Phil Ivey Throws Down

READ MORE: Full Tilt Poker, Online Poker, Phil Ivey, Poker

A little Phil Ivey smack, courtesy of DonkeyPuncher:

“I found Phil Ivey playing heads up against David Oppenheim. Oppenheim had the grand balance of ZERO dollars under his name. It looked like Ivey just busted him. Oppenheim then reloaded.

What I gather from the conversation is that he wanted a loan from Ivey so that they could continue their heads up battle. And when Ivey declined, the namecalling began…”

Wednesday Quickie [DonkeyPuncher]

Latter Day Card Sharks

READ MORE: Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Poker

Any time you walk into a card room, you not only have to look for the suckers but the sharks as well. In that spirit, Covers.com takes a look at Bodog’s new ad campaign:

Driven by a dramatic drum beat and quick cuts, each spot opens in a poker club, complete with beautiful people and upscale décor. As the camera works its way through the swank poker club, it stops to point out one of four poker “predators” seated at a poker table: The Hustler, The Under Dog, The Ringer and The Wild Card.

These guys really aren’t the sharks you need to be worried about at the tables. After the jump, we’ll give you a look at the real poker predators…

21ST CENTURY CARD SHARKS

The road dog gamblers of Doyle Brunson’s day were cut from similar cloth. Rugged guys who had to be as handy with their fists as they were with their chips. Poker’s a little more civilized now, and it’s not the ten-gallon hat you need to keep an eye out for at the Hold ‘Em tables. It’s these guys:

· The Savant - You want scary? Try sitting across the table from Daniel Negreanu and having him peg your hole cards with freakish accuracy. You could put the welding mask and oven mitts on to cover your tells, mix up your pre-flop raises, check when you’re supposed to bet, and it doesn’t matter. The Savant is staring into your soul and when he pushes in a raise, you can’t get out of the pot fast enough. This guy will call your hand, take your chips, and could probably sweet talk your girlfriend into bed. Well, maybe not Danny.

· The Iceman - Catch a four-outer on the river to take our money, and you’ll see a look on our faces like you just kicked us in the junk. Lay a bad beat on Phil Ivey and you’re likely to get nothing out of him at all. He’s cold, calculating, and completely unaffected. Nothing rattles the guy. The chips in front of him don’t represent real money, but instead the measure of how much better he is at this shit than you are. The Iceman cannot be melted. Good luck getting a read.

· The Asshole - Probably the most underrated of the latter-day poker sharks is The Asshole. If you think Jean-Robert Bellande isn’t calculating how tilty his sideways jabs at your poker skill are getting you, then you’re totally out of tune with The Asshole. He’ll bait you with sarcasm, speculate on your manhood, and eventually get you so angry you’re simply raising him out of spite. The Asshole wants you to hate him. He’ll goad you right out of your game, take your chips without apology, and will bankrupt you three times over if you let him.

· The Math Geek - Think you can confuse Matt Matros? Hardly. Try putting a move on a guy with a degree in Math from Yale and you’re likely to get your EV slapped around. Bluffing is a romantic notion, but if you bait the Math Geek into making a call with odds on his side, you’re going home broke. And to think, these are the same kids you stole milk money from back in third grade.

Bodog.com’s New Ad Spots Give Poker Players An Ace Up Their Sleeve [Covers]

WSOP 2005: Woke Up This Morning, Won Myself a Bracelet

READ MORE: 2005 WSOP, ESPN, Phil Ivey, Poker

What would a Tuesday be without a little WSOP action on ESPN? Well, it’d be just like a Wednesday, but that’s a lousy punchline. Anyway, two new episodes of poker grace the tube tonight, highlighted by a classic match between Robert Williamson and Phil Ivey in the $2500 Pot Limit Omaha with rebuys tourney. Excuse the spoiler, but the circumstances of Ivey’s participation in this tourney are too good not to relay. From Las Vegas Vegas:

Phil Ivey wasn’t going to play in Event #27 $5000 Pot Limit Omaha with Rebuys. He was sleeping at the time that the event was scheduled to start. Barry Greenstein noticed he was not registered, so he woke him up with a phone call. Barry knew that Pot Limit Omaha is one of Phil’s better games and insisted that Phil get over to the Rio to play. Phil Ivey mainly concentrates on cash games these days and he chose to play a light tournament schedule this year. It’s a good thing that Phil Ivey woke up and answered Barry Greenstein’s phone call because he picked up his fifth WSOP bracelet.

The PLO tourney is hour two, hour one is good ol’ Hold ‘Em action (Event 24, $2500 NL) with nearly no big names in sight. When Farzad Bonyadi is the guy you’re asking for autographs out of this bunch, you can probably guess the rest of these guys aren’t TV-table material.

WSOP on ESPN Tonight… [LasVegasVegas]
Event 27 (PLO) [Tao of Poker]
Phil Ivey Wakes Up to Win 5th Bracelet [LasVegasVegas]
Event 24 Wrapup ($2500 NL) [LasVegasVegas]
Event 24 [Tao of Poker]

Phil Ivey: Full Tilt Drunken Altruism or Foolishness?

READ MORE: Full Tilt Poker, Online Poker, Phil Ivey, Poker

An Oddjack reader e-mails in with a Phil Ivey Full Tilt Poker report. If this is true, we’re hopeful that Ivey wasn’t driving a car this evening. Or even operating a toaster, for that matter:

I was playing $5 SNG on Full Tilt Poker and an observer who was chatting with one of the other players at the table told us that Phil Ivey was playing one of the $1-$2 NL tables. Not a big deal really. At any given time, you can see Ivey, John D’Agostino or Chris Ferguson playing at the higher limit tables. What the observer said next definitely was interesting though. Phil was going all in every single hand. He started with $1000 and was going all in, no matter what position. He would then goad people into calling. Sometimes he would win, but mostly he lost. After about 10 minutes of this, he had dumped $1000 onto the rest of the players (one guy made almost $800) and then he left. I started scanning the other tables to see if you would show up anywhere and a couple of minutes later, he was at it again. It took just over 10 minutes to dump another $1000 to another table. People were asking him why he was doing it, and he answered that he was drunk and just having fun. I tried to get in on the action but there was 20 people in front of me in the waiting list.

Now, we know what you’re thinking - there’s no way that was Phil Ivey,that’s just some chucklehead using his name as his screen name. Not so fast. On Full Tilt Poker, the pro players who are sponsored by the site (including Chris Ferguson, Perry Friedman, Howard Lederer, and Clonie Gowen) not only get to use their own name, but a custom avatar as well. So unless Phil had some house guests to whom he lent his computer, if it says Phil Ivey is at your Full Tilt table, Phil Ivey is at your Full Tilt table.

Phil Ivey [Poker Babes]
Full Tilt Poker

Tournament Odds: The Legends Of Poker

READ MORE: Ben Affleck, Legends Of Poker, Phil Ivey, Poker

Not convinced these huge WPT tournaments are huge crapshoots? Think you’ve got an inside tip on who’s going to win this weekend’s Legends of Poker Tournament from The Bicycle in Los Angeles? Well, good luck with that. But if your Gambling Jones just won’t not let you put a couple of bucks down, Sportsbook.com has the line open and ready to take your action:

The favorite to capture the title is Ivey at 66-1. He is followed by Negreanu, Hansen, Layne Flack, Phil Hellmuth, Howard (The Professor) Lederer and Marcel (Flying Dutchman) Luske, all 80-1 bets to win the tournament. The Hollywood trio of Affleck, McGuire and Tilley are all listed at 400-1.

“The growth of Poker in the United States has been phenomenal, to the point that it no longer surprises fans to see celebrities from film get involved in these events,” says Alex Czajkowski, Marketing Director, Sportsbook.com. “Obviously, few people expect the movie stars to actually win a tournament like this, but it would be very exciting to see someone like Affleck at the final table playing the likes of Gus Hansen.”

150-1 for most of the pros? Come on, there’s going to be 2,000 plus playing in this thing. There’s not a player in this field that should be less than 500-1. We’ll throw you a pick, just for posterity’s sake… Give us Ted Forrest at 150-1. He’s going to win one of these at some point.

Sportsbook.com posts odds on WPT Legends of Poker Tournament [Yahoo! Finance]

WSOP 2005: ESPN Says “We’re Almost There”

READ MORE: 2005 WSOP, ESPN, Phil Ivey

Tonight’s ESPN World Series of Poker telecast is - again - not an actual WSOP event not-so-plausibly live from the Rio, but another one of those “circuit” events, this one from Harvey’s Lake Tahoe Resort back in May.

We won’t spoil it for you, but wunderkind of poker Phil Ivey is sitting at the final table. He’s pretty good at playing cards and all, but we’d beat the shit out of him in Slap Jack until his fingers swelled to the size of a Ball Park Frank. Bring it on Tiger Woods.

ESPN Presents WSOP Poker Tonight [Las Vegas Vegas] (spoilers)