Matusow & DeepStacks to Turlock Poker Room
By Arnold Warner

Arguably the most entertaining player in poker today, Mike “The Mouth” Matusow will lead a team of pros from DeepStacks for a seminar and tournament at the Turlock Poker Room in early May.

The DeepStacks Live Power Poker Course will be held on May 6 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Matusow will be there along with other Deep­Stacks pros so you can learn from some of the best poker players in the world about advanced tournament and cash game strategies. There will be one pro for every 10 seminar entries. Cost of the seminar is $495. To sign up or get more information, call the Turlock Poker Room at 209-668-1010. click here to read the whole article!

SJ pro wins at LAPC
By Barbara Engler

San Jose’s Wade Griffith may be just a shade under 24 years old, but he’s already starting to make his mark in the poker world. He’s had some decent results playing online and live tournaments as well as cash games, but his most impressive result so far was his victory in Event 3 of the 2011 Los Angeles Poker Classic at the Commerce Casino.

The buy-in was $545 for this no-limit Hold’em doublestack tournament held Jan. 24-25. There were 233 entries creating a prize pool of $111,282 with Griffith claiming $27,597 and the trophy that ­comes with it.

“That was my biggest hit and I’m very excited about it,” he said. “I couldn’t be more happy about it.” click here to read the whole article!

Montoya takes deaf poker title
By Raymond T. Akers

Livermore resident Nathan Montoya claimed the title and $7,200 at the National Championship Main Event of the National Deaf Poker Tour on Nov. 6, 2010 when he defeated 140 players buying in for $200 each at Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City.

Originally from Concord, Montoya attended college back east where he started playing Blackjack and Craps at an Indian casino in Oneida, New York. From there he moved on to playing poker at home games, then moved up to playing at the Taj.

“Upon moving to the west coast in 2006 I was thrilled with the number of cardrooms locally in the Bay Area, and ever since I started to focus on poker more,” he recently said via email. “In the beginning, I just stuck with cash games and just played in friends’ local home tournaments. But in the past year or two I’ve really started to take tournaments seriously.” click here to read the whole article!

NorCal Poker Ambassador
Appleseed needs to pick more fruit
By Randall Rapp

Sometimes your humble Ambassador starts to feel a bit like Johnny Appleseed when I’m off on one of my missions, only instead of apple seeds I’m planting dollar bills. Pick up a few here, then move them over there. After a particularly bedeviling run of cards the desire to pick some fruit becomes even more imperative than planting seeds.

Such was the case on our recent trip around the North Sacramento Valley. While way too many seeds got planted, Mrs. A and I managed to have a spectacular time anyway (plus we got some really good beer). click here to read the whole article!

Semper Discentes
What to do when playing "Jacks"
By Mark Lamb

Over the last 10 years or so, thousands of ridiculously repetitive, mundane articles have been written and published about poker. Everything from strategy to psychology and math to meditation has flooded the casual poker reader with useless garbage to peruse while relieving themselves in the restroom or waiting for an open seat somewhere.

Therefore I face the challenge of enlightening you with information that may not be available from the traditional poker books and articles. In this particular article, I will discuss some of the dynamics of the small, local cardrooms many of us are familiar with. click here to read the whole article!

2011 POY contest off to a big start

The Cardroom’s 2011 NorCal Poker Player of the Year contest started off with a bang. Our current leader, Lawrence Chow of San Francisco has already amassed over 2,300 points. If he can keep that up over the course of our 11-month season he would shatter last year’s record with nearly 13,000 points.

But he’s not alone.

Daly City’s Alex Giva is close behind with 1,832 points and six other players have more than 1,000, including 2009 champion Gerry Davidow of Fresno and 2010 champion Mark Lamb of Livermore.

A few changes were made to the rules for this year, but none that would account for the explosion in points. That’s due to good old fashioned success at the tables.

The biggest change we made was that points are now awarded for up to 30 places using our “10 percent rule.” In previous years only the top 10 players could possibly receive points, no matter the size of the field. Now, when playing in tournaments with more than 100 entrants, more than 10 will receive points. If there are 192 players then 20 will be eligible for points (remember, we always round up).

For more details on changes made this year (and to familiarize yourself with all the rules in general) go to the POY rules page.