcoming events, the BLUFF MSPT will also be adding multiple Day 1 flights at all stops.
Season 3, Event 2 of the BLUFF MSPT will boast one of the largest Guaranteed Main Event prize pools in the Midwest, $300,000!! This can’t-miss event will be hosted by Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel in Tama, Iowa, March 24 – April 1, 2012. Reserve your rooms now under the MSPT block as they will sell out fast!

For BLUFF MSPT upcoming events, structures, hotel information & other details, visit www.msptpoker.com.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/msptpoker
Twitter: @msptpoker

Objective: Live in the moment
Priorities: Writing and Working
Poker Goal: Focus on cash games; Play less tournaments
Habit to Break: Biting my nails
Habit to instill: Budgeting
A Sight to See: Danali, Alaska
A Hike to Do: Mount Whitney
A Place to Eat: Sage in Aria Hotel, Las Vegas
A Person to Meet: Billy Joe Armstrong
An Experience to Have: Feel content doing nothing
Do More: Listening and Yoga
Do Less: Complaining
Be More: Patient
Be Less: Flaky
Spend More Time: Writing
Spend Less Time: On my computer
Random Wish: Make travel videos
Bucket List: Write a book
Word of the Year: Breathe
New Year’s Resolution: Not to make one ♠

If you were given a button that tells you exactly when you are going to die, would you push it?

My vote is yes. Even if the information is painful, I’d like to know what could be the single most valuable factor in altering my immediate future. To illustrate, let’s take the following scenarios:

1) The hopeful and most likely scenario: I die ~ 50 years from now. Daily life doesn’t change at all. Business as usual.

2) Still very possible: I die ~ 25 years from now. Daily life remains the same, but future plans are altered. I consider not having kids or having them immediately. Vacations are taken more readily. Liquidate 401k. Why save for retirement?

3) I have ~ 10 years to live. Huge changes are made. Travel much more frequently. Put bucket list in full effect. Skew goals toward immediate changes and influence. Commit more time to writing. Hold off on the little ones.

4) I have ~ 1 year left. Drop everything except two or three activities: write a book, visit Paris, eat at Noma. Spend more time with closest loved ones. Abandon all long term plans.

The closer we get to our expected death, the more important the information becomes. The most effective strategy for action packed living and increased quality of life is when we assume we have little time to live. It seems the optimal course of action is to live our daily lives as if we only have five years left. (This still allows for long terms goals: kids, retirement, etc).

Remember the semester long homework assignment your teacher gave you? Almost everyone does two things:

1) Assumes the assignment must be hard because they give you so long to complete it
2) Doesn’t start working on it until the last week

When we deal with abstract amounts of time we become overwhelmed. As a result we under perform. We believe that it’s too hard to realize our goals. And like the long term project, we procrastinate until there is no time left.

Time is our most precious commodity. I would love to know when I’m going to run out. In fact, I would propose a trade: Give away a fraction of the time I have left in exchange for the information I want. That is, of course, assuming I still have time left to give. ♠

 
For more blogs and to contact Alec, visit www.alectorelli.com

Things got started just four days ago at the Hotel Corinthia with a Prague single-day tournament entrants record of 500 players.

It then ended with just one man standing Sunday Night: Estonia’s Raigo Aasmaa.

After leaping into the European poker scene with a third-place finish at home earlier this year in EPT Tallinn, Aasmaa managed to get over the hump at GSOP Prague and win his first major title, despite a rather tough final table.

Bet24′s own Finnish Pro Kimmo Kurko appeared to give Aasmaa his toughest test, grabbing the chip lead part way through the final table and looking poised to hoist the trophy himself.

However, fortunes changed quickly and Kurko was the shortest stack heading into the final three.

After a deal was struck improving second and third place money and ensuring the winner would still walk away with €80,000, Kurko soon hit the rail taking the €60k left for third leaving it up to Roger Hairabedian to take care of Aasmaa heads-up.

Hairabedian had the chip lead to do it with, and certainly the confidence, but big pot after big pot went Aasmaa’s way until the big money, and the title, were both his.

All in all it was an exciting trip to Prague and clearly the GSOP’s most successful event to date.

Click back to check out the BLUFF Live! crew’s final video recap, including an interview with the champ, some of the sights and sounds of the final table and a funky look at the famed Prague Castle.

Next up for the GSOP and Bet24 will be a stop in the skiing Mecca of Salzburg, Austria at the end of next month- Hopefully we’ll see you there.

The field was whittled down from 47 to the final three tables before Norwegian model and Porn Star Aylar Lie busted 23rd, making her as the last woman standing.

She was followed closely to the rail by a group that would also not make the final table, just as Austrian Piotr Madej built the chip lead he will take into tomorrow’s nine-player final, set for 1 p.m.

He’ll be followed closely there by fellow Austrian Raihpo AAsmaa and England’s Christopher Kiefert, the subject of the Cover Story Interview in tonight’s video recap from Prague.

We’ve also got a funky look at Prague’s famed Charles Bridge and all the action from the felt, so click back to check that out.

In the meantime, a look at the rest of the final table shows Bet24′s own Finnish Team Pro Kimmo Kurko still hanging around.

He’ll enter tomorrow’s final seventh in chips and just a double-up away from making some real noise.

The rest of the final will see players from Hungary, Bulgaria, France, and Argentina compete for the €100k first-place prize.

So tune back in to BLUFF Magazine, the Bet24 Blog and our final video recap to see how it all shakes down Sunday in Prague.

For now, here’s a look at the chip counts and seating assignments:

Seat 1: Roger Hairabedian 651,000

Seat 2: Grudi Grudev 666,000

Seat 3: Mark Adorjanyi 907,000

Seat 4: Chris Kiefert 1,716,000

Seat 5: Raigo Aasmaa 1,779,000

Seat 6: Piotr Madej 2,081,000

Seat 7: Emmanuel Obregon Cano 468,000

Seat 8: Kimmo Kurko 754,000

Seat 9: Ville Salmi 936,000

On the way, Day 2 of the event saw 209 players enter and just 47 earn a spot on the Day 3 roster.

England’s Chris Kiefer did the most moving, putting himself into chip lead position as the bubble burst and holding onto a substantial lead as play finished.

However, getting from here to the title will be no easy feat.

Standing in the way is a host of contenders, including Bet24′s own Finnish Superstar Kimmo Kurko, the very same man who was the subject of the Bluff Live! crew’s Cover Story Interview today.

You can find that, the chip counts, a look at the famed Wenceslas Square Christmas Market in Prague and a whole lot more in the Day 2 video recap.

Kurko ended just outside the top ten, but is in with a clear shot at some big money here in Prague.

Unfortunately, the rest of the Bet24 team of Pros and Qualifiers will have to cheer him on from the rail as they made their way to the exits throughout the day.

But with names like American Shannon Shorr and a host of others still in the hunt, there will certainly be plenty of excitement on the felt worth watching over the next two days.

For those of you at home, Bet24 and Bluff will endeavour to print all the news you need to know here in Prague until a champion is crowned, so stay tuned – it’s going to be a ton of fun.

500 players made this is the biggest ever one day field for a poker tournament in the Czech Republic and the biggest GSOP event in the tour’s two season history.

With the record breaking out of the way and newly signed Bet24 Team Captain and Cross-Atlantic WSOP bracelet Winner Jesper Hougaard in the mix, hopes were high for the day.

Unfortunately, Hougaard hit the rail early, bluffing off his stack with sixes against queens.

However, Anders Jensen carried the Bet24 flag to an almost 50k stack and Finnish Team Pro Kimmo Kurko built his up close to 70k by the time eight levels were through.

Add in surviving qualifiers Srboljubs Stojilkovic, Jesper Hansen, Mikkel Svarre, and Markus Lehto and there are enough Bet24 players among the 215 or so that pushed through the day to ensure the team is in with a shot.

No longer in with a shot is GSOP Greece winner Sergio Marti Aguiar, who joined the likes of Irish Open winner James Mitchell on the rail early, along with more than half the 500-player field.

Like Team Beat24 Captain Hougaard, they’ll be stuck enjoying the rest of the week in Prague, which has quickly developed a reputation as Europe’s biggest party city.

The BLUFF Live! video crew talked Jesper a bit about that it in our Day 1 video recap, plus we’ve got a look at Prague’s Old Town Square Christmas Market, The GSOP Live Welcome Party, the end of day chip counts and a whole lot more.

Click back to check it out tonight and we’ll be back tomorrow with all the action from Day 2 of GSOP Prague.

The GSOP has always been committed to events with affordable buy-ins at attractive destinations and GSOP Live: Prague, running Dec. 7-12 in the Czech Republic, looks to be no different.

With the annual Christmas Markets running at both the famed Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square throughout the month, there’s really no better time to be in Prague, as the city truly comes to life throughout December.

The $1,500 main event will call the 5-Star Corinthia Hotel home, but the real host of this event is the city itself.

Famed for its Cabarets, Clubs and non-stop Nightlife, online qualifiers from Bet24, the rest of the OnGame network and direct buy-in players from around the World are sure to enjoy the city of Prague as much as the chance to book a big score on the felt.

Plus, with Prague’s rich history, there are always a ton of things to see and do, even for those who take a pass party scene, including sightseeing highlights like the Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge and the Astronomical Clock in the aforementioned Old Town Square.

Thanks to a partnership with Bet24, BLUFF Magazine and the BLUFF Live! video crew will be on the scene in Prague to provide a snapshot of the tournament action and all the highlights of a few days in one of Europe’s most fun destinations.

Stay tuned to BLUFFMagazine.com all this week to see all the action from on and off the felt – It’s going to be wild party and the crew plans on collecting the video evidence to prove it.

The first webisode from Epic Poker’s first Main Event begins on Day 3 of the tournament. Out of 137 starters, 18 players remained, all guaranteed at least $43,000. Against a $20,000 buy-in and first prize of $1 million, however, nobody busting during this webisode would walk away thinking it was a successful day.

With the starting chip average of 342,000 (57 BB), the players generally had sufficient chips to use their full range of skills. The webisode’s highlight hands involve multiway pots, betting on multiple streets, and sufficiently deep stacks that viewers can see players bluff, call potential bluffs, exercise pot-size control, consider difficult laydowns, and generally exercise the range of skills. Although televised poker provides occasional examples of this, the Epic Poker broadcast unquestionably demonstrates the gulf between “poker” and “professional poker.”

If poker were not a game of skill, nothing would matter to the outcome but the strength of a player’s hand. This webisode provides an unprecedented look at what professional players all know: it’s about everything but the strength of your hand. By pitting the best against the best, these players are exposing themselves to your judgment to a remarkable degree. When you see two great NFL players match up, there is a chance one succeeds by forcing the other to make a mistake. It’s the same in poker and if you ask yourself, “How could a great player make that bad call (or bad bet or bad fold)?” recognize the role of the other great player in influencing that play.

For lovers of poker and those who believe poker is a game of skill or want proof, watch the first webisode. If you are pressed for time or can’t imagine doing just one thing for forty-six consecutive minutes, use the following guide to some of the entertaining moments. The summaries below do not reveal any relevant hand results. Note in the webisode how viewers are generally kept informed of stack sizes, blind levels, the size of the pot, and position – items that can significantly affect the context of the players’ moves.

Table Draw and Chip Counts for Day 3

When play resumed at the start of Day 3, there were 11 minutes left at the 2,500-5,000/500 ante level. Justin Bonomo, the shortest stack, doubled up on each of the first two hands, bringing his total chips to over 180,000. Because no players were eliminated during the first 11 minutes of play, the players’ stacks, as multiples of the big blind for the 3,000-6,000/1,000 ante level appear in parenthesis.

Table 1
Seat 1 – Adam Levy 587,000 (98 BB)
Seat 2 – Dan Fleyshman 82,500 (14 BB)
Seat 3 – Hafiz Khan 144,000 (24 BB)
Seat 4 – Hoyt Corkins 252,500 (42 BB)
Seat 5 – Brandon Meyers 109,500 (18 BB)
Seat 6 – Isaac Baron 637,500 (106 BB)

Table 2
Seat 1 – Noah Schwartz 259,500 (43 BB)
Seat 2 – Matt Glantz 453,000 (76 BB)
Seat 3 – Ted Lawson 200,000 (33 BB)
Seat 4 – Huck Seed 93,500 (16 BB)
Seat 5 – Chino Rheem 408,000 (68 BB)
Seat 6 – Gavin Smith 257,500 (43 BB)

Table 3 – TV TABLE
Seat 1 – Hasan Habib 646,500 (108 BB)
Seat 2 – Eugene Katchalov 418,000 (70 BB)
Seat 3 – Sam Trickett 1,032,000 (172 BB)
Seat 4 – Jason Mercier 535,500 (89 BB)
Seat 5 – Justin Bonomo 42,000 (7 BB)
Seat 6 – Erik Seidel 609,000 (102 BB)

10:30 Katchalov v. Mercier – 3-barrel bluff or clear value bet?

With the blinds at 3,000-6,000/1,000 ante, Mercier raised the minimum, to 12,000 UTG+1. Eugene Katchalov, in the big blind, called with pocket deuces. Jason Mercier is known as a super-aggressive player, and this hand demonstrates the difficulties that even a player of Eugene Katchalov’s caliber has playing defense. After Katchalov check-called the flop and turn, he checked and Jason bet with the board reading 4d-4h-9c-4c-7s. Eugene had a full house, but he also had just about the weakest possible hand that could be in the lead.

Watch the hand to see how Jason Mercier’s bet-sizing gives Katchalov clues – only are they actual clues or fakes?

At 28:00, there is a profile of Eugene Katchalov, his family’s difficult last days in the Ukraine, and the struggles he faced as a child in a new country and a new language.

14:00 Seidel v. Habib – missed draw or value bet?

After hand that started with three players looking at a flop of Js-Tc-Qs, Hassan Habib found himself considering calling Erik Seidel on the river with just ace-high.

There is also an interesting feature on Seidel (16:00) in which he discloses that he almost quit poker last year.

18:00 Rheem v. Glantz – from monster to playing the board

Chino Rheem started the hand with 90 big blinds, Matt Glantz with nearly 70. Matt started by flopping a set but by the end of the hand, the board read 8-Q-J-9-T. Did Chino play smart and get lucky, or did he just get lucky? Could Glantz have played the hand in a way to avoid having to call all his chips and play the board? What about Chino’s play on the river? What about Matt’s play?

Redraw at 12

When the tournament was down to 12 players, right after the beginning of the 4,000-8,000/1,000 ante level, the players redrew for seats at two tables. This was the chip and seating position, with number of big blinds in parenthesis. The chip average was now over 570,000, or 71 big blinds.

Table 1 – TV TABLE
Seat 1 – Jason Mercier 651k (81 BB)
Seat 2 – Isaac Baron 577k (72 BB)
Seat 3 – Eugene Katchalov 205k (26 BB)
Seat 4 – Gavin Smith 384k (48 BB)
Seat 5 – Adam Levy 766k (96 BB)
Seat 6 – Erik Seidel 758k (95 BB)

Table 2
Seat 1 – Chino Rheem 1.123M (140 BB)
Seat 2 – Ted Lawson 103k (13 BB)
Seat 3 – Hasan Habib 818k (102 BB)
Seat 4 – Sam Trickett 832k (104 BB)
Seat 5 – Huck Seed 197k (25 BB)
Seat 6 – Brandon Meyers 429k (54 BB)

22:00 Seidel v. Mercier v. Baron – cards mean nothing

Very simply, Erik raised on the button and Jason (small blind) and Isaac (big blind) called. There was a flop. There was no showdown, or river, or even turn.

Mercier checks.
Baron bets into the preflop raiser.
Seidel, the preflop raiser, folds.
Mercier check-raises.

What is Baron doing betting out of turn? Why is Seidel folding? What’s Mercier doing check-raising? How does Baron respond?

All three players started the hand with 70-90 big blinds. This inconsequential hand – it was not a huge pot, either in total or in relation to any of the chip stacks – demonstrates how the players maneuver based on position and stack sizes.

29:00 Baron v. Mercier – Does Jason always have it?

Under the gun, Jason raised the minimum (his usual amount at this table) and got calls from Isaac Baron (UTG+1), Gavin Smith (the button), and Erik Seidel (the big blind).

After a flop of 2s-Kd-7d, Mercier does what he always does: he bets out. Do you think he cares he has two players behind him? (New statistics gathered on EpicPoker.com compare the preflop and postflop aggressive, as well as the percentage of hands played and showdowns won for all the players. There is frequently an inverse relationship between hands played and preflop aggression vs. postflop aggression. That is, especially active players before the flop are less active later in the hand, and the players more selective preflop are more likely to be aggressive later. Not so with Mercier.)

He gets Gavin and Erik out but both Mercier and Isaac Baron have real hands. Watch Jason’s bet-sizing and Isaac’s response.

38:00-44:00 Mercier v. Seidel

In a pair of hands, after viewers have gotten to see them play deep into hands – and they’ve obviously become very familiar with each other – they go at it in a pair of hands like stags fighting to the death. Betting with nothing, bets on every street with the lead in the hand changing, judicious value bets, carefully considered folds: it’s a poker clinic in two hands.

Approximately every two weeks, EpicPoker.com will release an additional webisode from the first Main Event. (There are three.) On Friday, November 4, Epic’s second Main Event, 8-Handed No-Limit Hold’em, debuts on Velocity. You can see Epic’s broadcast schedule for the second event. You can also follow Epic Poker on Facebook and Twitter.

Michael Craig is the Editor-in-Chief of EpicPoker.com and GlobalPokerIndex.com.

The Spaniard, who took the chip lead on Day 2 of the event, held on to bring the second biggest stack into the final nine and outclassed the field on the way to earning the €78,447 top prize.

Although he managed to get all the way to the final two, Mad Bulgarian Stefan Genchev, the massive leader when things kicked off at 2 p.m. local time Saturday, could not turn his maniacal style into a title, seeing his stack go up and down all day until he finally fell heads-up to Aguilar shoving king-queen into Aguilar’s big slick.

The ace-king held and suddenly what started with a GSOP Live record 345 players just a few short days ago was suddenly down to just one.

To no one’s surprise, Aguilar told the BLUFF Live! video crew he’s planning on playing the rest of the GSOP Live series, staring with the Prague Main Event coming up in December.

To hear how excited he was to hoist the trophy, check out the latest post on the GSOP Live: Greece video page, where you’ll also find a special look at the action from the final table and the Bet24 Qualifier’s dinner at Porto Carras’ decadent White Room fine dining restaurant.

That’s all from the Bet24 Blog in Greece – See you in Prague!

Here’s how the final table finished up:
1 Sergio Marti Aguilar €78,447
2 Stefan Genchev € 50,512
3 De Lima Carvalho €35,588
4 Ally Squire €27,552
5 George Tzimas €20,664
6 Stylianos Pantelakis €16,072
7 Timotheus Grall €12,628
8 Anders Vind €10,523
9 Dimitrios Vlahos €8,801

What started with 45 was quickly pared down to a final table of nine as the players proved to be gamblers at heart with the €78,447 first-place prize on their minds.

Overnight chip leader Sergio Marti Aguilar managed to keep his head about him as short stacks shoved and big stacks pushed all around him today.

As a result the Spaniard will ride into Saturday’s final second in chips on a bit over 1.3 million.

However, even Aguilar will be looking up at Bulgarian Stefan Genchev, who managed to get up and over the amazing 2.3 million chip mark by the time the final table was set – His biggest move coming when Anders Vind tossed his sizeable stack in the middle with nines only to fall to Genchev’s jacks.

With that kind of lead, local pundits are already handing the title to Genchev, but in this game anything can happen, and the rest of the final nine is guaranteed more than just €8,801 in ninth-place money, but a shot at the title tomorrow as well.

In the days leading up to the event, the scuttlebutt was all about how soft the local players were.

However, three Greeks managed to make the final here, which should put to rest the rumors that this seaside country, which is relatively new to poker, is full of fish.

Joining them there will be two German and one British OnGame Network qualifiers, in addition to a direct buy-in player from Portugal.

On the eve of the final table, the BLUFF Live! video crew took a tour of the Porto Carras’ fabulous vineyard and winery, tossed it in with a little poker action, chip counts and an interview with Bet24 Qualifier Aron Olsson waxing poetic on how great the event has been for him in their latest video.

You can check that out on the GSOP Live: Greece Video page here on the site and check back right here on the Bet24 Blog tomorrow to see who takes down the GSOP Live: Greece title.

For now, here’s a look at the final table players and chip counts:

Stefan Genchev 2,347,000
Sergio Marti Aguilar 1,305,000
De Lima Carvalho 820,000
Ally Squire 765,000
George Tzimas 737,000
Stylianos Pantelakis 363,000
Timotheus Grall 224,000
Dimitrios Vlahos 179,000
Anders Vind 139,000

Prize pool numbers were released and the field quickly found out they’d be vying for €78,447 in first-place cash with the top 45 finishers getting a piece of the cake.

The remaining Bet24 qualifiers still in the hunt fell early and often leaving just Bet24 Team Pro Anders Jensen representing the site.

But despite coming in with a big stack, even Jensen could not survive the carnage that was Day 2, falling as the remaining field quickly approached the money bubble.

Jensen was still all smiles though, looking forward to enjoying all the Porto Carras Grand Resort and Northern Greece has to offer for the next few days instead.

Dutchman Olivier Schut who appeared poised to make a deep run early, turning his mid-sized stack into a chip leading one by the time the dinner break rolled around.

As a result, the BLUFF Live! video crew made him the subject of a special Bet24 Rising Star Cover Story interview.

Plus, they shot some footage of a themed Greek Night at Porto Carras and threw that together with a look at the tournament action, chip counts and more in the Day 2 feature on the GSOP Greece Video Page tonight.

However, Schut’s good fortunes seemed to change in the latter half of the day as he fell from the top spot and was barely hanging on as the day came to a close.

It all ended when the money bubble popped, meaning there’s 45 left headed into Day 3.

Right now it’s Sergio Marti Aguilar who holds the overnight lead on over 600k.

The entire group will be back Friday to play down to the final table of nine and you can check back with the Bet24 Blog on BLUFF Magazine to see how it all shakes down.

A significant number, considering that when you add it with Tuesday’s 88, the total of 345 makes this the biggest GSOP field in the tour’s history.

The action spilled out of the second floor conference room and into the casino to accommodate the massive field filled with a number of recognizable GSOP faces and a healthy helping of Bet24 and other OnGame qualifiers.

After turning $22 into a $3,500 package on Bet24, Swedish Qualifier Aron Olsson did his best to survive the day and represent the site, but it was Danish Bet24 Team Pro Anders Jensen who really put on a show.

Jensen chipped up mid way through the day dragging a big pot when his tens held against an opponent’s rivered pair of eights.

Then he moved up over 90k when he knocked out another foe flopping a set of jacks against a pair of queens all in pre flop.

Soon enough he crested the 110k mark with a set of tens and suddenly found himself among the chip leaders.

The BLUFF Live! video crew caught up with Jensen at the dinner break for a special Bet24 Rising Star edition of BLUFF Cover Story which you can check out on the GSOP Live: Greece video page, along with a snapshot of the action from the tournament floor, top ten chip counts and a look at the Porto Carras’ amazing marina – The largest in Northern Greece.

The day drew to a close after eight levels of play with Ioannis Papathanasiou holding the overnight chip lead, Jensen right behind him and 148 total surviving.

They’ll be added to the 43 survivors from Day1A for Day 2 Thursday and we’ll be back then to fill you in on all the details as the pretenders are separated from the GSOP Live: Greece Main Event contenders.

A pun-intended “grand” total of 88 players hit the felt for the first of two starting flights and while the overall field is expected to be relatively online-qualifier heavy, Day 1A of the $1,500 GSOP Live Greece main event was a mostly local affair.

In fact, 62 of today’s 88 starters are of Greek decent.

Thinking a field of locals would be softer than a lot of his usual online foes, Bet24 qualifier Mogens Hansen decided to give it a go Tuesday.

The Dane ran into a little trouble early in a nasty flush-over-flush debacle, but managed to right the ship mid-way through the day flopping trip kings and getting it all in for a much needed double up.

Unfortunately, he got bluffed off of trips on a board with four spades to dump a huge pot and eventually fell with pocket nines just before the day drew to a close.

The rest of the Bet24 online qualifiers and hundreds more from all over the OnGame network arrived at the host Porto Carras Grand Resort throughout the day Tuesday.

Most plan on hopping into the action on Day1B Wednesday, giving tournament organizers the confidence to announce early and often that they expect this to be the largest GSOP Live event in the tour’s short but illustrious history, surpassing the 333 players who showed up in Malta during the first season.

Janos Katzenberger won that one, booking a near six-figure score of $98,133.

While prize pool and registration numbers will have to wait until Day1B kicks off and registration closes around 2 p.m. local time Wednesday, we can say that 2011 Aussie Millions Runner-Up James Keys has the inside track at the big cash already, ending Day 1A on top of the 43 players who survived.

The goal of GSOP Live has always been to create live poker tournaments with affordable buy-ins at premium locations, giving recreational players the best live event experience possible and GSOP Live Greece is clearly no different.

With the five-star Porto Carras Grand Resort hosting the event for the next week, players are sure to enjoy the action off the felt as much as they do on it and the BLUFF Live! video crew plans to join them every step of the way.

With tours of Southern-Europe’s largest spa facility, the resort’s own 315-boat marina, 47.5 hectare vineyard and more planned for later in the week, the BLUFF Live! crew kicked things off Tuesday with a look inside Porto Carras’ decadent Purple Bar and the GSOP Live! Welcome Party.

Plus they’ll have all the pertinent tournament action, top ten chip counts and Bet24 Qualifier and Rising Star interviews all week, starting with Tuesday’s particulars and a few words from the aforementioned Hansen.

You can find all the videos right up until a GSOP Live Greece champ is crowned Oct. 15 on the GSOP Live Video page at http://www.bluffmagazine.com/videos/index-gsop-greece-2011.asp.

The $1,500 GSOP Live: Greece Main Event will go off Oct. 11-15 featuring a mass of online qualifiers from Bet24, the rest of the OnGame network and a host of local recreational players hunting a big score.

But GSOP Live tournaments are really about more than just poker.

The Porto Carras Grand Resort will play host to the event on the shores of the Mediterranean, about an hour outside of the country’s second largest city, Thessaloniki.

And the 1.763 hectare resort, boasting three hotels, numerous restaurants and nightclubs, a championship golf course, Southern-Europe’s largest spa facility, its own 315-boat marina, 45,000-tree olive grove and its 47.5 hectare vineyard capable of producing 2,500 tons of wine, will be the real star of this show.

When it kicked off in 2010 inside the Latvian capital of Riga, the stated goal of GSOP Live was to create live poker tournaments with affordable buy-ins at premium locations, giving recreational players the best live event experience possible.

Hundreds of online qualifiers enjoyed the experience with Martin Emanuelsson walking away with the GSOP Live Riga title and $86,425.

The success of the tour continued as Janos Katzenberger was crowned GSOP Live Malta champ soon after, taking home $98,133.

The tour’s first season then wrapped up with Anders Henriksson winning $134,583 at GSOP Live Seville.

The series’ commitment to fabulous destinations was next on full display this past August when the second season kicked off at the legendary Old Trafford Stadium, home of the Manchester United Football Club.

Jens Kerper took home the title there and the hefty sum of $81,175.

Now, thanks to a partnership with Bet24, BLUFF Magazine and the BLUFF Live! video crew will be on the scene in Greece to provide a snapshot of the tournament action and all the highlights of the GSOP’s latest dream poker vacation destination – The Porto Carras Grand Resort in Greece.

Stay tuned to BLUFFMagazine.com all this week to see all the action from on and off the felt.

On Friday, September 30, at 10 PM ET, Discovery HD Theater provides a sneak peak at the first episode of Epic Poker, from Day 3 of its August Main Event. When the network debuts with its new name and programming next week as Velocity, it will show the second hour of in-the-money coverage on Friday, October 7, at 10 PM ET. On Saturday, October 8, at 1 PM ET, CBS provides the network premiere of Epic Poker, with highlights from the final table.

At Epic’s first Main Event, 137 of the world’s most accomplished tournament poker players battled for a first prize of $1 million. After two days of play, just 18 remained. Those players returned on Day 3, guaranteed at least $43,190. Here are the profiles of the 18 money players, who have between them earned 20 World Series of Poker bracelets, 7 titles on the World Poker Tour and European Poker Tour, a pair of NBC Heads-Up Championships, and $80 million.

Isaac Baron (2-Year member) – Isaac, 24, is the youngest money finisher in the Main Event. The native of Menlo Park, California, possesses a staggering amount of talent, poise, and potential. When he was just 19, he won over $1.1 million in online poker tournaments and was named Card Player Magazine’s 2007 Online Player of the Year. By the time he was old enough to enter a Las Vegas poker room legally, he had already won over $1 million on the European Poker Tour. In the last 2 years, he has proven himself a fierce closer, making 3 final tables in events with buy-ins of $5,000 or more and winning twice. He has earned over $2.2 million in live tournament poker and a similar amount online.

Justin Bonomo (3-Year member) – Justin turns 26 on the date of Epic Poker’s Sneak Preview. He was introduced to competitive gaming through Magic: the Gathering, where he became nationally successful. In sixth grade, he decided he never wanted to work for anyone but himself and has succeeded. During winter break from his first semester at the University of Maryland, he went to Paradise Island, where he cashed in the WPT Main Event and has been making money at poker ever since. He has been a successful online poker player since he was a teenager. Bonomo, who recently relocated from Las Vegas to Malta, has earned over $2.8 million in live tournaments.

Hoyt Corkins (5-Year member) – Hoyt, 51, raises cattle in Alabama and lives in Las Vegas. He began playing tournament poker in 1989 and won several tournaments, including a World Series of Poker bracelet in 1992. A divorce, and the expansion of cash-game poker in the South, kept him away from the tournament circuit for more than a decade. In 2003, following Chris Moneymaker’s WSOP victory, he returned and promptly won the WPT Foxwoods championship for nearly $1.1 million. He has since become one of the leading players on the World Poker Tour, winning against in 2010, making a total of 6 WPT final tables and cashing 18 times. He also won his second WSOP bracelet in 2007. He has over $5.5 million in career earnings.

Dan Fleyshman (Pro/Am qualifier) – Dan, 29, won his way into the Main Event by finishing 7th in the Epic Poker Pro/Am, in which 9 players (1 League member, 8 others) received entries into the Main Event. Fleyshman, attending a football game with a friend, heard the expression “Who’s your Daddy?” for the first time. The pair printed and sold tee shirts with the slogan, giving birth to a marketing and licensing company that eventually made Dan, at 23, the youngest CEO of a NASDAQ-listed company in history. Playing part time in smaller buy-in events (though he made the final table of the 2010 World Series of Poker Europe £10,000 Main Event, finishing 7th), Dan developed a reputation as a fearsome “closer.” Of 13 tournaments in which he cashed between 2005 and 2009, he won 7 of them.

Matthew Glantz (2-Year member) – Matt, a 39-year old from the Philadelphia area, has been playing poker professionally for about 8 years. After earning a pair of degrees at Temple University, he took a job as a clerk on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, eventually working for several options trading companies and starting his own company. As he became more interested (and more successful) in poker, he and his wife agreed he would play full-time for a year and either return to the Exchange or continue playing. Glantz has been continuously successful since that time and is now a respected high-stakes mixed-game player at the Borgata in Atlantic City and in Las Vegas during the World Series of Poker. He has demonstrated high-stakes versatility by becoming the WSOP’s most consistent performer in big-money mixed-game tournaments. Since 2008, he has made 4 World Series final tables in mixed-game events with buy-ins of $10,000 to $50,000. He also won the European Poker Tour’s London Open High-Roller Event in 2009. He has earned over $3.8 million in tournament poker.

Hasan Habib (3-Year member) – Hasan, 49, was born in Karachi, Pakistan and lives in Downey, California. He was a talented tennis player who won a National Tennis Championship for his age bracket in 1976. He came to the United States to attend the University of Redlands, where he also played tennis. A descendant of a prominent Pakistani banking and merchant family, Habib established a successful chain of video stores in the United States and learned to play poker, eventually becoming a well-known high-stakes player. In 2000, he made the final table of the WSOP Main Event, finishing 4th. He won over $2 million in tournament poker in 2004 and another $1 million in 2005, making back-to-back final tables at the World Poker Tour Championship, finishing 2nd and 3rd, and winning a World Series of Poker bracelet in 2005. He has earned $5.4 million in his tournament poker career.

Eugene Katchalov (3-Year member) – Eugene, 30, born in Kiev, raised in Brooklyn, and educated in finance and international business at NYU. He began trading stocks but eventually found poker a more lucrative profession. He has earned nearly $7 million in live tournament poker, including a World Poker Tour event in 2007 worth nearly $2.5 million, a super high-roller event in January 2011 worth $1.5 million, and his first World Series of Poker bracelet in June 2011. Since the introduction of the Global Poker Index in June, he has been one of the Big Four (along with Erik Seidel, Jason Mercier, and Bertrand Grospellier) holding a near-monopoly on the top positions. He has never ranked lower than GPI#4 in the short history of the Index.

Hafiz Khan (2-Year member) – Hafiz is a 36-year old former software engineer from Stockton, California. From 2007 to April 2011, he made approximately $2.5 million in online poker tournaments. His first live tournament cash was mammoth: he finished 2nd out of 1136 in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure WPT Main Event in January 2008, worth almost $1.1 million. In the just 3 ½ years in live tournaments, he has earned over $2.2 million, including a victory at $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em at the L.A. Poker Classic in 2009 and 2nd place in the July 2011 Bellagio Cup $10,000 Main Event.

Ted Lawson (2-Year member) – Ted Lawson, 51, was born in Buffalo, New York and, by way of Florida, now lives in Las Vegas. After becoming captain of the University of Buffalo’s nationally-ranked wrestling team, Lawson graduated and got started in the insurance business. By 2004, the company he and wife Michelle founded, 21st Century Holding Co., was publically traded on NASDAQ. A recreational poker player since college, Ted, an iron-willed competitor with a happy-go-lucky attitude, saw the growth of World Series of Poker and decided to “give it a shot.” In his third tournament, his first career cash, the won the $5,000-Rebuys Pot-Limit Omaha event, along with $500,000. In 2007, his family relocated to the Las Vegas area and he devoted himself full-time to poker. He was earned over $2.6 million in his tournament career.

Adam Levy (2-Year member) – Adam, 29, is a legend of online poker. Under the screen name “Roothlus,” he won over $3.7 million in online poker tournaments. Levy took to poker easily, along with a group of talented gamers who traveled nationally as teenagers competing at Magic: the Gathering. (The Magic circuit has functioned for 10-15 years as a developing league, having spawned League members Levy, Bonomo, David Williams, Eric Froehlich, Isaac Haxton, Brock Parker, Scott Seiver, and Sam Stein.) Adam has twice earned six-figures at the World Series of Poker Main Event, including 2010, when he finished 12th. He has earned $1.6 million in live tournament poker.

Jason Mercier (5-Year member) – Jason Mercier – Jason, 24, may be the best poker player of the online poker boom. The Florida native and resident was a high school basketball star, once scoring 47 points in a game. His poker skills proved so prodigious that he turned down a scholarship to attend another school while playing online. Although Mercier eventually dropped out of college, he became a tremendously successful online poker poker. (Prior to Black Friday, he has been spotted playing high-stakes cash games in poker rooms while resting his computer on his lap, playing online.) His first career cash was one of the great debuts in poker history, a victory in the European Poker Tour San Remo Main Event, worth nearly $1.4 million. In less than 3 ½ years, Jason was made 29 final tables. Remarkably, he has won 11 times, including 2 World Series of Poker bracelets. He has earned $6.7 million in live tournament poker.

Brandon Meyers (Pro/Am qualifier) – Brandon, 28, is a professional poker player originally from Minnesota. Until June 2011, he was known primarily among poker insiders as a cash-game player. Meyers has had an incredible summer: he finished 4th at the World Series of Poker in the $2,500 Mixed Hold’em and, just 12 days later, finished 4th in the $10,000 Main Event of the Bellagio Cup. Along with his runner-up finish in the Pro/Am and money finish in the Main Event, $350,000 of his $540,000 in career earnings has come since June 2011.

David “Chino” Rheem (3-Year member) – David, 29, is a Los Angeles native and resident. A veteran of low-stakes poker rooms in South Florida (where he became close friends with the Mizrachi family) and L.A., he first demonstrated his gift for tournament poker in 2006. At the World Series of Poker, he finished runner-up in the $1,000-Rebuy event, less than a week after winning a $1,000 event at the Bellagio. In 2008, he repeated that kind of sustained excellence, but on a much bigger stage. He finished fifth in the WSOP $5,000 Mixed Hold’em Championship, and then became part of the first November Nine. He took at bad beat at the final table to finish seventh, but earned over $1.7 million for his performance. Less than 6 weeks later, he won the $15,000 World Poker Tour Bellagio Five Diamond, worth another $1.5 million. In the 2 ½ years since those landmark performances, Rheem has shown flashes of promise, but has also run up significant debts, which several players claimed he didn’t honor. In winning the first Epic Poker Main Event, he lifted his career earnings to $5.7 million. He paid every bit of his winnings to creditors, and pledged with Epic Poker’s Standards & Conduct Committee oversight, to honor his debts. His victory and its aftermath provided a glimpse into Chino’s overwhelming talent and potential new start, as well as the ability of professional poker to establish and enforce high standards of conduct and integrity.

Noah Schwartz (2-Year member) – Noah, a 28-year old native and resident of Florida, discovered online poker while in high school as a means of occupying himself after his father’s death. His rollercoaster story of success and failure – he won $70,000 his first month online, ran that up to $300,000 the next month, and lost it all in 10 days – taught him early (though expensive) lessons in bankroll management and patience. After showing promise in baseball as a pitcher in high school, he attended Florida International University but suffered an arm injury that ended his career. Schwartz became a successful cash-game player online, though on PokerStars in March 2007, he won the Sunday Million tournament for over $353,000. In live tournaments, he has earned over $1.5 million.

Huck Seed (5-Year member) – Huck Seed, 42, is one of Las Vegas’s most storied high-stakes gamblers. Originally from Montana, he was an academic and athletic standout, and attended CalTech and played on the basketball team. He took a leave of absence from school for poker and never returned. He is a legendary World Series of Poker performer, which 4 bracelets, including the Main Event in 1996. He also won the 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions. He has won over $7 million in tournament poker. Among gamblers, he was won some legendary proposition bets. He defeated an NBA pro 1-on-1; ran a marathon in Las Vegas on the 4th of July; and shot 4 rounds of golf under 98 in one day in the Nevada heat using just 3 clubs and no golf cart. (He actually had to play 5 rounds that day, because he shot 98 in the first round.)

Erik Seidel (5-Year member) – Erik, 51, may be the best tournament poker of all time, and 2011 has been his best year. He is a New York native and Las Vegas resident, a former securities trader put out of business by the 1987 stock market crash that discovered poker at a local backgammon club. That poker game became the world’s most difficult home game, the Mayfair Club. Players in the game over the next few years include Howard Lederer, Dan Harrington, Jay Heimowitz, Jason Lester, Mickey Appleman, and Steve Zolotow. In Seidel’s first poker tournament, the 1988 World Series Main Event, he finished runner-up to defending champion Johnny Chan. He went on to win 8 WSOP bracelets, a World Poker Tour championship, and an NBC National Heads-Up Championship. He was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in November 2010 and has, since then, had one of the great seasons in poker history. He started 2011 with $10 million in career tournament earnings. He is now closing in on $17 million. Erik has made 11 final tables in 2011 in events with buy-ins of $5,000 or more. His worst finish is 4th: 4 wins, 3 runner-ups, 2 3rd places, 2 4th places.

Gavin Smith (3-Year member) – Gavin, who celebrated his 43rd birthday during this event, is one of poker’s most beloved personalities. His uncensored honesty and humor, along with his devotion to family, friends, and underdogs, are legendary. Smith grew up in Guelph, Ontario, studied for a degree in economic, drove a taxi, worked as a greenskeeper, and ran a poker club. He was the WPT and Card Player Magazine Player of the Year for 2005, and won his first WSOP bracelet in 2010. In his live tournament poker career, he has earned over $5.7 million.

Sam Trickett (2-Year member) – Sam, a London resident, turned to poker after his semi-professional career in football ended with a knee injury. Just 25, he is one of the world’s most highly-regarded high-stakes players. He was part of a now-legendary cash game in Macau where he won £1 million in two sessions and found the game so favorable that he is now learning Mandarin. Trickett has been playing tournament poker for just three years and has earned nearly $5 million – including $1.3 million and $1.5 million in the same week in January 2011 in a pair of super-high stakes tournaments in Australia.

Go to EpicPoker.com to obtain the full broadcast schedule, review the live coverage of the first Main Event, and see over 350 biographies of League members and other top poker players. Follow Epic Poker on Facebook and Twitter.

Michael Craig is the Editor-in-Chief of EpicPoker.com and GlobalPokerIndex.com.

So starts Epic Poker’s Broadcast Premiere Video. For poker followers who have heard about little but Epic since the end of the World Series of Poker, the minute that follows probably sounds like settled business: the best players, a players’ league, the next phase of professional poker. It’s likely that the premiere video doesn’t even contain much footage from the upcoming broadcasts.

Still, when I saw it, the video gave me the chills. First, for most of the millions who will watch those initial broadcasts, this is new. Second, and more significant, the real wake-up call was about who delivered the message. After O’Brien’s introduction, at least nineteen professional poker players appeared on camera to introduce the League to television. Like most poker broadcasts since 2004, familiar faces like Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow, Joe Hachem, and Phil Laak appeared.

But most of the players featured – the new “face” of Epic Poker – were not part of that stock group that’s had a bear hug on TV poker for most of last seven years. Jason Mercier, Eugene Katchalov, and Ben Lamb appeared multiple times. Adam Levy emphatically stated, “This is our league.” Dwyte Pilgrim, Vanessa Selbst, and Chino Rheem introduced the League. Faraz Jaka appeared three times, delivering two of the key messages: “This is the future of poker,” and “This is the perfect way to take the competition to the next level.”

It is a stunning video, not just because of fast cuts and percussive beat. After all, David Neal is Epic’s producer, and he has won 34 Emmy Awards. He is working with 441 Productions, which has 24. With those credentials, you expect a stirring minute-plus. But Vanessa Selbst? Faraz Jaka?

That’s where Epic is going out on a limb, and where I’m excited to be there with them. The League is lucky to have the participation and the gravitas of players like Phil Hellmuth and Joe Hachem. Epic is betting, however, that accomplished poker players after the Moneymaker-inspired TV poker boom, are at least as interesting and compelling as they players TV usually features. Neither Selbst nor Jaka finished in the money in the first Epic Main Event. They appeared not because they are well-known, but because they should be.

Vanessa Selbst, twenty-seven, has won over $4 million in tournament poker. She has won a bracelet, a Main Event on the Partouche Poker Tour, an NAPT Main Event at Mohegan Sun in 2010 and, in an exceedingly rare display of skill, successfully defended that title in 2011. During much of this time, she has been studying at Yale Law School. Despite, between 2006 and 2008 at the World Series of Poker, winning a bracelet, making another final table, and in consecutive years making the semi-finals in the Heads-Up Championship, she mostly skipped the Series in 2009 and 2010 because she considered more valuable the opportunity to work at Yale’s legal clinic during the summer. Her goal is to make enough playing poker to endow a legal foundation providing access to legal services to people in poverty.

Faraz Jaka isn’t a household name or, in this League, extraordinarily young or successful. He is four years older than Event 2 champ Mike McDonald and has $4 million fewer earnings than Jason Mercier, and $14 million fewer than Erik Seidel. Yet if Epic Poker’s success depended on whether you should know Faraz Jaka, I would bet on Epic.

Faraz, who ran a half-mile in high school in 1:59 and a 4:29 mile, was introduced to poker in his freshman dorm at the University of Illinois. His original poker nickname, which became his online name, was “The Toilet.” In dorm games, he believed it was wise to play any two suited cards. When he would occasionally make a flush, his friends would yell, “Damn it, the Toilet flushes again!” Upon becoming a successful online poker player, he ran $10,000 into $175,000 – then lost it all, but learned valuable lessons in the process.

How valuable? He graduated after majoring in economics and business and, in the six months straddling his twenty-fourth birthday (in 2009), he earned consecutive tournament cashes of $400,000, $774,000, and $571,000. That money is now tucked away in investments, including real estate and a business he started with partners, AxisCasterboarding.com. “I consider myself a businessman first and a poker player second.”

CBS introduced American television to tournament poker with the 1973 World Series of Poker. Thirty-eight years later CBS is back in the game, but it’s not playing a pat hand. When Velocity and CBS present twenty hours of Epic Poker programming, it will remain true to the origins of tournament poker and honor, where honor is appropriate (e.g., Erik Seidel), the great players of the poker boom who are still at the top of their game. Poker is a meritocracy, however, and the focus will ultimately be on the players that perform the best. With a rich and diverse group of men and women comprising Epic Poker’s first season roster, poker’s best-known personalities will have to share the spotlight with a new and interesting group of competitors.

You can watch Epic Poker’s Broadcast Premiere Video. To celebrate the sneak preview broadcast on HD Theater on Friday, September 30 at 10 PM ET, the Velocity premiere on Friday, October 7 at 10 PM, and the CBS debut on Saturday, October 8 at 1 PM ET, Epic’s website will feature TV Main Event Extras including player facts, new statistics, poker analysis, and the best photos, videos, and coverage from the first Main Event.

Michael Craig is the Editor-in-Chief of EpicPoker.com and GlobalPokerIndex.com.

Londons ok, I’m fairly settled down here but often find myself with little to do beyond poker. I find myself spending an uncomfortable amount of time on online banking probably in the hope that the numbers will just go up if I stare. Other than that time seems to have passed by ridiculously fast this month, suppose youtube isn’t going to watch itself.

I’ve done a spot of cooking – made a bread and butter pudding that looked atrocious but tasted good and helped my housemate George out with a massive spaghetti and meatballs that came out a bit thin because I put too much oil in the pan. Have to start somewhere!

Yes, I and others ate this

I’ve been watching a lot of the videos on Khan Academy too, really awesome idea and implementation. If they had videos for my whole degree I would have learned so much more and got a way better grade.

Other than the downswing and boredom getting me down, I think I was affected by the unexpected death of Paresh Jain. I’d never met him or talked to him really but I’ve played with him online and read a lot of his posts on 2+2 and seen him about at live events. He seemed like a nice chap and a very good player. Certainly his death made me take a good look at myself and my future with not much of a conclusion. Best wishes to all his friends and family.

A Champion for the Ages

The most impressive aspect of Mike McDonald’s remarkable victory is that, at 21 years, 11 months, and 30 days, he is Epic Poker’s youngest champion. Because this was just Epic’s second Main Event, it will take time to appreciate the enormity of this distinction. Right now, it means only that Mike is younger than Chino Rheem. Consider the following for perspective:

*Mike is the youngest player in Epic Poker League, where membership requires (among other accomplishments) $1.25 million in career live tournament poker earnings.

*Mike is the youngest League member by a margin of at least a year. That means he will be younger next year than any other League member this year. In fact, there is a reasonable chance that he will be the youngest League member next year. It may be several years before another twenty-one-year old qualifies for Epic Poker.

*If Epic Poker had started a year earlier with similar requirements, Mike undoubtedly would have qualified, though ineligible because at age twenty, he would not have legally been allowed to play poker at the Palms.

*(Here is where it gets even better.) McDonald is a full-time college student and has already largely retired from professional poker. In April 2010, he explained in his blog that “despite playing lots of poker and enjoying it plenty, I feel unfulfilled by it and think it can cause me to feel unfulfilled about other things in my life.” He concluded, “for now I don’t really know whether I’ll be considering myself a ‘pro poker player’ anymore. I’ll still play. I’m sure it will always be a part of my life …. In some ways I feel that the poker chapter of my life is ending and although I may regret it I’m looking forward to finding something new.”

It sounds remarkably cliché to say something like “Mike McDonald has a very old soul” but that is an accurate way of conveying that the precocity of his poker talent is not the most interesting aspect of his personality. He was more than five months from his twenty-first birthday when he wrote those words, but he proved true to his intentions. Although he has played some outstanding poker, he re-enrolled in college, in the business program at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. He is a full-time student, enjoying meeting new people, learning more about health and nutrition, thinking about some future business plans, and trying to read more.

McDonald has been playing online poker since he was fifteen. By the time he graduated from high school, he was making six-figures online. As “Timex,” he became one of the most respected and successful online poker players. He tried university, but was too good at poker to continue. He played his first live tournament, World Series of Poker Europe, the week of his eighteenth birthday. After successes in the Czech Republic and Australia, he became poker’s youngest major titleholder just five months later when he won €933,000 (over $1.3 million) and the European Poker Tour’s German Open in Dortmund.

How often does a talent this great, having earned this much success, even partially withdraw to seek a more balanced and fulfilling life at twenty-one? Has any modern athlete won $4-5 million and then become a full-time student? Any television or film personality? Any musical performer?

Don’t get the idea from these platitudes that Mike McDonald thinks he is somehow too good for poker or noble because he wants to be a college student. As he said in his blog one year after announcing his return to school, “while I may come across as if I know what’s best for myself, I am ultimately still a kid who has no idea what to do with my life.”

Before play started on Friday, Mike and I talked about shared reading interests, though he has to devote a lot of his reading time to course-work. I recommended Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein, about a writer who covers the U.S. Memory Championship, meets some European competitive memory champions who share their techniques, and trains for the following year’s U.S. Championship.

A poker player of McDonald’s talent and accomplishments, though he never heard of a memory competition, instantly understood that such a thing existed – indeed, must exist. Mike told me that, even before he started playing poker, he wanted to be a world-class competitor at something. “We’re a games-playing family – cards, chess, board games. When I told my dad that if I worked at it, I could become a world-champion Monopoly player, he said, ‘What you need is to get a girlfriend.’”

Cracking up, Mike concluded, “That’s probably the best advice he’s ever given me.”

Many Happy Returns

The expression “many happy returns” is typically a birthday greeting, a wish that the celebrant have many more birthdays. According to Wikipedia, its earliest attributable use was by a Lady Newdigate in an 1789 letter: “Many happy returns of ye day to us my Dr Love.” I don’t know who Lady Newdigate was – or, for that matter, the identity of this Doctor Love character – but it can be a birthday greeting as well an encouragement to travelers. It could apply to any of the seven talented players Mike McDonald outlasted at the final table.

David Steicke, second place, $506,260 – David Steicke plays only the biggest poker tournaments. He literally can’t afford to play smaller: he is a full-time commodities trader and his home in Hong Kong is too far from most tournaments outside the Pacific Rim to be worth his time. We got to know David much better this week, which is the least we could do since the distance of his two round trips to Epic Main Events exceeds 30,000 miles. He is a fierce competitor who plays with the nerve and unpredictability of someone who regularly makes big financial decisions and wants the challenge and accomplishment more than he needs the money. It’s nice to see someone do well who came from so far away. I wish him a happy return to Hong Kong, at least a fifteen-hour non-stop flight – though there are no non-stop flights from Las Vegas.

Fabrice Soulier, third place, $299,160 – Fabrice, likewise, was rewarded for his patience with commercial air travel. Safe returns to his native France, where he and friend Nicolas Levi have already gone for the Partouche Poker Tour’s Monday, September 12 Cannes Main Event (where Fabrice finished third last year). Soulier, who was short-stacked on numerous occasions during the final two days, has a way of making his time in the money count. He has just three U.S. cashes this year: third at the LAPC Heads-Up event, a World Series bracelet in the $10,000 HORSE, and this third-place Epic Main Event 2 finish. We look forward to his December return.

Erik Seidel, fourth place, $184,100 – Chris Hanson (@HPTChris), HPT’s TV host (along with Fred Bevill), tweeted before the final table, “@Erik_Seidel makes another @EpicPoker final table. If he cut off his pinky, would the finger regenerate into a better player than me?” This was Erik’s return to the Epic Main Event final table. Although it ended unsuccessfully – Seidel didn’t even move up on the Epic money list, stalled at second – it was his second excellent performance at Epic. If we have run out of superlatives for him, consider this: Erik Seidel has made ten final tables in 2011 events with buy-ins of at least $5,000, and his fourth place Friday night tied for his worst finish.

Nam Le, fifth place, $126,570 – Nam, like McDonald, celebrated a birthday over the weekend. He turned thirty-one on Saturday. Le was a creature of habit at the Palms, ordering the same breakfast delivered at the same time every day, following the same routine of returning to his room during every break to lie down, and even watching the same television show before going to bed. It is unknown whether such habits fueled his strong play, either in the past week or in the past decade (during which he has earned over $6 million) but his return to familiar circumstances paid off. This was not, in fact, Nam’s first September 9 final table. On September 9, 2008, he won the APPT High-Roller event in Macau for over $473,000. David Steicke had the chip lead in that event, too, though he took fifth place that time, Nam’s finishing spot on Friday. Happy birthday to Nam.

Isaac Baron, sixth place, $92,050 – Like winner Mike McDonald, Baron enjoyed enormous success as a teenager and may have not yet reached the peak of his talent or achievements. He was Card Player’s first online Player of the Year in 2007. He also scorched the EPT before he was casino-legal in Nevada, finishing fourth in the 2008 EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo for €589,000.

By the time we get to the sixth-place finisher, “happy returns” may be recognized only with the perspective of an outsider. After all, everyone but the winner ends up with zero chips, slinking away from the table while play continues, and wondering of what might have been. For Isaac, this was his return to the money on Epic (along with Erik Seidel, Matt Glantz, and Adam Levy, who bubbled the final table twice). Baron deserved better than the horrible luck he had against David Steicke in the first hour, but he can’t be faulted for his two-for-two record in Epic Poker League or his outstanding play in consecutive events.

Sean Getzwiller, seventh place, $69,040 – After meeting Sean during his back-to-back seat-winning Pro/Am performances and playing him in the Charity event, I felt invested in his success and watched closely as he survived a short stack for the second half of Day 2. Wishing him luck at the beginning of Day 3, he had the tremendous confidence appropriate to a man who had made it through a pair of Epic Pro/Ams and had a WSOP bracelet and $800,000 to show for his 2011 efforts. He was still short but told me, “If I double up, I’ll be top ten and I’ll be in good shape for the long road ahead. And you know I’ll get it in good before then.” He expertly navigated his way to the final table and had the misfortune twelve hands in to run his A-K into Mike McDonald’s K-K. In addition to this event marking Sean’s return to the Main Event via the Pro/Am, his final-table finish earns him a provisional card enabling him to enter Main Event 3 in December.

Russell “Dutch” Boyd, eighth place, $57,530 – Representing the 2003 poker boom in early ESPN WSOP broadcasts second only to Chris Moneymaker, Dutch has borne eight years of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: over $2 million in career earnings, a pair of WSOP bracelets, and admiration as a wunderkind when things were going well – and some very difficult times when they weren’t. At thirty, he has a great partner in his life in his girlfriend Michelle, and an appreciation of what he has accomplished along with what he has left to accomplish. Coming off a twelve-month period in which he earned just $10,000 in live tournaments, this was his return to TV, final tables, and, hopefully, the potential he has shown during substantial portions of the last decade. He played three days of canny poker, and then got stuck on the eighth hand at the final table running his jacks into Erik Seidel’s aces. Although Seidel eventually fell, it was clearly a case of Dutch running into the wrong hand from the wrong player at the wrong time. Emphasizing poker’s cruelty, Boyd got to watch the flop bring Erik a third ace before his enforced exile.

Happy returns to all, whether it’s for birthdays, long voyages, or consistently great performances. We look forward to seeing all eight competitors again on December 14 for Event 3.

For results of Epic Poker Pro/Ams, Charity Events, and Epic Poker League Main Events, as well as poker features, player biographies, videos, and photos, go to EpicPoker.com.

Michael Craig is the Editor-in-Chief of EpicPoker.com and GlobalPokerIndex.com.

Ticket to the Big Show

The opportunity is REAL. At Epic’s first event in early August, a pair of $180 satellite winners won cash and $20,000 seats to the Main Event. In fact, despite 68 Epic Poker League members in the field (providing a chance to play with pros like Mike Matusow, Vanessa Selbst, Mike Sexton, Sorel Mizzi, and Justin Bonomo), only one League member (Andy Bloch) bested the non-League members (including 40 Palms satellite winners) for one of the nine Main Event seats.

Ask Clifford Waite, a recently retired 51-year old truck driver from Grand Junction, Colorado. He came to Vegas and played a $180 satellite because he enjoys playing Heartland Poker Tour (HPT) events and HPT (which shares a corporate parent with Epic) would be broadcasting the Pro/Am final table on its network. He defeated pro J.J. Liu to win the satellite, then made the televised Pro/Am final table, and took a painful two-pair versus higher-two-pair beat to bust in fourth place. That earned him $5,180 and a place in the $20,000 buy-in, $400,000 added Main Event. “I’m freerolling now,” Waite said. “I’ve wanted to play at this level with these kinds of players for awhile, and I think I proved in the last three days I can play at this level and have some success.”

You could also ask George Long. The 77-year old Las Vegas resident and daily-tournament regular, parlayed his $180 satellite investment into a $20,000 Main Event seat, $1,190 in cash, and some unforgettable experiences.

Cliff, George, and Andy Bloch joined six other seat winners on Tuesday, August 9 in the Palms Ballroom to play the first Epic Poker Main Event. The other winners, who bought directly into the Pro/Am, ranged in background and experience from 29-year old Steve O’Dwyer (who won the Pro/Am less than a month after winning a $5,000 buy-in event at the Bellagio Cup), to Jeremiah DeGreef (also 29, a self-described “unemployed internet poker player now looking for a job” who, fluent in Arabic, formerly was a translator for the U.S. Army), to Micah Raskin (who won his seat on his 43rd birthday and divides his time between his direct marketing and software company, Borgata tournaments – in one of which he won over $320,000 – and singing in New York cover band Backseat Betty).

Despite the tough Main Event field, these players were not lambs being led to slaughter. Even Waite and Long, the two satellite qualifiers, had the chops to succeed. Apart from prevailing in the tough-field Pro/Am, Waite made an HPT final table and had several cashes on the HPT and WSOP Circuit. Long on three occasions won the Bellagio $1,000 daily tournament.

Cashing In

Did any of those eight non-Epic Poker League members score in the Main Event? Two of them finished in the money, proving they deserved their seats with the best in the world. Dan Fleyshman, the youngest-ever CEO of a NASDAQ company and now running Victory Poker and engaged in several philanthropic projects, finished seventh in the Pro/Am, worth a Main Event seat and $1,990 in cash. He hung tough with a short stack toward the end of Day 2 of the Main Event and finished in the money. He went out in 15th place, good for $43,190, a tremendous result considering Dan plays poker, at most, part-time.

Brandon Meyers, a 28-year old poker pro originally from Minneapolis, runner-up in the Pro/Am finished in ninth place in the Main Event, earning $70,960 (in addition to the $11,900 cash from the Pro/Am). Primarily a cash-game player before 2011, Meyers has been red-hot this summer, wrapping up the WSOP with a 4th place finish in $2,500 Mixed Hold ‘Em and matching that finish in the $10,000 Bellagio Cup Main Event.

Any of these excellent players would tell you nobody at the Palms was giving anything away. Epic Poker and the Palms, however, teamed up to provide a shot at turning satellite money into a million dollars. The eight players who won their way into the first Epic Main Event – two who got there for $180 and two others who cashed out for $43,000 and $70,000 – showed the poker world the prospect is there for those who seize it.

A $1,500 Pro/Am, awarding up to nine Main Event seats, precedes each Epic Poker Main Event. The next Pro/Am starts Friday, September 2 (Day 1a) and Saturday, September 3 (Day 1b) at noon, in the Key West room of the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. For a schedule of the Pro/Am as well as the satellites into the Pro/Am, go to Epic Poker’s website (www.epicpoker.com/events/epic-poker-pro-am-information.aspx).

When I was at school I’d often moan to my mum about how history/geography/English were useless to me and how I would never use them and how boring they were. She would always patiently explain to me that it isn’t necessarily what I learn that matters so much as the learning process. It wasn’t advice I clicked onto until maybe a year or so after I’d left university where having successfully coasted my way through 16 years of education I was left with a $2k roll trying to make a living at NL50. While I appear quite lazy to many it’s more that a lot of things just don’t hold my interest and so I stubbornly don’t want to put the effort into it. A year and a half on from playing full time I was only up to NL200 – it would have been shrewd to have taken my mums advice of sticking at school just to get that learning process down. Fortunately for me poker is something I absolutely love so I am quite happy to commit a lot of time to getting better at it which is probably half the process itself.

Currently I’m investigating a couple of property options, nothing overly exciting just something to squirrel away some money into in case everything goes tits up. It’s a somewhat daunting prospect dropping a lump on something especially as I’m unlikely to go down the traditional route of residential housing. Hopefully I won’t make too many mistakes and clock onto things earlier rather than later but thankfully I have a fairly laissez faire attitude anyway (probably something to do with those slacking school days) so if it all goes wrong I guess I’ll just live and learn.